ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Pierre Lartigue's Léger, légére. Published in 2003 by La Bibliothéque, Léger, légére is neither a novel nor a collection of stories. It is a series of eighteen—the number is significant—short-prose texts loosely connected to each other by means of a few recurrent themes, emotions, and settings. Above all, however, it is Lartigue's "light"—as the title suggests—stylistic "music" that soothes and stimulates the reader from beginning to end. It is there on the oyster docks or in the verdant inland country that Lartigue ponders a real, tangible world full of surprises. This is another aspect of the "lightness" suggested by his title: he deftly draws our attention away from himself as narrator, and redirects it toward "humble"—as he cautions—beauties of the present that lend themselves to "extensive daydreaming." Lartigue's fascination with disappearance and reappearance represents the most engaging aspect of his writing: his "light-handed" way of leading to those spiritual enigmas that secretly concerns all.
