Der Pelz meiner Tante Rachel by Raymond Federman. Translated
from French* to German by Thomas Hartl, 1997. Available from: Faber and
Faber, Leipzig, Germany.
At the outset, the title attracts attention. Federman experts know that aunt Rachel has not appeared in any of Federman’s previous novels. So, does the text confront us with a totally new chapter of Federman’s striking life story which has already been turned into a whole series of metafictional texts? Yes and no. A postscript called “Addenda” shows that aunt Rachel is a fictitious person. However, as we all know, the borderline between fiction and reality is highly problematic. The postscript even mentions Federman himself as a fictional character; the sole difference is that the author’s alter ego is called “Féderman.” A tiny little accent carries the difference between the author and his fictitious counterpart. On the other hand, the list of “wirkliche Namen wirklicher Personen” (real names of real people) closes with Nixon, Reagan and Bush. There is probably no reader who would claim that these people belong to the world of fiction only. Federman turns the distinction between fiction and reality into a highly ironic game which points to one of the basic concepts of metafiction, namely that all texts are fictional. That does not mean, however, that fiction cannot evolve around an autobiographical or historical nucleus. This nucleus is transformed into fiction, and is simultaneously questioned and reinterpreted in the very process of writing. Thus, Federman creates “versions” of an autobiography which has grown more familiar over the years. This autobiography relates the story of a Jewish boy in France who escapes the Holocaust due to a spontaneous gesture of his mother. The boy manages to survive the remaining years of the war on a farm in the unoccupied parts of France, and later emigrates to America. Living in the shadow of the American Dream, the immigrant finally escapes oblivion thanks to a brilliant dissertation on Samuel Beckett.
So now it’s aunt Rachel. The fact that she is a “fictitious person” does not mean that she did not exist. Aunt Rachel serves as a narrative gap; the narrator’s memories rely entirely on a single photo, and on stories that were related to him by his parents (who died in a concentration camp). To paraphrase Federman, the critic: You have to invent if memory proves to be insufficient. And this is exactly what the novel does. It invents life in the name of a truth that not even Federman’s own texts have mentioned so far. However, the novel is not so much a radical criticism of America, as the German cover text pretends, as it is a stunning “critique” of the narrator’s country of origin, France.
After ten years of struggle in America, the narrator returns to Paris. There, he wants to finish his novel Die Zeit der Nudeln which “Federmaniacs” easily recognize as Federman’s first novel Double or Nothing (1971). The narrator makes contacts with the Amour Fou (Crazy Love) press company which, as its name suggests, is not really the right recipient for Federman’s radical prose. The reader understands very quickly that, in spite of all the allusions to America as an anti-intellectual country, the writer would have been “Lost in Oblivion” in France (to quote a film by Don DeCillio). In a highly humorous and clever manner, Federman dismantles the myth of France as an intellectual country, so that France, for the second time in the narrator's life, turns into a point of departure. This second farewell to his home country becomes even clearer when the narrator visits the house of his deceased parents where he finds his rich uncles and aunts. An empty room on the first floor (where the narrator grew up) turns into a second narrative gap into which the narrator withdraws in order to hold a mirror to the Holocaust survivors of his family.
The autobiographical nucleus is presented in a series of conversations, for example with a publisher or a taxi driver. The narrator "talks" with two different voices; the vulgar diction belongs to the young Frenchman who dreams of sexual encounters, whereas the elevated style anticipates the writer and literary critic who is on the point of establishing himself. Thus, past, present and future turn into a narrative continuum that spans from the birth of the narrator’s mother (in 1910) to the year 1996, so that even Federman’s new publisher Michael Faber and his translator Thomas Hartl become fictionalized. The overall impression is that of an improvisation in language, or of a solo on a saxophone (an instrument Federman plays with considerable virtuosity). At the end, however, a quiet listener gets up at a café in Montparnasse: Federman’s fictional alter ego who has recorded his “last tape” by telling yet another version of his autobiography to himself. This most recent version carries a totally stunning truth. It becomes obvious that, to a certain extent, the death of the narrator’s parents can be attributed to the stinginess of the rich family members, who, warned in time of the initial deportations in France, only thought of saving themselves. They did not warn the narrator’s parents for fear of having to look after the poorer family members. In short, the nucleus of Federman’s novel carries a truth that goes far beyond the autobiographical level.
* La Fourrure de ma Tante Rachel. Paris: Circé, 1996.