We begin with one-legged Vito Piranese, and his assignment is to find out about the movements of Franck Chopin, an entomologist specialising in flies who occasionally is given spying projects by Colonel Seck through Maryland, the boss nicknamed after the kind of Gauloise he smokes. Piranese (there are many references to authors, films, songs, etc) is given the code 13, 47, 14: this is an indication that at 13:00 he takes a 47 bus at the Gare du Nord and at the fourteenth stop makes an exchange of papers with another agent, and he remembers the numbers because his birthdate is '47, everyone can remember 13 and 14 comes after it. It's all very ludicrous, as it's of course meant to be.
Lac's world is one in which acute observations are made, in which inanimate objects are given human attributes, flies are imagined to possess human sensibilities, and many actions of a human (as opposed to an animal) are slightly obsessively dissected, such as Chopin eating a banana. It is a world in which great detail is all-important, trade names and numbers are strewn about, digressions being many.
Chopin 'situates and dates' aspects of his body ('from the gash on his knee (Baccarat, 1957) to the stiffness of a metacarpus (Canton, 1980)'; when kidnapped and stowed in the boot of a car he mentally notes 'ropes and greasy rags, jack, spider brace and 10W50 can of oil'; and there are even a few fictional references to articles he's written: '1. CHOPIN (F.), « Les conditions expérimentales de la performance en autonomie du vol chez la psychode (Psychoda alternate) », Annales de parasitologie, XX, no 6, 1972, pp. 467-473.'
Some of the ludicrous is based on factual truth: where Chopin must meet Seck on one occasion, in the grounds of Thiais cemetery, seems accurate down to the last detail (I've spent several hours tracking down graves in the obscure place), although I was unaware of the (very real) existence of Zog I of Albania's memorial.
And some is so very ludicrous (though highly ingenious) as to be pure invention (I think): the planting of nano-microphones on the bodies of flies delivered to subjects in 'presents' of bouquets of flowers so the flies can 'spy' on them and Chopin records their eavesdropping remotely. There is even (or of course?) some fly empathy, and we learn of the most dreaded enemy of the fly since 1631 (which Wikipédia (and not Echenoz) tells me marked the foundation of La Gazette by Théophraste Renaudot): the year of France's first newspaper.
I've just mentioned a few things, not Chopin's relationship with women (particularly with Suzy Clair), even Vital Veber, the main subject of the surveillance, or any of the other characters. Echenoz packs a great deal into 189 pages, and they have to be savoured by re-reading.
And I don't remember anyone going to the Canal Saint-Martin in the novel, but it's a nice touch having the telephoto shot of Echenoz himself on one of its bridges.
My other Jean Echenoz posts:
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Jean Echenoz: Je m'en vais | I'm Gone
Jean Echenoz: Je m'en vais | I'm Off | I'm Gone (revisited)
Jean Echenoz: Ravel
Jean Echenoz: Courir | Running
Jeaan Echenoz: Jérôme Lindon
Jean Echenoz: 14
Greetings from Romania,
ReplyDeleteI just discovered this blog* through searching on Google more about the reception of this novel by Echenoz, after reading it...
In your place, I would have focused in this review on how not just the obsessive details and digressions subvert spy fiction expectations, but also the focus on atmosphere (with the narrator overtly exaggerating the artificiality, through the overuse of the word "synthetic", and the meaninglessness of everything here) and low-key psychology: not so much the few and momentary melodramatic feelings of F. Chopin (his dialogues and actions betray him more than enough) but rather how the entire cast seems to be preoccupied to little degree beyond what they're scripted to do. Of course, my distinction here becomes moot by the end of the book, when Chopin stops paying attention to how the operation unraveled and, with him (convinced that he did not really matter in something that even more certainly matters less), the narrator also stops giving us information in that direction.
The book was recommended to me as being as anti- as it can get, so I was a little disappointed, so to say, that the book retains a small dose of suspense, the narrator does not destroy or skip over all the "fun" parts, that in the end it has been actually rather entertaining and very humorous. I'm sure that, if any strictly-genre reader stumbled upon "Lac", they certainly would have put it down early on, and even those who managed to skip all the "boring" descriptions (which is a big part of the fun for those of us initiated readers, familiar with the Minuit tradition) must have been frustrated, but the book in general and the chapters in particular are quite short. So it is kind of a compromise and a distraction, but an interesting one in its depressive French pomo way. These are "my two cents", anyway.
*I am going to read now more of your blog, but I can already I am going to enjoy it and it is a pleasure for me to see you dedicate your time to quite a lot of contemporary French literature, which at least in my country (Romania) it is often seen as utterly uninteresting, the likes of Bruckner or Houellebecq (utterly obnoxious for me) being the only exceptions usually invoked. Even so, I wouldn't say writers who are respected in French literary circles could be called "obscure", let alone "outsiders", as your blog subtitle claims... but "overlooked" outside France quite definitely! And someone blogging in English about these books - in 2018! - is definitely worthy of my humble respect.
Regards,
Yigru Zeltil
(obscure poet from Romania... just proving, once again, that most people who care about this kind of literature ought to be writers themselves...)
Yigri, thank you for these remarks, which are very much appreciated.
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