Art and the manner inCriticism is easy the difficult art

Write on Hédi Kaddour requires caution. Novelist hailed and award-winning for his first novel, "waltenberg", published in 2005, at the age of fifty, he is also a first-rate stylist, who hunts the adverb, adjective, or superfluous suspension points as other trout fario in high mountain streams. It will give as proof the entry "Monday, April 21," Journal of 2008 where it pins Jonathan Littell, the author of the "kindly ones", for his "chicken pox of adverbs." "When it displayed regret, it is"publicly", and when is preferred, it is"certainly"." And worse, Auschwitz, when a voice shouts "A shower!", it is in the midst of a series of "properly, calmly, virtually, especially, officially". "Accountant of the overflow in" "of the prize Goncourt 2006, point six to eight adverbs (458, 470, 478) page, times ten and more (532).

Attentive reader, Kaddour notes that in the draft of "The Human Condition" Malraux was crossed in a "terrible" adjective phrase which, next to the word "Cree" too recalled the remâché style of soap operas. He applauds the construction "countdown of the adverbs" at Colette. In "The retirement Sentimentale" note, "an any:"I see you, voluptuously lying in a hotel bed,"Colette dares:" I see you year through a bed of hotel, flattering and dug kidney. ".". With the same enthusiasm, Kaddourdénonce the excess of ellipsis at the end of paragraph, "often of bad makeup, such as a lipstick" drooling a little is Ecstasy, avenue Italy, before the sign of a store large sizes for women, "night rounds." denounces the use of adjectives expected in a regional daily press columnist: "genuine policy... respectable values... undisputed integrity...". "Before the nailing to the pillory for his fall:"silence and indifference are the piers which prohibit the entrance of the port of the expression defining tomorrow's society." "Finally, at the entrance to"Sunday 9 March", he revels in this note of Valery Larbaud on the phrase"kill the pig":" applicable to the profession of writer precept: avoid the bombast, maintain the expression within the felt expression and that it communicate. ". "In the margins of a draft,"kill the pig"would mean"A rewrite by lowering the tone".

Art and the manner in

Criticism is easy; the difficult art. At the beginning of his novel "Savoir-faire", Hédi Kaddour begins with walk us a little. Only the time and place are safe: the England of the years 1920-1930. But who is the hero The French journalist of the Excelsior, Max Goffard The American opera singer, Lena Hellström Thibault, his young pianist and lover Or is colonel William Strether, master of the Regent's Hotel, decorated with the Distinguished Service Order for his bravery at the battle of Mons in August 1914

After a brilliant digression on art and how to interpret the first lied by Schumann "frauenliebe und leben", Kaddour brings us, although it appears there, for it: the rise of the English fascism between the wars. As it soon appears that the colonel Strether in addition to its activities in the restoration is not reluctant to make the provocative on behalf of the British Facist League. Max believes hold it until a coup de theatre Vienna lay down all its certainties. And ours, naive readers. With this novel from a genuine fact various défraya the British Chronicle, Hédi Kaddour proves that he knows to handle the art of "kill the pig". Elegantly, skillfully and swiftly.