The Infernal Automobile: Car Culture in the Fiction of J.M.G. Le Clézio

James   Boucher
University of Iowa, USA

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of the culture of the automobile in J.M.G Le Clézio’s early fiction.  Tracing the emergence of the automobile as icon and myth during the trente glorieuses of post-war France, cinematic representations of the car in Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle anchor a discussion of the unintended consequences of the ubiquity of the personal vehicle in French urban spaces.  Le Clézio’s texts create a complex image of the automobile as anathema to the natural environment, social cohesiveness, and individual identity.  Rather than being represented as liberating, the idealized culture of the car is problematized as providing neither mobility nor freedom. 

Keywords: eco-criticism, capitalism, car culture, pollution, consumerism, s

pace.