‘Quelque part, j’avais écrit dans mon journal, avant de savoir que ϳ̓étais malade: “Mort du sida. Indication superbe d’une biographie”’¹ (‘Somewhere I had written in my diary, before knowing that I was ill, “Died of AIDS. Superb note to strike for a biography”’). This sentence sums up perfectly thewriterHervé Guibert’s complete attitude to the disease. In imagining himself dead he can already see the advantages held out to a biographer by the circumstances of his death. There is never any question of wallowing in self-pity over his own fate: in transcending his condition, in reaching towards the fictional...

A particular status attaches to an author’s ‘youthful writings’: critics respond to them in one of two ways, either as foreshadowing the works to come, or as having very little in common with them. Guibert’s youthful works show him taking his first hesitant steps as a writer. Hervé Guibert is obviously their creator, but some of the early texts inLa Mort propagandedate from 1971, when the young Hervé was only sixteen, so they cannot be approached uncritically; and because the book consists of twelve sections written over a period of eight years, the reader of the present study...

In the texts studied in this chapter we shall see the story beginning to be engendered by photographs set alongside the text, first of all without any attempt at integration (Vice), then becoming integrated into the narrative (Suzanne et Louise). The writer then proceeds to another stage in the relationship between image and text inL’Image fantômein which photography feeds the text while remaining absent from it. As for themes, they will be similar to those ofLa Mort propagandebut worked out in a more polished way.

The stories (eight in number, called ‘nouvelles’ [‘short stories’] on the...

This chapter will study three books, all published in 1982, along with the texts ofLa Piqûre d’amour et autres textessuivi deLa chair fraîchedating from 1981 and 1982. None of these books bears a generic subtitle. As will be seen,Les Aventures singuliéresis an attempt at fiction, and if Guibert does not resolve all the questions that preoccupy him with respect to the creation of a novel, narrative possibilities found here in embryonic form will be developed in other books. With the last text, ‘Le Désir d’imitation’ (‘The Desire to imitate’), Guibert will find a narrative...

SinceL’Homme blesséserved as point of departure for Guibert in his quest towards the novel, this chapter begins with a study of that experiment and links it with the text ‘Les escarpins rouges’, which tells the story of the writing ofL’Homme blesséand provides us with important information about the process of literary creation.Les Lubies d’Arthuris the first of Guibert’s books to bear the subtitle ‘roman’ (‘novel’), so I will be asking if this text, which was to have been issued in instalments with illustrations, is really a novel, and linking it to a text entitled...

The two books studied in this section are subtitled ‘novel’. Going by what has been said in the preceding four chapters, we can bet that a novel written by Guibert will deal with bodies and death and that it will be motivated by a sentiment of love. We can also wonder what role the image will play in this novel and what the relationship between truth and falsehood will be. It will also be interesting to see whether a ‘je’ (‘I’) narrator makes an appearance and, if so, under what identity(ies).

Des Aveugleswas published by Gallimard in 1985. It...

In analysingMes parentswe will see from the outset that its contents are found in other books, pointing us in the direction of what is fundamental in this work, its form rather than its content. Indeed on the back cover the book is called ‘autobiographie de jeunesse’ (‘autobiography about his youth’), and the author will write the ‘je’ (‘I’) of a narrator who is identifiable with Guibert. Will the book fulfil its desired function? That is the question which my analysis, backed by the thematic of the text, will seek to answer.

The chronological order was not respected for...

The books studied in this chapter vary from a collection of short stories (Mauve le vierge), a stage play (Vole mon dragon), two books without generic subtitle (Les Gangsters/Fou de Vincent), a novel (L’Incognito), and lastly a text between short story and novel (La chair fraîche). We can already see that between 1988 and 1990 Guibert uses a whole variety of genres. I shall therefore try to evaluate them with respect to the project of the voices of the self by concentrating on the identity of the narrator and on the narrative voices, and since the chapter is called ‘Towards...

WhenÀ l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vieappeared in 1990, a scandal erupted in the press, a sort of trial by media, pointing the accusatory finger at Hervé Guibert and at his publisher because it was thought that behind some of the characters real people could be recognised, in particular Michel Foucault under the guise of ‘Muzil’.L’Événement du jeudiset the tone with a special report entitled ‘La litté rature a-t-elle tous les droits?’ (‘Can literature do just as it pleases?’) with the suggestive subheading: ‘Hervé Guibert raconte l’agonie de Michel Foucault’ (‘Hervé Guibert’s account of...

A year-and-a-half elapsed betweenÀ l’amiandLe Protocole compassionnel. It is known from the ‘Ex-Libris’ broadcast that during this period Guibert was very poorly and that he did not write for a year. His survival he then will attribute in part to his readers, who had started writing to him. As the narrator ofLe Protocole compassionneltells us, the readers rallied round after he appeared on ‘Apostrophes’ to ‘[le] maintenir en vie’ (‘keep him alive’) in their own way.¹ On ‘Ex-Libris’ Guibert will say that these letters helped him to keep going for a year without writing. A...

I discussedCytomégalovirusin the last chapter despite the fact that it appeared after Guibert’s death, since it formed part of the project of thanatographical writing. With the three books left for me to study, Guibert is in my view still committed to the project of the voices of the self, so their thematic will be that of the body and death also. Of note, too, is the fact that the three bear the label ‘roman’ (‘novel’), with a variant forMon valet et moi. The only difference from the three other works published sinceÀ l’amiis that, as...

The enterprise of the voices of the self is at an end. The word ‘enterprise’ reflects in my view the whole singularity of Guibert’s work: an enterprise is a major project one carries out without knowing whether it will end one day or perhaps even prove impossible to finish, whence the entire theme of the work’s incompletion. But an enterprise is also a constant tending to the construction of an edifice from compatible materials, a constant that emerges from the thematic I have been studying.

A comparison betweenLa Mort propagande, published in 1977, and ‘La Pudeur ou l’Impudeur’, broadcast...