Femmes

by Philippe Sollers

In this sharp, sardonic novel, a misogynist American writer moves through erotic encounters from Paris & New York to Barcelona, Venice, & Jerusalem, pursued by lovers who are members of an militant feminist group dedicated to the "reeducation" of men.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Philosophy, Novels, 20th Century, Literature

570 pages, Broché

First published January 26, 1983

About the author

Philippe Sollers (born Philippe Joyaux) is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel (along with the writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet), published by Seuil, which ran until 1982. In 1982 Sollers then created the journal L'Infini published by Denoel which was later published under the same title by Gallimard for whom Sollers also directs the series.

Sollers was at the heart of the intense period of intellectual unrest in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. Among others, he was a friend of Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes. These three characters are described in his novel, Femmes (1983) alongside a number of other figures of the French intellectual movement before and after May 1968. From A Strange Solitude, The Park and Event, through "Logiques", Lois and Paradis, down to Watteau in Venice, Une vie divine and "La Guerre du goût", the writings of Sollers have often provided contestation, provocation and challenging.

In his book Writer Sollers, Roland Barthes discusses the work of Phillippe Sollers and the meaning of language.

Sollers married Julia Kristeva in 1967.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sollers was a founder of the Tel Quel avant-garde group, and the synopsis here is so gleefully blatant -- an acerbic self-proclaimed misogynist travels the world recounting his flings while evading a militant feminist terrorist group -- that I thought this HAD to be doing something actually interesting. But alas no. Here, the terrible narrator is no mirror of a broken society, but a minor distancing device so that the author can expound on all the opinions he'd really like to give us straight out. Including utterly uninteresting reflections on reactionary gender politics, such as that all women really want is to trap men into marriage and remaining a single womanizer displays a rare, heroic iconoclasm. Oh come on, this was the 80s not the 50s. I would tend to say that daring to really, actually connect with another person remains the more rebellious act. But no, instead, we get 560 pages of transparently Celine-channeling ramblings of a lonely misanthrope. All the parts of Celine I hated, too, come to think of it. And then why drag Lacan and Barthes into this muddle as well? They deserve so much better. Granted, I'm not actually done yet -- could there be some grand reckoning? I doubt it. I almost want to keep reading just to confirm my initial overwhelming irritation, but for that I'd have to...keep reading.

...

earlier attempt to grapple with my frustration:

This immediately raises a few questions. Why remake Celine in the 80s? Why fill 560 pages of ramblings on art and society with the only connective glue the twinned threads of sex and a paranoiac fear of feminist conspiracy? Sollers earns a lot of leeway on founding Tel Quel and publishing the likes of Maurice Roche, so I want to hear him out. But of course, we're hearing him out via a secondary narrator (who even stresses their separateness while praising Sollers himself) but is this a direct mouthpiece for various cynical opinions of the author himself like Celine's, or a satiric grotesque, whose warped opinions probe a warped society? Possibly, it's both -- he seems too caricatured for Sollers to really allow himself identification (even if his friends are coded versions of Sollers' real friends), but S. also seems to be enjoying the cover that such provides: he can say whatever he'd like about anything but always retreat behind his ironic proxy if questioned. Not that it has to be this way with such narators, but I'm having difficulty making out a useful satiric agenda behind this guy -- S. just seems to want to let him talk. At length. About whatever is in their collective mind. Perhaps S.'s awareness of his problematic ways of relating to the world will emerge at some point. Perhaps not.

Not that there isn't a plot, but it's more of a vehicle for the voice. Sex, of course (here just so many disdainfully related encounters and relationships which our narrator managed to avoid committing to (even though married!)) -- well sex is the great equalizer of early-post-modern lit, isn't it? Anyone is entertained by reading about sex, so it can be used to propel any otherwise cumbersome semi-experimental text. Anyone, provided, usually, that they're male, in the usual assumption of male gaze (not that women do not enjoy reading about sex as well, as the best-seller lists attest, but surely this non-committal griping manchild is not their avatar. He's not mine either!) (I feel like Pynchon is much defter at humanizing his conceptual constructs through sex in less biased ways, for instance; it's the execution here that annoys, not the technique itself. Though here it also actually dates this a little -- it seems to belong to the 60s, where sexual permissiveness meant something much more radical, than to the 80s).

In any event, why sex is dubious connecting glue here is also underscored by the related plot thread: our self-proclaimed misogynist has discovered a radical feminist conspiracy towards world domination, and must warn us all (again, the presumption of the sympathetic male reader). Here, the character is more of a caricature, the whole thing can't be anything but ludicrous, but it nonetheless provides for endless discussion of questionable gender politics. The voice rambles and cavorts through its plots and subjects gracefully, in its way... even if... Celine again... it over-depends on the ellipses... but cavort as it will, I'm not entirely amused. Again, why must we listen to this guy for 560 pages?

Granted, I'm only about a quarter through, but nothing suggests a radical change in structure or content. Please surprise me, S., on that count.

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

But who’s this old Swabian farmer, with a beret on his head and a swastika on his back?

The final quarter wasn’t exactly bad, actually a charged montage of ideas, but it required over four hundred pages to arrive at the payoff, a slog of forced titillation and jagged misogyny.

It is impossible to approach this without filtering it through my readings of Binet’s Seventh Function of Language: the similar setting of Paris in the early 1980s with shifts to the US and Italy. The portraits of Barthes and Lacan and of course the idea that Sollers is one of the villains of that novel, his ambition hobbled by his bumptious habit of misquotation. Likewise the author offers a steady vomit of erotic anatomy and corresponding eschatological citations. I’m not sure to what effect but a memorable sequence leads from a terrorist attack through a feverish dream packing along Wagner, Houellebecq, Pynchon and Heidegger. I can’t recommend this but it is interesting as collage, though as a cipher for Tel Quel, Kristeva or misogyny I’m not sure it satisfies. Confounds and enrages, certainly, but nothing satisfying.

[tomasawyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lecture barbante, style redondant... Des points de suspension... un voyage... un coït... des points de suspension... un voyage... un coït... des points de suspension. Monsieur est un personnage désinvolte et il veut que ça se sache, à chaque phrase. La ponctuation, les conventions, il s'assied dessus. Prendre la vie au sérieux, très peu pour lui. Monsieur est détaché de tout (sauf de l'argent) mais ça ne l'empêche pas d'avoir un avis sur tout et de vous expliquer la vie. Quel ennui...

[Robert Wechsler]

The best two things about this novel are (1) the rhythm of the phrases, clauses, and sentences between Sollers’ ellipses (à la Celine, but not really like Celine) and (2) Bray’s translation; I bought the novel because she translated it. Unfortunately, the wonderful rhythms, equivalent to those of Philip Roth’s best prose, are not frequent enough, the narrator is hard to take, and I found his babbling boring much of the time. I’m glad I tasted 50 pages of the prose, but I can’t imagine reading over 500 pages of this.

[Andrew]

It's hard to know what to make of this – on the one hand Sollers wanted to go on a journey to the end of the night, and I approve of that, but was this of value? Maybe it was just too nihilistically Frenchy, but more likely it's the fact that this was 200 ages of material in a 600 page book. Pourquoi, Philippe? I really need to read his early work that landed him on the scene at some point, though, because when Roland Barthes speaks, I listen.

[LaFleurBleue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Très long
Ce livre m'a indirectement fait pensé à la Dolce Vita de Fellini : un "truc" connu, réputé, d'un auteur fameux, mais sans vraiment de suite, ni de structure d'ensemble, plutôt un enchaînement d'idées, de scènes, une accumulation d'instants qui très vite lasse, énerve et finisse par barber le lecteur ou le spectateur.
Et plus encore que la Dolce Vita, Femmes a vraiment vieilli et est vraiment daté des années 80.

[Ronald Jean-toussaint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un livre à lire relativement tôt dans sa vie… On dis d’une certaine manière que tous les écrivains essaye d’écrire le même livre, et ici, sollers s’attaque à la jambe de maman, le pouvoir de la femme, son vide, ses contours… son culte invisible, les transformations de la société dans le regard de l’auteur, des digressions, interpénètré par dans du style Celinien, mais léger et ludique. Agréable, peut être un peu long, un peu trop satisfait de son propre esprit.

[Ludo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just like the Daft Punk song, Toooooo Long.

But as usual, with Sollers, full of ass-HOLY-sly funny (and philosophical) observations. Also a lot of pretty good sex. Too much of it, come to think of it.

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Se descose
Quiere abarcar demasiados temas
Esperaba mucho más

[Paul Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and its sense of play, its sense of being alive in France, its provocations which are sometimes mocking sometimes sincere, but always joyful. Its a delight to accompany a mind so comfortable with history and literature ( I don't mind his borrowing of Celine's ellipsis). My favorite parts were the sections on art and Picasso. There is a joy throughout in relation to ideas and life I find admirable and rare. What few reviewers seem to get in America is that "Women" , like DeKooning's women, is an images of women's power as viewed by men (see aspects of Kali) and not a misogynist view at all. Kathy Acker was no less varied in the power of her women. Sollers runs the gamut of gods here. All of which make one engage with ones own experience and takes. To me at least.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book if you like a Frenchman crying about anti-semitism, feminism, communism, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Also stealing from Celine.