Yasmine Ben Amor

Oblique writing in Pierre Michon's Vies Minuscules Yasmine Ben Amor

A text with a strong autobiographical content, Vies minuscules is, on the face of it, an opportunity to write in salvation for its author. These short stories tell of Michon's powerlessness in the face of a rich language described as Grace. The autobiographical text is concealed within eight biographies that the narrator-protagonist, knew directly or by hearsay: these lives as the author qualified them, are apparently insignificant, tiny or even mediocre but whose Michonian pen tried to elevate them to the rank of majuscules and to correct their defects. Indeed, in the writer patois, an infatuation for a work of exploration of the past is quickly noticed. He sets out to delve into memory, to search his own background for what will make him a whole subject and a great man of Letters. The book also reflects a tug-of-war between a shame of origins and a strong desire to make amends, and a quest for literary perfection that finds a provisional answer in this exchange between the two ambitions.