"The Seventh Function of Language" by Laurent Binet - a detective story about the murder of Roland Barthes A mysterious novel about French bohemia that will make any philologist laugh. BookJack talks about the novel by the French writer Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language (Ivan Limbach's Publishing House, translated by A. Zakharevich). In it, detectives investigate the sudden death of the philosopher Roland Barthes and learn about the life of high society, which is more like a farce.
Son of an historian, Binet was born in Paris, graduated from University of Paris in literature, and taught literature in Parisian suburb and eventually at University. He was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for his first novel, HHhH.
At the end of February 1980, the great mythologist, semiotic, philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes was hit by a truck near his home, and a month later, never recovering from his injury, he died in the Salpetriere hospital in Paris. This well-known fact becomes the starting point for Laurent Binet's "The Seventh Function of Language" - a dashing postmodern action, masterly balancing for more than five hundred pages at the junction of a classic detective story and an inspired philological skit.
Barthes fell under the wheels of a truck, returning from a meeting with François Mitterrand, the presidential candidate from the Socialist Party (his political star will reach its zenith in the next elections, but so far no one believes in the possibility of success). Having found this out, the police, in the person of Commissioner Bayard, a boring and rude philistine of conservative views, decides to make inquiries - and comes to startling conclusions. Apparently, Bart was the victim of an assassination attempt: the philosopher had a document with him, which disappeared without a trace immediately after the accident. The investigation finds out that this document, describing the mysterious "seventh function of language", seems to have some kind of magical power - it is not for nothing that a whole train of murders follows it and the intelligence services of several countries are hunted at once.
In search of a clue to what happened, Bayard is trying to penetrate Barthes' circle of friends - semiological scientists, boring linguists, fashionable philosophers, arrogant psychoanalysts, narcissistic writers and talkative journalists, vying with each other in their "Roland Barthes" dialect, in which words are shorter than "intertextuality" and "discourse" are considered interjections or particles. Desperate to understand what all these clever guys are, and what the hell is going on in their midst, Bayard decides to find an assistant - a young graduate student Simon Herzog becomes him. Herzog bribes the detective with the fact that, desperate to clearly explain what semiotics is, switches to the intelligible language of examples. In a completely Sherlock Holmes way, interpreting the "signs" hidden in Bayard's appearance (a cheap suit, a wrinkled shirt, a way to keep a door under control, a trace of a wedding ring), reveals all the ins and outs of the detective, from the recent death of his partner to the disintegrated second marriage.
Together, Bayard and Herzog (very soon it becomes clear that his initials - SH - are not accidental, and in their tandem Holmes is Herzog, while the slow-thinking Bayard is destined for the role of Watson) plunge into the world of Parisian bohemia, political intrigue, homosexual orgies, secret operations, secret societies, international conspiracies, chases, shootings, scientific conferences, funny madness and academic nonsense - sometimes quite serious and even informative, sometimes frankly parodic.
About Laurent Binet's novel, you need to understand two important things: firstly, if you have no history of any liberal arts education, you most likely will not be too funny (but if you have it, in some places you will laugh out loud, and also get tremendous pleasure solving numerous author's charades, recognizing quotes and reading cultural references). And secondly, if you hope for any plausible development of detective intrigue, then you are hoping in vain. The grotesque and absurdity will only grow, and together with real historical characters (ranging from Michel Foucault to Donna Tartt and Umberto Eco) literary characters will appear on the stage - so, having gone to a scientific conference in America, Bayard and Herzog will get to the report of Morris Zapp, the hero of the novel "Academic Exchange" by David Lodge. And although in the end the secret of Roland Barthes' death will still be revealed, there can be no question of any correspondence to the classical detective canon in this case: the plot loops, makes unmotivated turns and as a result comes down to either fiction or farce.
The reader will be amazed at how freely - not to say familiarly - Laurent Binet treats the classics of French thought and the icons of the political establishment - both dead and alive. The psychoanalyst and writer Julia Kristeva works for him for the Bulgarian special services (this fact was paradoxically confirmed later), the post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault is perverted with young gigolos in the bathhouse, Umberto Eco is talkative and self-centered like a capercaillie on the current, the politician François Mitteran is a mediocre in the past, almost an executioner), the novelist and essayist Philip Sollers undergoes a humiliating castration, and all the other characters look comical at best, and repulsive at worst.
However, in a paradoxical way, Binet's novel did not provoke in France not only lawsuits (as it would most likely happen in our country, if someone tried to joke just as sparklingly about Russian spiritual bonds), but even any noticeable public discontent. And the reason for this is quite simple: "The Seventh Function of Language" is undoubtedly a novel about a happy era, literally beaming with love for it and for all its inhabitants, without exception. The turn of the 1970s and 80s is a time of the triumph of leftist ideals, a romantic time of hopes, insights and breakthroughs. And Binet - a staunch leftist, like most European intellectuals - is clearly fascinated and captivated by her. And this unconditional love - not excluding, however, an unclouded clarity of view - at once removes all possible ethical claims to the novel and justifies the author's poisonous irony.
This article was sponsored by Allen Parker
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