On Both Sides of the Tracks - by Morgane Cadieu

About the Book

"Social climbers have often been the core characters of novels. Their position between traditional tiers in society makes them a touchstone for any political and literary moment, including our own. Morgane Cadieu's study looks at a certain kind of contemporary social climber in French literature whom she calls the parvenant. Taken from the French term parvenu, which refers to one who is newly arrived, a parvenant is a character who shuttles between social groups. A parvenant may reach the level of another social class, but devises literary ways to come back, constantly undoing any fixed ideas of social affiliation. Focusing on recent French novels and autobiographies, On Both Sides of the Tracks speaks powerfully to issues of emancipation and class. Cadieu offers a fresh, critical look at tales of upward mobility in the work of Annie Ernaux, Kaoutar Harchi, Michel Houellebecq, âEdouard Louis, and Marie NDiaye, shedding fascinating light on social mobility today as a formal, literary problem"--

Book Synopsis

An analysis of social mobility in contemporary French literature that offers a new perspective on figures who move between social classes.

Social climbers have often been the core characters of novels. Their position between traditional tiers in society makes them touchstones for any political and literary moment, including our own. Morgane Cadieu's study looks at a certain kind of social climber in contemporary French literature whom she calls the parvenant. Taken from the French term parvenu, which refers to one who is newly arrived, a parvenant is a character who shuttles between social groups. A parvenant may become part of a new social class but devises literary ways to come back, constantly undoing any fixed idea of social affiliation.

Focusing on recent French novels and autobiographies, On Both Sides of the Tracks speaks powerfully to issues of emancipation and class. Cadieu offers a fresh critical look at tales of social mobility in the work of Annie Ernaux, Kaoutar Harchi, Michel Houellebecq, Édouard Louis, and Marie NDiaye, among others, shedding fascinating light on upward mobility today as a formal, literary problem.

Review Quotes

"On Both Sides of the Tracks shows the narrative of social mobility--at a time of increased immobility--to be an intimate, if ambivalent, structure of literary fiction and nonfiction. The intimacy works both ways: the parvenant is also an uncanny figure for the reader-writer, the class-crossing 'I'/eye imparting to reality the force of the literary. Cadieu attends exquisitely to how details, language, style, tropes, punctuation, and intertexts encode the unending effort and self-consciousness of socio-symbolic passing. One can no longer write about class and the novel without engaging with this fine work."-- "Thangam Ravindranathan, Brown University"

"In this lucid, well-documented, and engaging text, Cadieu shows that social mobility constitutes an important frame in terms of which contemporary French society and literature can be apprehended and that the figure of the (upwardly mobile) transclass individual provides an excellent entryway into the French landscape and literary field."-- "Gerald Prince, University of Pennsylvania"

"Incredibly wide-ranging and rich, On Both Sides of the Tracks stands to be the definitive account of social mobility and class in contemporary French literature. Cadieu tracks the figure of the parvenant--the social climber whose climbing can never really end--as it works its way through and reshapes contemporary French literature, transforming social mobility from phenomenon into experience, one that is fundamentally rooted in language. Cadieu incites us to read these texts as closely as their authors read their own lives."-- "Annabel L. Kim, Harvard University"