‘Curiouser and curiouser’: Childhood Figures to Live By, in Writings in French by Lydia Flem and Philippe Forest

This article analyses selected writings in French by Lydia Flem and Philippe Forest, with a focus on the intertextual presence of literary figures from well-known sources, identifications with figures from imaginary worlds and their relationship to the writing project. These authors’ curiosity about the place of storytelling in understanding selves and lives extends to the question of how literature connects with experiences that otherwise remain inaccessible or elude conscious awareness. The formal and thematic functions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan are examined in Flem’s Comment je me suis séparée de ma fille et de mon quasi-fils and Forest’s L’Enfant éternel. The article argues that via the perspectives of the (parental) narrators in both texts, these literary figures mobilize the creative expression of experiences of change and loss. The (re)turn to literature takes place not because it saves, or consoles, these writers insist; rather, they describe the compelling and paradoxically sustaining functions of reading and writing even as they precisely fail to offer up any certain resolution. Literature’s capacity to enliven curiosity about human experience means that writing is life; literary figures live with and in them. In a similar spirit to Deborah Levy’s description of ‘living autobiography’, the article argues that Flem and Forest attest to the need and desire to write in an ‘engaged’ way, characteristic of a writing practice that encompasses concrete and imaginary worlds, reality and fantasy. From explorations of transition and loss, Flem’s ‘bébé de papier’ and Forest’s ‘être de papier’ emerge.