Never Say I

"Never Say I" reveals the centrality of representations of sexuality, and particularly same-sex sexual relations, to the evolution of literary prose forms in twentieth-century France. Rethinking the social and literary innovation of literary works by Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, and Colette, Michael Lucey considers these writers' production of a first-person voice in which matters related to same-sex sexuality could be spoken of. He shows how their writings and careers took on political and social import in part through the contribution they made to the representation of social groups that were only slowly coming to be publicly recognized. Proust, Gide, and Colette helped create - and also sometimes themselves embodied and enacted - persons and characters, points of view, and narrative practices from which to speak and write about people attracted to those of the same sex, or for them, or as them. Considering novels along with journalism, theatrical performances, correspondences, and face-to-face encounters, Lucey focuses on the interlocking social and formal dimensions of the use of the first person. He argues for an understanding of the first person not just as a grammatical category but also as a collectively produced social artifact, demonstrating that Proust's, Gide's, and Colette's use of the first-person involved a social process of assuming the authority to speak about certain issues, or on behalf of certain people. Lucey reveals the three writers as both practitioners and theorists of the first-person; he traces how, when they figured themselves or another first person in certain statements regarding same-sex identity, they self-consciously called attention to the creative effort involved in doing so.