No More Bets! The Reader As a Paradoxical Accomplice in Tanguy Viel's The Absolute Perfection of Crime

Abstract

Delusion and gamble, but also failure and disillusion are some of the most strik-ing features of The Absolute Perfection of Crime, a novel that encloses its own read-ing instructions, which are intimately linked to film codes and the idea of remake. Tanguy Viel’s work manages to stage the frailness of fiction, halfway between the signified and the signifier, critical detachment and fictional illusion. Fol-lowing the anthropological approach to game theory and the theory of literary genres, this paper aims to analyze the inner functioning of the representation tools at work in the novel as a means to highlight the paradoxical role granted to the reader