THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

by Simonne Jacquemard ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This Prix Renaudot is again an experimental novel and an avant-garde abstraction in which there are many mutations; time and place converge, diverge; so do dreams and realities; and always there are the philosophical double meanings. The central character, Simeon Leverrier (another solitary, another stylite) is a night watchman by profession; he is also a watcher of the night, and having excavated an old well in the middle of the garden, he makes his descent to the dark center of the earth. He also takes someone with him, a shopgirl, who dies there after her 79 day interment. The strange parallelism of time makes possible his coexistence in a world in which he is both dead and alive. It also makes possible the novel's shifts from his interrogation now, by his prosecutor, to his antecedent activities, the notes he kept, the observations of his neighbors, etc. The novel's meaning? in the descent to death alone can one find the ""keys and answers"" -- the assurance that ""death has no power."" The message too may have lost its sting, but if it is not original, much of the writing is; it has extraordinary precision along with a rather fascinating mobility of ideas and images.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: olt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: FICTION