Édouard Louis, Didier Eribon and Geoffrey de Lagasnerie in one book?! Yes, please - or so I thought. These three dudes all hail from the working classÉdouard Louis, Didier Eribon and Geoffrey de Lagasnerie in one book?! Yes, please - or so I thought. These three dudes all hail from the working class and are now professors for sociology and philosophy, all of them considered to be among the most influential intellectuals in modern day France, and while I have some issues with Eribon's postmodern classic Retour à Reims, I'm a huge fan of Louis' autofictional efforts, particularly Changer : méthode.
So now de Lagasnerie, best friend of Louis and life partner of Eribon. In his essayistic effort, he makes some excellent points about friendship being a dispositive through which we view the world, and how it can be an anti-institutional, liberating framework. But how in the world can this man, son of a cleaning lady, miss that the friendship between these three, which is presented as exemplary, is functional because they have the resources to maintain it the way they do: Traveling the world to meet your friend, so you have enough personal time together? Staying in hotels for weeks, sometimes even months? Working together in coffee houses? Ka-ching, de Lagasnerie.
And why oh why does he construct an opposition between family (deemed oppressive and reactionary) and friendship (open and dynamic), as if they were no supportive families and no toxic friends? It's just nonsense. Also his take on relationships with big age gaps is... ähem... interesting.
Despentes break-out-novel was unfortunately inspired by her own rape, and she has turned her anger into art by employing the trope of the rape-and-revDespentes break-out-novel was unfortunately inspired by her own rape, and she has turned her anger into art by employing the trope of the rape-and-revenge movie, mixing it with the classic idea of the murderous couple on the loose; but here, the couple doesn't consist of heterosexual lovers, but of two female friends who indulge in behavior that is usually ascribed to toxic masculinity.
Manu, a drifter and part-time porn star, meets Nadine, a prostitute, after they both have just murdered people that wanted to judgementally tell them how to properly exist in the world. Both have stored lots of anger due to the way they have been treated as women, especially Manu, who was gang-raped and later accused of being a slut because she did not fight back in order to survive the ordeal. As a team, the two women go on a remorseless murder rampage, shooting people for dubious or no good reason at all - and for an astonishingly long time, this mirror-image of systemic violence with no regards for the individuality and humanity of the victims goes unpunished. On their way to a meeting point with a friend of Nadine's dead best friend, they drink and do drugs to remain numb, and they live out their sexual desires without regard for societal conventions (for women).
In a way, this is a psychological book, a cathartic text that intentionally goes way overboard by appropriating the patriarchy and then turning the metaphor into a blood bath. The ideas behind this fictional work are explained in King Kong Theory, and the movie version has been banned for a long time, not only because of the violence (which is shown with very cheap special effects), but mainly because of the explicit sex scenes, performed by adult film actors - which amounts to nothing special when it comes to the consensual encounters, but renders the gang rape scene extremely hard to watch. Currently, you can watch the movie on Amazon, e.g.
Virginie Despentes has given a very interesting short interview about the book, you can watch it here (apparently, this woman is too much even for Vice, as this document proves). I'm fascinated by her work and already hoping for a new book in the near future.
Now Shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2023 Since autofiction has become a trend, the market is swamped with confessional texts about intergeneratioNow Shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2023 Since autofiction has become a trend, the market is swamped with confessional texts about intergenerational trauma, many of them midcult, hence: Relying on an "important" topic and pointing at personal experience without doing the aesthetic work necessary in order to produce quality literature. And frankly, I was reluctant to pick up Schenk, because I was expecting another highly accessible text that allows people to feel socially conscious just by repeating sentences like "she makes the voice of XXX heard", or "she speaks about trauma in her own life". etc. pp. you get the idea.
But no: Schenk has written a rather riveting account of her French mother's life, who was born the daughter of a destitute prostitute with an unknown father. We hardly learn about Schenk herself, no: She does not make this about herself, she makes it about systemic misogyny, her grandmother and mother being examples for the larger order of society. The story ponders how the worth of a woman was and is measured, how shame leads to emotional ailments and guilt, what belonging to a certain class means for a woman (which is very different than for a man).
The author, who is almost 80 years old, is angry, and she channels this anger in smart, controlled sentences, that precisely capture the brutality she dissects. These punchy, harsh on-liners are Virginie Despentes material, and I want to have a beer with Schenk and be a badass like her when I'm her age.
Carrère's new book is based on his reporting on the V13 trial, meaning the court proceedings around the terrorists attacks that happened in Paris on FCarrère's new book is based on his reporting on the V13 trial, meaning the court proceedings around the terrorists attacks that happened in Paris on Friday, the 13th (so vendredi 13, V13) of November 2015: The Bataclan massacre during the Eagles of Death Metal concert, the shooting in front of the Stade de France during a televised, sold out soccer match between France and Germany, and the attacks on restaurants and bars in the lively 10th and 11th arrondissement. 130 people died, more than 350 were physically injured, many of them severely. Hired as a reporter by L'Obs, Carrère attended the trial against 14 men who participated and helped the Islamist operation (six of the main perpetrators killed themselves with suicide vests), a trial that went from September 2021 until June 2022, with around 1800 coplaintiffs and 300 lawyers. The judiciary chronicle (that's the French subtitle of the book) are his news reports, sometimes lenghtened with material that did not fit into the space assigned to the reporting in the magazine.
In the first part, Carrère lets the victims speak, and he does not hold back: We hear about the "meat confetti" reigning down on the Bataclan, about the huge holes shot into bodies, how corpses are re-assembled when it's hard to find all parts, how blood soaks through piles of bodies (some dead, some alive), how people watched others scream, beg, and be executed. The worst part is the apparent glee with which the terrorists slaughtered the concert goers, and Carrère parallels this with the beheadings of Daesch (the Islamic State): This is less about spreading religion, and more about indulging in sadism. There are many stories from those who lost their loved ones, a particularly moving testimony comes from a Muslim mother and teacher of Arabic who was at home listening to religious music while her daughter was killed by Islamists.
Then, there are the terrorists, and Carrère openly struggles to understand (which is not at all the same as sympathize with!) why they did what they did. He is intrigued by a statement made by one of them, who says that to comprehend Daesch and terror, you need to read the book from the beginning, and not start in the now. Carrère tries and ponders the caliphate, the surroundings in Molenbeek (a terrorist breeding ground in Brussels), and the individual stories of the defendants. It's hard to read, and I was particularly intrigued by the youg lawyers who took on the task of defending the terrorists, in order to uphold the French justice system (also a way to fight barbarism).
Carrère puts himself in the book as a moral and psychological investigator (mind you: Shortly before that, he had a severe breakdown and depressive episode, as described in Yoga), and he is strong because his role is not about subsuming the events under the law, it's about empathy. He talks to victims, people who lost loved ones, defendants, lawyers, reporters - and often to himself, trying to detect how he would judge the case, and why. This is a fantastic document of the trial, a reflection of contemporary history, an investigation into terror, written in sparse, held-back prose that underlines the monstrosity of the attacks. Great, great reporting....more
I'm flabbergasted: This diary is absolutely terrible on every level. Houellebecq apologizes for his remarks about Islam, talks about his sexual preferI'm flabbergasted: This diary is absolutely terrible on every level. Houellebecq apologizes for his remarks about Islam, talks about his sexual preferences, and complains about being tricked into performing in a porno, and it all makes for a shockingly stupid mess. Let's try to pick the strands apart:
1. The Houellebecq porno Questionable Dutch art collective KIRAC approached Houellebecq to star in a sex film, and, you know, he did have sex in front of a camera with a director present, but then said he was shocked that the woman he slept with was not really a passionate exhibitionist, but did it for money and fame, and was also not making enough of an effort (WTF). Houellebecq signed away his rights to the film, but claims he was unaware that you could sign away your rights after the film was produced so he did not expect the clause to be in the contract, which he did not properly read (WTFF???). Also, he did not google the people he made porn with, and he did not watch "Honey Pot", which he says they even sent to him, but he did not care to check it out ("Honey Pot" is an infamous sex film in which KIRAC degrade and insult a far-right philosopher who stars in it, and they released the intimate film without his consent). It also does not help that Houellebecq refers to KIRAC members in Nazi language, calling them "roach", "pig", etc.
2. The sex stuff Why, Michel, why? Houellebecq details parts of his sexual preferences, seemingly to fight against extreme purity culture, but no one wants to hear that. Like, seriously, Michel, make it stop. And I don't say that because of ageism or because he is not conventionally attractive or anything like that, no: These passages are just stupid and unnecessary and serve no actual function. Taken together with his rants against feeling violated by KIRAC and the Islam passages that deal with alleged racism, they are also in very bad taste.
3. Islam Houellebecq has realized that some of his utterances about Islam that led to him almost being sued for instigating hatred against Muslims were stupid, and he apologizes. He quotes the terrible passages and corrects them, and you can still debate over his new statements, but they are most certainly less stupid than before. It's certainly possible to claim that these corrections are the only reason the book exists, the publication protects him from being sued for his initial statements, and everything else in there is just fog to distract from this scandal. And what renders this whole thing ridiculous is exactly how the corrections get mixed up with sex and porn, the only connection being that, as the title suggests, the developments portrayed took place during the same months during his life. The effect is irritating.
So this rambling extravaganza is an effort to set the record straight: Houellebecq wants to show his side of the story, and he manages to look somehow just as bad if not worse than before. The structure is a mess, logic is largely absent, and some arguments are so absurd that I felt ridiculed by having to read them. What the heck, Michel? I've read all of this man's novels and still believe he is a great, great artist (I just love The Map and the Territory), but with this publication, there goes his Nobel......more
This French feminist debut novel is a very smart romp, as it illustrates what would happen if someone lived by the advice given in women's magazines rThis French feminist debut novel is a very smart romp, as it illustrates what would happen if someone lived by the advice given in women's magazines regarding how to please and interpret a man. The 40-year-old protagonist defines her own existence fully by being a wife, her world revolves around her obsession with her husband, whose every gesture and utterance she ponders and over-interprets, spending every waking hour catastrophizing and plotting: She is a beautiful, empty shell who married up and now aims to be a trophy wife. The effect is hilarious (why does he think that I'm a clementine and not a banana? why didn't he hold my hand when we watched tv?), but also very dark, because this is a book about control in relationships, and internalized societal control.
Although she has everything the world tells her she should want (a successful husband, two friendly children, a nice house in the suburbs), this wife is not content, but paranoid, because her husband leaving would mean her own end: There is no personality she can hold on to, because she has replaced it by the accumulation of expectations what a wife is supposed to be. Even in her job as an English teacher, she somehow manages to make the assignments relate to her husband, and as a literary translator, she sees herself as a vessel that occupies other writers' voices, thus once more obliterating her own. And at the end of the day, this is not even about loving her husband, as the text points out again and again - and the husband seems to know that, because to love somebody, you have to be somebody.
Ventura finds a captivating voice for the obsessed narrator, and I really enjoyed how the synaesthesia (the book covers one week, every day has its own color) heightens the sense of fighting for control, as the wife aims to categorize everyone and everything in order to be able to act accordingly, the perfect mirror for whatever is set in front of her. The text reads like a thriller while giving away more about the protagonist than she herself realizes, although we hear everything from a first-person perspective - and that's what makes for particularly successful psychological writing.
Prix Edmée-de-La-Rochefoucauld for debut novels 2004 This was the start of Énard's spectacular international career: The 20-year-old protagonist and naPrix Edmée-de-La-Rochefoucauld for debut novels 2004 This was the start of Énard's spectacular international career: The 20-year-old protagonist and narrator of his debut novel "The perfect shot" is a murderer, torturer, and rapist. As a highly effective sniper, he is also a respected and feared combatant in his besieged city (the war is never specified, it could be the civil war in Lebanon or the one in Algeria though). Brutalized and psychologically destroyed by war, his emotional landscape proves that humans are not animal: No animal would ever indulge is such a fest of pointless cruelty. With his best friend Zak, the protagonist goes on torture sprees in which sexual lust and a frenzy of violence culminate in disturbing images - and make no mistake, Énard describes the physicality in all its gore and explicit detail.
This novel contains images that would fit right into the New French Extremity movement in cinema. In juxtaposition to this, we follow the protagonist as he falls in love with the 15-year-old caretaker of his single mother, who suffers from grief- and war-induced PTSD so extreme that she has lost her mind. The protagonist is fully unable to express any feelings connected to vulnerability, he only knows to conquer and defend with fear and power - which is exactly what he tries to do. As a sniper, he only finds peace in the flow of concentration he experiences when shooting from roofs - and he chooses objects for various reasons, often only to mentally destabilize and demoralize the opposing side. Killing and torture become coping mechanisms.
Énard ponders the effects of desensitization and brutalization that come with war: The protagonist is both fully human and de-humanized, as he has lost the ability to show emotions. He is exactly what Klaus Theweleit had in mind when he wrote about fascist soldier ideals: A shell of a man, an effective killing machine unable to do anything else. What makes this book so challenging and great is that Énard writes from the killer's perspective and thus does not grant the reader any relief: The depiction of emotional deformation combined with gore and rape is relentless and terrifying. While we get some hints at how the narrator became like this, Énard ultimately doesn't explain the extremity, which is brilliant, because it is of course ultimately inexplicable. In this regard, it's a book about subconsciousness, about suppression - but the protagonist is never excused. At one point, he protects a woman in during a civil terror operation in the countryside he partakes in - why? He and we couldn't possibly pin down the moral impulse.
I love this text for its daring approach to the portrayal of human violence. Énard is such a n intelligent and captivating author, I will aim to become a completist (and I will start a riot when Frank Wynne's translation of The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger's Guild will not be nominated for the International Booker 2024)....more
German Edition out soon: Der Tanzende A novel about loneliness, set in a disco: Jestin's debut Heatwave (Hitze / La Chaleur) was dark and pretty good, German Edition out soon: Der Tanzende A novel about loneliness, set in a disco: Jestin's debut Heatwave (Hitze / La Chaleur) was dark and pretty good, and this sophomore effort is darker and even better. Our protagonist is Arthur, whom we follow between the ages of ten (in 1990) and 39. When we first meet him, he is a shy child attending the birthday party of a club owner's nephew, which brings the kid into "La Plage" for the first time. It will take him years to find the courage to actually dance in the club, and once he overcomes his inhibitions to move, he obsessively hits the dancefloor multiple times a week - but Arthur never manages to overcome his issues to form long-term meaningful bonds with people. The club becomes his safe space where he can move freely, an alternative world to a reality in which he experiences himself as a failure and which he aims to evade. At the beginning of the book, he wakes up on a bench in "La Plage", aged 39, and wonders how to proceed...
Once again, Jestin shows an outsider, and the portrayal of Arthur, who is good at heart, but reigned by anxiety of the unknown, is devastatingly sad. Arthur wants to connect with people by dancing, but he also wants to flee real life. He desperately seeks love, but can't make it work, as he is unable to break out of his routine: A dead-end job in a gym where he also works out, and his nights at the club. The idea to face new environments terrifies him, so as he ages, he gets stuck in this lifestyle and becomes a tragic case, slipping further and further into depression.
Arthur does not drink or take drugs, he holds no strong opinions or beliefs, he seeks deliverance in dancing - not for one night, but perpetually. This is probably the most claustrophobic party novel ever written, and the subtlety, intelligence, and psychological depth of this first-person narrative is highly impressive, especially considering that Jestin (who by his own account doesn't know how to dance) was born in 1994. We need translations into more languages and some international prize nominations for this highly talented guy....more
Soon available in English: Dear Dickhead Hold on a sec: Virginie Despentes - the provocative punk author - has turned into a critical darling, celebratSoon available in English: Dear Dickhead Hold on a sec: Virginie Despentes - the provocative punk author - has turned into a critical darling, celebrated by practically the entirety of the French press? Yes, and she did it with her new book, discretely titled "Dear Asshole" ("Cher connard"), which deals with the divisive topic of gender relations, and is rendered as a - WTF?! - epistolary novel. Yes: Letters. About gender. Full of curse words. And people love it. Kudos, Virginie, I knew you were a genius since Vernon Subutex 1.
Our protagonists are Rebecca, a famous 50-ish movie star who struggles with age discrimination in her industry and the world as a whole (some see Béatrice Dalle in her, I don't think so), as well as Oscar, a 40-ish writer. Rebecca used to be good friends with Oscar's sister, now Oscar tries to generate attention for himself by attacking the actress on the web - the backlash includes his former assistant for press relations, Zoé, accusing him on social media of sexually molesting her (which, as we learn early on, is very true). The explosive core of the novel is that all three of them represent different genders and age groups, Rebecca and Zoé stand for different types of feminism, and Oscar is a sexist with issues - but nevertheless, they start interacting, they start communicating, increasingly also including Oscar's lesbian feminist sister. We read lengthy mails that Oscar and Rebecca send to each other as well as Zoé's posts. These people hear each other out. They consider each other's view. All of them are somehow right and somehow wrong. All of them are people - and they acknowledge that.
As this is Despentes, this is of course not a book that pities sexists - on the contrary, Rebecca and Zoé kick Oscar's ass, but they believe that he has the capacity to be better, that he can take responsibility for his actions, and the supporting feminist cast, Oscar's sister and his teenage daughter, offer additional perspectives. It's also a book about COVID and loneliness, and a book about family, trauma, and depression. Both Rebecca and Oscar are addicts (heroin/crack and alcohol respectively), and the function of drugs in society is a major theme, just as the effect of mobbing on social media, of increasingly extreme bubbles on different sides of the conversation that turn people into punching balls. Rebecca, Oscar, and Zoé feel rage and desperation: Oscar has been the victim of classist discrimination in the literary scene, Rebecca of both classism and sexism in the movie industry, and Zoé of sexism in the art world. And Oscar is also a Houellebecq-ian character, a loser on the erotic market: Despentes has always written feminist novels, and now she has risen to be the second great voice in the French debate next to Michel Houellebecq, whose big topic is the commodification of love and sex (and one can find quite a few parallels, but also differences to Despentes).
The taboo topic of violence in the arts in France, particularly the role of the "male genius" who is romanticized and admired for his transgressions, has recently been an important issue, just look at Le Consentement, e.g., or the heated debate about the open letter signed by Catherine Deneuve et al. criticizing the #metoo movement (Despentes directly references that letter in the novel). "Cher connard" might also hint at a distinct event in the media/literary world: TV host Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was accused of assaulting women, among the accusers was writer Bénédicte Martin who said the TV personality raped her. Her editor - not anyone, but freaking Frédéric Beigbeder (!!!) - apparently laughed at her and declared the molestation to be normal. Houellebecq allegedly commented on this by saying: "Nothing changes."
Despentes knows it doesn't have to be like that, as she points out the agency of everybody involved. This book is also a text that tries out different standpoints, that uses its plot to discuss gender relations from different perspectives, to ask where we want to go after #metoo. "Cher connard" has so much panache, it's so fast and smart and fun, and it was high time that Despentes gets recognized has one of the most important literary voices on our continent.
Now Nominated for the National Book Award for Translated Literature 2023 Prix Goncourt 2021 An excellent choice for the Goncourt: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr hNow Nominated for the National Book Award for Translated Literature 2023 Prix Goncourt 2021 An excellent choice for the Goncourt: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr has written a well-composed, highly intelligent, entertaining and frequently hilarious novel about racism in the culture industry and the role of literature in society. Set in 2018, his protagonist Diégane is an aspiring writer from Senegal who emigrated to France to study at a prestigious university (much like a Sarr himself). By accident, he learns about the enigmatic fellow Senegalese writer Elimane who in 1938 published a highly celebrated novel, "The Labyrinth of the Inhumane", but then became the target of vicious attacks in the French press accusing him of plagiarism, and he subsequently disappeared. Diégane becomes obsessed with the destiny of the mysterious author and starts to research his whereabouts, assisted by one of Elimane's relatives, sixty-ish poet Siga D.
Sarr's main characters have to process the experience of being educated by a colonial power and trying to succeed in its system, while at the same time being aware that France saw colonialism as a mission to "civilize": They are playing by the rules of a system that has historically perceived their culture as inferior (even Albert Londres, until this day a hero of French journalism, has defended the need to civilize Africa, he just opposed the means, see Terre d'ébène). Elimane is modeled after the real author Yambo Ouloguem from Mali, whose novel "Le devoir de violence" won the prestigious Prix Renaudot in 1968. Ouloguem was then accused of plagiarism, he returned to Mali and was never able to recover from the blow his reputation took. Not-so-fun fact: After Sarr won the Goncourt in France, there was a campaign against him in Senegal, basically calling him a gay traitor to the motherland (you can read about it here).
In the book, Elimane is the victim of a racist press campaign, a combination of intentional hate-based attacks and ignoranace-based categorizations: Wow, a literate, educated Black man who has managed to write a book, what a novelty! But is he actually Black? And if so, is his writing African enough? (Interestingly, the novel mentions Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer born and raised in Japan and writing in Japanese who is frequently informed by Western media that his writing is too Western - because some Western people obviously deem it appropriate to inform a Japanese man how to properly write Japanese literature.) Elimane's and Diégane's stories show what Orientalism means for the people affected, and Sarr also takes aim at the excesses of some renderings of identity politics, namely those that exchange personality and character with formal traits and ascribe positive and negative value to those traits (e. g. Blackness, queerness, religious orientation, etc.), not the person behind them.
Sarr uses the large time span Elimane's life covers to illuminate historical context, from colonialization and its repercussions to WW II and the role of African soldiers fighting for their colonial powers (see also the fantastic, International Booker-winning Frère d'âme) to domestic political unrest in Senegal. As we join Diégane on his quest for Elimane, we travel from France to the Netherlands, then to Senegal and Argentina. We meet Jewish publishers and runaway Nazis, African expatriates and Senegalese patriarchs, and we deal with literary and actual witchcraft. Literary history plays a major role in the text, from the obvious The Odyssey (or is it rather Don Quixote?) over a whole bunch of French greats, like Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, to Witold Gombrowicz and Jorge Luis Borges (the novel's title is also a reference to Borges).
The novel has a lot to say about finding one's own voice, but as a part of a world library, which, much like Elimane's life, is a labyrinth, but at the same time doesn't respect walls: Storytelling might be rooted in a place or a person, but transcends it, which is its specific witchcraft. Not to understand this means to read the wrong way, a sin Elimane thinks needs to be punished by death. Or is cultural cosmopolitanism, as Diégane's best friend thinks, nothing but a perfidious illusion that intends to re-frame and thus de-legitimize the alienation of non-Western writers in a literary world dominated by the West? What role can a writer play, in their own culture and globally? Sarr's book is a deeply philosophical pageturner, and a worthy winner of the Goncourt.
(The German version, Die geheimste Erinnerung der Menschen, has been translated by the team that usually transforms other high-profile, ambitious texts like Mathias Énard's works, so that should tell you something about the quality of Sarr's language.)...more
This is the second novel by National Book Award-winning French-Korean author Dusapin, and the atmospheric text is a stellar example for subtle, grippiThis is the second novel by National Book Award-winning French-Korean author Dusapin, and the atmospheric text is a stellar example for subtle, gripping writing about identity, belonging, and liminal spaces. Much like Min Jin Lee's rather epic Pachinko, Dusapin's concise novella illuminates the destiny of the so-called Zainichi, Koreans who have fled their country due to the war and moved to Japan. Marginalized, discriminated against and short of opportunities to join the mainstream labor market, many became entrepreneurs in the stigmatized Pachinko gambling business - like the grandparents of 29-year-old Claire, who is the protagonist of “The Pachinko Parlor”.
The grandparents run a Pachinko in the former working-class quarter of Tokyo, a place where many Zainichi took up residence. Living on the margins of society, alienated both from the Korean community and Japanese society, the elderly couple still works hard. Their daughter, Claire’s mother, has long left Japan, and Claire, whose primary language is French, lives in Switzerland where she has learnt Japanese, but not Korean. Now Claire visits her grandparents, and she plans to travel to Korea with them, so they might see their home again, after 50 years. But the planning goes slowly, and Claire spends many weeks in the basement of their house close to the Pachinko, ruminating in the oppressive heat, playing Tetris and tutoring Mieko, a timid 10-year-old who lives with her single mother in an abandoned hotel. Mieko is supposed to improve her French, so she can go to school in Switzerland, but the insecure child suffers because her father has left the family, and she does not know where he is...
Lost roots in the form of countries, languages and ancestors permeate the quiet, but deep text that becomes more and more evocative, leading to dreamscapes populated by mystical deer, non-places like sad amusement parks and alternate, displaced mock realities like “Heidi’s Village” in Yamanashi (which does actually exist: Johanna Spyri’s book about the nature-loving girl in the Alps was famously turned into an anime and is well-known in Japan). Claire and Mieko connect over their experiences of otherness, Mieko as the lonely, fatherless girl with the sad mother, Claire as a young European woman who passes as Japanese and doesn’t know her ancestral country and family history, which is greatly covered by taboo and hardly discussed. The grandmother is becoming frailer and frailer, and time is running out. The moody scenes in the Pachinko, the ghost-like minor characters, and the food- and games-related gatherings where those partaking struggle for connection underline the vastness and darkness of liminal spaces for those trying to navigate them.
I really enjoyed the gripping, intelligent, haunting writing, and I’m very curious what Dusapin will publish next....more
Maris, Houellebecq's late friend who was murdered in the Charlie Hebdo attack, was a well-respected economist, and in this small volume, he investigatMaris, Houellebecq's late friend who was murdered in the Charlie Hebdo attack, was a well-respected economist, and in this small volume, he investigates how Houellebecq's writing relates to the ideas of Alfred Marshall, Joseph A. Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Charles Fourier, and Thomas Robert Malthus, because "que la société - il vaudrait mieux dire l'humanité - meurt de l'économie est, pour une fois, tout à fait prévisible. C'est la prévision de Michel Houellebecq."
Make no mistake: Maris never intended to write a scientific text; rather, the book contains entertaining essays full of personal flair, and I enjoyed how the author relates economic theories to characters and plot events in Houellebecq's novels, which all in a way revolve around the idea of the world as a supermarket, around the commodification and monetary measurement of absolutely everything, including compassion, love, desire, and ultimately life - including death. Maris argues that Houellebecq stresses the fear-based degradation that comes with this process and its irreversibility.
A highly interesting little volume for everyone interested in studying Houellebecq beyond his superficial shock value....more
Gunnar Decker finds a highly interesting and entertaining way to discuss all of Houellebecq's artistic endeavors, from his novels and novellas over thGunnar Decker finds a highly interesting and entertaining way to discuss all of Houellebecq's artistic endeavors, from his novels and novellas over the essays and poems to his music and directorial efforts. The chapters ponder Houellebecq's family history, his philosophical and aesthetic positions between Arthur Schopenhauer, H.P. Lovecraft, Joris-Karl Huysmans et al., as well as his enduring themes, namely the world as a supermarket and transhumanism.
As a Houellebecq completist (at least when it comes to his fictional work) and a reader fascinated by this daring, provocative author (and annoyed by the shallow, intellectually lazy critique he often faces), this book was a real pageturner to me, I read it through the night because I just could not stop. I particularly enjoyed the astute observations regarding my favorite Houellebecq novel, The Map and the Territory, and the discussion of religion that compares Houellebecq to Huysmans, particularly dissecting Against Nature, The Damned, and En Route.
This is how non-fiction about literature should be crafted: Intellectually challenging, well-written, and exciting. Loved it....more
Prix Littéraire Frontières Léonora Miano 2022 Poet Mariette Navarro has written her debut novella: The text centers on a restrained, female captain of Prix Littéraire Frontières Léonora Miano 2022 Poet Mariette Navarro has written her debut novella: The text centers on a restrained, female captain of a container ship who, on an impulse, allows her all male crew to stop the engine in the middle of the ocean in order to go swimming in the open waters. She alone remains on the ship and awaits her men while fighting dark thoughts rooted in trauma that will soon have an effect on the whole trip: When the sailors return from their exciting, but also terrifying trip, there is a mysterious extra person involved, and the engine of the ship suddenly lacks the power to go as fast as before...
What could be a captivating psychological tale only shines with lyrical, intense descriptions of human bodies being submitted to a powerful body of water. The detailed scenes involving waves, sounds, and light are atmospheric and effective, but all in all, the prose veers off course: It's overwritten, heavy on obvious metaphors, and it feels forced. None of the characters really come alive.
The book is based on a real voyage the author undertook to Guadeloupe, an overseas region and department (state) of France, located in the Lesser Antilles, islands that are also referred to as "territoires ultramarins" (hence the French book title Ultramarins). The Prix Léonora Miano celebrates literature about borders, and the text does indeed focus on crossing various borders: Between water and land, restraint and imprudence, the living and the dead, the past, the present and the future, etc.
I see what Mariette Navarro wanted to do here, but I'm not the right reader for such verbose, over-artificial language....more
Gabrielle Wittkop masterfully trolls us with lyrical romantic language, Gothic motifs, and an abundance of literary references from Edgar Allan Poe anGabrielle Wittkop masterfully trolls us with lyrical romantic language, Gothic motifs, and an abundance of literary references from Edgar Allan Poe and Vladimir Nabokov to the Marquis de Sade: In her slender epistolary debut novel, a highly cultivated antiquarian from Paris celebrates the melancholic beauty of our constant decay by, you know, robbing graves and having sex with corpses. It's disgusting and hilarious, and it's also perfectly crafted. In his diary, Lucien, the title-giving necrophiliac, plays with tons of literary tropes, but turns them into the grotesque, the macabre, and the bizarre, and it's all way more amusing than it should be.
You can learn more about necrophilia from my favorite mortician Caitlin Doughty who tallked about it on YouTube, and in case you wonder why in the world I picked up this book, check out the video on the rediscovery of author Gabrielle Wittkop by a man of wonderful literary tastes, Cliff Sargent, here....more
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022 Violaine Huisman's debut novel is a fictionalized biography of her bipolar mother Catherine, a workiLonglisted for the International Booker Prize 2022 Violaine Huisman's debut novel is a fictionalized biography of her bipolar mother Catherine, a working class dancer and author of "Saxifrage", who married rich and influential intellectual Denis Huisman. The eccentric pair indulged in drugs and orgies, and while instable Catherine longed for security, she was also drawn to self-destructice behavior; while she declared that she wanted to be free and independent, she still tied her destiny to men. Her poor mental health resulted in suicide attempts and hospital stays, and Violaine Huisman and her sister Elsa grew up feeling responsible for their mother's survival.
Split in three parts, we first get the author's perspective on her mother as a child, then we learn about Catherine's perspective, and lastly, we hear about her passing and funeral. The image that comes together is that of two damaged, but also rather terrible people - the parents - who were a burden on their children, and I say that although it is clear that this is not the message that the author wants to convey: Violaine Huisman wants to paint an empathetic picture of her mother's sad life, a neglectful mother who was herself neglected and who suffered from a terrible mental illness that tortured her for many years. And that's the crux: It's hard to tell where her agency starts and where it ends. It's easy to imagine that Catherine had zero friends attending her funeral; it's way harder to understand what Denis Huisman must have been thinking - in the book, his decisions appear erratic.
Still, this is also and in large parts a book about the Parisian upperclass ostentatiously acting like the cliché of the Parisian upperclass (drinking and having affairs while wearing YSL), and it's not exactly interesting, but reads like a soap-opera about intergenerational trauma. This is also why this does not relate to Édouard Louis or to Didier Eribon, who both write autofiction with a political dimension as they ponder the French class system using their own example. Huisman has no political agenda, this is a deeply personal text. In Germany, one might think of Monika Helfer and her project writing about members of her family in several novels, but Helfer also has a larger frame: She illustrates Austrian and German 20th century history and how it (de-)formed her ancestors and herself.
I suppose that it must have been therapeutic to write this book for Violaine Huisman who aimed to forgive her mother, and it's not a bad text, but great literature this is not: It's not aesthetically outstanding or particularly relevant content-wise.
You can listen to my interview with Frank Wynne, jury president of the International Booker 2022, here. ...more
English: Change: A Novel Let's be real: I also thought Louis would now really start struggling to milk his life for even more meaningful autofiction - English: Change: A Novel Let's be real: I also thought Louis would now really start struggling to milk his life for even more meaningful autofiction - but surprisingly, this book about, you guessed it, personal change is my favorite effort by him. In it, Louis explains how he went about changing his life and himself, but this is not an American-style text about self-actualization, reaching your potential, and fulfilling your dreams; no: our protagonist walks an extremely painful path between self-denial and self-invention, his way is littered with people he left behind, he even medically changes his appearance, and he feels a lot of regret - still, he is not sorry, because now, he is his own man.
Again, Louis talks about his working class childhood that was overshadowed by violence and poverty (see: En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule) as well as about his parents (see: Qui a tué mon père and Combats et métamorphoses d'une femme), but he gives it a new twist: He talks about his thoughts and efforts to flee which were fueled by his desire for revenge - Louis wanted the people who victimized him and discriminated against him for his homosexuality to feel shame, and he also admits that the education that led him away from his own family made him feel power over the heritage he himself felt ashamed of.
Enter Elena, a friend he made while studying in Amiens: She and her family of cultivated academics became role models for Louis, who went about his transformation after the principle of "fake it 'til you make it" - he emulated them until he met Didier Eribon and shortly after Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, who in turn became his role models and friends. The text is strong because it shows Louis' weakness: Sure, he climbed the social ladder, but he paid a prize and he can't outrun his heritage and insecurity.
This is super-interesting stuff for all the Pierre Bourdieu stans out here: You want to learn what habitus means? Look no further! It is painful what Louis endures to learn the social codes of different classes, and how much he wants to belong - at one point, he goes as far as only sleeping with people who appear rich and of high status, and he tries to convince the mayor of Geneva to adopt him (seriously!). It's sad how far he goes to deny where he came from, and he slowly comes to realize this.
But this book is also a thank you note and an apology to the people in Louis' life that were affected by his desire to change: The first part is adressed to Elena, the second to Didier (Eribon), the third to Elena again. There a passages in which he directly adresses his father, and some in which he talks to his own reflection in the mirror.
As a first generation college student and working class kid I know a thing or two about class, habitus, and the desire to take revenge on those who in your childhood thought they were better (because: richer and with parents of higher status) than you, so I found the book very affecting and in many ways relatable. I applaud Louis for his self-reflection, which grows in every book he writes: This novel is worlds apart from "The End of Eddy", because it seems like now he has the space and maturity to re-evaluate many things that happened to him.
So all in all, I can't believe that Louis has written yet another intriguing book about himself. I can't wait for the next one....more
Carrère's autofictional novel takes some wild turns: Starting out as a book about yoga and meditation, we meet the author at a retreat, from where he Carrère's autofictional novel takes some wild turns: Starting out as a book about yoga and meditation, we meet the author at a retreat, from where he gets called after only five days when his (and Michel Houellebecq's) friend Bernard Maris is murdered in the Charlie Hebdo attack. After ten years of remission, Carrère's mental health issues throw him off the rails again: He is institutionalized, diagnosed as bipolar, medicated with ketamin and lithium, and he receives electroconvulsive therapy. After leaving the hospital, he travels to a Greek island to help during the refugee crisis: He now seeks deliverance not in himself, but in helping others (and don't think that the book is simplistic enough to sell that as the answer - clearly not).
As a yoga enthusiast myself, I liked the idea to write a book about a man striving for control and inner peace who in the end is confronted with the most terrible truth of yoga: That yoga is always a practice, that the person who claims to "know" how to do yoga only reveals to be ignorant about it - a yoga practitioner always trains, and never fully masters his craft, because humans are imperfect and forever trying to deal with a challenging world full of randomness. What happens to Carrère is horrible, he struggles with severe mental health issues and goes down a suicidal spiral. He reflects on his life which suddenly turns from looking happy to looking nightmarish.
Carrère ponders the meaning of happiness, especially in the context of family, romantic love, and literary success, but the disparate text does not become meandering or narcissistic, it remains tentative and highly introspective. It's an unusual approach to autofiction that operates on emotional extremes and aims for control, over one's own mind or at least over one's own narrative.
So my fave literary critic Ijoma Mangold was right: This is fascinating stuff....more
Londres was one of the first investigative journalists, the most important journalism prize of the Grande Nation is still called the Albert Londres PrLondres was one of the first investigative journalists, the most important journalism prize of the Grande Nation is still called the Albert Londres Prize. This text is considered a classic of anticolonialist literature, BUT: Londres did not argue against colonialism as a whole. Rather, he wanted a better colonialism: Like many of his contemporaries, he saw the colonies as a civilizing mission. He wasn't upset that the land and the people were exploited, but how they were exploited.
Here, Londres writes about the workings of a penal colony in Northern Africa where abitrary justice, violence, and torture rule. It abides to a smiliar cruel non-logic like Kafka's In the Penal Colony (Kafka was already dead when Londres' piece was published though).
Londres writes against inhumanity and pointless cruelty, he wants a humane colonialism (which doesn't exist, but let's follow his logic for the sake of investigating his time and colonial thinking). He was severely attacked in France, sued, called a traitor to France. But the documentary character of his writing and the facts he reported, especially the numbers, forced officials to act: The French colonial minister had to answer question regarding the "systematic murder of Black people" in the context of the Congo-Ocean railway, for example.
And then there's today's treatment of colonial history: In 2005, President Sarkozy wanted to implement a law demanding to include the positive aspects of colonialism in school textbooks - he failed. And what did I, a German, learn about German colonialism (which included a genocide in Namibia) in my German high school? Nothing. What about you?
You have to praise all publishers who provide the public with Londres' works, because they are instructive historical documents....more
Loading...
