Patrick Saveau

Serge Doubrovsky ou l'écriture d'une survie

When Serge Doubrovsky coined the word "Autofiction" that appeared on the back cover of Fils, published in 1977, he not only contributed to the renewal of the autobiographical genre, but he also gave a new impetus to critics who were and still are trying to define it. Although scholarly research on the autofictional genre has been thriving for the past 30 years, culminating in a 10 day conference that took place in Cerisy la Salle, France, in July 2008, Patrick Saveau decided to eschew generic questions and embark on another path. In Serge Doubrovsky ou l'ècriture d'une survie, he decided to examine trauma as the source of Doubrovsky's writing practice. Indeed Serge Doubrovsky was only 11 years of age when World War II broke out. In June 1940, France signed the Armistice with Nazi Germany, Vichy decided to collaborate with the German authorities and shortly thereafter anti-Jewish laws were voted in by the Pètain regime. Doubrovsky managed to survive until the end of November 1943 when a policeman dressed in plainclothes came to his parents' home and announced to Doubrovsky's father that he would be coming later on in the morning to arrest them. Without this forewarning, Doubrovsky's family would have been added to the 75,000 Jews that were deported to extermination camps by the French administration. Instead, his family went into hiding from November 1943 to August 1944 when Paris was liberated. Patrick Saveau's book examines how this particular period, in other words what has been termed in France "les annèes noires", comes to haunt the different narrative threads that Serge Doubrovsky has weaved in his eight autofictions. Whether he writes about his life as an atheist Jew, his relationships with women, his views on masculinity, or his daily life, the narrator is always brought back to this traumatic period.

Serge Doubrovsky ou l'écriture d'une survie. PU Dijon. 2011.  Available online through Amazon France or Librerie Decitre.