cover image Signed, Malraux

Signed, Malraux

Jean-Francois Lyotard. University of Minnesota Press, $72 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-8166-3106-3

Working a typically playful vein, French philosopher Lyotard (d. 1998), one of the foremost theorists of postmodernism, has written an idiosyncratic depreciation of Andr Malraux (1901-1976), the self-publicizing professional intellectual who was enshrined in the Pantheon in 1996 as a hero of culture. Beginning as an anarchist and then a Communist-leaning adventurer, Malraux became an esteemed novelist (Man's Fate, Man's Hope) and ended up as Charles de Gaulle's minister of culture. Lyotard's ambiguous attitude toward his subject is captured in the term farfelu--he uses it dozens of times, but it is left untranslated--an all-purpose term for harebrained, eccentric or even senseless. Lyotard, no respecter of mere chronology, whipsaws the reader in time from one decade to another, granting Malraux his grudging admiration for creating a personal ""fantasy machine"" and for ""signing his life as if it were one of his works"" (hence the title). The Malraux he presents is, in a series of farfelu images, ""a bit of a punk"" and an ""odd bird"" who ""loathed himself as a little boy whose diurnal stupidities would by evening be absolved by the leniency of women."" The translation--in attempting to capture Lyotard's self-consciously ""pomo"" style--veers between triteness (""rubbed shoulders""; ""beaten track""; ""happy camper"") and opacity (""ubuesque""; ""acephalous""; ""paraph""). While Lyotard's disciples may enjoy his gambols, those seeking a straightforward introduction to the subject will be better served by Curtis Cate's more workmanlike--and balanced--Andr Malraux (Forecasts, Jan. 27, 1997). (Apr.)