Hallucinating Foucault
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| Hallucinating Foucault | |
| Author | Patricia Duncker |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Serpent's Tail |
| Publication date | 1996 |
| Pages | 178 |
| ISBN | 0 330 35177 X |
| Followed by | James Miranda Barry |
Hallucinating Foucault is a 1996 novel by Patricia Duncker.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
A postgraduate student goes to France to meet the object of his thesis, Paul Michel.
[edit] Plot summary
A postgraduate student writing a thesis on the French writer Paul Michel starts a relationship with a girl he meets in the library, at Cambridge University. She encourages him to look at his biography more closely rather than only focus solely on the texts. They have dinner with her father; later in London he meets Jacques Martel, a friend of her father's who knows Paul Michel. He then decides to move to Paris to find him, and reads his letters to Michel Foucault in the library. He finds out Paul Michel is in Clermont-Ferrand. He arrives there at night and finds accommodation in Romagnat. He starts meeting with Paul Michel. Soon enough, they are allowed to spend whole days out in the gardens. Eventually, they manage to winkle a day outside of the premises. Michel gets attacked by a man in a bar and fights back. He then kisses the protagonist. Paul Michel is later granted two months away from the madhouse. The protagonist drives him down to Nice, where they stay with an old friend of his, Alain Legras, and his wife. Michel tells his student about his relationship with Michel Foucault. Eventually, he kills himself in a car accident, under the influence of drugs and alcohol. After the funeral, the protagonist returns to England and writes the thesis, but fails to expand on the writer's life.
[edit] Characters
- The protagonist. He remains unnamed. He is writing a thesis on Paul Michel.
- Paul Michel, a French writer who won the Prix Goncourt and later lives in a madhouse. He dies in Gaillac.
- The Germanist, a postgraduate student. She smokes and lives on her own in a flat she owns in Cambridge. She grew up with two fathers after her mother left home. She smokes cigarettes.
- The Germanist's father, a homosexual who works for the Bank of England.
- Jacques Martel, a friend of the Germanist's father. He is Paul Michel's guardian.
- Mme Louet, a B&B hostess in Romagnat.
- Dr Pascale Vaury, Paul Michel's doctor in Sainte-Anne in Clermont-Ferrand.
- Alain Legras, a friend of Paul Michel's in Nice. His wife is named Marie-France.
[edit] Allusions to other works
- Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Christopher Smart are mentioned.
- Music is mentioned with Jean Michel Jarre.
- The painter Hieronymus Bosch is mentioned.
[edit] Allusions to actual history
- Gerrard Winstanley is briefly alluded to.
- The Germanist gives the protagonist an article on Paul Michel taken from Gai Pied.
[edit] Literary significance and criticim
- The novel won the Dillions First Fiction Award.
