and geography, is the lack of distinction

Jones makes between space and place. This

may have been a conscious decision on the

author’s part, but no rationale is given for it,

and it would have been helpful to have an

understanding of why these terms are not

considered separately.

Nevertheless, this book has much to

commend it, and makes some valid points

as to the importanceof the spatial in relation

to identity and cultural production. Chap-

ter Three’s study of the spatialities of AIDS

as figured within Guibert’s work makes

some particularly interesting remarks on

the body, space and the gaze. If the

construction of ‘home’ is rather lost sight

of in this chapter, it is recovered in the

following one, which carries out an

engaging reading of the significance of the

mother and the mere-patrie within Dou-

brovsky’s autofictions. Here, being caught

primarily between two languages, as well as

between two spaces (France and the US),

contributes to what Jones describes as

Doubrovsky’s ‘divided identity’ (206), and

to his ‘autofictional double’ (215) inhabit-

ing an ‘in-between’, or ‘entre-deux’ (215)

that the author attributes to his Jewishness.

This is apredicament also found in thework

of Robin, and Jones’s treatment of this

writer highlights the ‘sense of not-belong-

ing’ (227) that informs this writer’s literary

texts, before going on to analyse someof the

strategies deployed to negotiate this.All in all, this is a promising first book

that combines close readings with

theoretical analysis from an interdisci-

plinary perspective.

CERI MORGAN

Keele University

q 2012 Ceri Morgan

The Radical Use of Chance in TwentiethCentury ArtD. LEJEUNE

Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2012275 pages, 55.00 e, ISBN 978 9042034396

‘Un Coup de des jamais n’abolira le

hasard’: Mallarme’s renowned poem with

its enigmatic title is often cited but, it

would seem, barely understood. Likewise,

Breton’s ‘objective chance’. Chance in all its

possible forms is scrutinised by Lejeune in

this book, held up to the lens of the

philosopher Clement Rosset and con-

sidered in opposition or relation to such

ideas (amongst others) as Artificialism

and Naturalism, objectivity and subjectiv-

ity, certainty and uncertainty, optimism

and pessimism, stability, fixity and

absurdity. Through a careful (if slightly

dry) opening discussion of the nature and

meaning of chance in scientific, philoso-

phical and religious terms, Lejeune arrives

at a point where he can begin to unpack

the presence of chance in the work of

Andre Breton, Franc�ois Morellet and

John Cage in turn, in an informed and

subtle manner.

The three figures are chosen to give a

broad perspective on the use of chance in

the arts, Breton standing for literature,

Morellet for visual art and Cage for music.

The inclusion of the lesser-known

Morellet alongside two avant-garde giants

is a brave choice, and seems to reflect a

personal research interest—Lejeune has

met both Morellet and Rosset, his chosen

philosopher for the project, and he

includes interviews with both as an

appendix. The actual links between Rosset

and Morellet are tighter than those

between Rosset and either Breton or

Cage, and the informed reader should not

386 Book Reviews

expect to learnmuchnew about the author

or composer. Nonetheless, they are exam-

ined in relation to a highly pertinent theme

and the contextualisation of Rosset and

Morellet is useful, surely serving to provide

a more sustained analysis of the two

figures’ work than has previously been

undertaken.Lejeune considers the use of chance as

both technique and theme, demonstrat-

ing the ways in which, for Breton,

chance comes to be merely a means of

invention that can contribute to the

broader project of Surrealism. For

Morellet and Cage, on the other hand,

chance is a subject and system in and of

itself, a way of sustaining invention and

using the various elements involved in

the exhibition of an artwork or the

performance of a composition (artist/

composer, venue/performer, audience

and instruments) as uncontrolled vari-

ables in order to avoid fixity. The

primary difference between Morellet

and Cage, Lejeune concludes, is that

Morellet is an Artificialist and Cage a

Naturalist—labels that he takes to prove,

challenging Rosset, that either perspec-

tive can lead to a radical use of chance.

The use by Morellet of mathematical

notions of infinity and by Cage of Asian

philosophy to subtly different ends is

fascinating, and almost as much can be

learned here about the potential of

different media to incorporate chance

as it can about the motivations of the

book’s protagonists.

Lejeune’s English suffers from a slightly

awkward turn of phrase that, combined

with the complex philosophies at play,

makes the book denser and harder to

read than it might otherwise be; however

this is on the whole a valuable and

intelligent contribution to the field.

CAROLINE LEVITT

The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

q 2012 Caroline Levitt

The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s FrenchScience Fiction: Stepchildren of VoltaireBRADFORD LYAU (Ed.)Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Co., 2011238 pages, $55.00, ISBN 978 0786458578

Bradford Lyau’s study focuses on the

work of 11 authors whose novels appeared

in the ‘Anticipation’ science fiction series

publishedby theFrenchpressFleuveNoir in

the 1950s. Lyau divides these authors and

their works into categories (moderate,

extremist, conservative, radical) based on

his assessment of their perspectives on

scientific and technological progress. Inter-

ested in the different views of modernity

andmodernisation he reads in these novels,

Lyau is also concerned here with tracing an

intellectual and literary history of French

science fiction in relationship to both

contemporary American influences and a

French literary tradition reaching back to

the Enlightenment.In his first chapter, Lyau provides

readers with a broad introduction to the

issues and challenges that shaped the

immediate postwar landscape in France:

a pervasive cultural fearof decline; political

division between left, right, and centre in

the wake of wartime occupation and

resistance; technological and economic

modernisation; American political, econ-

omic, and cultural influence; and an

expansion of French popular culture that

included a ‘paperback revolution’ in

Book Reviews 387