As I tried to imagine where Godard could go next, Hawthorne's story of
Wakefield came to mind: a man intending to leave home for a week stays
away for twenty years and then "entered the door one evening, quietly,
as from a day's absence." Although Hawthorne gives the tale an
equivocally happy ending, he follows it with a frank declaration of its
darker purpose: "Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world,
individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one
another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man
exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like
Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe."
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Wakefield" (1834) from Twice-Told
Tales. quoted in "Profiles: An Exile in
Paradise: How Jean-Luc Godard disappeared from the headlines and into
the movies" by Richard Brody, New Yorker, 11/20/2000,
page 76.