ABSTRACT
Jean Rouaud's disinclination to write a work of conventional family piety, and the delicate nature of some of his subject matter, has led to a degree of the embarrassment and discord among its members. The family memory that emerges often does so in extremely literary-allusive, intertextual terms which contrast all the more strikingly with the fascination with bodily functions evinced elsewhere. Jean Rouaud's memory seems particularly to feast on the unpalatablebut-true latter category; indeed, to import one of the sentences of interior monologue recreating the Bregeaus' conjugal disharmony from Les Champs d'honneur. The significance of the novel's hermeneutic title will not yield itself until towards the end; it refers to the business acumen of the father, whose astute idea it was to order promotional ashtrays bearing the name of the family firm. The Rouaud family history is an inexhaustible project.
