ABSTRACT
J. M. G. Le Clézio (b. 1940) was not on my short list of French writers whom I thought might, and hoped would, win the 2008 Nobel Prize. I had long imagined that one of an elderly trio (Jacques Réda, Philippe Jaccottet, Yves Bonnefoy), whose poetry, poetic prose, and essays have nourished me constantly for some three decades, would eventually get the award; and then, when I learned from the noon radio news that Le Clézio had been chosen, several of his French contemporaries also came to mind. There is not room here to name them all; even less to explain the respective differences with which they develop themes that are expressed in Le Clézio’s own work as well, namely the constitution of the self, the place of the Other, the lasting consequences of history, and the writer’s openness to the outside world. Broadly speaking, whereas many postwar French writers have excelled in autobiography, Le Clézio (who by no means avoids this genre) has also been characterized by his attraction to other places, other mentalities, and otherness in general; that is, to what lies outside the self.
