Surveying the horizon of the contemporary French novel, one is necessarily struck by the multiplicity of that form. Such a phenomenon is most apparent in the domain of what might be termed the "critical novel,'' that is, a text devised with considerable deliberation, and which demands reflection on the reader's part; a text that is aware of the tradition it has inherited, and which positions itself with regard to that tradition in a variety of manners; a text that puts its own "literariness'' into play for the benefit of readers who are attuned to that discursive gesture; a text that questions (either implicitly or more explicitly) prevailing literary norms; that puts commonplaces on trial through irony or parody; that asks us to rethink what the novel may be as a cultural form. Amid that multiplicity, however, there runs a common thread: the search for a new kind of novel, one more closely suited to our expressive needs than the forms that are currently being practiced. Most characteristically, that new form is sketched out in a hypothetical, conditional mode; typically, the critical novel adumbrates that new form, but does not exemplify it. My intention-here at least-is not to analyze that phenomenon in detail, but rather to suggest the degree of its amplitude. In that perspective, I shall speak briefly about six recent novels which put it on display in interesting ways.
