The Review of Contemporary Fiction
The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade by Rikki DucornetSteve Tomasula
Rikki Ducornet. The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade. Henry Holt, 1999. 212 pp. $22.00.
“A fan is like the thighs of a woman,” begins Rikki Ducornet’s new novel, “It opens . . . with a flick of a wrist. It produces its own weather. . . .” From this prime image, The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition grows into an allegory of imagination’s effect on the world. In place of the embuggering/throat slashing scenes in Sade’s own work, the novel first follows the citizens’ trial of Gabrielle, a confidante of Sade and maker of erotic fans. Sade’s letters to her are brought in as evidence of her perversity, as is their co-authored novel about officially sanctioned atrocities by the Spanish in Mexico. The book then switches to Sade, imprisoned within earshot of the guillotine as he reads Gabrielle’s letters and imagines meals, gardens, books—and the erotic scenes she painted on fans.
With bows to the historical Sade, Ducornet creates exquisite lists—a Sade book of hours, calendar of days—and the novel becomes a poetic rendering of this author’s philosophy of the abject, a tradition extended by Georges Bataille and so prominent in contemporary body art (see Cindy Sherman’s vomit photos). Here, knowledge of the world comes from the body as well as the mind, and is most eloquent about reigns of terror. Sade’s literary valorization of the vile exposes that which is hidden by platitudes and other “enlightened” justifications for the literal atrocities committed routinely in the name of God and country (though, of course, the self-interest of rich aesthetes escapes critique in this aristocrat’s telling). Perversity is thus revealed as a matter of inversion, a matter of perspective—a creation of the aggressive eye—the perfect complement to Ducornet’s approach to art through the sublime language and meticulous attention to form that is characteristic of her prose. [Steve Tomasula]