Vassilis Alexakis’s "late works": L’enfant grec and La clarinette

Abstract

In this study, I suggest that Alexakis’s last two novels can be read as his
quintessentially “late works”. Although I will refrain from arguing for the
development of a “late style” in Alexakis’s final works, I will show that L’enfant
grec and La clarinette reflect on lateness in ways that extend some of the author’s
favored themes while, at the same time, expanding their inter- and extra-textual
narrative function. I will first discuss some of the prevailing theories in the field
of “late style” studies; then articulate the theoretical contours of Alexakis’s
“lateness”; and, finally, identify the narrative strategies that the author deploys in
his last two novels to both center and eschew his ongoing reflection on death and
loss;to highlight the porous, if not irrelevant, border between reality and the
novelistic universe; and to texture the radical contractions of space and time that
make the life of a bilingual, bicultural subject manageable, if not enjoyable and
creatively productive, even as he senses the inevitable approach of life’s ending.