Judith Elbaz's 'Le champ' Blends Art History and Personal Vertigo

In 'Le champ,' Judith Elbaz weaves together parietal art, Pompeii frescoes, wallpaper from a Trouville hotel room, a contemporary installation visit, dreams, her brother's old soul, Hélène Cixous's Greek air, and Pascal Quignard's reliable culture. The novel resists fixed methods or protocols, instead grafting, disjointing, and patching with thread and needle. Its field is never definitive but fluctuating, oscillating between enlarging or filling voids and digging or increasing solids. Recurring vertigo—from crystals traveling in the inner ear, from the desire to photograph a friend and the interdependence of friendship and love, and from writing that mixes continuity and rupture—drives the narrative. Didier Arnaudet reviewed the work for artpress.