The seventh function of language

Title:

Author:

Binet, Laurent, author.

Added Author:

Taylor, Sam, 1970-

Personal Author:

Binet, Laurent, author.

ISBN:

9780374261566

Edition:

First American edition.

Physical Description:

359 pages ; 22 cm

Abstract:

Paris, 1980. Literary critic Roland Barthes is struck by a laundry van and dies after lunch with presidential candidate FrancÌʹois Mitterand. Was it an accident ... or murder? Hapless police detective Jacques Bayard's new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory, and sends him in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious "seventh function of language."

The suspicious death of literary critic Roland Barthes in 1980 Paris reveals the secret history of the French intelligentsia, plunging a hapless police detective into the depths of literary theory as it was documented in a famed linguist's lost manuscript.

Personal Subject:

Barthes, Roland-Death and burial-Fiction.

Subject Term:

Intellectuals -- France -- Paris -- Fiction.

Genre:

Detective and mystery fiction.

Mystery fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

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Summary

From the prizewinning author of HHhH , "the most insolent novel of the year" ( L'Express ) comes a romp through the French intelligentsia of the twentieth century.

Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies--struck by a laundry van--after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn't an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered?

In The Seventh Function of Language , Laurent Binet spins a madcap secret history of the French intelligentsia, starring such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristeva--as well as the hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory (starting with the French version of Roland Barthes for Dummies ). Soon Bayard finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious "seventh function of language."

A brilliantly erudite comedy with more than a dash of The Da Vinci Code -- The Seventh Function of Language takes us from the cafés of Saint-Germain to the corridors of Cornell University, and into the duels and orgies of the Logos Club, a secret philosophical society that dates to the Roman Empire. Binet has written both a send-up and a wildly exuberant celebration of the French intellectual tradition.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A famous semiotician has been killed. Call the police! And the post-structuralists!It's 1980, and Roland Barthes has been struck by a van on a Paris street. He'll later die in the hospital, and the incident initially appears to be an accident; the famous decoder of signs and symbols in everyday culture could be absent-minded and had been drinking. But as Jacques Bayard, a police superintendent, begins his investigation, dark rumblings emerge that Barthes possessed knowledge of a "seventh function of language" coveted by scholars, gangsters, and politicians alike. To make sense of the dense thickets of linguistic theory and jargon required to crack the case, Jacques recruits Simon Herzog, a young semiotician, and soon this unlikely Holmes and Watson are traveling to Italy and the United States chasing clues, in the process infiltrating the Logos Club, a secret group that hosts high-end debates that are literally blood sport (the loser consents to having a finger chopped off). Binet's second novel (HHhH, 2012) is at once a mystery and a satire of mysteries, and though the storytelling is often baggy and thick with academic lingo, there's more action than the intellectual setting implies. There are high-stakes motives (the "seventh function" allegedly has mind-control powers), explosions, and a healthy amount of sex (male prostitutes play a critical role in the plot). But Binet also operates on a brainier level, giving some real-life drama to the likes of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Umberto Eco, and other thinkers who dealt in linguistic abstractions; his version of a sex scene is a union of "two desiring machines" on (symbolism alert) a dissecting table. "I think I'm trapped in a novel," Simon says, in just one of the novel's many overt displays of irony; students of post-structuralism will surely detect more subtle ones. A clever and surprisingly action-packed attempt to merge abstruse theory and crime drama. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.