The postmodern literary imagination

Literary writing is a privileged site of inscription for any time period. The authors of two recent novels, Emmanuelle Maffesoli and Clément Bosqué (Septembre, Septembre) and Arnaud Viviant (La Vie critique), offer a description of “Parisian literary life,” by turns ironic and disenchanted, often poetic. These novels, which both lack a genuine “story” and eschew detailed characterization, depict a dreamlike rather than objective reality—as many marks of the postmodern imagination.