Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory (review)

also reveals in an embarrassing typographical error just how unfamiliar she is with the key (auto)biographical theorists that should have grounded her study: “Mais ici, nous ne sommes plus à l’époque de Saint-Augustin, de Montaigne, de Pascal ou de Rousseau, où l’écrivain ose reveler dans son intimité et ses secrets. L’écrivain moderne ‘Brouille les cartes, pratique un subtil dosage de mensonge et de vérité, et remanie le matériau de sa propre vie. L’ultime avatar de cette pratique est l’auto fi ction [sic], cette mise en fi ction de la vie personnelle, telle que Serge Dobrovsky [sic] l’inaugura à la fi n des années 70’” (50). That she misspells Doubrovsky’s name and never mentions the work of Philippe Lejeune—which is essential to understanding the autobiographical “pact” underpinning what it would seem Delphine really wants to show—is telling. Yet Delphine’s work not only lacks depth. It is marred by additional typographical errors and several troubling inconsistencies. Why vacillate, as she does for example, between the use of “auteure” (78) and “auteur” (9), “écrivaine” (138) and “écrivain” (12)? While an occasional error of agreement can certainly be forgiven, Delphine’s inconsistent capitalization of Liking’s middle name—“Were Were Liking” (170), “Were were Liking” (78), for instance—is distracting and hard to overlook. Delphine’s copy editors apparently did not seriously reread the manuscript before publishing it. Do the few redeeming features of her simplistic work warrant even a fi rst read by others? Probably not.