Elvis, Mickey, Bruno

Abstract

Assuming that his readers know nothing about Bruno Schulz, François Coadou believes that he should start from the basics, although it seems that he would really like to concentrate on more specific problems. The second part of his book is an attempt to present an original interpretation of Schulz’s fiction. Coadou precedes it with a subchapter titled, “Presentation of Bruno Schulz,” which seems neutral, but in the French context is quite unusual, referring to Gilles Deleuze’s Présentation de Sacher-Masoch, since the author of Venus in Fur provides one of the issues under scrutiny. Coadou approaches Schulz’s fiction as an open work in the tradition of Cervantes, Sterne or Joyce, claiming that in his analysis of the decomposition of the world and subjectivity the Polish writer proved more penetrating than the author of Ulysses. Next to such daring, controversial, and sometimes simply doubtful proposals, one may find in Coadou’s brief study a metacritical reflection criticizing the schematism of Schulz’s reception, continuously referring to the same biographical facts and psychological diagnoses. L’inquiétude de la matière is an interesting attempt to approach the Polish writer from the outside, but on the other hand, it is also disappointing because of its interpretive and stylistic faults.