From Aesthetic Dissidence to Literary Marketing: Centrifugal and Centripetal Strategies of Contemporary Swiss Novelists
Abstract
Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz was once rejected by the Parisian center, since he was not "at the right distance" from French literary standards. His subsequent strategy to finally gain recognition by Paris therefore consisted of "exaggerating his own differences" and cultivating his "vaudoiserie".
A hundred years later, writers such as Jean-Pierre Rochat (1953), Noëlle Revaz (1968) or Joël Dicker (1985) have also developed a panoply of techniques likely to attract favors (as well as indignation) to them in Paris. Historically and logically the closest to Ramuzian regionalism, Rochat struggles (mostly in vain) to give voice to Swiss peasants, a resolutely non-elitist and decentered social class.
Noëlle Revaz's trilingual experiments are better received in France, Germany and Belgium, even if her reception remains limited to an audience of academics, as well as regulars at literary cafés, festivals or media libraries. As for Joël Dicker, his triumphs in various cultural centers of the world are beyond doubt.
However, the question arises whether the "Swissness" represented by him is not a pure commercial strategy.