Just using the word recherché is recherché. Indeed the word recherché is likely a bit too recherché for some readers, although a little less recherché for the readers of art and literary criticism, and especially for serious students of culinary history. In English usage recherché means rare, exotic and obscure. Also affected, appropriate, apt. As well as artistic, chic, choice. Esoteric is another meaning that comes to mind.
Recherché also means very unusual, not generally known, as well as chosen with great care in order to persuade people to admire your style and appreciate your knowledge. I for one certainly want the reader to admire and appreciate just how recherché this post on recherché is—being apt, affected, and unusual—I hope to render the word recherché that much less recherché and that much more comprehensible in the process.
Recherché Rolls trippingly on the tongue. Not from my tongue, but from the tongues of academic erudites, gallery wraiths and the all around hipoisie of the mid to late 20th century where it found its current use and gained its expansive definition.
When read on the page, the word recherché makes me think that Cher somehow hooked up with Ché Guevara—like Bennifer and Brangelina— and it leaves me both wanting more and needing less. Cher and Ché have at times been quite recherché in their own unique ways.
When I say recherché aloud—if I haven’t been drinking—it makes me wonder if maybe I’ve had a stroke. Ruh-sher-shay. Otherwise it functions as a handy non sequitur on those occasions when you have had a bit too much to drink. Ruh-sher-shay…
When reasonably sober, if I intone the word aloud at the same time as reading it on the page I experience—in both the Lacanian and the Literary sense—what can only be termed a pure bivalent jouissance. Recherché! “Ruh-sher-shaaay…!”
Artists and art critics both like using the word recherché, because it makes them sound like they can speak French. It also makes them sound like they know something you don’t know, even if you do happen to speak French. Take for example the statement, “At base Duchamp’s work is as a whole more recherché than substantive, in fact the main substance of his work—the stuff, if you will—is in itself found in being recherché…” Who could argue with that? Who would want argue with that?
If you happen to speak French, when you hear the word recherché you are probably less inclined to think of the English usage than the notions of Search, Quest, and perhaps even Research. I’m not going to pretend that I can speak French, but I do know how to use a dictionary: Rechercher, Verb: 1. to search for, to look for. 2. to search again, to look for again. Recherche, Adjective: 1. sought after. 2. research.
When recherche is written without the accent on the e, the word is French (re/search), when written recherché with the accent, the word is English (exotic, obscure). English does not utilize accents so it is easy to become confused. When some writers use the English word recherché they don’t mind when the unwashed suspect they may be fluent in French. When I use the word recherché I use it as an emblem of the definition of the word itself, i.e.: I chose it… with great care in order to persuade people to admire my style and appreciate my knowledge.
Speaking of appreciable and recherché knowledge: Recherche Bay is located in the extreme southeastern corner of Tasmania, and is so named in honor of the Recherche, one of the ships in the d’Entrecasteaux expedition sent to find the missing explorer Jean François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. The ship in question, a scow originally named the Truite, was re-christened the Recherche in July 1791. I can only surmise that this was done to serve as a constant reminder to both command and crew that their primary mission was to search for the lost La Pérouse expedition, rather than to scour the Australian coast for exotic and rare treasures, which was what they actually did. Poor Jean François de Galaup was never found. When it comes to the recherché—in both English and French— this is about as recherché as recherche can get.
The word recherché came into English usage first in reference to exotic culinary dishes as a direct result of such excursions as cited above. In the paragraph that follows I have strung together a bunch of sentences which contain early usages of the word from novels and essays that will go unreferenced.
To my great surprise, the dinner was abundant and even recherché… come
to join in my recherche teas… They want recherché meals, and real champagne wine, and everything ‘imported’ even when it’s made on the spot… (Even) beggars would want something more recherché… Ah, how modern and piquant and recherché… She went with him everywhere, but the recherché suppers were almost a thing of the past. (Usages taken from Fine Dictionary where citations can be found)
The use of recherché in reference to exotic culinary treats pretty much reached a peak in the 1860s and remained constant for another 90 years. It’s easy to see how all those exotic dinners caused the word’s meaning to expand—(for example) while many of the dinner guests may have gushed over the recherché fare, others may simply thought of the affair as affected or pretentious.
By the 1950s, recherché came into fashion as a hip buzz word used by artists and critics where the general meaning of ‘exotic, or obscure’ expanded between the jaws of vapid criticism and dense creativity—if it wasn’t the other way around. Considering the art being produced, it is easy to understand the added definition: unusual and not understood by most people. Recherché’s usage in print spiked massively in the 1950s, and finally peaked in the 1980s where there was then a sudden drop off in usage, with its myriad and somewhat contradictory meanings thereafter firmly enshrined.
La Recherche de l’absolu is a recherché novel written by Honore de Balzac in 1834 that was translated into English and instantly fell into obscurity. La Recherche de l’absolu is also an essay written in 1948 by J-P Sartre on Alberto Giacometti, in which Sartre recasts the sculptor’s work—in an act of almost pure appropriation—as emblematic of the Existentialist’s philosophical universe. In my opinion J-P Sartre—as a person and as a philosopher—satisfies most of the English definitions of the word recherché. As a playwright he is much more cogent and circumspect. I also agree with Sartre that Proust was vastly overrated by the overheated minds of recherché leftist factions in 1960s France…
À la recherche du temps perdu is a seven volume novel written by Marcel Proust which may be familiar to some as the The Search for Lost Time. In the art world of the 1950’s and 60’s recherché was bandied about by hip Postmodernists like Andy Warhol who prior to his fame, worked as an illustrator on an advertising account for shoes. He later assembled his drawings of shoes into a portfolio he titled À la recherche du shoe perdu, in a playful take on Proust’s title.
Probably one of the newest usages of the word is found in the term Recherché Postmodernism coined by the literary critic Dale Peck who wishes it would supplant James Wood’s critical term Hysterical Realism. As far as I can tell both terms mean the same thing, and are intended as a put down. Dale Peck and James Woods appear to be in something of a contest over who can best trash writers such as DeLillo, Rushdie, Franzen, Pynchon, Foster-Wallace and Zadie Smith, who they accuse of operating under the above labels.
To paraphrase Peck & Wood: Recherché Postmodernism has been called literature’s latest disease, and is characterized by a hysterical desire to be large—to sound big while constantly referencing the exotic and the obscure. These writers want to be seen as knowing stuff about things, and knowing things about stuff. They write weighty tomes with big words which include topical theories which just might solve some of today’s big social problems. These writers want to show off, they want to be chic, and show that are learned by writing about choice morsels from things that are not generally known.
But they also want to show that they do not take themselves too seriously by being zany, that they like to make things up and can be even surreal by being the embodiment of the oxymoron serious fun. Being dead serious about all this whimsy, they often neglect to advance a narrative, or even stoop to hint at a plot, because that involves people, and they are talking bigger issues, issues about people, so there is no time roll up their sleeves and show anything about mere people and their pedestrian interactions. None of these writers are likely to atone for their sins before they die—I mean David Foster-Wallace is already dead and now beyond the reach of all criticism, and the others are rapidly aging and have long been deaf to all such criticism. So there’s that, to which can be added the fact that Postmodernism—if it ever even existed—is dead as well.
To sum up: The earliest usage of recherché in English is found in 1722, from French recherche: carefully sought out, researched. Past participle of rechercher: to seek out, a quest. From Latin circare: to wander hither and thither. From circus: circle, therefore to wander, seek and return. Commonly used in 19th century of food, styles, etc., to denote obscure origin and rarified excellence. From there by implication: Exotic, chosen with great care, affected, appropriate, apt. As well as artistic, chic, choice, unique, and difficult to understand. The word is used in both the pejorative and the complimentary senses.
As you can see, the word recherché is not so very recondite as it may appear at first glance, so when you come across it late in the novel Dressing Stone, you will easily understand exactly what is meant.