Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the French Academy's Grand Prix du Roman.
"Michon's prose tends to slow down in order to oblige you to hear its rhythms and also to see and touch and smell what is happening beneath it."—Harper's Magazine
He was not tall, unobtrusive, but he held your attention by his feverish silence, his dark cheer, his alternately arrogant and oblique manner—grim, you would call it. At least that was true seeing him later in life. None of that appears on the Würzburg ceilings in the portrait Tiepolo left of him, when the model was twenty years old: he is there, so they say, and you can go see him there, perched among a hundred princes, a hundred constables, and ushers . . .
Corentin, a young man of humble origins, rises up in Parisian society, becoming a famous painter who is called upon to decorate the homes of Louis XIV's mistresses. Yet his masterpiece is "The Eleven," a revolutionary representation of the eleven members of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror.
Pierre Michon, born in Cards, France, in 1945, is one of France's foremost contemporary writers. He has been awarded the Prix Décembre, the Grand Prix du Roman (for The Eleven), and the Prix de la Ville de Paris for his body of work.
Elizabeth Deshays is a teacher and a translator. She is the author of a study on bilingual education, L'Enfant Bilingue. She lives in Provence, France.
Jody Gladding is a poet and translator of over twenty books from the French. Her most recent collection of poetry is Rooms and Their Airs (Milkweed Editions). She teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Review
PRAISE FOR SMALL LIVES
"Rarely have I encountered a writer whose work felt so rewarding upon a first reading. . . . Reading Small Lives, I felt profoundly that Michon was carrying on the mark of a true writer: one who speaks in his own voice while conveying with all its immediacy and flesh-and-blood possiblity of what it means to be human."
Richard Kalich, The Review of Contemporary Fiction
"In Small Lives by French author Pierre Michon, not only are we aware that we are reading great literature, but we have the privilege to accompany him on this journey in which he discovers the voice and style that make this an outstanding work of depth, substance and originality."
Monica Carter, Three Percent
"The emotion, the forceful claims of the imagery, the painting of the starry night: Mr. Michon achieves what other writers wouldn't try, licensed as he is by keen regret and transfigured loss. More than other writers, Mr. Michon misses the poetry of the past, and in missing it he possesses it."
Benjamin Lytal
"Michon's prose tends to slow down in order to oblige you to hear its rhythms and also to see and touch and smell what is happening beneath it."
Roger Shattuck, Harper's
"In the flow of Michon's meditations and narratives, the visionary becomes the actual, and the actual becomes the visionary."
Leonard Michaels
"One of the best-kept secrets in of modern French prose."
Publishers Weekly
"An astonishingly rich, mythic new direction in modern French narrative."
Guy Davenport
Synopsis
A Grand Prix du Roman-winning meditation on the relationship between art and power set during Louis XIV's reign.
Synopsis
In The Eleven, Michon lets us into the world of Corentin, a painter shaoed by—and who eventually shapes—history. Brought up among provincial aristocracy to become a favorite of Parisian society—his paintings are commissioned by Louis XVs mistress—Corentins career rides the Tides of the French Revolution. His masterpiece, "The Eleven," is an enigmatic Last Supper, representing the eleven members of the Committee of Public Safety (including Robespierre and Saint Just) during the Reign of Terror. Corentin and company, his work of art, and the historical tableau of the French Revolution come to life in dazzling, even painterly, detail. A potent blend of fact and fiction, The Eleven is a beautifully written, astute meditation on the nature of history itself and the artists role in it.
About the Author
Pierre Michon, born in Cards, France in 1945, is one of France's foremost contemporary writers. He was awarded the French Academys Grand Prix du Roman for The Eleven, the Prix Decembre for his short novels Abbes and Corps du roi, the Prix Louis Guilloux for La grande beaune (The Origin of the World), and the Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1996 for his body of work.
Jody Gladding is a poet and translator. Her most recent collection of poetry is Rooms and Their Airs. She has translated over twenty books from French, including Serpent of Stars by Jean Giono. She teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Vermont.
After devoting a part of her life to specialized horticulture, Elizabeth Deshays now works as a teacher and translator. She is the author of a study on bilingual education, L'Enfant Bilingue. In addition to Michons novels, she translated Julien Gracqs La Presquile (The Peninsula). She lives in Provence.
Jody Gladding and Elizabeth Deshays were awarded the French-American Foundation for Translatio Prize in 2008 for their rendering o Pierre Michons Vies Minuscules (Small Lives).