Oh, Please

 

The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet (2015)

There must be fifteen people in the world (outside of French academia) who would be interested in this book. I hope I never have to meet them. Of course it’s a satire, a send-up, a burlesque… but it’s also very pretentious. In fact, beyond pretentious, beyond supercilious, beyond self-congratulatory. And do take note: this book is about French intellectuals and politicians, named and identified (if you can recognize them, their fame doesn’t really go past the borders of France) — and it’s set in 1980, so these are the intellectuals of yesteryear. These are the same French intellectuals who are contemptuous of Americans who don’t fully appreciate Jerry Lewis. Not to mention sneering at Americans who don’t know about structuralism post-structuralism, and a lot of other isms.

“How do you know that you’re not in a novel? How do you know you are not living inside a work of fiction? How do you know that you’re real?” one character asks another, shortly after a third character has been brutally mutilated by the self-appointed philosophical authorities. It’s that kind of book. 

By the way: Yes, there are six other functions of language. The plot of this novel involves a madcap search for a missing piece of paper with a summary of “The Seventh Function of Language” which is the inscrutable final “function” in a semiotic analysis of a whole lot of abstract thoughts that appeal to the pretensions of one of these French school of philosophy. At the beginning, the actual death of Roland Barthes, one of these intellectuals, is revealed not to have been caused by a random auto accident (which actually happened) but by a complicated murder plot which draws in almost every other French intellectual in the field and numerous non-French ones too, including Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky. As the novel proceeds, there are more and more violent deaths (odd for such an intellectual story)!

I feel as if this review has started circling the drain, maybe because the book goes on and on and on… Never mind. 

Here are a few more quotes to show what I mean:

“Simon makes friends with a young Jewish feminist lesbian, coming out of Cixous’s conference on women’s writing. Her name is Judith, her family is from Hungary, she is doing a PhD in philosophy, and it so happens that she is interested in the performative function of language and suspects the patriarchal powers that be of resorting to some sneaky form of the performative in order to naturalize the cultural construction that is the model of the heteronormative monogamous couple: in plain English, according to Judith, all it takes is for the white heterosexual male to declare that something is in order for it to be.”

“Roland’s great semiological lesson that has stayed with me is pointing to any event in the universe and explaining that it signifies something. He always repeated that the semiologist, walking in the street, detects meaning where others see events.” 

“In spite of his reputation, Foucault is pretty groggy after his exploits last night. He dips a huge pecan cookie in a remarkably drinkable double espresso. Slimane sits with him, eating a bacon cheeseburger with blue cheese. The restaurant is at the top of the hill, at the campus entrance [Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, site of an academic meeting with all the famous people], on the other side of the gorge spanned by a bridge where depressed students commit suicide from time to time. They are not really sure if they’re in a bar or a tearoom.”

Full disclosure: I bought the Kindle edition of this book, which had somehow been on my reading list, because it was only $2.99. 

Review © 2025 mae sander 

Day of Protests

 Dexter, Michigan, Protest at 1:00 PM

The protest rally was held in Monument Park in downtown Dexter, around 10 miles west of Ann Arbor. Dexter has a population of 4,500. We estimated that around 200 people were in the park.

The Dexter Bakery: Best-Known Business in Town

Although the park across the street was crowded, the streets were almost empty.

Dexter celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. This is the downtown in 1908 in a mural on the wall of the bakery.
Quite a few buildings are unchanged.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, Protest at 4 PM

Each of the four corners of the streets at the protest site  were crowded with people carrying signs.
Our guess is that there were around 500-600 people present

 

The rally was scheduled at an intersection of two major streets at the edge of town.
This seemed mysterious until we realized that downtown and the campus area were overwhelmed by the annual Hash Bash today.

ALL PHOTOS © 2025 MAE SANDER

April Is Here!

Flowers Around Me

Spring thoughts shared with Deb’s Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.
All spring photos were taken this week, © 2025 mae sander.

Baby Owls

Can you see two owlets peeking out from their hollow tree? We visited them on Monday.
Shared with Eileen’s critters.

 An Excellent Novel

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think many people are recalling the start of the pandemic five years ago, and probably share my feeling that it seems very long ago and at the same time seems like just yesterday. The pandemic is at the center of the lives of the characters in this newly published novel, which makes it perfect reading for right now! Ultimately, the narrator says: “The ending of lockdown trailed off like a forgotten song. If only life could immediately return to what it used to be. Some bars and restaurants had opened, all hesitantly, the rules changing day by day.” Things return to normal — but not really.

Dream Count is about four characters, all women from Africa who immigrate or simply visit the United States. Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor all know one another in various ways. Each belongs to different ethnic and status groups. They have different economic opportunities: one comes from a quite rich family, one makes money on her own, and one is quite poor. I was fascinated by the vivid portrayals of the women, their relationships with men, their views of both American and African social norms, their attitudes towards having children, their jobs or careers, and many other features of their lives. The author has a fabulous way of creating stories and showing the inner and the outer realities of the characters.

The poorest woman in the story, Kadiatou, works as a hotel maid in New York, and her high-profile experience is based on the much-publicized rape of a hotel maid by the famous French banker Daniel Strauss-Kahn, in 2011. However, the author created an entirely different background for the character and her reaction to the events and the cancellation of the prosecution of the perpetrator, imagining an original persona into existence

What is the “Dream Count” of the title? It’s the way that Chiamaka, the pivotal character, during lockdown, reviews her many failed relationships with a series of lovers, both serious and casual. At the end, her friend remarks that “normal people spent lockdown suffering anxiety while you were busy looking up your exes and reviewing your body count.” Chiamaka (who is narrating the novel, corrects her:

“My dream count,” I said. 

“So how many dreams have you been with?” 

“The world has changed and you look back to take stock of how you’ve lived. And you have so much regret,” I said. I wished I had not used that word, “regret.”

In my opinion, Dream Count is one of the best novels I’ve read recently because of the penetrating portraits of the characters and the fascinating insights into both African and American lives.

A Poem For Changing Seasons

With all the big wind storms that have swept across the country lately, I thought a symbolic wind poem would be good for this week —

[what if a much of a which of a wind]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

what if a much of a which of a wind

gives truth to the summer's lie;

bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun

and yanks immortal stars awry?

Blow king to beggar and queen to seem

(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)

—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,

the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays

screaming hills with sleet and snow:

strangles valleys by ropes of thing

and stifles forests in white ago?

Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind

(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)

—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,

it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream

bites this universe in two, 

peels forever out of his grave

and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

Blow soon to never and never to twice

(blow life to isn't: blow death to was)

—all nothing's only our hugest home;

the most who die, the more we live

(Source: Poetry Foundation)

Caused by the wind in April, 2025.

 

Too Short or Too Long?

 

Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
Reminds me a lot of James Joyce (not just because it’s Irish).
Very good book, but too short. Shortlisted, too.

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. Lots of good characters!
Good book but too long, gets kind of lost in the misdirections.

The Shortest Way to Hades  by Sarah Caudwell.
Unfortunately a very discursive and frustrating book to read. 
It would be a good plot — almost a locked room situation —
except for excessive detail about legal matters and TOO LONG!