A Man's Place: Annie Ernaux

Product Information

This book though short, tells us a lot about the family life of hardworking people in France. Annie calls her writing style a neutral way of writing. She shares all the thoughts that went through her mind while writing this book

A Man’s Place | novel by Ernaux | Britannica

It’s taking me a long time to write. By choosing to expose the web of his life through a number of selected facts and details, I feel that I am gradually moving away from the figure of my father. The skeleton of the book takes over and ideas seem to develop of their own accord. If on the other hand I indulge in personal reminiscence, I remember him as he was, with his way of laughing and walking, taking me by the hand to the funfair. . . Writing, too, proves itself a stoic yet inflexible medium. Late in A Man’s Place, Ernaux writes, “I remember the title of a book, L’Expérience des limites. I was so disappointed when I started reading it, it was only about metaphysics and literature.” She evinces a disappointment that language, so appealing, cannot reach beyond theory. In doing so, she reflects on its inadequacies in capturing her father’s provincial, simple, utterly unremarkable life. Engagement with real social and personal experience is, apparently, not to be found in the books for which Ernaux’s erudite narrator yearns. E insieme al dolore, la bellezza di queste pagine, che non se ne va, rimane, si ferma, entra dentro.This is the first time I am reading a book that is considered therapeutic writing by the author. I think it will give readers a different reading experience compared to other memoirs. The first half of the book has a downright naturalistic slant: the hard work, the austerity of life, the impossibility to enjoy. Ernaux describes it all in a very clinically distant way, and in the second half portrays her own rebellion against the life and worldview of her parents. Between the lines you occasionally notice some self-doubt, namely whether she has not betrayed her own environment by her entry into the world of bourgeoisie; and perhaps that's the reason why she wrote this book: “Je hasarde une explication: écrire c'est le dernier recours quand on a trahi.” In that sense, this harsh book may be a form of therapeutic writing. An unsentimental portrait of a man loved as a parent, admired as an individual but, because of habits and education, heartbreakingly apart. Moving and memorable.’

A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux | Fitzcarraldo Editions

babasını kaybettikten sonra onu anlatmak için bir romana başlaması ve bunu kesinlikle yapamaması, aynen ebeveyniyle mektuplaşır gibi dümdüz anlatmayı tercih etmesi bize ernaux’nun o muhteşem üslubunu kazandırmış. yazarın burda da fotoğraflardan anlattıkları doğrudan seneler’i getiriyor akla. bir fotoğrafa bakarak kendini, sınıfını ve babanı anlatmak… o kadar yapılabilir bir şey ki. işte o zaman bu duygudaşlık ve kendini o durumda bulma hayali, başlıyor ağlatmaya.

ernaux bu kitapta aşkı, meşki de atmış kenara bir yüzyılın tarihini yazmış kendince. aynı zamanda köle gibi çalışılan bir zamandan işçiliğe, sonrasında ise esnaflığa uzanan bir sınıf yolculuğu bu.

A Mans Place by Annie Ernaux - AbeBooks A Mans Place by Annie Ernaux - AbeBooks

Ma qui, nelle pagine di Annie Ermeaux, siamo ben oltre la vergogna: la figlia sente di far parte di un altro mondo e un’altra epoca, che non ha più nulla da spartire con il medioevo del padre.

A Man’s Place

When I read Proust or Mauriac, I don't think they evoke the time when my father was a child. Its setting is the Middle Ages.” Sono passati molti mesi da quando, in novembre, ho iniziato questo racconto. Ci ho messo tanto perché riportare alla luce fatti dimenticati non mi veniva così facile quanto inventarli. La memoria fa resistenza. His great satisfaction, possibly even the raison d`etre of his existence, was the fact that I belonged to the world which he had scorned him. Un romanzo che segue la vita di un padre, il padre della narratrice, un operaio diventato commerciante, iniziando dalla sua scomparsa e andando a ritroso, per poi ricongiungersi, di nuovo, con l'inizio.

La place by Annie Ernaux | Goodreads La place by Annie Ernaux | Goodreads

No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral way of writing comes to me naturally, it is the very same style I used when I wrote home telling my parents the latest news." I thought to myself: 'One day I shall have to explain all this.' What I meant was, to write about my father, his life and the distance which had come between us during my adolescence. Although it had something to do with class, it was different, indefinable. Like fractured love." Note: In my notes at one point in the book early on I made this comment, ‘can’t believe what I’m reading...’. I was reading about the father’s childhood:También debo notar que las memorias nunca fueron lo mío, y esta no fue la excepción. Pero al menos las de Ernaux son muy cortas. Algunas citas interesantes aquí y allá, pero nada que vaya a quedar en la memoria, al menos para mí. The author has been able to create the detached and objective narrative about her father as we have seen in A Woman’s Story but I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the account of her mother’s life, perhaps something was missing in it, the depth of emotions is probably not as much as was in A Woman’s Story since somehow, we did not feel very connected, neither with her father nor with herself. It is still a quite powerful read despite its flaws, the control Annie Ernaux has on narrative, the honesty with which she portrayed account of her father doesn’t get dismayed with guilt- another classic example of autofiction, the genre brilliantly exploited and defined by the author. The core of this short book (and most of her books are short, part of a larger memoir project) is of course about her father, begun at the occasion of his death. It is also about a time and a place, mid twentieth century France. Ernaux writes of her struggle to move out of the working-class life in which she was raised to the middle class--university, teaching primary school, marrying “well” into her husband’s middle class family, becoming an academic and a writer. Her father’s pride and sense of loss about her moving out and “up” was mirrored by her own pride and sense of loss. In distinguished society, grief at the loss of a loved one is expressed through tears, silence and dignity. The social conventions observed by my mother, and for that matter the rest of the neighborhood, had nothing to do with dignity."