Hallucinating Foucault - November BOTM

[Diane]

Review thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Kristel]

This was a previous botm so I brought forward that discussion that was started by JenP
Patricia Dunker's first novel, Hallucinating Foucault is a work of fiction that explores "the undercurrents of love between a writer and a reader."

Here are a few questions to start off discussion. Jump with any thoughts and feel free to add your own discussion question for the group. I will jump in with additional questions as the month goes on.

1. How did you experience the book?
2. Thoughts of plot. Is it well developed, believable, do events unfold naturally, organically? Favorite moments, passages related to plot?
3. Characters: What do you think of them? Do you admire or dislike? Do they remind you of anyone? What motivations do they have? Can you related to anyone?
4. If you were to talk with the author, what would you want to know?
5. Why do you think it made the list? Does it deserve a place on the list?

[Kristel]

There was a lot of discussion about this book in the past. You might want to visit that thread if interested. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

You also might want to review Foucault. Did you study Foucault? What do you recall?

[Rosemary]

I really enjoyed this book, although I found it disturbing. I'd describe it as a novel of overarching obsessive love, which seems to the lover (the narrator) to be its own justification, but is used by others (including the object of his love) for their own purposes.

(view spoiler)[It also falls prey to the "gay man must die" trope that was prevalent right up until about 2010, when gay men finally started to be allowed happy endings in mainstream books and movies. (hide spoiler)]

I looked at the other thread, and it was so interesting. I know two people who have told me that they have schizophrenia. One is so well balanced on medication that you would have no idea, but he avoids relationships as Kristel said her nephew did, for fear of passing something on. The other is a man in supported accommodation who spends a lot of time on the streets near where I live, and sometimes has conversations with himself out loud, but has never been violent as far as I know.

Given these experiences, I could believe in Paul Michel as a person with schizophrenia controlled by medication. I found it harder to believe he would have the ending that he had. But I get that this could be related to coming off medication. I think that would be too prosaic to be presented that way in the novel, which was full of the idealism of starry-eyed youth.

[John Dishwasher John Dishwasher]

I read this as hardcore allegory. I feel like it is one of those stories where everyone in it represents a different part of the human being. I break it all down in my review, but basically I think Dunker is showing how the human intellect interferes with our search for redemption. I wondered for awhile if I was just superimposing these ideas onto the story, but Dunker's use of owls and lenses as symbols makes me think I'm at least in the ballpark.

I loved this book. To me it definitely belongs on the list. I'm always thrilled to find a book I can't help but give five stars. It seems to be happening less and less.

[Gail]

I do not have any experience with the medical community and the various symptoms of schizophrenia. My only experience of this illness is just an acquaintance whose symptoms are nothing like those described in the book. Although my acquaintance is considered "high functioning" or at least has been told he is "high functioning", he functions in a very different world than I do.
However, I do not think that this influenced my reading of this book in any negative way. Clearly it was more important that Paul Michel represent Foucault's idea of society's restrained madness. The character of Paul Michel was very well articulated, his intensity, his passions, his coldness and his classicism, all came alive for me and I was captivated. Our narrator's obsession was very understandable and how they came to represent writer and reader worked well, as John stated, as allegory.
I also felt that the philosophical dialogue between Paul Michel and Foucault, as written in love letters that were probably never sent, was brilliant. The contrast between idealist and crass practitioner, the fact that they both lived on the edge but their edges were so totally different and the fact that they had a desperate need for each other that had nothing to do with personally knowing each other, was so well done.
All in all a great read for a first time novelist.

[Jane]

I was hesitant to read this book because I've read Foucault and to say I disliked it is an understatement. But I adored this book! It was funny (descriptions of the Germanist especially) and moving and it was meaningful. It is a small book but there's so much going on. Delighted to have read it :)

[Pip]

I was unfamiliar with Foucault the philosopher, actually confusing him with Foucault, the physicist, of pendulum fame and Julian Barnes' book. However, that did not deter me from thoroughly enjoying a book that I started and finished on the same day! It is an intriguing introduction to the idea that an author requires a reader and their potential relationship. The unnamed narrator is studying the fictitious Paul Michel and in reading his work becomes deeply besotted by him. Paul Michel is, himself, deeply besotted by Michel Foucault, the real French philosopher, whose full name is, by no co-incidence Paul-Michel Foucault. In discovering that Paul Michel is now in a psychiatric hospital, he is encouraged by his girlfriend, identified only as the Germanist, to seek him out with idea that he might be able to facilitate his release. This sounds deadly dull and possibly too intellectual for the average reader, but it turns out to be a thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking novel which has another couple of themes in the nature of sexuality and the possible connection between creativity and madness. It is an intriguing work.