Things Seen

by Annie Ernaux, Brian Evenson (Foreword), Jonathan Kaplansky (Translator)

“Annie Ernaux’s work,” wrote Richard Bernstein in the New York Times, “represents a severely pared-down Proustianism, a testament to the persistent, haunting and melancholy quality of memory.” In the New York Times Book Review, Kathryn Harrison concurred: “Keen language and unwavering focus allow her to penetrate deep, to reveal pulses of love, desire, remorse.” 

In this “journal” Ernaux turns her penetrating focus on those points in life where the everyday and the extraordinary intersect, where “things seen” reflect a private life meeting the larger world. From the war crimes tribunal in Bosnia to social issues such as poverty and AIDS; from the state of Iraq to the world’s contrasting reactions to Princess Diana’s death and the starkly brutal political murders that occurred at the same time; from a tear-gas attack on the subway to minute interactions with a clerk in a store: Ernaux’s thought-provoking observations map the world’s fleeting and lasting impressions on the shape of inner life.

Genres: France, Nonfiction, Memoir, French Literature, Nobel Prize, Essays, Literature

106 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019. Her other works include Exteriors, A Girl's Story, A Woman's Story, The Possession, Simple Passion, Happening, I Remain in Darkness, Shame, A Frozen Woman, and A Man's Place.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ernaux Season. Day 7.

A spiritual continuation of Exteriors. Not as impactful on first read, perhaps because the novelty of the previous volume has worn off. Perhaps not. Maybe the vignettes here aren’t anywhere near as impactful, but they’re just as inspiring for someone that wants to toss out a few vignettes of his own. We go again.

It’s been a few years since I last saw her. We have had a mostly “positive” friendship, in that we applaud successes and do not always discuss failures. She has had a boyfriend for 3 years, whom I have not met until this moment, though I have heard plenty. He seems like an angel - finally some peace for her, I believe. I walk in after a full day, barely hanging on. I don’t think the wine I have brought is up to scratch. They’re tired, you can tell. We do the polite dance of exchanging dull work stories before getting going. Ramen for dinner. We can’t stop doing the social dance, the adult tango of tit-for-tat. I don’t want to be contributing to the cycle, but I am doing so either way. He seems disinterested, she is routinely checking her phone. Why are we here? How do we all draw closer? Time will not roll backwards, and I cannot conjure up the same energy that I had when I was 20. Nor can she endorse the same behaviour. They pay for the dinner, which I appreciate. Will I have a chance to repay the favour?

***

I think of a few recent conversations, all of which have gone so smoothly. We’re matched on many levels, they anticipate my next move, I anticipate theirs. I also think back to conversations years ago, those enshrined in love. They were not so smooth, as we weren’t matched on the same levels. I persevered. Now I question that perseverance. Did it not, perhaps, contribute to a growing, gnawing sense of frustration? Did I not begin to blame her for things that were entirely out of her locus of control? Did I allow my tendencies to be “the helper” become diluted with passion? Dangerous mix.

***

She sent me a text that implied that she knew what I was up to, how I was really feeling. Before I knew it, I was back in defensive mode. Thankfully, I stumbled onto a bit of awareness. Why did I find this state of being so disgusting? Why was I so against someone knowing that I was into them? Would showcasing vulnerability put me in a “losing position”, showing them too much of my hand? Maybe. I’m glad I caught it before I fucked it up this time. It usually ends with a quick series of texts that not only ruins the “allure”, but also ruins any chances I thought I had of companionship.

***

These aren’t even reviews of Ernaux’s works anymore. Ah, who cares. You’ll pick up the book if you really want to regardless of whatever I type here. We move.

Quotes:

“Stories are a need to exist.”

“Attack at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Five dead and paintings damaged, including one Giotto. Unanimous outcry: incalculable losses, irreparable. Not about the men, women, and baby who died, but about the paintings. Art is therefore more important than life, the representations of a fifteenth-century Madonna worth more than the body and breath of a child. Because the Madonna spanned centuries, and millions of visitors to the museum would still have had the pleasure of seeing her, whereas the child killed made only a very small number of people happy and he would have died one day anyway? But art is not something beyond humanity. In Giotto’s Madonna, there was the flesh of the women that he met and touched. Between the death of a child and the destruction of his painting, what would he have chosen? We cannot be certain. His painting, perhaps. Thereby demonstrating the dark side of art.”

“Songs transform life into a novel. They render what we have experienced beautiful or faraway. The beauty later sets off the pain when we hear them again.”

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most striking result for me, after reading this book, is the hopeless condition the author sees for us. But she does not complain, ever. She merely points out to us examples of the madness and indifference growing in our world today. She takes her own valuable time to record these observations, to make these notes because she cares, even if nobody else appears, even today, to be listening.

One day, the entire sky will become “aerial”, criss-crossed with routes that are noisier than those on the ground, invaded by aircraft that will collide with one another, and fall, causing ten thousand deaths a year, above and below. In cruel indifference, as is now the case with car accidents. This is how men resemble gods.____ Annie Ernaux 1999, Things Seen

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a journal of observed moments across the 90s Ernaux finds a degraded pulse of the times: supermarkets, politics, racism, poverty, war in the Balkans, general indifference. Begins apparently slight but reveals its heft by accreted instants of insight and appeal.

[ruby]

can confirm that things were seen, things happened, things were seen of things that happened, etc.

[Delphine Pernot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il n'y a pas assez d'étoiles pour ce livre, en même temps c'est Annie Ernaux.

Un journal d'errance entre Cergy et les gares du RER A qui dit beaucoup de la société des années 90, de son cynisme de son racisme et en creux, de la montée de l'extrême droite.

Il y a tant de remarques dans ce livre qui sont très actuelles même 30 ans après.

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'aime bien toujours le point de vue d'observateur sur les gens encore plus quand c'est un journal ancré dans le réel super fun

[Maïder Ohaco · Rating 3 out of 5]

J’ai beaucoup apprécié me plonger dans le regard observateur, acéré et très personnel que livre Annie Ernaux sur les choses qui font notre vie quotidienne. Elle décrit à sa manière ces situations, nouvelles, marqueurs de l’époque que nous vivons et voyons sans toujours vraiment y prêter attention…

[Sarah Turcotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Jonas Rodewald · Rating 4 out of 5]

« Peut-être même la philosophie les confortet-elle dans leur droit à ne pas être dérangés dans leur lecture, au nom de la supériorité du monde des idées sur le monde réel. » (28 octobre 1998 - p. 120)


Des moments vécus d'une époque des années 90, des moments d’une vie extérieure, c'est-à-dire de vie en dehors des personnes et des espaces familiaux. Des espaces qui, malgré leur caractère quotidien, conservent une certaine étrangeté. Le métro et le RER avec les SDF, le supermarché avec ses interactions à la caisse, mais aussi la consommation passive des médias avec les horreurs des années 90.
Des petites réflexions sur la vie quotidienne qui me laissent avec une étrange sentimentalité d'une époque que je n'ai jamais vécue. Une sorte de journal intime de moments oubliables, des moments qui m'auraient échappé depuis longtemps.

Momente der 90er Jahre, Momente einer « vie extérieure », des Lebens außerhalb von familiären Menschen und Räumen. Solche die trotz ihrer Alltäglichkeit eine gewisse Fremdheit behalten. Die Metro und der RER mit Obdachlosen, der Supermarkt mit seinen Interaktionen an der Kasse, aber auch passiver Medienkonsum mit den Schrecken der 90er Jahre.
Die kurzen Gedanken über ein alltägliches Leben lassen mich mit einer seltsamen Sentimentalität für eine Zeit zurück, die ich nie erlebt habe. Eine Art Tagebuch über „vergessbare“ Momente, solche, die mir längst entfallen wären.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobel Prize -- that's a lot of weight to place on this slim text. So, let's see: it's a deft mixture of the mundane (although Paris mundane never quite seems that ordinary) and the philosophical. It's a useful and accurate rendering of the way the crises of 1990s Europe played out to those watching from a distance -- quite a thought provoking comparison with the current climate. The diary entry format feels artless, but I feel a lot of work went into its crafting, especially the way the different motifs weave together. Narrator's persona is engaging -- detached but never dismissive. I'm not sure I love the translation, but I'd have to find out more about Annie Ernaux's style before I could give a full evaluation. All in all, enlightening and fresh.

[Léa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aux premiers abords presque agacée de ces banalités de la vie, je finis la lecture de ce court récit étrangement émue et passablement déprimée par un société qui ne semble pas s'être améliorée ces vingt dernières années...

[Banu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Annie Ernaux’nun 1985-92 yılları arasında aldığı günlük notlardan oluşan bir kitap, daha doğrusu iki kitabın birleşimindan oluşan şahane bir edisyon bu: “Harici Günlük” ile “Dışarıda Yaşam”. Okuduğumuz o müthiş kitaplar nasıl bir zihnin ürünü, bunu görebilmek için harika bir eser. Bu iç-dış meselesi benim kafamı epeyce meşgul ediyor yıllardır. Anladım ki bir şeyi şöyle etraflıca görebilmek için dışına çıkmak gerekiyor. (Yeterli değil ama gerekli bir koşul bence).

Annie Ernaux’nun kendi yaşamını, çocukluğunu, ailesini ve koşullarını iyice görebilmesinin bir koşulu onun dışında çıkmak olmuş. Ama birinden çıkıp diğerine atlamamış da (atlamış ama oradan da geri çıkmış) Paris’in 1950’lerin ortalarında yükselmeye başlayan banliyölerinde bir yaşam kurmuş kendine 80’lerden itibaren. Bu banliyö hayatının ne merkezde durma ne de toplumun en kenara itilmiş kesimine dahil olma gibi bir hâli var. (Zaten yeni orta sınıf kendine yaşayacak bir yer bulsun diye kuruluyor bu kenar kentler, biliyorsunuz). İşte bu arada kalışının ona kattığı muazzam bir gözlem gücü var. Ernaux’nun kalemini bu kadar güçlü kılan en önemli özelliklerinden biri de bu. Bu notlar da o gözlem

Bu notlar tabii kenar notları gibi. O yüzden daha ziyade “meraklısına” bir eser bu. Ama Ernaux’da derinleşmek isteyenler için bulunmaz bir kaynak. Buenos Aires’in çok sevdiğim yayıncılarından Milena Caserola’nın Milena Paris alt grubunun çalışması. İçine hem konteksti açıklayan hem de muhteşem çevirmeni Sol Gil’in harikulade çevirmen notunu eklemişler. (Ernaux’yu Buenos Aires İspanyolcasıyla okumak da büyük nimet doğrusu: BA-YIL-DIM).

“Annie Ernaux mahremiyetin politik boyutunu savunuyor” derler ya hep, işte tam da kamuya açık alanlarda yaşanan hayatlarda mahremiyetin izlerini okuduğu, insanın ağzında pır pır bir yazma hevesi bırakan, müthiş kıymetli notlar. Yazı atölyelerinde “prompt” niyetine kullanılsa yeridir.

#annieernaux #diariodelafuera #lavidaexterior #milenacaserola #solgil

[saif · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The sensation of time passing is not inside us. It comes from the outside, from children who grow up, neighbors who leave, from people growing older and dying. Bakeries that close and are replaced by driving schools or television repair shops. The cheese department moved to the back of the supermarket, which is no longer called Franprix but Leader Price."

[Laura Linsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like pseudo-personal moments, as ‘the narrator often seems as affected by what she experiences through film or television as she does by the real events of her life’ (from Brian Evenson’s intro). I feel that.

[prisca💋 · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Le récit est un besoin d’exister.” ❤️

[Lucy Hodgman · Rating 3 out of 5]

i try and try to be an annie ernaux girl but i just don’t think it’s going to happen

[Théo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Observatrice, émouvante, juste. J'ai profondément été touché par certains passages de ce recueil.
Une serie de fragments de vies que j'ai adoré partager avec elleux.

[Augustin Rabiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Écrit dans le métro et dans le rue, se lit dans le métro ou dans la rue.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, you can see why she won the Nobel this year.

[Ri0them · Rating 4 out of 5]

Déprimant mais beau

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reading this slim book in one and two page increments. It's written in a very cool, observed-phenomenon style that reminds me a great deal of the work of photographer/conceptual artist Sophie Calle. It's just 'Things Seen'--on the street, on the RER train... moments. I can't stop reading. A time, a place.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lu d’une traite.

Je me rends compte combien les événements de notre vie courante et immédiate comptent et prennent dr la valeur avec le temps. Je me rends compte ce qu’ils disent d’une époque et de nous. L’auteure a compris très tôt ce que le quotidien contient d’universel.

Un récit qui a l’air simple et évident mais qui ne l’est pas.

[Kyle C · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Everything I write, I write as evidence", Ernaux tells in one of her entries. This autofictional diary is not a sequential story or plot; the entries constitute instead an archive of experiences interwoven with her own didactic musings. In the collection, Ernaux moves around the city of Paris subjecting every thought and vision to probing scrutiny—a beggar in the street, the presidential election, a black woman whose child is misbehaving, recent UN reports of the Bosnian genocide, buying yogurt at a grocery. In these short vignettes, mere momentary observations, she comments on the nature of aging, the comfort of bourgeois security, the folly of human blindness, and the power of writing. News of Kenneth Starr report on Clinton prompts a gnomic pronouncement: "Written sex makes the person seem average but maintains a kind of magic, which disappears with the last line". Watching the film, Morir d'aimer, about a thirty-year old female teacher who slept with her eighteen-year old student, leads to a circumlocutory discussion on the moral martyrdoms of 1968, the people whose transgressions were punished because of, rather than in spite of, a new spirit of libertinism. A busker on the train prompts introspection on the act of giving (it is not to help the hungry poor person but to feel loved). Whether it is a quotidian experience or an epochal moment of history, Ernaux applies the same tools of critique.

Ernaux tortures every experience to tease out a deeper existential meaning. When buying detergent, Ernaux notes that the customers and cashiers only see each other in the moment of purchase—it is money which permits the social act of seeing. At all other times, people are bound by "ritual blindness" to one another; they are strangers carefully ignoring one another. Ernaux is obsessed with this social code of seeing and unseeing. She notices how no one else sees the beggar in the street; no one else sees the Serbian atrocities in the news; and no one sees the immigrants (to see them is to humanize them). For Ernaux, in contrast, the writer occupies a privileged vantage point. The writer sees who sees and who does not; the writer notices the 102-year old woman who has seen a past that has vanished; the writer sees the extravagant neck-tie of the military spokesman, the egregious symbol of the fact that he will never see war.

I found this valorization of the hero writer a little too grandiose and self-serving, but I enjoyed much of the material—contemplative rather than doctrinal, exploratory rather than systematic

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published in France in 2000 and translated to English in 2010. In these essays Ernaux describes what she notices while on the train or bus, walking, at the grocery store or mall. There is no plot or special characters as in her memoir/journal/ biographical writing. She is the person noticing these things and commenting on them from her perspective. Her earlier book, "Exteriors' published in 1993 focused happenings from 1986-1992.

"Things Seen" is much more recognizable, continuing in 1993 to 1999. She mentions going to political demonstrations and watching X-Files and doing two loads of "his" laundry which she describes as "the Sunday of a single woman whose son comes to see her with his girlfriend from the Paris area." The narrator seems concerned by what she experiences on television and the news; the death of Princess Diana or the war and genicide in Serbia, Te right to die simply and gentley in the Netherlands. The murder of the 19 yr.old female hitch hiker.

Then the real life homeless poor sitting/lying down on the streets. The young mother playing to the crowd, loudy scolding her child at the grocer's. The mouse she finds living behind the stove accumulaating the cat's kibble and building a wooly nest. Each time she removes the food and nest she becomes accustomed to the mouse being there until finally the trap springs and she feels the blame that we all feel when we see that little strangled body.

Ernaux writes what we can't even say. " 'Remorse does not exist, I discovered, fascinated, that remorse was pure fiction.' This diary excerpt resembles a passage from a novel written in the first person but is not fiction. It is the exact transcription of feelings experienced after an actual murder", by a boy who killed a boy his own age, smply because the boy was Beur. She asks, is writing acceptable only if it is fiction? Ernaux's view of the 1998 Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky relationship was thought provoking as well as the reaction to the suffering of the war in the Balkans as opposed to the war in the Gulf eight years earlier....Feelings of becoming accustomed and necessary.

Ernaux sees it all and covers it all in her brave style of writing, for herself, as in a journal, that we are privileged to because publishers saw that her writing was special . Maybe this book deserved more than 3 stars from me.?

[Carrotcakie · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The sensation of time passing is not inside us. It comes from the outside, from children who grow up, neighbors who leave, from people growing older and dying. Bakeries that close and are replaced by driving schools or television repair shops. The cheese department moved to the back of the supermarket, which is no longer called Franprix but Leader Price” (10)

“Today, for a few minutes, I tried to see all the people I ran into, all strangers. It seemed to me that, as I observed these people in detail, their existence suddenly became very close to me, as if I were touching them. Were I to continue such an experiment, my vision of the world and of myself would turn out to be radically transformed. Perhaps I would disappear” (13)

“‘We are gripped by shame,’ certain intellectuals claim. They are mistaken; distant reality does not make people feel ashamed” (24)

“I don’t know what to think. People said, ‘you have to put yourself back in time; things were not so clear then.’ That always means put yourself in the shoes of those who had nothing to fear, in their offices, in Vichy or elsewhere, never in those of the people who boarded trains for Auschwitz” (64)

“First novel is reminiscent of ‘first dance.’ Forty years ago, middle class girls awaited this event to make their entry into society. Now they wait to make their entry with their firs literary work: this is an improvement” (66)

“The students seem increasingly infuriated. Everything they have read or learned about cultural differences and tolerance does not help them at this precise moment. Perhaps even philosophy upholds their right to not be disturbed in their reading, in the name of the superiority of the world of ideas over the real world” (74)

[Moon · Rating 2 out of 5]

LU EN FRANÇAIS

I was expecting to like this one more than I did.

I know cynicism is Ernaux's speciality (lord knows I'm an expert in such a field myself), but to read nearly 150 pages of desolate whinging of all the injustice in this cruel world feels a little overdone. It stops being engaging after a while; perhaps it is just a testament to the diary format not always being able to click with certain readers. At times it feels a bit like a lamenting emo teenager's pondering of the world (a.k.a. mildly unbearable and vaguely self-effacing).

 Yes, I am fully aware of Ernaux's introspection-via-other-people approach, but honestly I'd feel a little uncomfortable if someone was making notes about me on the train, judging me in a calculated way, and then publishing these thoughts in a book. It feels a little invasive to me, even if anonymity is fully intact. There's no need to create a story for a stranger on a train when each one of us already has a story, you see? I'm not really a fan of self-imposition.

 The narration, to me, grew slowly more grating as the book progressed. I'm almost a little sad; I'm a pedantic detail-follower, too, and having a fascination with both Paris and the 90s, so I went into this book excited. I came away from it feeling like I've wasted my precious Saturday (which are like a student's invaluable nirvana, so this is no small issue.)

Deux étoiles.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book - maybe it's because I spent a lot of time on public transit in Paris on the RER lines Annie Ernaux writes from in this book, but the flashes of interaction and shrewd observations she records in the public spaces around the city and its suburbs were deeply compelling to me. In the intro, Brian Evenson writes that the voice in this book is a persona, and possibly not literally AE herself, but I find it reads almost like a diary that focuses the personal WITHIN seemingly impersonal observations about strangers, politics, supermarket shelves that, through their accumulation, becomes a very intimate look into the mind of the person narrating all of it. It's like talking to someone who doesn't divulge much about themselves but whose interests and obsessions say a lot on their own. Ernaux's thoughts on the passage of time, aging, the way we treat life-or-death situations as something at a remove if we can't see them or they don't involve intrigue or celebrities we personally identify with, even the cruelty to unhoused people she seems among the Parisians around her — these things all felt very resonant with so many dynamics you'll find in any city today. I felt like I was sitting right next to AE in subway cars, grocery aisles, spaces she writes about that are a part of her everyday life and used to be part of mine when I lived in Paris. This is a close-in, ephemeral, at times challenging book, but one I'm still thinking about after finishing.

[Billie Pritchett]

The title is not false advertising. A "fictional" account of random bits and bobs from everyday life in the Paris metropolitan circa 1993 to 1999. Most of the diary entries capture moments so prosaic one wonders why write them down let alone read about them.

Example. The entry for April 11, 1998.

Memories in black and white of childhood, of all the years up to 1968. Memories in color afterwards. Hasn't memory followed the transition from movies and television from black and white to color?

If you're compelled by this, may the Force be with you. But by way of contrast, here is Virginia Woolf, writing in her diary, also for the date April 11, but for the year 1918.

To the 17 Club this afternoon. But one must describe the weather. Imagine living inside a yellow balloon, the ceiling of which floats up & down, with an atmosphere inside of exhausted air. Such is our situation. When ceiling sinks nearly to the top of our heads we have to turn on the electric light; as we did at luncheon. Occasionally rain falls, but brings no relief. Going to London all the lights in the train were on. I went to the Omega, got my pictures & ran into Roger, carrying a roll of manuscripts, which was, he said, his translation of the Lysistrata. This he has done, on a moderate knowledge of Greek, & wishes to have acted, but doubts how far one can go.

One of these passages is a compelling run of prose. The other is not.

[R0sa B · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 mars

Gabrielle Russier s'est suicidée le 1er sep- tembre 1969, à trente-deux ans. Elle avait été mise en prison pour avoir aimé l'un de ses élèves, âgé de dix-huit ans, « mineur » à cette époque. Cayatte en a fait un film avec Annie Gi- rardot dans le rôle de Gabrielle Russier, Mourir d'aimer, avec une chanson de Charles Aznavour. Elle n'est pas morte d'aimer, mais d'avoir at- tenté aux fondements de la société que 68 ve- nait d'ébranler. La famille d'abord: divorcée, elle arrache un jeune homme, fils d'universi- taires, à son avenir programmé, études, mariage bourgeois. Mère de deux enfants, elle bafoue par une liaison avec un jeune homme le rôle et << la plus haute mission» de la femme. Puis l'école professeur, elle transgresse les fron- tières entre enseignants et enseignés, exhibe le rapport caché de désir entre les uns et les autres. Pour finir la justice entre en scène, exé- cute la volonté des familles et de l'école. Ga- brielle Russier est une victime expiatoire de 68, une sorte de sainte des temps modernes.


P79

[benin · Rating 4 out of 5]

small work of genius. feels astounding to read the exact thoughts I and others have been having while witnessing so many large scale and state sanctioned ethnic cleansings and genocides. the rer serves to give her material to chew on and to demonstrate the mechanics of the journal — this passive observation, always watching, and this vast distance between what is felt and what is done, the repulsive division of what is obligated and what is deeply felt. her attention to the contradictory excesses of western media, to poverty, intimacies on trains, and above all this constant sting of time being inevitably lost. despite the critical preoccupation with this attitude toward time and memory, I felt the book was much more a testament to what it means to witness something, anything. much more to say but I must leave it there for now.