Picture Theory

by Nicole Brossard, Barbara Godard (Translator)

First published in French in 1982, this novel of lesbian love among four women takes place between Curaçao and Montreal; New York and Paris. The title, taken from Wittgenstein, is a reference to the hologram as a new pictorial model for woman. Like the hologram which is intended to be read from an infinite number of changing conditions, Brossard's work abstracts the image of the feminine so that it can be read from all angles.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Fiction, Canada

186 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Born in Montreal (Quebec), poet, novelist and essayist Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. In 1965 she cofounded the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour and in 1976 she codirected the film Some American Femnists. She has published eight novels including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert, Baroque at Dawn, an essay "The Aerial Letter" and many books of poetry including Daydream Mechanics, Lovhers, Typhon dru, Installations, Musee de l'os et de l'eau. She has won the Governor General award twice for her poetry (1974, 1984) and Le Grand Prix de Poesie de la Foundation les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase-David, which is for a lifetime of literary acheivement, was attributed to her in 1991. That same year she received the The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn have been translated into Spanish. In 1998 she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay titled She would be the first sentence of my new novel/Elle serait la premiere phrase de mon prochain roman(1998). In 1989, a book of her poetry in translation, Installations, was released, translated by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. Nicole Brossard lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicole Brossard is amazing and tricky. I've written in another review about how she writes in an open manner that invites the reader to help build meaning, but I recognize that the ambiguity and interpretability of many passages can also seem closed if the reader has to work too much to find something to hold to. Not to say that she writes completely abstractly -- the situations here come through, a series of meetings and conversations and relationships among a group of lesbians moving through a number of moments in time and locations -- but that through these scenes and characters, the majority of Nicole Brossard's words are concerned less with the ostensible plot or characters, than with concepts, theory, poetics. Often the book as an object, as a collection of words. Often her concern seems mainly to be for words themselves. Which is where the invitation to join in assembling a meaning comes in. Not to say that she writes meaninglessly at all, but that she leaves enough ambiguity for the reader to have space to work. Which, though, as I said, tricky, it rewards. I'm still working on it, though. Having read all of this sequentially, I feel like I'm now beginning the work of flipping back through, delving, reading and re-reading.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is more going on in this one than I was able to get out of it on one reading. If I am remembering correctly, I felt I was missing a lot of intertextual references, among other things.

Acquired 1995
Cheap Thrills, Montreal, Quebec

[Amira Hanafi · Rating 5 out of 5]

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