Word: carnejoux
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...Bertrand Carnejoux is a roving young journalist of notable amatory agility. Every ripple in the stream of his consciousness reflects a preoccupation with sex, and he introduces a dozen different mistresses in the first 50 pages. But on page 31, Bertrand begins to speculate about writing a treatise, in the form of a novel, to be titled: The Phenomenology of Physical Love. The secret is out; this Don Juan is not a sexual athlete but a literary one, an aspiring philosopher of womanizing. As the reader reads on, he discovers that Claude Mauriac's new novel is hardly...
...Carnejoux is the alter ego of Novelist Claude Mauriac, son of Francois Mauriac...
...brassiere. A plainclothes detective on a stake-out forgets his ambush to gawk; an aging homosexual glances at the girl in envy; a bookstore owner obsessed with the past history of this quarter of Paris barely sees the girl as she passes before his eyes. And a novelist named Carnejoux, watching the square from his balcony, is excited: first, because he is as lustful as the detective and the traffic cop, and second, because he knows that the beautiful, bouncing runner will make a fine incident in the avant-garde novel he intends to write about an hour...
There is probably a limit to how much can be said with Mauriac's method, but fortunately the author, unlike most avantgardists, feels no compulsion to be deep. His slight, amusing novel, The Dinner Party, merely proved slyly that the host (Carnejoux again) and most of his guests were intricately and sexually involved with one another. The present book proves even less, and is equally charming. Its effect is that of sitting in the sun at an outdoor cafe, slightly muzzy from wine, and imagining idly what is going on in the heads of the passersby...
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