Rameau's Niece

Rameau’s Niece is about Margaret Nathan, a historian with a bad memory. I have terrible memory and once hoped to be a medieval historian, so there if you sense an authentic agony in Margaret’s comic plight, that could explain it. For me, one of the most enjoyable things to write, ever, was the 18th text within the novel called “Rameau’s Niece,” after the wonderful dialogue Diderot wrote of a discussion between the composer Rameau (who I love, by the way) and his nephew. My dialogue is a seduction of the pupil, a young woman, by her teacher. It is actually a pastiche of the writings of 18th century philosophes about the desire to know, the senses, the importance of experience. Tweaked just a tiny bit, these philosophical writings begin to sound like pornography.I relied heavily on the brilliant works of Robert Darnton for background on how pornography was used as a revolutionary tool at the time. For his books, all of them absorbing, witty, deeply instructive and exquisitely written, click here.The book was made into a film called The Misadventures of Margaret starring Parker Posey. One of the things, besides the divine Parker Posey, that I love about the movie, which is pretty campy, I will admit, is that the screenwriter and director, Brian Skeet, understood immediately that I had thinking of a kind of Hollywood movie of the 30′s referred to as comedies of remarriage, particularlyThe Awful Truth , and his film is full of playful references to those movies. "This witty companion to Rameau's Nephew, Diderot's light-footed masterpiece, traces the vagaries of a young woman's life as it begins to duplicate the surprising gyrations of an eighteenth-century lascivious novel she has uncovered. Along the path of temptation, love, lust, folly, and reconciliation through the sophisticated labyrinth of contemporary Manhattan, we join this delightful young Candida on her cockeyed quest for truth." "Margaret Nathan is the scholarly though mortifyingly forgetful author of The Anatomy of Madame de Montigny, an unlikely best seller celebrated by feminists and by deconstructionists, and soon to be a television movie. Happily married to a benevolently egotistical Columbia professor, Margaret seems blessed - until she finds herself seduced by the libertine novel she has discovered in the library. Thus begins a series of amorous contretemps that plunge Margaret into the maelstrom of contemporary sexual practice, until she is washed up panting on the farther shore of self-understanding." "A screwball comedy of ideas, Rameau's Niece is insightful, affecting - and hilarious. At once an affectionate satire of New York intellectual life and a moving account of a young wife's coming-of-age, it confirms the stylistic accomplishment and command that critics hailed in Schine's previous fiction while advancing her work to new heights of comic complexity and psychological insight. Rameau's Niece is one of the funniest, most original, and most delightfully readable novels of the season."--BOOK JACKET.

In this delightful novel from an author who has been favored in so many ways by the muse of comedy,* we meet Margaret Nathan, the brilliant but forgetful author of an unlikely bestseller. Happily married to a benevolently egotistical, slightly dull but sexy professor, Margaret seems blessed-until she finds herself seduced by an eighteenthcentury novel she discovers in the library. Rameau’s Niece is wise, affecting, and thoroughly entertaining.

Wrapped in its lascivious world, Margaret begins to imitate its protagonist, embarking on a hilarious jaunt around Manhattan in search of renewed passion. Will she find fulfillment through her escapades or settle for her husband? Part romantic comedy, part intellectual parody, Rameau’s Niece is wise, affecting, and thoroughly entertaining.

* New York Review of Books

With the ups and downs of temptation, love, lust, folly, and reconciliation, readers follow a very modern Candida through the sophisticated labyrinth of contemporary Manhattan, in this delightful literary romp that spoofs the cultural elite.

Traces the vagaries of a young author's life as it begins to duplicate the surprising gyrations of the eighteenth-century lascivious novel she's uncovered