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An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.
In love, thwarted, ridiculous – the wind has changed direction and he is stuck here for ever.
In June 1819 Henri Beyle (aka Stendhal) is rejected by the woman he loves. But quitting is not an option, and Beyle finds himself stranded in an afterlife populated by tourists, shoplifters, characters in novels he hasn’t yet written and impostors who have stolen his pseudonyms.
Footnoting a host of other writers, An Overcoat is an obsessional play upon the life and work of one of the founders of the modern novel.
In June 1819 Henri Beyle (aka Stendhal) is rejected by the woman he loves. But quitting is not an option, and Beyle finds himself stranded in an afterlife populated by tourists, shoplifters, characters in novels he hasn’t yet written and impostors who have stolen his pseudonyms.
Footnoting a host of other writers, An Overcoat is an obsessional play upon the life and work of one of the founders of the modern novel.
- GenresFiction
130 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 2017
About the author
Jack Robinson
8 books4 followersJack Robinson is a pen-name of Charles Boyle, editor of CB editions.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 11, 2023
Re-read after its deserved inclusion on the outstanding longlist for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize for 'gorgeous prose and hardcore literary fiction' from small, independent presses.
CB Editions is a small UK independent publisher, focusing on short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’. Past works include works from the innovative Will Eaves and the simply stunning Ágota Kristóf.
CB Editions is a one-man operation, run by Charles Boyle, who has also written stories, novels and poetry under his own name, as Jennie Walker, and as Jack Robinson. His first "Jack Robinson" work was Recessional - my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... His 4th and 5th, published in 2017, are a diptych of novels consisting of Robinson, a lightly fictionalised survey of the literary and film descendents of Robinson Crusoe (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...) and this: An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.
No it's not a novel about a pencil (although I wouldn't put that past the author) - H.B. is Marie- Henri Beyle, an author of many pseudonyms and assumed identities (almost Pessoa-like) but now best known for his novels written as Stendhal.
The novel summarises his career as follows:
Beyle begins with books on music and painting, largely plagarised from other writers. He is determined to become a comic dramatist, but never finishes a single play. He writes a novel whose main character is impotent and hides this so artfully that everyone is puzzled, not least the girl. Eventually, a chance newspaper crime report propels him into writing Le Rouge et Le Noir, and he's off, but with characteristic indirection: plots that double back on themselves, narrative representations that veer between first-person and third-person, and a style that both affects to be and sometimes is careless. Dates and directions and the ages and circumstances of his characters are unstable: in La Chartreuse de Parme he has a character in 1822 reading a book that wasn't published until 1837; in the same novel Count Mosca has a wife, and then, conveniently, he doesn't. Famously he compares his novels to mirrors carried along a road - but, as Michael Wood puts it, 'the mirrors tilt, jump and go dark with alarming frequency'
The novel opens:
In June 1819 Henri Beyle followed the woman he loved from Milan to Volterra, in Tuscany, where she had gone to visit her children. He was thirty-six; he had written no novels, yet, but had published books on music and painting and the cities of Italy, making liberal use of writing by other authors, and he had met Mathilde Dembowski in Milan the previous year. Dembowski was aged twenty-nine and had two children and was separated from the Polish army officer she had married at seventeen.°
During the journey to Volterra Beyle put on green glasses and an oversize overcoat – the kind you might choose for shoplifting, with deep pockets; or the kind worn by SS officers in war films°° – so that he could observe Mathilde without being recognised, his reasoning being that if he greeted her openly (a) she’d rebuke him for following her, and (b) everyone in town would assume he was her lover: “Therefore I shall show her far more respect by remaining incognito.”
The ° and °° marking the first of the copious footnotes in the novel, which almost constitute a narrative of their own, typically referring to quotes and anecdotes from Stendhal's life and writings (phrases within double quotes are the (translated) words of Beyle/Stendhal himself (1783–1842), quoted from one or other of the books listed on page 133), or those of many other writers with whom he can be linked e.g. Machado de Assis, Sebald, Nabakov, Gogol, Bolano, Ford Madox Ford, Elizabeth Bowen, di Lampedusa, the Oulipans Henry Matthews, Georges Perec and Oulipesque Sophie Calle.
As an example, the second footnote above tells us a better word for 'overcoat':
°° Or a carrick, which Nabokov insisted was the correct English translation for the garment that furnished the title of Gogol’s The Overcoat: ‘deep-caped, ample-sleeved’.
which led me off on the track of Nabakov's fastidious views on literary translation (executive summary: only his own translations meet his high standards) e.g. see his 1941 piece 'The Art of Translation: On the sins of translation and the great Russian short story'. https://newrepublic.com/article/62610...
Further links to Nikolai Gogol are highlighted throughout the story e.g. that an overcoat was one of the very few items Beyle left in his will, that the day that Akaky Akakyevich is born in The Overcoat, March 23rd is the same day Beyle was born, and that Gogol's book, as well as his Dead Souls, were published in 1842 the year Beyle died.
A picture of Beyle's tomb in Montmartre taken by the author on - you guessed it - March 23rd, 2017.
Yet this is no dry academic tome, but instead humorous, light and playful in tone, and, while pointing out Beyle's failings and many idiosyncrasies, highly affectionate rather than critical.
Another footnote sent me down a much less learned tunnel - a line that Beyle suspected Walter Scott had a secretary to fill in the scenic descriptions couldn't but help recall Matt Lucas' Barbara Cartland pastiche Dame Sally Markham (http://littlebritain.wikia.com/wiki/D...)
We also learn that: 'Beyle is,among other things, the patron saint of hack writers', 'making liberal use of writings by other authors' and bashing out works on commission, such as a travel diary ostensibly of a trip to Rome but written, by recall of past trips or pure invention, from his Paris base, and his unflattering potrayal of rural France in Mémoires d'un Touriste Par De Stendhal, as if the Austrian Tourist Board had commissioned a book extolling their country by Thomas Bernhard
The fiction in the novel - and its title - comes from the narrative device that Beyle is still living, or rather not living but in the afterlife, in the present day (On mornings when the town is shrouded in mist it takes a while for Beyle to remember who and where he is, let alone the day of the week.), still pursuing his lover around France and Italy in his terrible disguises, and encountering a succession of his own pseudonyms and alter egos, e.g. Baron Dormant:
The Baron is choking with laughter, so much so that Beyle thinks he might have a heart attack and die - except that he can't, because this is the afterlife, which is itself the joke.
The very idea - the Baron now swirling his brandy - it's absurd. A novel in the afterlife? You might as well set a novel in a prison in which everyone has been incarcerated for so long no one remembers why they are there, which crimes they have committed, even whether they are supposed to be the guards or the prisoners, and the keys have been thrown in the river.°
° Julien Sorel in Le Rouge et Le Noir: "The worst of being in prison, he thought, is not being able to lock one's own days."
At one point the narrator comments:
You write and you post what you've written through a sort of letter box to your readers - but it is not a letter box, it is a shredding machine. Various people attempt to piece the pieces back together. Some of them are even paid to do this.
I have loved piecing together Jack Robinson's latest work - which I highly recommend to anyone who loves playful yet erudite literature - and, while I was not paid to do this, I must thank CB Editions for the review copy.
CB Editions is a small UK independent publisher, focusing on short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’. Past works include works from the innovative Will Eaves and the simply stunning Ágota Kristóf.
CB Editions is a one-man operation, run by Charles Boyle, who has also written stories, novels and poetry under his own name, as Jennie Walker, and as Jack Robinson. His first "Jack Robinson" work was Recessional - my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... His 4th and 5th, published in 2017, are a diptych of novels consisting of Robinson, a lightly fictionalised survey of the literary and film descendents of Robinson Crusoe (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...) and this: An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.
No it's not a novel about a pencil (although I wouldn't put that past the author) - H.B. is Marie- Henri Beyle, an author of many pseudonyms and assumed identities (almost Pessoa-like) but now best known for his novels written as Stendhal.
The novel summarises his career as follows:
Beyle begins with books on music and painting, largely plagarised from other writers. He is determined to become a comic dramatist, but never finishes a single play. He writes a novel whose main character is impotent and hides this so artfully that everyone is puzzled, not least the girl. Eventually, a chance newspaper crime report propels him into writing Le Rouge et Le Noir, and he's off, but with characteristic indirection: plots that double back on themselves, narrative representations that veer between first-person and third-person, and a style that both affects to be and sometimes is careless. Dates and directions and the ages and circumstances of his characters are unstable: in La Chartreuse de Parme he has a character in 1822 reading a book that wasn't published until 1837; in the same novel Count Mosca has a wife, and then, conveniently, he doesn't. Famously he compares his novels to mirrors carried along a road - but, as Michael Wood puts it, 'the mirrors tilt, jump and go dark with alarming frequency'
The novel opens:
In June 1819 Henri Beyle followed the woman he loved from Milan to Volterra, in Tuscany, where she had gone to visit her children. He was thirty-six; he had written no novels, yet, but had published books on music and painting and the cities of Italy, making liberal use of writing by other authors, and he had met Mathilde Dembowski in Milan the previous year. Dembowski was aged twenty-nine and had two children and was separated from the Polish army officer she had married at seventeen.°
During the journey to Volterra Beyle put on green glasses and an oversize overcoat – the kind you might choose for shoplifting, with deep pockets; or the kind worn by SS officers in war films°° – so that he could observe Mathilde without being recognised, his reasoning being that if he greeted her openly (a) she’d rebuke him for following her, and (b) everyone in town would assume he was her lover: “Therefore I shall show her far more respect by remaining incognito.”
The ° and °° marking the first of the copious footnotes in the novel, which almost constitute a narrative of their own, typically referring to quotes and anecdotes from Stendhal's life and writings (phrases within double quotes are the (translated) words of Beyle/Stendhal himself (1783–1842), quoted from one or other of the books listed on page 133), or those of many other writers with whom he can be linked e.g. Machado de Assis, Sebald, Nabakov, Gogol, Bolano, Ford Madox Ford, Elizabeth Bowen, di Lampedusa, the Oulipans Henry Matthews, Georges Perec and Oulipesque Sophie Calle.
As an example, the second footnote above tells us a better word for 'overcoat':
°° Or a carrick, which Nabokov insisted was the correct English translation for the garment that furnished the title of Gogol’s The Overcoat: ‘deep-caped, ample-sleeved’.
which led me off on the track of Nabakov's fastidious views on literary translation (executive summary: only his own translations meet his high standards) e.g. see his 1941 piece 'The Art of Translation: On the sins of translation and the great Russian short story'. https://newrepublic.com/article/62610...
Further links to Nikolai Gogol are highlighted throughout the story e.g. that an overcoat was one of the very few items Beyle left in his will, that the day that Akaky Akakyevich is born in The Overcoat, March 23rd is the same day Beyle was born, and that Gogol's book, as well as his Dead Souls, were published in 1842 the year Beyle died.
A picture of Beyle's tomb in Montmartre taken by the author on - you guessed it - March 23rd, 2017.
Yet this is no dry academic tome, but instead humorous, light and playful in tone, and, while pointing out Beyle's failings and many idiosyncrasies, highly affectionate rather than critical.
Another footnote sent me down a much less learned tunnel - a line that Beyle suspected Walter Scott had a secretary to fill in the scenic descriptions couldn't but help recall Matt Lucas' Barbara Cartland pastiche Dame Sally Markham (http://littlebritain.wikia.com/wiki/D...)
We also learn that: 'Beyle is,among other things, the patron saint of hack writers', 'making liberal use of writings by other authors' and bashing out works on commission, such as a travel diary ostensibly of a trip to Rome but written, by recall of past trips or pure invention, from his Paris base, and his unflattering potrayal of rural France in Mémoires d'un Touriste Par De Stendhal, as if the Austrian Tourist Board had commissioned a book extolling their country by Thomas Bernhard
The fiction in the novel - and its title - comes from the narrative device that Beyle is still living, or rather not living but in the afterlife, in the present day (On mornings when the town is shrouded in mist it takes a while for Beyle to remember who and where he is, let alone the day of the week.), still pursuing his lover around France and Italy in his terrible disguises, and encountering a succession of his own pseudonyms and alter egos, e.g. Baron Dormant:
The Baron is choking with laughter, so much so that Beyle thinks he might have a heart attack and die - except that he can't, because this is the afterlife, which is itself the joke.
The very idea - the Baron now swirling his brandy - it's absurd. A novel in the afterlife? You might as well set a novel in a prison in which everyone has been incarcerated for so long no one remembers why they are there, which crimes they have committed, even whether they are supposed to be the guards or the prisoners, and the keys have been thrown in the river.°
° Julien Sorel in Le Rouge et Le Noir: "The worst of being in prison, he thought, is not being able to lock one's own days."
At one point the narrator comments:
You write and you post what you've written through a sort of letter box to your readers - but it is not a letter box, it is a shredding machine. Various people attempt to piece the pieces back together. Some of them are even paid to do this.
I have loved piecing together Jack Robinson's latest work - which I highly recommend to anyone who loves playful yet erudite literature - and, while I was not paid to do this, I must thank CB Editions for the review copy.
December 17, 2017
NOW RE-READ AFTER ITS INCLUSION ON THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS LONG LIST.
Beyle asks if I’ve read Flaubert’s letter to Louise Colet in which he spoke of writing “a book about nothing, a book … held aloft by the internal force of its style, as the earth stays aloft on its own.”
A book held aloft by the internal force of its own style. I think this is that book!
My first reading of this novel caused me to immediately purchase and read all the other books by the same author (including one called "by the same author"). My second reading confirms my view which pretty much aligns with what Nicholas Lezard wrote in The Guardian: "I can’t think of a wittier, more engaging, stylistically audacious, attentive and generous writer working in the English language right now."
Don't read it expecting plot. Do read it expecting pleasure.
-----------------
An Overcoat is published by CB Editions, a very small independent publisher in the UK.
CB editions publishes short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’.
Notably for this reader, CB Editions is the publisher of The Absent Therapist and Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine. Both of these are books that require more than one reading - they challenge their readers.
Jack Robinson is a pseudonym of Charles Boyle who is, in essence, CB Editions. It is fitting that this book is written under a pseudonym because it concerns Marie-Henri Beyle, a 19th-centurty author who most famously went by the pseudonym of Stendhal. Beyle also used a lot of other pseudonyms, which is important to note when it comes to reading An Overcoat.
The basic premise of An Overcoat is an imagined after-life of Beyle set in a modern-day city. Some characters from his own lifetime seem to make the journey with him to this after-life and there are more characters added in the modern time in which the book is set.
There is a fine line between books where the author says “Look at this - I am cleverer than you” and books where the book says “Look at this - this author is cleverer than you”. I don’t like the first kind, but the second category covers many of my favourite books. I appreciate that the dividing line might be a bit subjective! An Overcoat is more than a little reminiscent of Playing Possum (on this year’s Goldsmiths list) which is a book from the second category that is currently sitting at Number 1 in my list of favourite books of 2017. So, you can probably guess where this review is heading.
As with PP, there are large parts of this book that I do not understand and there are references to things that I do not know about. But it is not pompous or self-aggrandising. It is clever, witty and a pleasure to read. It is book that says within just a few pages “You will need to re-read me and I will reward you more with each re-reading”. I know that I will be re-visiting it again soon.
I was attempting to copy some of the quotes that struck me from the book, but I got so absorbed in the actual reading of it that I forgot to keep that going. Perhaps I will pick them up again on a re-read. The book does mess around with time a bit with references to the period when Beyle was alive mixed in with the modern day setting of his after-life. And it is aware it is a book. At one point, we read:
“But people don’t die in novels, Beyle says, matter-of-fact.
You flick back to Chapter 2 and there they still are, in the bloom of youth.”
And then in a footnote, we read:
“Nothing is more difficult in this solemn tale than to respect chronology.”
This idea of footnotes is important. Like Infinite Jest, this book (albeit only about 1/10th the length of IJ) makes extensive use of footnotes, sometimes with footnotes to the footnotes. Most of these pick up on topics raised and point us back to Beyle’s life or work. One footnote early in the book lists pseudonyms used by Beyle and it is worth book-marking this page as many of the names referenced later make appearances as characters in the novel.
In further meta-fictional trickery, the author himself makes several appearances. At one point, he joins Beyle and a woman at a restaurant meal. The text is often aware of the author:
“She accuses him of an ‘invasion of privacy’ and then, annoyed with him, or me, for saddling her with such terrible lines, tells Beyle he is no better than a stalker…”
And it raises philosophical points like this one (again in a footnote):
“Some of the guests...kept their eyes closed throughout the performance. They were both there and not there. In this, they were at one with the characters in the films, and the actors playing them.”
Or
“He suspects that he has caught a bug from something rotten in the genre itself, something long past its use-by date, a plate of leftover sub-plots at the back of the fridge that are growing mould.”
Finally, to attempt to give an impression of the book, it is worth noting that two chapters consist of alternating sentences taken (in their English translation) from a Spanish language exercise book and a Persian phrase book.
It is not immediately obvious what the plot is, if indeed there is a plot. But plot is hardly a consideration here. There are repeated visits to certain threads of story and it would be fascinating to put those together without the gaps between them, but I don’t think that the aim here is to tell the reader a story. If you are a reader who likes plot and a narrative that moves forward in a structured way, this is not the book for you.
As I say, I did not understand everything in this book. But it was a delight to read and is a book I will be returning to very soon. I will also be looking at other works by the same author.
My thanks to CB Editions for a review copy.
Beyle asks if I’ve read Flaubert’s letter to Louise Colet in which he spoke of writing “a book about nothing, a book … held aloft by the internal force of its style, as the earth stays aloft on its own.”
A book held aloft by the internal force of its own style. I think this is that book!
My first reading of this novel caused me to immediately purchase and read all the other books by the same author (including one called "by the same author"). My second reading confirms my view which pretty much aligns with what Nicholas Lezard wrote in The Guardian: "I can’t think of a wittier, more engaging, stylistically audacious, attentive and generous writer working in the English language right now."
Don't read it expecting plot. Do read it expecting pleasure.
-----------------
An Overcoat is published by CB Editions, a very small independent publisher in the UK.
CB editions publishes short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’.
Notably for this reader, CB Editions is the publisher of The Absent Therapist and Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine. Both of these are books that require more than one reading - they challenge their readers.
Jack Robinson is a pseudonym of Charles Boyle who is, in essence, CB Editions. It is fitting that this book is written under a pseudonym because it concerns Marie-Henri Beyle, a 19th-centurty author who most famously went by the pseudonym of Stendhal. Beyle also used a lot of other pseudonyms, which is important to note when it comes to reading An Overcoat.
The basic premise of An Overcoat is an imagined after-life of Beyle set in a modern-day city. Some characters from his own lifetime seem to make the journey with him to this after-life and there are more characters added in the modern time in which the book is set.
There is a fine line between books where the author says “Look at this - I am cleverer than you” and books where the book says “Look at this - this author is cleverer than you”. I don’t like the first kind, but the second category covers many of my favourite books. I appreciate that the dividing line might be a bit subjective! An Overcoat is more than a little reminiscent of Playing Possum (on this year’s Goldsmiths list) which is a book from the second category that is currently sitting at Number 1 in my list of favourite books of 2017. So, you can probably guess where this review is heading.
As with PP, there are large parts of this book that I do not understand and there are references to things that I do not know about. But it is not pompous or self-aggrandising. It is clever, witty and a pleasure to read. It is book that says within just a few pages “You will need to re-read me and I will reward you more with each re-reading”. I know that I will be re-visiting it again soon.
I was attempting to copy some of the quotes that struck me from the book, but I got so absorbed in the actual reading of it that I forgot to keep that going. Perhaps I will pick them up again on a re-read. The book does mess around with time a bit with references to the period when Beyle was alive mixed in with the modern day setting of his after-life. And it is aware it is a book. At one point, we read:
“But people don’t die in novels, Beyle says, matter-of-fact.
You flick back to Chapter 2 and there they still are, in the bloom of youth.”
And then in a footnote, we read:
“Nothing is more difficult in this solemn tale than to respect chronology.”
This idea of footnotes is important. Like Infinite Jest, this book (albeit only about 1/10th the length of IJ) makes extensive use of footnotes, sometimes with footnotes to the footnotes. Most of these pick up on topics raised and point us back to Beyle’s life or work. One footnote early in the book lists pseudonyms used by Beyle and it is worth book-marking this page as many of the names referenced later make appearances as characters in the novel.
In further meta-fictional trickery, the author himself makes several appearances. At one point, he joins Beyle and a woman at a restaurant meal. The text is often aware of the author:
“She accuses him of an ‘invasion of privacy’ and then, annoyed with him, or me, for saddling her with such terrible lines, tells Beyle he is no better than a stalker…”
And it raises philosophical points like this one (again in a footnote):
“Some of the guests...kept their eyes closed throughout the performance. They were both there and not there. In this, they were at one with the characters in the films, and the actors playing them.”
Or
“He suspects that he has caught a bug from something rotten in the genre itself, something long past its use-by date, a plate of leftover sub-plots at the back of the fridge that are growing mould.”
Finally, to attempt to give an impression of the book, it is worth noting that two chapters consist of alternating sentences taken (in their English translation) from a Spanish language exercise book and a Persian phrase book.
It is not immediately obvious what the plot is, if indeed there is a plot. But plot is hardly a consideration here. There are repeated visits to certain threads of story and it would be fascinating to put those together without the gaps between them, but I don’t think that the aim here is to tell the reader a story. If you are a reader who likes plot and a narrative that moves forward in a structured way, this is not the book for you.
As I say, I did not understand everything in this book. But it was a delight to read and is a book I will be returning to very soon. I will also be looking at other works by the same author.
My thanks to CB Editions for a review copy.
January 29, 2018
NOW RE-READ AFTER ITS INCLUSION ON THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS LONG LIST.
CB editions is a very small UK publisher, which publishes short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’.
One notable success was Will Eaves The Absent Therapist which made the incredibly strong shortlist for the 2014 Goldsmith award.
Jack Robinson is one of the pseudonyms of Charles Boyle the founder of CB Editions, which is largely a one person operation.
And this book is an imagined afterlife of Marie-Henri Beyle– the 19th century author who operated under a number of pseudonyms, most famously Stendhal.
The book imagines Beyle in a modern day city, reflecting on what he sees around him, just as he did in life of other cities, together with a seemingly similarly reincarnated ex-lover M (Mathilde Dembowski) and a cast of contemporary characters such as a waitress Anna and a hotel manager/tour guide Franco. However this is vastly simplifying the complexity of this short book.
As a far from exhaustive list of examples of what it contains: two chapters create an imaginary dialogue of which alternate lines are taken first from a Spanish primer and secondly a Colloquial Persian phrase book; copious footnotes (some of which give rise to further sub-footnotes) pick up on themes in the text and relate them to Stendhal’s life or writing – often in fact pointing out that Stendhal’s writing (even his supposedly non-fictional writing) had a best a troubled relationship to his actual life and experiences; characters move into and out of the book – including the author who at one point joins Beyle for dinner; references are made in the text and footnotes to the works of other artists and authors – typically but not exclusively those who mention of implicitly reference Stendhal or his works in their own works – such as Sophie Calle, Ford Madox Ford, Elizabeth Bowen, Gogol Nikolai; there are frequent mediations on the afterlife and comparisons to worldly sensations.
Stendhal syndrome is a psychomatic disorder arising from physical reactions (from rapid heartbeat to faintings) that are linked to the emotional impact of art – or as the book puts it “being overwhelmed by art”
For me the reading equivalent is to read images or phrases in a book which simply stop my reading in its tracks, making me pause and reflect on them and note them down. I experienced this often during this book:
In style, I was at times, in the lightness and playfulness of the style set alongside deeply embedded cross-references, reminded of the early and strongest novels of Milan Kundera or those of Alain de Botton(who more typically references philosophy rather than literature). But there is a uniqueness to the style of the author which made me both interested to read his other works, and very keen to return again to this one.
Having now revisited this book and read the author's other works, particularly the other part of the "diptych" , my admiration has only increased, particularly for what I can only describe as the generosity of his writing, making what could be difficult literature so fresh and accessible.
My thanks to CB Editions for a review copy.
Here’s another tip: if you’re planning to write about someone who existed in history, be wary. Once you’ve put an actual person into a book, they become larger than life, because larger than death.
CB editions is a very small UK publisher, which publishes short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’.
One notable success was Will Eaves The Absent Therapist which made the incredibly strong shortlist for the 2014 Goldsmith award.
Jack Robinson is one of the pseudonyms of Charles Boyle the founder of CB Editions, which is largely a one person operation.
And this book is an imagined afterlife of Marie-Henri Beyle– the 19th century author who operated under a number of pseudonyms, most famously Stendhal.
The book imagines Beyle in a modern day city, reflecting on what he sees around him, just as he did in life of other cities, together with a seemingly similarly reincarnated ex-lover M (Mathilde Dembowski) and a cast of contemporary characters such as a waitress Anna and a hotel manager/tour guide Franco. However this is vastly simplifying the complexity of this short book.
As a far from exhaustive list of examples of what it contains: two chapters create an imaginary dialogue of which alternate lines are taken first from a Spanish primer and secondly a Colloquial Persian phrase book; copious footnotes (some of which give rise to further sub-footnotes) pick up on themes in the text and relate them to Stendhal’s life or writing – often in fact pointing out that Stendhal’s writing (even his supposedly non-fictional writing) had a best a troubled relationship to his actual life and experiences; characters move into and out of the book – including the author who at one point joins Beyle for dinner; references are made in the text and footnotes to the works of other artists and authors – typically but not exclusively those who mention of implicitly reference Stendhal or his works in their own works – such as Sophie Calle, Ford Madox Ford, Elizabeth Bowen, Gogol Nikolai; there are frequent mediations on the afterlife and comparisons to worldly sensations.
Stendhal syndrome is a psychomatic disorder arising from physical reactions (from rapid heartbeat to faintings) that are linked to the emotional impact of art – or as the book puts it “being overwhelmed by art”
For me the reading equivalent is to read images or phrases in a book which simply stop my reading in its tracks, making me pause and reflect on them and note them down. I experienced this often during this book:
He discovers that in a town frequented by tourists it is hard to walk in a straight line. Tourists walk slowly and stop for no reason at all in the middle of the pavement, like children before the dawning of spatial awareness.
The light is silent now. It’s like bottled light. As you might bring back from holiday a bottle of some local liquor that on a winter night at home will taste sickly sweet, nothing like it tasted on the terrace by the sea. This light does what it is expected to do – there are shadows behind where it gets blocked – bit it is a little clotted, heavy tired, which is understandable, given that it’s been travelling from so far away and for such a ridiculous speed and with no notion of where it is headed or why
People don’t die in novels … you flick back to chapter 2 and they are still there, in the bloom of youth. You look up to your shelves and they are still there. Even when you don’t look up to your shelves, they are still there. And when you tell what happens in novels, you speak in the present tense – everything still in play, all options open.
He likes watching people who are doing repetitive work – cashiers at supermarket checkouts, scaffolders, soldiers, street-sweepers, married couples, writers.
To reduce congestion, a plan for a bypass from conception to the afterlife is being considered
(Of films) For those who are hard of hearing or for whom the plot is just too silly to bother keeping track of, there remains simply “the bits where”.
(Of a detective who suddenly is inserted in the text) He suspects that he has caught a but from something rotten in the genre itself , something long past it’s use-by date, a plate of left over subplots at the back of the fridge that are growing mould.
In style, I was at times, in the lightness and playfulness of the style set alongside deeply embedded cross-references, reminded of the early and strongest novels of Milan Kundera or those of Alain de Botton(who more typically references philosophy rather than literature). But there is a uniqueness to the style of the author which made me both interested to read his other works, and very keen to return again to this one.
Having now revisited this book and read the author's other works, particularly the other part of the "diptych" , my admiration has only increased, particularly for what I can only describe as the generosity of his writing, making what could be difficult literature so fresh and accessible.
My thanks to CB Editions for a review copy.
April 13, 2018
It's been over 40 years since I've read any Stendhal, but a working knowledge of either his life or novels isn't really necessary to enjoy this breezy and fun book. Others have already pointed out the use of Wallace-esque footnotes and the similarity to 'Playing Possum', but I found this not as confounding as those other works - and certainly more readable than anything that made it to the Republic of Consciousness Prize short list (this only made the longlist). I usually require a bit more in the way of plot and character development than this exhibits, but since it's such a short work, the lack of same didn't irritate me much. Although it would probably be even more comprehensible with a re-read, I'm going to watch Argento's film 'The Stendhal Syndrome', which gets a brief mention, instead!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HUUW...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HUUW...
February 1, 2018
An Overcoat :Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.
Jack Robinson (a pen name of Charles Boyle).
This is an intriguing book which is praiseworthy, above all, for its different construction, its achievement in writing historical fiction/ biography in a disjointed, wonderfully innovative, writing style. The often chaotic life of Beyle is ideally suited to this scattergun, shifting, perspective style of writing.
For the most part I think it is successful, but mostly when viewed in retrospect, by dipping in (which Beyle would approve of) rather than experiencing a full immersion in the book on an initial reading.
My main reservation is that many of the anecdotes, coming thick and fast, struck me as too detached, even though I acknowledge that this is not a plot or story based linear piece of writing.
The central conceit of disguise that is Henri Beyle, is mirrored by our author, Charles Boyle.
Boyle’s choice of the name. ‘Jack Robinson’ as his occasional nom de plume, is no accident. Not Robinson as in Crusoe, elsewhere; The etymology of Jack Robinson goes back to 1811 or before, it seems. The association with something happening quickly, and it’s original association was with a gentleman who is gone before he can be identified (or ‘announced’ in the c.19th); its applicable to both Beyle and Boyle (note the similarities here too!!)
The meat of the book is contained in Chapter ii “Almost Bucolic”.
The book’s intent, though, is signposted around the edges, including author biographical details, drawings, epigrams, and in the short opening Chapter “The Disguise”. This is the essence of the idiosyncratic persona of Henri Beyle. The Overcoat of the books title, and the true life attachment of Beyle to overcoats is linked and deliberate.
Charles Boyle tells the reader on page 5 what to look for:
To live as if one were a character in an over- plotted opera is essentially comic. So are disguises, I’m pretty sure that anyone who dons a disguise- beard, forged papers; green glasses, Overcoat- expects to be seen through
Reading “Overcoat” I am reminded again about how little of (even) European history and literature, I am aware of. Beyle/ Stendhal is a writer who clearly left lasting impressions on many contemporaries, through to the avant garde French artists of the late c. 20th. (Gogol; Balzac; W.G. Sebald; Anita Brookner; Sophie Calle- (to name just a few references introduced through the book by Charles Boyle).
I look forward to my next visit to a historic City (maybe even Florence) when I can explain my tingles of excitement and anticipation as The Stendhal Syndrome.
Jack Robinson (a pen name of Charles Boyle).
This is an intriguing book which is praiseworthy, above all, for its different construction, its achievement in writing historical fiction/ biography in a disjointed, wonderfully innovative, writing style. The often chaotic life of Beyle is ideally suited to this scattergun, shifting, perspective style of writing.
For the most part I think it is successful, but mostly when viewed in retrospect, by dipping in (which Beyle would approve of) rather than experiencing a full immersion in the book on an initial reading.
My main reservation is that many of the anecdotes, coming thick and fast, struck me as too detached, even though I acknowledge that this is not a plot or story based linear piece of writing.
The central conceit of disguise that is Henri Beyle, is mirrored by our author, Charles Boyle.
Boyle’s choice of the name. ‘Jack Robinson’ as his occasional nom de plume, is no accident. Not Robinson as in Crusoe, elsewhere; The etymology of Jack Robinson goes back to 1811 or before, it seems. The association with something happening quickly, and it’s original association was with a gentleman who is gone before he can be identified (or ‘announced’ in the c.19th); its applicable to both Beyle and Boyle (note the similarities here too!!)
The meat of the book is contained in Chapter ii “Almost Bucolic”.
The book’s intent, though, is signposted around the edges, including author biographical details, drawings, epigrams, and in the short opening Chapter “The Disguise”. This is the essence of the idiosyncratic persona of Henri Beyle. The Overcoat of the books title, and the true life attachment of Beyle to overcoats is linked and deliberate.
Charles Boyle tells the reader on page 5 what to look for:
To live as if one were a character in an over- plotted opera is essentially comic. So are disguises, I’m pretty sure that anyone who dons a disguise- beard, forged papers; green glasses, Overcoat- expects to be seen through
Reading “Overcoat” I am reminded again about how little of (even) European history and literature, I am aware of. Beyle/ Stendhal is a writer who clearly left lasting impressions on many contemporaries, through to the avant garde French artists of the late c. 20th. (Gogol; Balzac; W.G. Sebald; Anita Brookner; Sophie Calle- (to name just a few references introduced through the book by Charles Boyle).
I look forward to my next visit to a historic City (maybe even Florence) when I can explain my tingles of excitement and anticipation as The Stendhal Syndrome.
November 8, 2017
“It’s not hard, de Saupicquet once told me, to gain entry into other people’s lives: they generally leave the spare key under the plant pot by the back door, the usual place. But once you’re in, it hits you that they have gone out, and you have no idea when they’ll be coming back.”
An Overcoat, by Jack Robinson, takes episodes from the life of 19th-century French writer Marie-Henri Beyle, better known as Stendhal, and muses on them from different perspectives. The book is structured in scenes with copious footnotes. Beyle is portrayed existing in an afterlife where he interacts with people from a variety of times, including our own.
Rarely have I read a book that I feel less qualified to review. I had never heard of Beyle, nor am I familiar with many of the other writers mentioned throughout. Those I did recognise wrote works I haven’t read. Thus I came at this blind and offer my thoughts without prior knowledge of the subject being so imaginatively portrayed.
Beyle dons an overcoat as a disguise. Throughout his life he adopted many disguises in the form of pseudonyms, just as readers today create internet usernames. His attempts at masking his identity are compared to modern day habits of changing hair colour when dissatisfied with one’s own. Those who already know a person see through such behaviour instantly. A person may try to reinvent themselves – adopting a new look, name, place or occupation – but in time will revert to whatever they have always been.
Beyle was an inveterate womaniser who was obsessed with his sexual conquests. He desired Mathilde Dembowski, who he met while living in Milan. She rejected his advances. Many of the scenes involve M, her children, Beyle’s attempts at dissimulation.
He wanders the streets of a contemporary town, visits coffee shops, observes tourists, ponders the continuance of existence after death. Although placed in current times many of the scenes are based on what is known of his life, with footnotes providing references and tangential musings. Beyle concocts fantasies involving himself and those around him. There are deliberations on accepted absurdities. The author’s commentary provides nuggets of insight, the vignettes a sympathetic retelling.
Although somewhat rambling and meandering this was a curiously satisfying book to read. There is no story as such, it is more a rumination on a writer and existence. As a reader I felt a little overwhelmed at times due to my lack of knowledge. What I learned of Beyle did not endear him to me, but I enjoyed the playfulness of the portrayal.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, CB Editions.
An Overcoat, by Jack Robinson, takes episodes from the life of 19th-century French writer Marie-Henri Beyle, better known as Stendhal, and muses on them from different perspectives. The book is structured in scenes with copious footnotes. Beyle is portrayed existing in an afterlife where he interacts with people from a variety of times, including our own.
Rarely have I read a book that I feel less qualified to review. I had never heard of Beyle, nor am I familiar with many of the other writers mentioned throughout. Those I did recognise wrote works I haven’t read. Thus I came at this blind and offer my thoughts without prior knowledge of the subject being so imaginatively portrayed.
Beyle dons an overcoat as a disguise. Throughout his life he adopted many disguises in the form of pseudonyms, just as readers today create internet usernames. His attempts at masking his identity are compared to modern day habits of changing hair colour when dissatisfied with one’s own. Those who already know a person see through such behaviour instantly. A person may try to reinvent themselves – adopting a new look, name, place or occupation – but in time will revert to whatever they have always been.
Beyle was an inveterate womaniser who was obsessed with his sexual conquests. He desired Mathilde Dembowski, who he met while living in Milan. She rejected his advances. Many of the scenes involve M, her children, Beyle’s attempts at dissimulation.
He wanders the streets of a contemporary town, visits coffee shops, observes tourists, ponders the continuance of existence after death. Although placed in current times many of the scenes are based on what is known of his life, with footnotes providing references and tangential musings. Beyle concocts fantasies involving himself and those around him. There are deliberations on accepted absurdities. The author’s commentary provides nuggets of insight, the vignettes a sympathetic retelling.
Although somewhat rambling and meandering this was a curiously satisfying book to read. There is no story as such, it is more a rumination on a writer and existence. As a reader I felt a little overwhelmed at times due to my lack of knowledge. What I learned of Beyle did not endear him to me, but I enjoyed the playfulness of the portrayal.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, CB Editions.
May 9, 2023
I write this review knowing that people read reviews of obscure books less often than they read obscure books.
HB of course is Henri Beyle who mascaraded in life as the author Stendhal. Who in turn had many other aliases, for various reasons.
This is not a life, so much as an amusement, a work totally devoted to the pursuit of an idea, let loose Henri Beyle in a city and give him an afterlife as himself, grappling with the present.
The premise is silly enough to be fun. It takes a little while to adjust your reading to the dual narrative of text and extensive footnotes. Which is deliciously pointless, like a fluffy dessert, a fool perhaps.
Deception being a rich part of Beyle’s life, the illusion of a serious book abounds. There’s the footnotes for one thing. Then there’s the author Jack Robinson who is really Charles Boyle, the editor of CB Editions, a little one-man band publisher of short fiction and poetry.
But does it have anything serious to impart? Well, it’s a kind of biography of sorts and I’m not a lover of the biographical form, so it’s a good thing it only offers those pieces of a life relevant to some other point, which is not much of a point. But then there are these juicy little thoughts here and there – Beyle was known to need money and write things like tourist guides to Rome. So when I read the following I laughed at the commentary of the modern reader and the 200+-year-old problem authors have living their precarious existence needing readers whose frame of mind for reading a book is no more than:
And anyway, people today don’t have time for stories, they want to cut to the point. They want to be told how to live their lives, they want advice. The author as agony aunt.
You don’t need to have read Stendhal to enjoy this book, it’s not so much allusive since everything you need to know is present in the footnotes. Though it’s fun, it did make me want to break my covenant (of not reading author biographies) and read the life of Stendhal. Mischievous of the author to make me want to do that. I don’t want a lesson. The modern world is full of such experiences of wanting. Serious things keep popping up though. After observing a young boy nick a GPS, he thinks:
The world is so elaborately geared to making you want things that when you don’t want anything you become invisible…
In this afterlife, funny things happen to Beyle. One night he wakes from a dream where he was awarded a Nobel Prize posthumously, only when he wakes, the phone is ringing for real.
A novel in the afterlife? You might as well set a novel in a prison in which everyone is incarcerated for so long they cannot remember why they are there, what crimes they have committed, even whether they are supposed to be the prisoners or the guards. And someone has thrown the keys into the river.
A marvellous form of purgatory.
But people don’t die in novels. Beyle says matter of fact. You flick back to chapter 2 and there they are in the bloom of youth.
The footnote here quotes Giuseppe de Lampedusa:
’In La Chartreuse people don’t really die, they just withdraw by imperceptible steps towards incorporeal memory.
Lovely isn’t it!
That’s all, just a little taster of what’s going on here. A bit of fun, an interlude, divertimento, conceit, a clever joyous ride into the world of literature, an author having fun, toying with us, creating the illusion of a work using the master illusionist Stendhal, umm, Henri Beyle as our guide through this afterlife, or underworld, or footnote into the mind of Charles Boyle, I mean … Jack Robinson. And quick as a flash, with just a footprint left in the sand, it’s all over.
HB of course is Henri Beyle who mascaraded in life as the author Stendhal. Who in turn had many other aliases, for various reasons.
This is not a life, so much as an amusement, a work totally devoted to the pursuit of an idea, let loose Henri Beyle in a city and give him an afterlife as himself, grappling with the present.
The premise is silly enough to be fun. It takes a little while to adjust your reading to the dual narrative of text and extensive footnotes. Which is deliciously pointless, like a fluffy dessert, a fool perhaps.
Deception being a rich part of Beyle’s life, the illusion of a serious book abounds. There’s the footnotes for one thing. Then there’s the author Jack Robinson who is really Charles Boyle, the editor of CB Editions, a little one-man band publisher of short fiction and poetry.
But does it have anything serious to impart? Well, it’s a kind of biography of sorts and I’m not a lover of the biographical form, so it’s a good thing it only offers those pieces of a life relevant to some other point, which is not much of a point. But then there are these juicy little thoughts here and there – Beyle was known to need money and write things like tourist guides to Rome. So when I read the following I laughed at the commentary of the modern reader and the 200+-year-old problem authors have living their precarious existence needing readers whose frame of mind for reading a book is no more than:
And anyway, people today don’t have time for stories, they want to cut to the point. They want to be told how to live their lives, they want advice. The author as agony aunt.
You don’t need to have read Stendhal to enjoy this book, it’s not so much allusive since everything you need to know is present in the footnotes. Though it’s fun, it did make me want to break my covenant (of not reading author biographies) and read the life of Stendhal. Mischievous of the author to make me want to do that. I don’t want a lesson. The modern world is full of such experiences of wanting. Serious things keep popping up though. After observing a young boy nick a GPS, he thinks:
The world is so elaborately geared to making you want things that when you don’t want anything you become invisible…
In this afterlife, funny things happen to Beyle. One night he wakes from a dream where he was awarded a Nobel Prize posthumously, only when he wakes, the phone is ringing for real.
A novel in the afterlife? You might as well set a novel in a prison in which everyone is incarcerated for so long they cannot remember why they are there, what crimes they have committed, even whether they are supposed to be the prisoners or the guards. And someone has thrown the keys into the river.
A marvellous form of purgatory.
But people don’t die in novels. Beyle says matter of fact. You flick back to chapter 2 and there they are in the bloom of youth.
The footnote here quotes Giuseppe de Lampedusa:
’In La Chartreuse people don’t really die, they just withdraw by imperceptible steps towards incorporeal memory.
Lovely isn’t it!
That’s all, just a little taster of what’s going on here. A bit of fun, an interlude, divertimento, conceit, a clever joyous ride into the world of literature, an author having fun, toying with us, creating the illusion of a work using the master illusionist Stendhal, umm, Henri Beyle as our guide through this afterlife, or underworld, or footnote into the mind of Charles Boyle, I mean … Jack Robinson. And quick as a flash, with just a footprint left in the sand, it’s all over.
July 12, 2021
Worth a look if you're a Stendhal superfan or a fan of formally unconventional biographical tactics. Found this via a comment on a site called Goodreads, can't remember who mentioned it, really had no idea what it was about when I ordered it, just knew it was a pseudonymous author (Jack Robinson), and so I came to it without preconception or expectations (low ones, actually), thinking at best it'd be the English equivalent of indie lit. Turns out, per the title, it's an overcoat of a novel, slips of biography entwined with imaginative reanimation of Henri-Marie Beyle, most famously known as Stendhal. I knew that Stendhal was a pseudonym but didn't know that Beyle wrote under so many others (Pessoa gets all the heteronymic attention). The overcoat is a reference to Gogol's overcoat, too, the story written down the street from where Beyle died, but also various overcoats of authorship and self-conception. The so-called real name of the author is Boyle, nearly Beyle, and the author interjects throughout with footnote asides and quotations usually about Stendhal, for example a quote from Bolano at one point. Footnotes on nearly every page fracture the reading in a way that's not really annoying since the quotations and biographical info were often more interesting than the story toward the top of the page, with the vampiric Beyle haunting modern Paris with a woman not particularly fleshed out. The overstory definitely felt a little apparitional but I didn't worry too much. Overall I found it a pleasing, admirable, inventive, clever/"brilliant," as the Brits say, formal contrivance, an effective way to entertainingly cram a lot of stray Stendhal research in. I'm now researching which translation to read of Charterhouse of Parma, which I've been meaning to get to for a while. The Life of Henri Brulard I feel like I've owned for years, couldn't get into it, and either sold or have in a box in the basement. The Red and the Black I read eleven years ago and it wasn't exactly a favorite. But I'm definitely more interested in the author than I was last week when I started this.
July 27, 2017
This brief work seems Jack Robinson's effort to be recruited into Oulipo if he is not already a member.
It represents Stendhal's (Henri Beyle) afterlife and his attempt to seduce Mathilde Dembowski, whom he had followed from Milan disguised in an over-sized overcoat and green glasses. To no avail in life but, perhaps, successful in an afterlife which entwines Beyle in contemporary artifacts such as video games, etc.
Many of the vignettes in the book find their basis in Stendhal's journals, essays, and novels though these are not incorporated directly into the text, finding themselves in the multitude of footnotes along with various writers--NaBOkov, Perec, Mathews, Gogol (naturally), Rimbaud, etc--and women as well as aspects of Beyle's biography. The book entertains--I have been reading snippets of Beyle's autobiography over the year, a fact that drew me to this book--and may well merit Oulipo consideration, but I shall have to reread it to be fair to it.
This reading was on a cruise in the Scottish Highlands and lower Hebrides and was thus extended and irregular.
It represents Stendhal's (Henri Beyle) afterlife and his attempt to seduce Mathilde Dembowski, whom he had followed from Milan disguised in an over-sized overcoat and green glasses. To no avail in life but, perhaps, successful in an afterlife which entwines Beyle in contemporary artifacts such as video games, etc.
Many of the vignettes in the book find their basis in Stendhal's journals, essays, and novels though these are not incorporated directly into the text, finding themselves in the multitude of footnotes along with various writers--NaBOkov, Perec, Mathews, Gogol (naturally), Rimbaud, etc--and women as well as aspects of Beyle's biography. The book entertains--I have been reading snippets of Beyle's autobiography over the year, a fact that drew me to this book--and may well merit Oulipo consideration, but I shall have to reread it to be fair to it.
This reading was on a cruise in the Scottish Highlands and lower Hebrides and was thus extended and irregular.
January 22, 2018
I picked up Jack Robinson’s An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B. after seeing it pop on several best of 2017 lists and Instagram recommendations. It didn’t hurt that it was a slim 130ish pages. (Note on the author: Jack Robinson is a pseudonym for Charles Boyle of the publisher, CB Editions.)
From the back-cover description, “(Henri) Beyle finds himself stranded in an afterlife populated by tourists, shoplifters, characters in novels he hasn’t yet written and impostors who have stolen his pseudonyms.” The Beyle in reference is Henri Beyle, the writer Stendahl. And maybe it’s because I rarely sleep well due to a 10-month-old son or maybe it’s because my reading comprehension is average at best, but when faced with the “impostors,” the “pseudonyms,” the countless footnotes and misdirection, I became tangled in a labyrinth of Robinson’s/Beyle’s/Boyle’s.
“Beyle had more pseudonyms than scholars can count, more than he could keep track of himself….a tissue of deceit begets freedom, and it was this that Beyle required: not a single alternative fixed point, but continuous metamorphosis.”
There are themes and maybe breadcrumbs to follow. I believe there’s a way to stitch it together which, I’m guessing, better-rested and more astute readers have discovered, but I failed. I know nothing of Stendahl beyond a name which probably shouldn’t discredit someone from reading this novel.
But I found myself more intrigued by the loosely-related footnotes than HB’s afterlife. There are references to 40-some odd books throughout these pages and footnotes. There are direct interjections from the author. “There are days Beyle and I pass each other on the street, unawares, walking in opposite directions.”
One note I loved that was connected to a passage about rules of engagement between Beyle and the unwilling target of his affections, Mathilde Dembowski:
“In 1923 the Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky, living in exile in Berlin, fell in love with Elsa Triolet. She allowed him to write to her, but on this condition: ‘Don’t write to me about love. Don’t. I’m very tired.’ The result was a book (Zoo, or Letters Not about Love) of letters from Shlovsky to Triolet about animals, cats, cities, trousers, books, earrings, the weather, writers’ gossip, laughter – in sum, about love.”
That description of love feels like an apt description of An Overcoat. Not that Robinson/Boyle’s book is about love, but it’s about all these things – sex, wishing for super powers, Napoleon, an overcoat that looks like it could be a piece of an SS uniform, Rome, dining out – that, when combined, make up a sketch of Beyle/Stendahl.
I’ve seen a few reviews posted after a re-read and I can’t help but imagine that’s an appropriate tact to take for this. And, depending on how deeply one wants to follow along, maybe a close set of notes would help.
From the back-cover description, “(Henri) Beyle finds himself stranded in an afterlife populated by tourists, shoplifters, characters in novels he hasn’t yet written and impostors who have stolen his pseudonyms.” The Beyle in reference is Henri Beyle, the writer Stendahl. And maybe it’s because I rarely sleep well due to a 10-month-old son or maybe it’s because my reading comprehension is average at best, but when faced with the “impostors,” the “pseudonyms,” the countless footnotes and misdirection, I became tangled in a labyrinth of Robinson’s/Beyle’s/Boyle’s.
“Beyle had more pseudonyms than scholars can count, more than he could keep track of himself….a tissue of deceit begets freedom, and it was this that Beyle required: not a single alternative fixed point, but continuous metamorphosis.”
There are themes and maybe breadcrumbs to follow. I believe there’s a way to stitch it together which, I’m guessing, better-rested and more astute readers have discovered, but I failed. I know nothing of Stendahl beyond a name which probably shouldn’t discredit someone from reading this novel.
But I found myself more intrigued by the loosely-related footnotes than HB’s afterlife. There are references to 40-some odd books throughout these pages and footnotes. There are direct interjections from the author. “There are days Beyle and I pass each other on the street, unawares, walking in opposite directions.”
One note I loved that was connected to a passage about rules of engagement between Beyle and the unwilling target of his affections, Mathilde Dembowski:
“In 1923 the Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky, living in exile in Berlin, fell in love with Elsa Triolet. She allowed him to write to her, but on this condition: ‘Don’t write to me about love. Don’t. I’m very tired.’ The result was a book (Zoo, or Letters Not about Love) of letters from Shlovsky to Triolet about animals, cats, cities, trousers, books, earrings, the weather, writers’ gossip, laughter – in sum, about love.”
That description of love feels like an apt description of An Overcoat. Not that Robinson/Boyle’s book is about love, but it’s about all these things – sex, wishing for super powers, Napoleon, an overcoat that looks like it could be a piece of an SS uniform, Rome, dining out – that, when combined, make up a sketch of Beyle/Stendahl.
I’ve seen a few reviews posted after a re-read and I can’t help but imagine that’s an appropriate tact to take for this. And, depending on how deeply one wants to follow along, maybe a close set of notes would help.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews