The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Mirrors by Marcel Cohen
Jeffrey DeShell

Marcel Cohen. Mirrors. Trans. Jason Weiss. Green Integer/Sun & Moon, 1998. 224 pp. Paper: $12.95.

Two sentences from Valéry’s epigraph to this extraordinary volume of short texts provide a useful portal into the book. The sentences read: “He . . . confines himself to what he really sees. He thus isolates himself with what is,” and the sixty-four pieces that follow, some as short as one hundred words, others seven or eight times longer, work to articulate small fragments of concrete, sensuous experience: the sight of a blue cloth floating in a window on a battlefield; the sound of a cousin sleeping on the other side of a wall; the feel of textured wallpaper in the pitch dark of a blackout. It is through these small morsels (one hesitates to call them fragments) of remembered or created experience that the narrator attempts to reconstruct his life, to connect himself with his past, to create or unveil mirrors where he can view himself and prove his existence to himself. However, as the epigraph indicates, such an attempt is not without its risks, as the writing here reveals a solitary and secluded voice, detached from the world and unable to directly effect the events it witnesses and describes.
While this detachment, this inefficacy and weakness signal an ultimate failure of the voice’s attempt to view itself, it is this very detachment, inefficacy, and weakness that allow the texts to speak to others. The large event or significant action is here replaced by intimate sensation and minute image—Jewish children abused to their deaths in Paris become the pressure of a father’s hand to move the child-observer along; the scrawl of the word Jew on the side of the house after the war becomes a crate of tomatoes offered by a neighbor—and it is these small sensations and gestures that reverberate in the reader long after the book is closed.
Memoir, fiction, history, travel writing: the genre of these texts is impossible and unnecessary to determine. What is certain is that this is a brilliant book, one that will reward a slow and patient reading. [Jeffrey DeShell]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Mirrors by Marcel Cohen Jeffrey DeShell Marcel Cohen. Mirrors. Trans. Jason Weiss. Green Integer/Sun & Moon, 1998. 224 pp. Paper: $12.95. Two sentences from Valéry’s epigraph to this extraordinary volume of short texts provide a useful portal into the book. The sentences read: “He . . . confines himself to what he really sees. He thus isolates himself with what is,” and the sixty-four pieces that follow, some as short as one hundred words, others seven or eight times longer, work to articulate small fragments of concrete, sensuous experience: the sight of a blue cloth floating in a window on a battlefield; the sound of a cousin sleeping on the other side of a wall; the feel of textured wallpaper in the pitch dark of a blackout. It is through these small morsels (one hesitates to call them fragments) of remembered or created experience that the narrator attempts to reconstruct his life, to connect himself with his past, to create or unveil mirrors where he can view himself and prove his existence to himself. However, as the epigraph indicates, such an attempt is not without its risks, as the writing here reveals a solitary and secluded voice, detached from the world and unable to directly effect the events it witnesses and describes. While this detachment, this inefficacy and weakness signal an ultimate failure of the voice’s attempt to view itself, it is this very detachment, inefficacy, and weakness that allow the texts to speak to others. The large event or significant action is here replaced by intimate sensation and minute image—Jewish children abused to their deaths in Paris become the pressure of a father’s hand to move the child-observer along; the scrawl of the word Jew on the side of the house after the war becomes a crate of tomatoes offered by a neighbor—and it is these small sensations and gestures that reverberate in the reader long after the book is closed. Memoir, fiction, history, travel writing: the genre of these texts is impossible and unnecessary to determine. What is certain is that this is a brilliant book, one that will reward a slow and patient reading. [Jeffrey DeShell]

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