THE LITTLE PRINCE BY ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

I had bought the book at St Pancras station at the end of one our day trips. It was, I guess, a prop, something to fiddle with, to pretend to read; it was, in other words, a way of erecting a barrier between us while on the train home. Not because I didn’t want to speak to her, but because I was ashamed of my behaviour. I had spent the day chiding her. Don’t do this; don’t touch that. How was it possible that the most common sense actions were inaccessible to her? I had first met her in Moscow, a meeting that ended in a car crash. I saw her again in Barcelona, where she was on holiday. She had arrived with no money at all. She had money this time, this third time when I had invited her to England, but she seemed not to value it. She’d smile and laugh, as though the dangers and miseries of the world were not applicable to her. I called her a child. These words came easily to me. But what I didn’t say was how inelegant she made me feel, how dour and unimaginative. She struck me as some kind of dream fairy. I began to wonder if she really existed. Perhaps I died in that car crash and none of this is real, I thought. I awoke every morning amazed to find her next to me. I didn’t tell her any of these things.

With her, the world became clear and intelligible. The flowers, the water, the hills. I didn’t like them any more than before but I saw them and understood them at last. You think that I am simple just because I always smiling, she had said, still smiling; but that isn’t the case. She’s doing the hardest thing of all: making the most of life; approaching it with a kind of manic positivity that makes my heart ache with admiration and incredulity. How can she be real? I wasn’t used to feeling anything; I’m not used to it. I am bewildered. I imagined, as I saw her off at the airport after two weeks, that all would return to normal, that everything would stop. I do not want clarity; the glare is too harsh. Let me once again see through blurry eyes, I prayed. At first, I thought I’d got my wish. As I walked away, I felt purged of something beautiful but terrible. But then, when I got home, I opened the book and started to read. Please tame me, says the fox to the Prince. Or something of that sort. I could not stop crying. I was Nietzsche throwing his arms around the horse.

“You’re beautiful, but you’re empty…One couldn’t die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she’s the one I’ve watered. Since she’s the one I put under glass, since she’s the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she’s the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she’s my rose.”

The Little Prince is narrated by a man who is stranded in the Sahara Desert due to a problem with the engine of his plane. He is alone, without water, and, he thinks, likely to survive only a week. While he is trying to fix his plane he is approached by an ‘extraordinary small person’ with an ‘odd little voice’, who asks lots of questions, but will not respond to them. The two hit it off over a sheep, an imaginary sheep, and it is easy to be swept away by the charm and magic of the situation. Which is to say that initially one takes it all at face value. Why can’t a little Prince suddenly appear in the desert? A little Prince from another planet, who needs a sheep? It took me a while – me, an overthinker and careful reader – to realise what was really going on. For the boy does not exist; he is an hallucination, a dream fairy. He is a product of the man’s dire situation, and state of mind, but also a symbol; he is, for want of a better term, his inner child. It is an element of weirdness, of the offbeat, that helps to make the story compelling, that gives it greater depth.

The book begins with the man telling an anecdote about how he once drew, from the outside, a snake which had swallowed an elephant. The adults, he says, could not see it for what it was and thought it was a hat. When he then drew a snake swallowing an elephant from the inside they told him to stop altogether and devote himself instead to worthier subjects like geography, arithmetic, history and grammar. This anecdote is the first of many instances where de Saint-Exupery criticises the adult mindset and behaviour. Grown ups, he tells us, always need to have things explained. They are, moreover, overly concerned with dry facts and figures, rather than ‘essential matters.’ The narrator uses the example of making a new friend to illustrate this claim. A grown up would not ask what the voice of your friend is like, they would want to know how old he is or how much money his father makes. His point is clear: grown ups have forgotten how to live, how to see, how to experience wonder and joy; they lack imagination and, furthermore, wish to stifle the imagination and creativity of children.

What is not clear is what the author’s overriding message is. It appears to be that we should be always young at heart. Yet the ending of the book suggests that this isn’t possible. For the Prince goes away; one might say that he commits suicide, in fact. This may seem like a strange and unexpectedly melancholy conclusion, especially for a much-loved children’s book, but there is a deep strain of sadness, of darkness even, running through the entirety of The Little Prince. A man alone in the desert, remember, who hallucinates a little boy; a boy he loves; a boy who is his only friend. He feels disconnected from other people, and in this way the desert is symbolic too. The man is lonely, unhappy, possibly mad. Then there is the Prince’s story, that of a child who lives, again alone, on a planet far away from earth. This planet is no larger than a house. Even in the parts of the story which have been designed to illustrate how misguided adults are – the planet hopping section – there is a gloomy undercurrent. The king, for example, who rules over nothing. The tippler too.

For all that I have written so far about adults and children, loneliness and madness, The Little Prince is most affecting as a love story. Certainly, it is in that way that it hit me the hardest. So hard that I could barely breathe. In fact, I don’t know if I want to write about the flower and the fox. I do not know how to do justice to these aspects of the novel. They are now, and will always be, part of me and her, of our story, even though she doesn’t know it. Please tame me, says the fox, and I could cry forever, my arms thrown around the horse, my wet face nestled in its mane. To tame someone or something is to make it yours, is to recognise it, to make it unique. Your voice, your step, your presence will matter to them; only yours; and theirs will matter to you. Before, they were indifferent to you, before you were one amongst many, but now you are special; and they are special to you. The flower…a common rose, unlike any other, because it belongs to the Prince. I can hardly type the words. I do not want to sound like a fool. I cannot go on.

DISAGREEABLE TALES BY LEON BLOY

I don’t watch or read the news. Not anymore. I don’t want to know about current affairs. I’ve closed down almost all social media channels too. I’m leaving you to it, for my disdain for humanity was once at such a prodigious level that I was concerned about my mental and emotional well-being. Hooligan of heart; our souls are grim bestiaries. The world is a foul place. It reeks of death and decay. It stings my eyes and nose like cat piss; it clogs my throat like black smoke. It is only in cutting myself off that my anguish and bitterness has eased somewhat, like pus and bad blood being drained from a large boil. I wake up in the morning now, open the curtains, and look out upon nothing. Nothing, but the gentle twittering of birds and the calm flow of the river I live beside. It is a dull scene, but it is only in this way that I can stomach my existence, our existence; it is only without you, away from you, that I can tolerate my own wretchedness.

“The very sight of the old man engendered vermin. The dung heap of his soul extended so far into his hands and face one could not possibly imagine a more frightful contact. When he walked the streets, the slimiest gutters, shuddering at the reflection of his image, seemed to flow back to their source.”

According to his wikipedia page, French author Leon Bloy was ‘noted for personal attacks’ and prone to outbursts of temper; which, having read his Disagreeable Tales, seems like it might be something of an understatement. Perhaps only the work of Celine and Thomas Bernhard, and occasionally his friend J.K. Huysmans, could lay claim to being as vitriolic and hateful. In The Religion of Monsieur Pleur, for example, he writes of a man who exuded the stench of a ‘knackered beast’ and whose filth ‘did not assure him welcome in any abyss.’ In Two Ghosts, a woman’s face is said to have resembled ‘a fried potato rolled in scrapped cheese.’ Her odour, he continues, was that of ‘a landing in a hotel of the twentieth order – on the seventh floor.’ My sense of humour being of the sour kind, I found many of Bloy’s venomous barbs amusing and some of them genuinely funny. It is, of course, easy to say that someone stinks like shit, but there is a real skill – which the Frenchman had evidently mastered – in being able to fashion imaginative, and truly cutting, putdowns.

However, I imagine that for some readers Bloy’s narrative voice, and by extension his character, would be as disagreeable as many of the actions in the book. To criticise institutions, moral failings, etc, is acceptable, but to consistently highlight bad personal hygiene or appearance will likely strike the more sensitive amongst us as being too mean-spirited and lacking in manners. Certainly in England, where I live, we are especially uncomfortable with this sort of criticism. However, I found it both interesting, and a blessing, that Bloy does not position himself, at least in this book, as a saint with indefatigable reserves of love, understanding, and patience. He is petty, brutal; he is, by his own admission, ‘intoxicated by indignation.’ There is, of course, a sense of superiority in anyone who so lambasts and lampoons others, and while that isn’t an attractive quality in a friend, in a narrator it helped to hold my attention. Moreover, it should be noted that in many instances the unpleasant, slovenly physical state of the characters mirrors the state of their souls.

Bloy was, without question, a moraliser. His Disagreeable Tales, which are told in the form of short anecdotes, are judgements. The people who populate them are murderers, crooks, hypocrites, etc; they are venal, self-centred, idle, duplicitous, grasping and base. It is clear that the author saw the world, as I do, as something like a slagheap; and considered it his duty to comment upon it. In the first entry, Herbal Tea, Jacques spies on someone in the confessional who admits to poisoning a man’s tea and whom he recognises as his own mother. The son is said to worship the woman as the ‘paragon of rectitude and kindness.’ Many of Bloy’s stories are like this, where the ‘twist’ is someone being not what they appear to be. The most satisfying and surprising example of this is in The Religion of Monsieur Pleur. Here, the author sets the titular Pleur up to be a miser who will not spend his money; a rich man who willingly lives in appalling circumstances, such that the sight of him ‘engendered vermin.’ The reveal is that he is, in fact, exceedingly poor, having given all his money away to charity.

If I had one criticism to make of Bloy’s work it is that, as with Dickens, there isn’t a great deal of moral shading; the good are almost angelically good and the bad irredeemably bad. But, in spite of that, Disagreeable Tales is a lot of fun to read. It is well written – some of the imagery is fabulous – and gothic and grimy, and is, undoubtedly, still relevant today. Indeed, upon finishing it I, for a brief moment, thought about switching on the news. Donald Trump is, I’ve been told, in the U.K. With rightful, righteous indignation people will, I know, be greeting his visit. Yes, for a moment I wanted to share in that, to gorge myself on it, to myself decry that orange clown with the Weetabix hair. And, yet, instead I stood up, moved over to the window and looked out: nothing. Nothing except the gentle twittering of birds and the calm flow of the river that I live beside.

BLACK MIRROR: SELECTED POEMS BY ROGER GILBERT-LECOMTE

Rien. Nothing. I have the word tattooed across my fingers. Not to remind myself, because I never forget. That which awaits me? No, because there will be no me to experience it. It will be the absence of me. Nothing. The absence of all things. Including me. The void. I never forget, although it is impossible to contemplate it. For my thinking is always targeted towards something. Everything we do, every aspect of our existence, is targeted. Even when we think we are not doing anything. It is simply a lie we tell ourselves. We are always doing something. We live with the idea of the void, not the reality of it. There is no reality. It is nothing. Not even the word with which we attempt to pin it down. Does anyone understand me? I am scared of this phantom blackness. Less than a shadow, than the wind. Less than the stillness, the silence. It is the absence of shadows, of wind, of stillness, of silence. Rien.

I’ll speak of the dark 
To dank caves
Mushroom beds eyes glowing in the blackness
I’ll speak of the dark to coiled snails
I’ll speak of the dark 
To rain to soot
To the circle of moonwater motionless at the bottom of a well
To barrels rolling in the cellar at midnight
When the white lady moaned
I’ll speak of the dark
On the blind side of mirrors
I’ll speak of the dark
Of immortal torture
Of most ancient despair
In the absence of a universe

To discover something is to draw it out of the void, to give it existence. Before it was nothing, now it is. To discover is to create. You, in your discovery, are responsible for that thing. You are the creator of the universe, or at least those bits of it that exist, which is to say the bits that you have experience of. I came upon the work of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte in the same way that I happen upon most writers or books: by semi-accident. I found him, I created him, I dragged him out of the void, by following a trail. By now the marks left my footprints have been erased. Which is a pretentious way of saying that I have forgotten what led me to Black Mirror. A brief mention in an online article covering the surrealists, perhaps. Or Rene Daumal, whose work I admire, and with whom Gilbert-Lecomte founded the avant-garde Le Grand Jeu artistic group and magazine. A long-term morphine addict, he died, I’m told, at the age of thirty-six as a result of an infection caused by the use of dirty needles; and yet now I have breathed new life into him and written his poems.

Whether accurate or not, my understanding is that Gilbert-Lecomte published only one full length book in his lifetime. It is called La vie, l’amour, la mort, le vide et le vent. Or Life, Love, Death, Void and Wind. It is tempting to end my review here, with that. No other title summarises a writer’s body of work better. However, what that title hints at, but doesn’t fully convey, is the hysterical, gothic surrealism of some of the poems. In Notes for a Coming Attraction, for example, he writes of ‘horror in tar: the grin of certain dead people.’ Indeed, some of his lines wouldn’t look out of place in the liner notes of a death metal album. Like this from The Borders of Love: ‘Veiled in a red fog and buzz/Of blood seared by the venomous spells/And prestigia of desire/Exciting in the bend of your nocturnal throat/The voracity of vampires.’ Throughout, there are references to the ‘icy slithering of ghosts,’ and lemmings bashing their brains out, and fingers that ‘sprout insanely squealing diamonds/drops of blood singing in midair,’ and so on. Some of the images are theatrical and ridiculous, a great many of them are beautiful, but, regardless of how you feel about this sort of thing, there is certainly an impressive dedication to a specific [gloomy and anguished] mood.

Of all the things promised by the title of his book – life, love, wind etc – it is the void that dominates. Gilbert-Lecomte’s poems are filled with phrases like ‘black oblivion’ and ‘ethereal abyss’ and a ‘place of absence.’ There is barely a line in the collection that doesn’t mention blackness or darkness, which, in our attempts to understand the concept, to grasp it, are words that are invariably associated with nothingness. However, while fear is certainly a present emotion in the text, I did not get the impression that the poet directs it specifically at the idea of the void, at the state [although of course it isn’t a state] of non-being. In fact, he appears to always exist within it. In The Borders of Love, for example, he writes ‘Blind as I am/In the caves of being that are the antechambers of annihilation.’ Which suggests to me that rather than being, as I am, petrified of nothingness, of what happens after death, Gilbert-Lecomte’s despair is directed at his being [not the future lack of it]. 

This makes sense when one considers how troubled and difficult his existence was. On the Station Hill Press website, the publisher responsible for Black Mirror, it is written that ‘his life was a succession of jail and hospital confinements.’ I have also read that he was forbidden to marry a woman who was later deported to Auschwitz [and did not return]. And there was, of course, the years of drug abuse and addiction. Non-being might begin to look attractive in such circumstances, or certainly not something to be afraid of. It is notable, therefore, that so many of the poems allude to the womb, or explicitly mention it. For example, Gilbert-Lecomte writes of ‘caves of darkness,’ and being ‘at the bottom of the deepest cave,’ and of being ‘rooted in uterus/A ghastly fetus doomed to one more round/Of procreative desperation/Spinning on the wheel of the horror of existence.’ It is often [wrongly] claimed that our only experience of nothingness is pre-life, pre-consciousness, but again I don’t think that this is entirely what he had in mind. The womb, unlike life outside, is safe; to return to it is a comforting notion. Moreover, certain drugs, including morphine, are said to give you a feeling of contentment and safety that is womb-like. To my mind, Gilbert-Lecomte was preoccupied with the void, yes, but as a pacifier, and as something to aspire to, perhaps.

GAMIANI, OR TWO NIGHTS OF EXCESS BY ALFRED DE MUSSET

Our arrangement was that we wouldn’t talk at all, that as she entered my flat she would go immediately down on her knees without a word being exchanged between us. This was her fantasy. Throughout our communication, in the days leading up to her arrival, she always brought it back to this: don’t speak. She wanted to be treated like a whore. However, afterwards, after climax, once her mind had cleared, it became apparent that she was beginning to regret it. I have never done anything like this before, she said, in an attempt to excuse, or apologise for, her behaviour. Guilt and shame were working their insidious conjuring trick, transforming an event that was morally neutral into something bad, something negative, something wrong. What had been a pleasurable experience was already becoming that which she could not allow herself to contemplate or acknowledge. Yet, while she doubted and judged herself, I admired her. She had not only dared to dream, but dared to bring that dream to fruition.

“We, who are scarcely more than fantasies ourselves; will’o’the wisps who exist in this world only as the most fugitive of dreams; or nightmares, rather, in the troubled sleep of some lesser god.”

Gamiani is credited to Alfred de Musset, who is these days known – if at all – for his poetry. I’m sure that there are good reasons for linking him to the novel, but he certainly never himself took responsibility for it. This is not surprising when one considers the content, which involves a great deal of, at times unpleasant, sex. There are several scenes involving torture, although these are not particularly explicit; there is group sex, which seems par for the course with these sorts of things; there is some strap on action; and there is a little bestiality. These last two warrant further consideration, if only for the laughs. Of the strap on, de Musset muses that ‘the most generously endowed stallion in his moment of extremest power could not, at least as regards thickness and volume, have equalled that device.’ Most preposterously, he further notes that when a spring is pressed on its side it expels warm milk ‘halfway across the room.’ In terms of the bestiality, this centres around an enormous black dog called Medor who appears to be rather adept at cunninlingus.

However, it isn’t all warm milk, smooth tongues, and belly laughs; de Musset did have some interesting, if sometimes outdated, ideas about sex. The book begins with a man, Alcide, peeping on Gamiani while she seduces another woman [well, fifteen year old girl, to be precise]. He states that ‘what looked like rape was, I quickly understood, a kind of dance.’ This could of course be no more than a weak attempt to justify sexual abuse. Certainly, Rape or coercion crop up frequently in works of this sort, but that isn’t something I intend to discuss here. What is notable about this line is that it sets the tone for much of the sex in the book, or, rather, the attitudes and behaviour of the central characters towards sex in certain circumstances. Outside of marriage, under cover of darkness, sex is an animal, brutal activity, it is a ‘raging paroxysm.’ Anything goes, anything is permissible if it gratifies. Indeed, the gratification comes by way of indulgence; it is a consequence of truly letting oneself go. Yes, someone might play coy but what they really want is to devour and be devoured.

While for much of Gamiani one would be forgiven for thinking that de Musset was an advocate of libertinage, of sexual freedom, ultimately the opposite appears to be the case. When, following the first night, Alcide wakes up next to Fanny [the girl with whom both he and Gamiani – singularly and in union – take their pleasure] he finds that he is a gentleman again and no longer a beast. In the light of day, his mind is not full of filth, but syrupy, sentimental, moralising twaddle. For example, he says of the kiss that he and Fanny share: ‘I felt her soul upon my lips.’ Lips that only hours before were wrapped around his dick. Yet, in the morning, he feels ashamed, and expects, imagines, Fanny’s shame. In the morning, this buffoon is in love.* In contrast, when he looks in upon Gamiani, who is now cast as an evil temptress, she is described as being in an ‘ignoble heap, her face distorted, her body unclean, distorted.’ This is the worst sort of patriarchal claptrap: the innocent and the whore; both to be enjoyed and both to be judged by impossible, hypocritical standards. Indeed, the finale to the novel sees both temptress and tempted die upon their sword; and by sword I mean, of course, a large penis.

The suggestion is that Gamiani is based on de Musset’s affair with the bisexual author George Sand. If so, it isn’t, as you might have noticed, a flattering account of that relationship. Gamiani is said to have ‘the grace of a empress’, to have good manners and effortless style, but it is clear, as I explained in the previous paragraph, that her story is meant to serve as something of a cautionary tale. She says of herself that she is isolated from feeling; that ‘hell prowls’ in her spirit. She is tough and voracious and obviously a symbol of what happens when someone is too in thrall to their libido. Gamiani cannot be satisfied; she desires ever more intense and extreme sexual activity in an attempt to find satisfaction, much like a drug addict will take ever larger doses in order to get high.  However, for me, and for many others I am sure, she is actually the [unintentional] heroine of the novel. I’m not suggesting that we all fuck dogs, but I do believe that we should look upon the urgings of the body in a more sympathetic, tolerant way. There are, in fact, a good many people I know who would be happier if they could do this, if they – if we – could finally, fully throw off the shackles of guilt, timidity and shame.

 

*love itself is not buffoonish, rather the fact that Alcide ‘falls in love’ partly out of shame and partly because he now feels he ought to protect Fanny.

ILL SEEN ILL SAID BY SAMUEL BECKETT

As the sky goes black, suddenly black, and the snow drifts up into the air, I think of her. Of mum. My mum. Cancer-riddled, near death, near end, near black. Small and misshapen, she moves like a insect, injured, legs missing on one side only. Graceless, my mother, like an insect near death. Old, too old, too ill. Her hair once red, now gone, no more. She was mad before, in years gone by, for years until now. Now sane, seems sane. No more fire or fight, in her. As the sky goes black, and the snow rises from the earth, I think of mother, whose body, which is failing, has failed, was previously strong enough to push me out into the world. Her body, which for nine months sustained her son, which kept him alive, can no longer sustain her own self. At night, I wonder, as she lays down in darkness, at night, does she consider it certain, her life, her waking, in a few hours time? No, I’d say. No complacency, I’d say. No more of that. She is pure present, pure pain, no doubt, at least at times. The rest, at rest, she rests, with death.

“Already all confusion. Things and imaginings. As of always. Confusion amounting to nothing. Despite precautions. If only she could be pure figment. Unalloyed. This old so dying woman. So dead. In the madhouse of the skull and nowhere else. Where no more precautions to be taken. No precautions possible. Cooped up there with the rest. Hovel and stones. The lot. And the eye. How simple all then. If only all could be pure figment. Neither be nor been nor by any shift to be. Gently gently. On. Careful.”

As the sky goes black, no, no sky, nor snow, no more of that. An introduction is all it was. A way of getting here, wherever this is. No mother, either. Move on. Thought and feeling rising from the earth, no. Move on. In my room, afraid of the cold outside, afraid of the world outside, of them, of another them. Yes, that, or maybe that, in some way, to some degree, but I ought to avoid complications. In any case, I wanted to read, or reread, something by Samuel Beckett. First Molloy. In my room, I read, reread, then stop. For days I read, and reread, and stop, more often stop. Not for difficulty, no, but for a breath, to breathe. Molloy I see is more beautiful than I remember. Before, all I noticed was the humour. Or at least that’s all I could remember, from before. Yet still I stop, full stop, and move on to another. I have defended The Unnamable, passionately, to myself more often than not. Who else do I know who has read it? There is none. I read, and reread, and so on, and I like it, just as much as I thought I did, but still I stop, of course. Of course, I stop, otherwise this would be something else. The title at the top of the page is clear.

Maybe it was the snow, which I will not mention again. Maybe it was the stillness that rose from the earth. Maybe it was mother, who I will not mention again. I don’t know. Something drew me to this, specifically this, to Ill Seen Ill Said. For the third time. Or the fourth. I cannot be accurate on this point. I was drawn to it, not as I was drawn those other times, that is all. Move on. It is usually published with two others, as Nohow On. A trilogy, which isn’t a trilogy, after all. Ill fitting. Nothing links them, except the obvious, to which I will return. A matter of convenience, then. Beckett’s late prose pieces, as they are often called, and because late, near last, it is said that they are the toughest, the most obscure. That isn’t the case, or not for me, at least. No genius, I, either. The other trilogy, yes, The Unnamable, specifically, yes, although even those all are readable, re-readable, comprehensible. For me, to me, at least. Beckett’s style, as his life drew to a close, was one of clarity, simplicity, minimalism. His sentences, you might say, grew shorter, as the life left to him grew shorter also. They dwindled as he dwindled.

I promised I would return, and so it is. There is no escaping it. Say it, say what? Death, the bastard death. There is no escape. The book begins: from where she lies. Already you know; you know, if you didn’t already, from that. She lies, because movement is difficult. Down on her knees especially she finds it hard not to remain so forever. Such helplessness. She’s old, of course; of course, she’s old. So old, so frail, so close to the void, that her steps in the snow, hers not mine, her snow not mine, leave barely a trace. Perhaps that – old age and the approach of death – is the reason why she spends so much of her time at the window, watching Venus rise. It is beautiful, bright, and permanent, unlike she. Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. Is there a better way to live your last? I don’t know. The woman understands, it seems, her situation. She is ‘beyond surprise.’ Beyond because experienced and wise, perhaps, because resigned, perhaps. Or is she so because mad, because she doesn’t understand? Things and imaginings. As of always. Confusion amounting to nothing. The mind decays with the body. I will return to that. At the window then, passively, only because she cannot easily be elsewhere? I don’t know.

All of this is familiar, so far. Beckett, on death on dying. No new ground. Wonderfully executed, but new? No. The woman, a woman. Yes, of course, there is that, but gender at this stage, in this state, what matters that? Whether she or Molloy or Malone, no matter. The woman in her cabin, in a ‘formless place.’ Ok. Meagre pastures; stones increasingly abound. Ok. There was once clover. Ok. The woman living amongst ruin. This all strikes one as straightforward enough. The environment mirroring her state. Suggesting, you might say, also neglect, for she is alone. Withered crocuses. Fine. Ok. And the snow. Formless too, and white. A kind of void. Cold like death. Yet strictly speaking she isn’t alone. There are the animals, which come and go, as you would expect, and the men. Twelve men. Always in the distance, receding, circling, perhaps watching. Are they real? She is, we have established already, quite possibly mad. And her eyes ill see, without question. An illusion of men? There is a train of thought, which I would like to dismiss almost without mention, that they are the twelve disciples and the woman, the Virgin. Be that the case, or not, I find no great evidence for it, and even less enthusiasm.

The men, the twelve, why twelve, I don’t know. The men for me, putting aside the number, for I cannot explain it, are the others, the rest, the world, the truly living, at a distance, shadowy, indistinct, disappearing. Ghostly, in a word. One thinks of the dead, or dying, as the ghost, but to the dead, or dying, it is they, the others. The ethereal atmosphere, now that I am warming to my subject, is the reason that I love Ill Seen Ill Said as much as I do. I rate it, I should say, or I will anyway, higher than most, the highest, almost. For this reason. It is what sets it apart, from the rest of Beckett’s work. There are throughout repeated references to white. The snow, again. The stones. The lamb. The moon. Her hair, her hands. The rest of Beckett’s novels, no matter how absurd, all feel grounded in the real, in the world, our world. Yet this one is otherworldly. It exists in a misty dimension, between life and death. It’s great, and moving, beauty isn’t only in its style, but in its setting and atmosphere also.

120 DAYS OF SODOM BY MARQUIS DE SADE

I never thought that I would become tired of sex. In the last twelve months, however, I’ve done it more times, and with more women, than I had in all the previous years of my life combined; and recently I’ve noticed a change, a hint of boredom creeping into my lovemaking, like the shadow of a pot-bellied man crawling up a bedroom wall. I had once been so easy to please, so straightforward in my tastes, but now? If someone were to suggest the missionary position I would be horrified. The shadow of the pot-bellied man looms larger, and between his legs dangles a most flaccid and unimpressive cock. I have a preference for certain acts, of course, but I’ve never really had any kinks or fantasies. I’ve always found that sort of thing ridiculous, for it suggests to me a mind gone awry, a defect, a glitch in the system. Sex but not sex. Sex incognito. Yet last week I was talking to an underwear and fetish model. She was fresh off a job in which only her feet were of interest. ‘It’s because they’re forbidden, because they’re not the norm, because they’re kind of ugly and dirty; you’re not meant to sexualise them and so they become sexy,’ she said, and while I still didn’t feel any stirrings myself, for the first time I, in my jaded state, understood.

“Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace.”

The Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom appears to be one of those works that many people have heard of but know little about in terms of the specifics of the story. I was one of the many. In fact, I was under the impression that there was no narrative at all, that it was simply a catalogue of sexual deviancy. And it is that, but there is a frame around the kinks and perversions, in which four libertines gather together – some by way of abduction – a group of men and women, but mostly boys and girls, in a remote castle. There, they have a number of aged prostitutes recount their experiences, which are progressively more extreme, and which they then re-enact with the other inhabitants. This is, indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects of the novel, because it makes an audience of the libertines, almost in the same way that you, the reader, are; and just as the power of suggestion works upon them, there is the chance it will work upon you too. Certainly, not everything contained within will appeal to everyone, or I would sincerely hope not, but there is such a range, and it is so imaginative, that I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something. I think there is a misconception about pornography that people only go to it with, and looking for, pre-established ideas about what turns them on. There is some of that, no doubt, but I also think that, for better or worse, it also suggests, it teaches, it moulds.

While 120 days of Sodom is not a character study, the four libertines are sketched in some detail, to the extent that one is informed of both the length and circumference of their dicks. The Duc de Blangis is fifty years old, and ‘may be regarded as the repository of all vices and all crimes.’ His brother is a Bishop, who is, we’re told, ‘treacherous and cunning,’ and a ‘loyal devotee of active and passive sodomy.’ The President de Curval is ‘the walking image of debauchery and libertinage,’ who has a ‘dreadful squalor about his person that he finds sensual.’ This gentleman’s erections ‘are rare and only achieved with difficulty.’ Finally, Durcet, a financier. He has a ‘woman’s build and all of her tastes.’ In considering the four men a number of interesting ideas and similarities emerge, many of which are expanded upon, or given more weight, as the book progresses. First of all, one may have noticed that each of the men are rich or of noble birth. While de Sade doesn’t explicitly discuss the issue of class, it cannot be a coincidence that every anecdote involves people in a position of power and prosperity. One might say that these are the only people who can afford to use prostitutes, but I believe there is more to it than that.

Throughout, the small number of peasants are the only characters shown in a positive, or sympathetic, light. They are pious, good-hearted, downtrodden, or happy-go-lucky, while the rich have peculiar tastes or are simply monstrous. For example, one poor old woman is dragged from her sickbed and abused by a wealthy man; her daughter, who her mother very much loves and who cares for her, is abducted by the man and likely murdered as part of a sexual act. In another anecdote a working man shits, not for his own gratification, but for a rich man who has paid for this service. So what, if anything, is de Sade saying, indirectly at least, about class? The rich are the only people who have the time and the means and the imagination for these kinds of perversions, that in fact the free time and great wealth enables their imaginations. Secondly, if one can buy whatever one wants, if one can (by virtue of one’s power and wealth) have whomever one wants, then one is likely to become jaded very quickly. Therefore, to be a libertine, to be aroused by, to engage in, extreme or unusual sexual acts is, in this instance, an end point, it is arrived at as a way of reinvigorating dulled senses.

I have already used the term libertine multiple times, and that is because it is insisted upon in the text. Barely a page goes by in which it doesn’t appear more than once. To be a libertine is to indulge oneself, sensually, to excess, without regard to conventional moral principles. This is both the way of life and the philosophy of the four central characters; it is this that bonds them together. Far from having one particular kink, the men are interested in anything that is unconventional, anything that conventional society would deem wrong or disgusting, including rape, torture, incest, and murder. Indeed, anything criminal adds to their enjoyment, by virtue of how shocking, how frowned upon it would be. Perhaps this anti-conventional attitude is the reason why women are so scorned by the four libertines (and by the majority of the men in the book). Make no mistake, they are vehement misogynists, to an almost laughable degree. For example, there are numerous instances where a woman showing her vagina or breasts to a man sends him into a rage. It is, in almost every story, the arse they want! Always the arse! There are, indeed, several rhapsodic speeches on the subject, such as when one of the libertines salutes ‘divine arses! How I reproach myself for the tributes I stole from you! I promise you an expiatory sacrifice – I swear on your alters never to stray again for the rest of my life!’ The arse is of course not uniquely feminine.

“Only the law stands in my way, but I defy it – my gold and my influence place me beyond the reach of those crude scales meant only for the common people.”

As I sat down to write about 120 Days of Sodom there were a large number of themes that I intended to explore. My notes, in fact, totalled over a thousand words, and much of that I still haven’t touched upon, and will not, including the topics of nature and religion. I realise now that it is inadvisable, if not impossible, to discuss everything of note in detail. This review will have to serve as a kind of introduction, if it has any use at all. Bearing in mind the name of the author, one thing that it seems necessary to include is the role of sadism within the book. Surprisingly, sexual torture, and the pleasure gained from it, makes up only a small part of the prostitutes’ stories. However, the main reason for this is because the book is unfinished, and only one whore – she who is tasked with outlining the simpler pleasures – is able to give a fully fleshed account of her experiences. One is left in no doubt – and de Sade’s own notes attest to this – that there were greater horrors to come. Yet there is still, even within the ‘finished’ part of the manuscript, much that is disturbing, certainly when removed from the atmosphere of the text as a whole. For example, the inhabitants of the castle, aside from the four libertines of course, are not allowed to shit unless given permission and are not allowed to wipe or clean themselves. This is because the men have designs upon the shit, but also because they enjoy the power, they enjoy how unhappy it makes the boys and girls.

Throughout the book, de Sade makes it clear that almost none of the young people, nor the men’s wives, are willing participants. They shit in the captives’ mouths, and have them shit in theirs. They fondle, maul, and force them to suck and swallow, they rape and fuck arses and cunts. The disgust and pain their victims feel during these abuses is commented upon, albeit only in passing. It is this, more than the acts themselves, that turns the old lechers on. Within the castle there is a system of punishment, which the reader never has full access to, but which we are informed will be barbaric, potentially fatal. The victims, who are innocent both in terms of their overall situation and often in terms of the ‘crime’ they are charged with, are constantly reminded of the compassionless nature of their judges. The situation within the castle is, therefore, absolutely not the form of sadism that is currently en vogue, it is not a consensual exploration of mutual fantasies involving a master and a slave, a dom and a sub, although there is some of that within the stories the first prostitute tells. In any case, there were occasions when, rather than providing a libertine manual, I felt as though it was de Sade’s aim to torture his reader, to make them his victim; and yet, if so, he failed.

“If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.”

Before I finish, I want to return to a word I used earlier, which may have struck you as strange, or even disconcerting, given the context, which was ‘laughable.’ There is, without question, nothing funny about kidnapping, misogyny and sexual abuse. When I was reading A Sentimental Novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet last year I was deeply troubled by its contents and had to quit before the end. 120 days of Sodom is, however, or was for me, extremely amusing in places, because it is ridiculous. There is a marked difference of tone between this book and Robbe-Grillet’s. First of all, one never believes in the characters or the situation. I could not buy into de Sade’s reality. The four libertines are cartoonish, vaudeville, over-the-top; they stop just short of twirling their moustaches and laughing in an exaggeratedly sinister fashion. Moreover, consider again some of what de Sade tells you about them: one of them can’t get an erection, one of them only fucks arses and has his own fucked, and two of them have prodigiously large dicks. It’s terribly hard to take any of them seriously.

These men all have an insatiable sexual appetite, to the extent that they appear to be turned on, to be able to fool around, all day, every day; and most of them come multiple times. They are truly Herculean! Consider, also, some of the acts, the shitting in particular. It is no exaggeration to say that the libertines devour three or four turds a day each, and none of them end up unwell. They even put their captives on a special diet in order to have them produce especially tasty shit. I don’t want to labour over the scat too much, but it dominates the book, and there came a point when, despite having no interest in shit myself, be it sexual or otherwise, I started to gleefully anticipate the ceremony. de Sade had put me into a state of near delirium or hysteria. Every anecdote would end, I knew, with one person shitting in another’s mouth. It was like being locked in a room where someone tells you the same joke over and over again until you’re on the point of insanity and joyously shouting out the punchline in unison with your captor.

In other areas, the repetition was more of a issue. I am aware that de Sade wrote the book in prison, and that it is, at noted previously, unfinished. It is likely, therefore, that even the ‘completed’ part of the text is only a draft of sorts, and so it feels churlish to criticise, but there are frequent passages that are interminable. For example, I do not know how many times one needs to be told that the Duc thigh-fucked Zelmire, but it is certainly less than forty. Nor does one really need to be told, over and over again, who took who into the cupboard, especially as you are never informed as to what happens in there. There are, moreover, other instances of this sort, whereby de Sade will keep things, certain acts or events, from the reader, because, he states, they are too extreme for this particular part of his narrative and would be out of place. Which begs the obvious question: why tell us at all then? In any case, my enjoyment was not spoiled by these flaws. I did not think, even for long periods during which I read it, that I would be able to say that I love 120 days of Sodom; and yet I do. Perhaps I am even more jaded than I thought. The shadow of the pot-bellied man looms ever larger.

HECATE AND HER DOGS BY PAUL MORAND

Have you ever met an Englishman abroad? I travel regularly, often alone, and always make an effort to interact with the locals. Most of the time people are warm and friendly, at least outwardly, but there’s an unmistakable caution below the surface. You’re English? Yes. It feels like an admission of guilt. Perhaps I should apologise? How English that would be. It’s the same in bars and hotels. The workers are happy to take your money, but it’s clear that the reputation of your kind preceeds you. You’re eyed as something like a cross between a cash-cow and a pirate. Your role is to plunder and spend. It’s the only time that I am allowed a glimpse into what it feels like to be marked, to be judged, instantly and negatively, without having done anything to justify it myself. Why are you here? I’m here to goose your women and pave your streets with the contents of my stomach.

It’s worse at the weekends. Spend two or three weeks in a foreign country and you will come to see it yourself. Or hear it, rather. The pounding drums and clattering hoofbeats of the English arriving on the Friday evening. Of course we aren’t always so savage. Quite the contrary. Our national disease is our repression, our inability to express ourselves, our shame. Being emotionally disabled is our cultural signature. It is only when we are away, when we are somewhere and something unrecognisable, that we feel free, but moral and emotional freedom is too much for our weak constitution. We are the dog that has managed to break into the larder. We are the dog that has gorged itself then shit all over the living room floor.

“I threw myself recklessly into the inescapable maelstrom of the passions with the same determination which others use to subdue them. I envied Clotilde, to whom wickedness came naturally, whereas I had to try very hard to outdo her by committing acts of unbelievable folly.”

Hecate and Her Dogs is the story of a man, now sixty, who returns to Africa after thirty years. After a brief introduction, very little of the action takes place in the present, with the majority of the novel being a retelling of his past experiences of a place he swore he would never visit again, a place where ‘I left my youth and spent the worst years of my life.’ It’s a well-worn, but always intriguing set-up. One continues eagerly, awaiting the revelation, the answer to the question: why the worst? My anticipation was especially heightened by some of the reviews I had seen. In fact, I must admit that I was drawn to the novel mostly because it has been described as ‘repellent’ and ‘unnerving,’ amongst other things. Having read it, however, I wonder if these readers were particularly sensitive or, more likely, influenced by the unsavoury aspects of the author’s biography. Morand was not, to say the least, the most tolerant or enlightened of men. It is well documented that he was an elitist, a supporter of the Nazis, and an anti-semite. While the most ‘shocking’ aspect of the book doesn’t relate to Jews or the war, Morand’s unpleasant views do make the pages feel a little grimier to the touch.

With this in mind, one might anticipate that Morand’s Africa will be something like Celine’s or Conrad’s, which is to say hostile and primitive. Thankfully, surprisingly, that isn’t really the case. The book is actually set in Tangier, and therefore the closest literary comparison would be the work of Paul Bowles, which, in spite of its more positive reputation, has always struck me as being dubious also. In any case, there is one use of the word swarthy, one line about all arabs being called Ibrahim, and various references to the laidback, easy-going atmosphere. This latter point is important, because it – the local way of life – is used to contrast the personality and values of the narrator, which is often the case in novels of this sort. However, the difference here is that one gets the impression that the author, or the narrator at least, is being critical of the European, of himself, not the African. It is also telling that the novel’s dark heart, the Hecate of the title, is also a European who [seemingly] preys upon innocent local children.

Before considering the villain of the piece I want to focus upon the narrator in more detail. As previously noted, he is particularly self-critical. He describes himself as ‘square-shaped,’ ‘stiff,’ and ‘lacking in social graces.’ As with the Englishman abroad, he finds that new territory affords him the opportunity to reinvent himself, to indulge himself, to let himself go, but he does so inexpertly, without imagination. He did not, he writes, know ‘how to breathe.’ Indeed, his ideas about what letting himself go actually means are comically innocent, such that Morand starts to resemble a satirist: ‘I wanted to go out without a hat, stroll to the office without carrying a leather briefcase, don a suit of close-woven grey cloth, something that in Europe would have struck me as being scandalously raffish.’ I found this aspect of the narrative fascinating. It reminded me of the voice of Serenus Zeitblom in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. Even when the narrator does eventually let down his hair, he does so by copying the style of another. In other words, he imitates Clotilde, he appropriates her fantasies and desires.

Clotilde is initially portrayed as being a ‘blank,’ as ‘lacking lustre.’ She is graceful, and attractive, but in an obvious, predictable kind of way. Again, in spite of Morand’s elitist, classist, and racist views, he appears to be poking fun at the wealthy white European, who is ‘distinguished, not distinctive.’ Yet there is, of course, something about her that is distinctive, which is her apparent sexual interest in children. I say apparent for two reasons, because one never sees her doing anything wrong, one never witnesses the acts themselves, and her admissions, if you could call them that bearing in mind their vague nature, are all given at night, sometimes in her sleep. If one did want to point the accusing finger at Morand, then one might argue that it is Africa’s role to be the corruptor, rather than simply the conduit, but I really did not get that from the novel. It could, in my opinion, have been set anywhere, it just had to be somewhere else.

Nor do I think Hecate and Her Dogs is about sex, repellant or otherwise. To focus on that in reviews is misleading, albeit understandable. Yes, the narrator is influenced by Clotilde until he finds that her perversions ‘suited my taste,’ and there is something interesting about the power of suggestion, about the malleability of our sexual fantasies; but, as I mentioned previously, that is merely further evidence of his lack of imagination. For me, this is a book about what happens when you give an average man, a repressed dolt, a bit of rope, or a lot of rope, when you give him freedom. It is not necessary that he will do something so extreme or immoral, as he does here, but, in my experience, he will certainly do something out of character, he will gorge himself. And then he will shit all over the living room floor, of course.

FATALE BY JEAN-PATRICK MANCHETTE

There is money on the floor of my bedroom. Coins and notes. Whenever anyone comes over they joke about it. You must be rich, they say, to leave all this lying around. Untouched, unclaimed. I’m not rich, of course. Last week, however, I found four hundred and seventy pounds in Czech koruna on my bedside table. In my wallet is roughly two hundred pounds in Russian rubles. I’m not rich and yet my casual attitude towards money suggests otherwise, suggests a lack of need at the very least. And it is true, I don’t need it, not because I have so much as to make that word – need – meaningless, but because I was raised without it. I was raised without money, and so I am not in thrall to it. It’s almost as though I don’t understand its power. I feel detached from it; there is, for me, a sense of unreality about it. For eighteen years I lived without money, without ever buying anything, without ever coveting anything. When I was a child, for example, I thought that cars were mechanical creatures, completely independent of human beings. They existed on the roads, at a distance. It never occurred to me that you could own one. And I still don’t drive. Not once have I considered it, even though, quite clearly, I can afford the lessons.

“I am very interested in promotional items and free gifts,” continued the baron. “Also in trash. I have no income, you see, and a man with no income is bound to take a great interest in free gifts and trash.”

Published in 1977, Fatale begins with a hunting expedition, which, now that I think about it, is significant, is entirely appropriate, because a hunter is precisely what the central character, Aimee Joubert, is. Although you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She is described as being thirty or thirty five, as slim with ‘delicate features.’ She is, as with all noir leading ladies, attractive, appealing, sexual. Her smile, we’re told, is charming. But it isn’t just her smile that catches the eye. Naturally, many of the men in the novel are drawn to her; they want to help her, and fuck her too of course. Yet, as previously suggested, none suspect her of being a hired killer. This, for me, is what is most interesting about Aimee, for she bucks the trend of the wise-cracking, brazen femme fatale. In most noir novels that I have read one could not mistake these women for anything other than what they are: money hungry, immoral harlots who would kiss you hard and hit you even harder. That is part of the fun.

Aimee, however, although good looking and enigmatic, is fairly inconspicuous or certainly eager to blend in and observe. The hunter must not, of course, stand out too much, otherwise the prey might become spooked. It is also the case that often femmes fatales are weak women who act strong. Aimee, on the other hand, appears ‘fragile,’ and ‘feminine,’ while being, in reality, hard and durable, and almost manly [in private, at least]. She is, as noted, a killer for hire, but it’s not really that. It’s how, for example, she eats when she’s alone, voraciously, gracelessly, with food dribbling down her chin. It is how she speaks when the mask slips, bluntly, peppering her sentences with swear words. It is how she masturbates matter-of-factly. She is aggressive, but in a controlled way. She is, furthermore, well trained, expert, physically commanding. There is a scene in which she is shown to be using a chest-expander and throwing punches at a thick piece of cardboard.

The opening of Fatale, the hunting scene, is significant in a second, more subtle way. Aimee dispatches one of the men, the fattest of the bunch. Manchette insists upon his obesity, making it his critical, identifying feature. He writes about his ‘considerable backside,’ and describes how, when climbing down into a damp, narrow coomb, his ‘paunch pulled him forward.’ It strikes me that this is because fatness is associated with greed, and therefore with money, and these two things play a prominent role in the novel. Soon after disposing of the hunter Aimee bribes a porter. The man ‘fell prey to the charm of her smile and the fifty franc bill she held out to him.’ This is the first occasion, of many, where Manchette connects sex with money. For example, in the book’s most commented upon scene, Aimee strips naked in the private carriage of a train and rubs her sweaty body with her ill-gotten loot. The point, I think, is to suggest that money, like sex, is base, is dirty.

Certainly, the well-to-do inhabitants of Bleville are, with the exception of the baron, crooked and corrupt. They will do, and have done, anything to preserve their position, to further their position, and to make more cash. This is the circle that Aimee wants to infiltrate and ultimately bring down. When she first arrives, she talks to a realtor about purchasing property, while he is looking at her exposed knee. Sex and money again. The realtor is said to warm to her because he likes people ‘who take money seriously.’ The realtor is corrupt, of course. Aimee is too, let’s not forget, in the sense that she earns her pay by foul means. A Bleville sign impishly reads: KEEP YOUR TOWN CLEAN. Manchette mentions it frequently. It’s his little, yet not exactly subtle, joke. Money and dirt. It is telling that the scandal that threatens the successful Bleville men, and their wives, involves rotten fish. Telling that one man dies, towards the end, in a barrel of it, and Aimee, who is not without sin remember, rolls around in it. There is also another moment in the novel that is, for me, worth highlighting, which is when Aimee visits her mother. She wishes the old woman dead and yet brings her a present of an expensive sweater.

To say more about all this would perhaps ruin the book for anyone who wishes to read it. I may have ruined it already. In any case, I want to write something, before I finish, about Manchette’s style. I’ve already mentioned that his femme fatale is not the typical sort, but that is not the only way in which Fatale stands out. The noir genre generally trades upon a very specific, easily imitable, prose style. It is, as I have repeatedly stated in other reviews, broad-shouldered, punchy, and full of memorable lines. Manchette went another route. There is, first of all, not a single amusing wise-crack in the whole novel. Manchette wrote in short, often banal sentences, with an attention to insignificant detail that reminded me of Robbe-Grillet or Georges Perec. We learn nothing of his characters’ internal life, and yet we do know how fast the train is running and what Aimee’s weight is. More impressively, the author had a Flaubertian way of suggesting certain things without revealing them. For example, when a baby dies Aimee becomes panicky and upset, but her reaction is never explained. One has to guess, and I like that. I liked Fatale, all told. I’ll often think of it as I walk around my room, my cold feet stepping on the Queen’s coin.

THE HIGH LIFE BY JEAN-PIERRE MARTINET

What a world, Mesdames et Messieurs. What a world. Like a festering, rotting pighead in space. And us? We’re the fat, and ever-fatter, maggots that feed upon it. Sometimes, quite often in fact, I see people smile, and I have to wonder ‘are they mad?’ Or am I mad? Don’t they see? Maybe that’s the way: close your eyes and smile. I’ve always known that our planet is a horror show, and so nothing surprises me. Take the men in the entertainment business, those men that are currently being outed for years of sexual harassment or misbehaviour…am I shocked? I am profoundly not shocked. It is as I expected. It is simply the case that we are looking now, yes, we are looking at them and inevitably we are finding brutality, misery, and a host of other horrible things. The whole world, I tell you, is like this. Peer into any corner, shine a light on it, and you will see the filth. Take off your gloves and draw your finger along the surface and tell me how it feels. Greasy and unpleasant, isn’t it?

The world is a blocked sink, and I refuse to put my hand in there and rummage around in the dirty water, amongst the soggy, disintegrating scraps of food. So I read. I withdraw into another world. Is it a better world? If it is, it is only by virtue of not being real, of not actually existing, so that there’s no chance of encountering the awful people who inhabit it. I take my solace where I can find it. I take it by degrees. Often, I’m not even reading. I simply hold the book before my ghoulish face as a kind of barrier, a protective screen. People tend to leave you alone if you look as though you are reading. But there are those who ask: what are you reading? Usually on trains. Sitting next to some enormous old woman who wants desperately to tell you about her gay nephew or her wretched granddaughter’s wedding. I, of course, tell the truth. I say: it’s a book about pushing an eyeball up a girl’s ass; or, it’s a book about trying to fuck a bear, only the bear has a flaccid cock; or, it’s a weird little book about a weird little man who works at a funeral parlour and fantasises about killing people.

“Dark, yawning grave, ogre’s vagina, tomb of sleep and night, night of marshes, marshes of silence, silence of death.”

The weird little book is called The High Life, and it was written by Jean-Pierre Martinet. You might think, upon finishing it: what a nasty slug he must have been to have conjured up something like that. Well, I don’t know anything about him. All people are ghastly so Martinet must have been too. I will deal with the major characters soon, if anything about them could be said to be major, but first let me say something about the minor ones: they’re vermin. The owner of the funeral parlour, for example, watches the narrator, Adolphe Marlaud, choke ‘with an irritated look’; a twelve year old girl, whom Marlaud attempts to prey upon, enters the parlour and starts to trash it; an old woman seems ‘beside herself with joy’ at telling the misfortunes of another; and Adolphe’s father, it is revealed, shopped his Jewish wife, the narrator’s mother, to the Gestapo. There are others, but I am sure you get the picture. The High Life is only twenty-eight pages long, but each page is packed, like a neglected baby’s soiled nappy, with filth of various kinds and consistencies.

Death is fairly prominent. I’ve already mentioned the funeral parlour and the mother whose fate was to be gassed at Auschwitz by the Nazis. But there is more: ‘abandoned corpses, partially decomposed young girls, mauve and green and white, calves murdered with the blows of a cleaver, at dawn, under a drizzling sky.’ What else? Adolphe’s lover attempts suicide; and Adolphe himself, as suggested earlier, develops a murderous impulse, offing the odd dog and cat along the way. But this – death – is perhaps the least disgusting aspect of the novel, if you want to call this dribble of piss a novel. The references to death barely tickle the nostrils, in the grander scheme of things. I’ve read worse; you’ve read worse; we’ve all most probably seen and thought worse. It’s the dreary relentlessness, the never dispersing, subtle smell of recently emptied bowels, that starts to unsettle the stomach. Even the style of the book is crude, with references to ‘shit, ‘jerking off,’ and ‘cum on the walls.’

One doesn’t get to know Adolphe, in the Tolstoyan tradition. He is, in truth, barely alive as a character. Although that is the point, you might argue. ‘People generally called me a creep, or compared me to a bug,’ he says of himself; and bearing in mind his actions this actually undersells his unpleasantness. Marlaud is, in any case, very self-aware; he is not at all fooling himself. Martinet goes to great lengths to promote his character’s disagreeableness, and, although one wouldn’t call it sympathising, his woes. He is, first of all, only four feet tall [while his lover, incidentally, is over six feet in height]. He is a ‘runt,’ with a ‘urinous complexion’; he is a man so ‘ugly, so miserable’ that he has become a ‘lover of shadow and silence.’ You might want to make complex psychological deductions based on all this, but, quite frankly, I don’t have the inclination or energy. What struck me most, and what is in fact the novel’s main source of entertainment, was Martinet’s enjoyment, the glee he clearly felt in coming up with creative ways to describe, in piling on, the misery.

Consider the sex scenes with Madame C. Martinet, as Adolphe, writes about ‘her monstrous breasts unfurling upon me with the muted rumbling of an avalanche.’ And I must confess to having laughed a little. Likewise when she is said to have ‘ejected me from her tremendous vagina, leaving me on the floor like a dispossessed king.’ If there is a weightier concern, a serious point to all this, a transcendent theme, then it is in relation to power, specifically abuse of power or the feeling of powerlessness. Madame C. takes Marlaud, not against his will, but not exactly willingly either. She overpowers him, with her large body, but with her personality, with force of character, with desire, also. When Adolphe buys a gun to shoot the cats that bother his father’s grave – a man who, remember, denounced his own wife – he finds that he suddenly feels in control, even God-like. ‘I had no idea there was such strength in me,’ he says when he offs some butterflies. Which is funny, certainly, but sad and alarming too, for it seems to me that, as we as a species inch ever closer to collapsing under the weight of our own faeces, it says something revealing about how we have got ourselves in this position in the first place.

MONSIEUR VENUS BY RACHILDE

‘I’m always the man,’ she sighed. ‘It would be nice to be able to be the woman for once.’ It was our second meeting, and I was already sure that she was dangerous. From the beginning, I had noticed how a terrible warmth, which in other circumstances might actually have been charming, spread over her face whenever she thought she had upset me or fingered a sore spot. Later, when she felt more at ease, and more certain of my compliance, she openly dictated to me, issuing threats of violence, or some other form of recrimination, as my motivation. Very quickly, I extricated myself from this situation. Indeed, I spent much of the small number of weeks that the relationship lasted plotting a safe exit; but, in terms of the book under review here, what I find most interesting now is how it was evident that she saw relationships in terms of control and power, and, more specifically, that she equated masculinity with brutishness and dominance. She never outright said the words, but I got the impression that, as she continued her role as the ‘man’, she saw me as, or tried to make me into, her idea of a ‘woman.’

“A very special case. A few years more, and that pretty creature who you love too much, I think, will, without ever loving them, have known as many men as there are beads on her aunt’s rosary. No happy medium! Either a nun or a monster! God’s bosom or sensual passions! It would, perhaps, be better to put her in a convent, since we put hysterical women in the Saltpetriere! She does not know vice, she invents it!”

Monsieur Venus was published in 1884, and, as with almost everything I read these days, was then banned [this time in Belgium] when it was judged to be pornographic. Moreover, it begins with a preface that states: we warn readers that at the very moment they are cutting these first pages the heroine of our story is perhaps going past their front door. All of which threatens, or appears to promise, depending on your attitude towards this sort of thing, sinister or unsettling content. Moreover, that preface specifically suggests that the female lead will be something of a monster, or certainly someone of whom one ought to be afraid. Indeed, the word ‘monster’ is used more than once in the text to describe Mlle de Venerande, and on one occasion she is even likened to the Devil. While, in terms of decadent French literature, what she does is rather tame, it’s fair to say that some of her actions could be said to justify the terms applied to her. In short, Raoule, as she is referred to throughout most of the book, falls for, pays for, and then systematically dominates and feminizes a young man, who, ultimately, she has killed. 

I’ve seen it written that Monsieur Venus is a forward-thinking novel in the way that it engages with the currently hot topics of gender roles and gender fluidity. Raoule, for example, does not simply take the name of a man, she also dresses as one, and acts like one. In the language of today, one would say that she is a woman, in biological terms, who identifies as a man; and others see her in this way too. Raoule’s aunt calls her niece her ‘nephew’ and even her suitor, the mustachioed hussar M. de Raittolbe, plays along, speaking to her, and behaving towards her, as though she is ‘one of the boys.’ Conversely, her object of affection, Jacques Silvert, is associated with typically feminine activities or qualities. His entrance into the novel is as a man surrounded by flowers, and his first sentence is to introduce himself as Marie [who is, in fact, his sister]. His physical appearance is described as ‘thickset at the hips’, with slim ankles and straight legs.  

You will have noticed that in the preceding paragraph I wrote about ‘feminine activities’ and masculine behaviour as though these things are fixed, and I would like to point out that these ideas about gender are not mine. They are taken from the text, and sometimes from the mouths of the characters. In this way, it would seem that Monsieur Venus isn’t as enlightened, or ahead of its time, as some commentators would have you believe. To be a ‘man’ in Rachilde’s world is to smoke, to fence, to take and jilt lovers, to have short hair, and, most significantly, to dominate a ‘woman’, often in violent and brutish ways. Likewise, Jacques paints flowers, simpers, pouts, cries, is indolent, and so on. He also allows himself to be kept. In short, both characters are little more than outdated gender stereotypes, only with the roles reversed. To identify as another sex must not, surely, mean simply to take on the most negative behaviours and attitudes associated with that sex, but that is how it is presented here.

For me, to concentrate on gender fluidity when discussing Monsieur Venus is a mistake, for what it is really about is power and control. This is demonstrated throughout the novel in a number of ways. There is, first of all, the physical, emotional, and mental control exerted by Raoule over Jacques. He is frequently compared to a child, while she is clearly more mature [she is literally older, although that is by-the-by]. As with all bullies, Raoule does not go after a strong personality, such as M. de Raittolbe, but rather she targets the weak and vulnerable. Secondly, there is the power of money and class. Jacques is, to put it simply, very poor and Raoule is exceedingly rich; he is the son of a whore, and she of noble birth. Both characters, but especially Jacques, are ever conscious of the class and financial divide between them. He is in awe of her position in society, which naturally makes him her inferior, one that is expected to be compliant; while she is only able, at least initially, to control her lover, to even make him her lover, by paying for him.

However, while I remain convinced that Monsieur Venus does not have anything truly meaningful to say about gender fluidity, or homosexuality or bisexuality [both of which are hinted at, but never explicitly explored], I do think it touches upon something interesting with regards to what it was like to be a woman at the time. Not a lot is made of it, but Rachilde suggests that Raoule behaves the way that she does, that she takes on the role that she does, because she is frightened of being, or being seen as, vulnerable herself. This feeling of vulnerability is heightened when she falls in love, for to be in love is to lay oneself bare, is to give up, or have taken away, some of the power one has over oneself. Therefore, her actions, her transformation, could be seen in a different light. One might argue that Raoule makes herself one of the boys, even going so far as to mistreat her ‘mistress,’ so that the boys will identify with, and not mistreat, her. It is, in this way, a form of self-defence. She acts like a man to prevent herself from being treated like a woman.