Jean Giono: Que ma joie demeure (1935)

Jean Giono towers over Provençal literature. How can you describe the power of this big novel, which oozes, sings, and creeps into your system, eventually taking you over with its love of the rural countryside, the power of the mountains, the changes in the weather with the seasons, the bursting of nature, the various animals, trees, flowers, herbs, the joy of living out each second in a wonderland?

Well, it's not such a wonderland as that, and Jourdan is waiting for someone, a kind of saviour, a messiah. And so Bobi comes along, in whom everyone has an instinctive trust: he's a former acrobat who speaks French, but a kind of French that is at times difficult to understand, needs some explanation, which Bobi is only too willing to give.

The nature here – vegetable, wild animal and human animal – drips sex. I suppose Giono got away with it because he came decades after Zola, and was a little more subtle. Maybe so subtle that many missed the point.

The point of this book? There's a proto-ecological tale, even a communistic one, an urge for sharing, for delighting in uselessness for the sake of uselessness. This is a book which is anti-progress, anti-capitalist, it wears its heart on its sleeve, and although it yearns for happiness this is very short-lived.

Death is present amid the tremendous outpouring of life, and can come with age, accident or suicide. In the midst of the push for life, the contingent and the push towards opposition is inevitable.

My Jean Giono posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Sylvie Giono: Jean Giono à Manosque
Jean Giono: L' Homme qui plantait des arbres
Jean Giono: Le Hussard sur le toit
Jean Giono: Colline | Hill of Destiny
Jean Giono: Un de Baumugnes | Lovers Are Never Losers
Jean Giono in Manosque
Jean Giono: Notes sur l'affaire Dominici
Jean Giono's grave, Manosque, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence
Pierre Citron: Jean Giono 1895–1970
Jean Giono: Regain | Second Harvest
Jean Giono: Que ma joie demeure
Jean Giono: Pour saluer Melville
Jean Giono et al, Le Contadour

Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce (2009)

Marie-Hélène Lafon's previous novel, Les Derniers indiens (2008) dealt, of course, with the peasant mountain farmers of Cantal, as does L'Annonce. But the conflict here isn't between the older farmers and the modern-minded neighbours, but between the older generation in the Cantal and a mother and child from Bailleul in the Nord joining the community in the Cantal.

The word L'Annonce has a religious ring to it, the announcement of birth, although the announcement here is a simple man-seeks-woman note in a paper, probably Le Chasseur Français, which the forty-six-year-old peasant farmer Paul from Fridières writes, and to which the thirty-seven-year-old Annette in the Nord replies. There follow a couple of meetings in a halfway, neutral place: Nevers, in the centre of France, where they exchange photos and (tentatively) body fluids.

Again, as in Les Derniers indiens, the language circles constantly, dropping a few pieces of information here and there like a sower sowing, weaves between the past and present casually, adding to the tapestry of time. Annette was the wife of a violent drunken husband, Éric the son, and she wants to begin a new life far from her previous urban background.

Paul has set up a new living area next to his elderly austere uncles, Éric turns out to have hidden rural gifts, and the ready-made family, with Annette working in the nearest supermarket to help them get by, a loving relationship (mercifully without sentimentality) establishing itself. Lafon is my best discovery so far this year.

Links to my Marie-Hélène Lafon posts:
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Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens
Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce

Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens (2008)

This really is a comment on Marie-Hélène Lafon's Les Derniers indiens, but I feel this preliminary paragraph about an English novel is very relevant here. It's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, who actually studied French language and literature at university. Let's take her first sentence in this book, which won the Costa First Novel prize award in 2017: 'When people ask me what I do – taxi drivers, dental hygienists – I tell them I work in an office.' OK, it's written in a chatty colloquial style, as though it is spoken, maybe many readers identify the narrator with themselves, which is why this thing is so popular – even if, in the pages I read, reality seemed to be taking a back seat and I just couldn't believe in the existence of the female narrator. There seems to be something wrong even from that first sentence, and surely this is the fact that the word 'people' is too far removed from the parenthesis? How about 'When people – taxi drivers, dental hygienists – ask me what I do I tell them I work in an office.' That to me seems to be a better worked-on sentence, and although I read several more pages this didn't strike me as an interesting book in any way at all: to be honest it seemed very tedious, and I'd certainly not the least desire to read it. Do most people really read books to identify with themselves, turn pages and pass the time, learning nothing in the process?  If so it's a very sad world, but I suppose at least people are reading something, aren't they?

But are they reading 'finished' books, by which I mean books over which the author has sweated and slaved over a hot keyboard, taking hours to phrase, re-phrase, re-re-phrase, etc, a sentence, paying loving attention and even hours to the place of a comma? I think not, but Marie-Hélène Lafon is definitely one of those writers who care deeply about how they write, but then Lafon seems to be writing out of an inner need, as opposed to Honeyman, who simply appears to be writing to appeal to as many readers as possible, to how much money she can make out of inevitably very drab novels. Lafon believes that most books are 'unfinished' in that nowhere enough time has been devoted to corrections.

But then again, Lafon is no average writer. Now a teacher in Paris, she was born in the département of Cantal, in the Auvergne, to a family she describes as peasant farmers. And her family knew that they were the last survivors – among les derniers indiens – and most of Lafon's books are shot through with her past, the way of life there, and how it is changing. 

Les Derniers indiens may have autobiographical elements, although it is certainly not an autobiography. The narrator is of course not the protagonist Marie (and how can a narrator in a any book ever be the same person anyway?), although we see the novel through her eyes, and the moment of learning that Jean, the man she lives with, is not her husband but her brother, can strike hard. Incest is never mentioned, and physical incest in particular, but the hints of (often port mortem) psychological incest run throughout the novel: the clothes of ancestors kept in the wardrobe, the relationship between Marie's mother and her late son Pierre, the photos, etc.

The neighbours underline the difference between the old world and the new, buying new farming gear, eager to swoop on Marie's property when death comes, and sell the heirlooms off to the local braderies. Lafon's interest, though, is not in making stories, her words – often present in long sentences, adjectives, nouns, adjectival phrases piled on top of each other, swirling around constantly as if birds trying to reach their target prey, enrapturing.

I read recently that there's a saying (or which I was unaware) that goes something like Americans write to tell a story, whereas their French counterparts write to create an act of literature. I wouldn't quite go that far, but Marie-Hélène Lafon's works are certainly acts of literature.

As for Gail Honeyman, well... her work speaks for itself!

Links to my Marie-Hélène Lafon posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens
Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce

Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question (2015)

This bilingual book on Outsider Art (art brut) is what might be described as a coffee table book, and yet it doesn't come under that description (which usually means dumb, nothing but gloss, mindless, etc) in terms of content. This is a highly scholarly, fascinating book on an art form which is now being recognised seriously, and the proliferation of such books makes me incapable of judging it along with others on the same subject: there are far too many.

However, this book is a history of outsider art, of its increasing acceptance, of its relationship with art produced in psychiatric hospitals, of the acceptance through the not too distant past of art brut not only as therapy, not only as a means of expression, but as part of the art world in itself. Outsider art (art brut) is authentic art and should be recognised as such. We have come a very long way since the objections to Facteur Cheval's masterpiece in Hauterives as naive, amateur or primitive.

Included in this huge book are the works of familiar names such as Adolf Wölfli, Unica Zürn, Aloïse Corbaz, Josef Hofer, Madge Gill, Henry Darger, Gaston Chaisssac, Johann Hauser, Augustin Lesage, Carlo Zinelli, etc, etc. The cover image is by Dirk Martens, and the endpapers by Michel Dave and (together) Cléa Coudsi and Éric Herbin.

Art brut (Outsider Art) and associated:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Rémy Callot, Carvin (Nord)
Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question
Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield
The Art Brut of Léopold Truc, Cabrières d'Avignon (34)
Le Musée Extraordinaire de Georges Mazoyer, Ansouis (34)
Le Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal, Hauterives (26)
The Little Chapel, Guernsey
Museum of Appalachia, Norris, Clinton, Tennessee
Ed Leedskalnin in Homestead, Florida
La Fabuloserie, Dicy, Yonne (89)
Street Art City, Lurcy-Lévis, Allier (03)
The Outsider Art of Jean Linard, Neuvy-deux-Clochers (18)
Jean Bertholle, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jean-Pierre Schetz, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jules Damloup, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Camille Vidal, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Pascal Verbena, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
The Art of Theodore Major
Edward Gorey's Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA
Marcel Vinsard in Pontcharra, Isère (38)
Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber
The Amazing World of Danielle Jacqui, Roquevaire (13)
Alphonse Gurlie, Maisonneuve (07)
Univers du poète ferrailleur, Lizio, Morbihan
Les Rochers sculptés de L'Abbé Fouré, Rothéneuf, Saint-Malo
Robert Tatin in Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne
La Demeure du Chaos, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône (69)
René Raoul's Jardin de pierre in Pléhédel, Côtes d'Armor
Emmanuel Arredondo in Varennes Vauzelles, Nièvre (58)
Musée de la Luna Rossa (revisited), Caen, Calvados (14)
La Fontaine de Château-Chinon, Nièvre (58)

Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber (2010)

Samuel Daiber (1901-83) spent his final thirty-five years in a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland. This book concerns above all a letter held in the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne, being one of a number Daiber wrote to the head of the hospital, Dr Ralph Winteler, pleading to be released. In 1926 Daiber stood in front of a tram, convinced that he could stop it by his thoughts. Four years later he burned his family's clothes because he believed that the devil inhabited them. He also destroyed his own pottery over a number of years, and was interned in psychiatric hospitals several times over a number of years, but released because of his non-violent behaviour. His final and permanent internment was in 1948.

It is the language that Daiber used in his letters begging to be released that are of interest here, as the language he uses, coming into the category of écrit brut, is of huge importance. In the Preface to this book, Jean-Michel Adam refers to a 'character-concept' in one of Édouard Glissant's plays: le déparleur. In L'Imaginaire des langues (2012) Glissant describes this character as someone 'who accepts entry into the crushed, apparently empty of meaning, apparently contradictory, apparently far-fetched'.

In his astonishing letter to the head of the hospital Samuel Daiber distorts language, invents new words, acts out the world of the déparleur, above all manipulates the French language remarkably. The letter under the microscope is addressed to 'Sieur Wintelet Docteur', the 'Sieur' being an archaic form of 'Monsieur', literally 'My sire': from the perceived medieval serfdom of the asylum, the vassal addresses the lord of the manor? It would seem so.

But that's by no means all. The body of the letter is only four lines long, although the post scriptum (containing more than forty lines) is in effect the real body of the letter. But it is the words used, the neologisms, which are the main interest. Instead, for instance, of saying 'effrayé' (frightened) or 'chassé' (chased), Daiber says 'effrayadé' and 'chassadé'. Furthermore, the morpheme 'ad' frequently appears in negatives, almost as a more emphatically negative version often with a double suffix, as in 'pasadement' for 'pas'. Vincent Capt suggests that the 'ad' is a reversal of Daiber's first two letters, which initially seems like over-interpretation, but on reflection this is quite believable: Daiber is asserting his presence in the world.

Art brut (Outsider Art) and associated:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Rémy Callot, Carvin (Nord)
Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question
Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield
The Art Brut of Léopold Truc, Cabrières d'Avignon (34)
Le Musée Extraordinaire de Georges Mazoyer, Ansouis (34)
Le Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal, Hauterives (26)
The Little Chapel, Guernsey
Museum of Appalachia, Norris, Clinton, Tennessee
Ed Leedskalnin in Homestead, Florida
La Fabuloserie, Dicy, Yonne (89)
Street Art City, Lurcy-Lévis, Allier (03)
The Outsider Art of Jean Linard, Neuvy-deux-Clochers (18)
Jean Bertholle, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jean-Pierre Schetz, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jules Damloup, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Camille Vidal, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Pascal Verbena, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
The Art of Theodore Major
Edward Gorey's Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA
Marcel Vinsard in Pontcharra, Isère (38)
Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber
The Amazing World of Danielle Jacqui, Roquevaire (13)
Alphonse Gurlie, Maisonneuve (07)
Univers du poète ferrailleur, Lizio, Morbihan
Les Rochers sculptés de L'Abbé Fouré, Rothéneuf, Saint-Malo
Robert Tatin in Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne
La Demeure du Chaos, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône (69)
René Raoul's Jardin de pierre in Pléhédel, Côtes d'Armor
Emmanuel Arredondo in Varennes Vauzelles, Nièvre (58)
Musée de la Luna Rossa (revisited), Caen, Calvados (14)
La Fontaine de Château-Chinon, Nièvre (58)

Victor Hugo's description of a fire in Notre-Dame de Paris | The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

At the time of writing, 10:30 on Wednesday 17 April 2019 in England, the above Livre de Poche edition of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) stands at number 1 on Amazon's sales chart in France, with other editions at numbers 3, 4, 6 and 9. This is of course nothing to do with syllabus, and a non-fiction book of the same French name (priced at 85 euros!) stands at number 8.  As France and indeed the rest of the world mourns the awful destruction to perhaps Paris's second major tourist attraction, it is bizarre to read in Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris the imaginary description of a fire in the church. Hugo wrote the book in defence of the church, which at the time was in decay and there was talk of demolishing it:

'Tous les yeux s'étaient levés vers le haut de l'église. Ce qu'ils voyaient était extraordinaire. Sur le sommet de la galerie la plus élevée, plus haut que la rosace centrale, il y avait une grande flamme qui montait entre les deux clochers avec des tourbillons d'étincelles, une grande flamme désordonnée et furieuse dont le vent emportait par moments un lambeau dans la fumée. Au-dessous de cette flamme, au-dessous de la sombre balustrade à trèfles de braise, deux gouttières en gueules de monstres vomissaient sans relâche cette pluie ardente qui détachait son ruissellement argenté sur les ténèbres de la façade inférieure. À mesure qu'ils approchaient du sol, les deux jets de plomb liquide s'élargissaient en gerbes, comme l'eau qui jaillit des mille trous de l'arrosoir. Au-dessus de la flamme, les énormes tours, de chacune desquelles on voyait deux faces crues et tranchées, l'une toute noire, l'autre toute rouge, semblaient plus grandes encore de toute l'immensité de l'ombre qu'elles projetaient jusque dans le ciel. Leurs innombrables sculptures de diables et de dragons prenaient un aspect lugubre. La clarté inquiète de la flamme les faisait remuer à l'oeil. Il y avait des guivres qui avaient l'air de rire, des gargouilles qu'on croyait entendre japper, des salamandres qui soufflaient dans le feu, des tarasques qui éternuaient dans la fumée. Et parmi ces monstres ainsi réveillés de leur sommeil de pierre par cette flamme, par ce bruit, il y en avait un qui marchait et qu'on voyait de temps  en temps passer sur le front ardent du bûcher comme une chauve-souris devant une chandelle.'

A version of this in English:

'All eyes were raised to the top of the building. They beheld a sight of an extraordinary kind. In the upper-most gallery, above the central rose window, a vast body of flame, accompanied by showers of sparks, ascended between the two towers — a fierce and irregular flame, patches of which were every now and then carried off by the wind along with the smoke. Below this fire, below the sombre balustrade, with its glowing red open-work ornaments, two spouts, in the shape of the jaws of monsters, vomited without cessation those silver streams, which stood out distinctly against the dark mass of the lower facade. As they approached the ground, those two streams spread like water poured through the holes of the spout of a watering-pot. Above the flames the enormous towers, each showing two sides deeply contrasted, the one quite black, the other quite red, appeared still larger from the immense shadows which they threw toward the sky. Their numberless sculptures of devils and dragons assumed a doleful aspect. The flickering of the flame gave to them the appearance of motion. Gorgons seemed to be laughing, waterspouts yelping, salamanders puffing fire, and griffins sneezing in the smoke. And among the monsters thus wakened from their sleep of stone by the flames and by the din, there was one that moved from place to place, and passed from time to time in front of the fire, like a bat before a candle.'

Bruno Montpied: Marcel Vinsard, l'homme aux mille modèles (2016)

Writer, painter, film director and researcher Bruno Montpied specialises in art brut, art naïf, art singulier, art modeste, art hors normes, outsider art, or whatever name anyone cares to label an art form which is outside the boundaries of the conventional. He co-scripted Rémy Ricordeau's film Bricoleurs de Paradis (2011), wrote Éloge des Jardins Anarchiques (2011) and also wrote the colossal Le Gazouillis des Eléphants (2017). His Marcel Vincent is a short and fascinating book under Insomniaque's imprint 'La Petite Brute', containing many photos Montpied took when visiting Vinsard's home in Pontcharra, Isère (38).

The artist Marcel Vinsard (1930-2016) spent thirty years as a men's hairdresser in Pontcharra. Necessarily for such a trade, and by nature, he was a very sociable person and an example of his spindly work, which was inspired by Giacometti's L'Homme qui marche, was installed in the mairie in Pontcharra some years before he died. Apparently it was after being given a book on Alberto Giacometti which provoked Vinsard to begin his huge work in and around his home, amounting to one thousand works. But as Montpied remarks, the cliché made by an unimaginative reporter in a local paper — 'Le Facteur Cheval de Pontcharra' — merely echoes other lame nicknames, and indeed I've heard of L'abbé Fouré described as 'Le Facteur Cheval de la Bretagne', and Rémy Callot as 'Le Facteur Cheval du Nord'.

At first Vinsard began working in wood, such as his bust of his grandfather Célestin Revol, although he soon learned that polystyrene — much lighter, more malleable, easily portable, etc — was far more suited to his needs. There were one thousand figures in all, and Vinsard was not only willing to allow the curious inside his 'chalet' to view his creations, but he openly encouraged it by his self-advertising signs outside his house, and cycling around the village with an advert on his front shopping basket, and a bust of his deceased wife at the back.

Vinsard's figures are rooted in reality, and are arranged in no particular order, members of his family democratically side by side with heads of states and popular celebrities: Gérard Depardieu, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande, Roselyne Bachelot, Coluche, François Mitterrand, Jacques and Bernadette Chirac, Eddie Mitchell, Groucho Marx, Albert Einstein, etc.

Marcel Vinsard, who was in hospital with a serious heart complaint, died before being able to read this book about him and his work. Before he died many of his works had been plundered, many of them had suffered from neglect of upkeep due to his hospitalisation. It is hoped that they will re-appear in brocantes or other places to enable some of his works to be recuperated.

Montpied refers to a 28-minute video clip on YouTube, made by Yvan Ducognon in 2013, in which Marcel Vinsard describes some of his creations, and this is fascinating: Le Jardin extraordinaire de Marcel V. 

Art brut (Outsider Art) and associated:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Rémy Callot, Carvin (Nord)
Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question
Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield
The Art Brut of Léopold Truc, Cabrières d'Avignon (34)
Le Musée Extraordinaire de Georges Mazoyer, Ansouis (34)
Le Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal, Hauterives (26)
The Little Chapel, Guernsey
Museum of Appalachia, Norris, Clinton, Tennessee
Ed Leedskalnin in Homestead, Florida
La Fabuloserie, Dicy, Yonne (89)
Street Art City, Lurcy-Lévis, Allier (03)
The Outsider Art of Jean Linard, Neuvy-deux-Clochers (18)
Jean Bertholle, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jean-Pierre Schetz, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jules Damloup, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Camille Vidal, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Pascal Verbena, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
The Art of Theodore Major
Edward Gorey's Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA
Marcel Vinsard in Pontcharra, Isère (38)
Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber
The Amazing World of Danielle Jacqui, Roquevaire (13)
Alphonse Gurlie, Maisonneuve (07)
Univers du poète ferrailleur, Lizio, Morbihan
Les Rochers sculptés de L'Abbé Fouré, Rothéneuf, Saint-Malo
Robert Tatin in Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne
La Demeure du Chaos, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône (69)
René Raoul's Jardin de pierre in Pléhédel, Côtes d'Armor
Emmanuel Arredondo in Varennes Vauzelles, Nièvre (58)
Musée de la Luna Rossa (revisited), Caen, Calvados (14)
La Fontaine de Château-Chinon, Nièvre (58)

Belinda Cannone: Entre les bruits (2009)

This is a story of confusion, but then that would be expected of a novel which is a spy story (a number of times reminding me of Echenoz's parody spy novel Lac), a detective story, a love story, but most of all an intense study of awareness, of what our minds (and bodies) are capable of. Belinda Cannone explores not only between the sounds, but between the relationships we have with all living people and things, even though we may not be aware of them.

A central subject is hyperacusis, or the ability (some may with reason say disability because of its sometimes devastating effects) to recognise tiny sounds a long distance away: the sounds a 'mute' mouse makes, what people are saying some distance away in a noisy restaurant, the sound a fox makes in a distant forest, etc. Ear plugs are a great help in a town where the noise of chaos can drown out thought, drown out any attempts at communication.

Hyperacoustic Jodel, who works as an acoustics engineer, meets hyperacoustic eleven-year-old Jeanne, and begins to teach her how to distinguish between different sounds, how to to some extent render some order to the chaos, learn what it's like to be different. But then only the different understand.

I was some way through this novel which one reviewer had suggested had strong sexual content, which I thought was maybe a reference to a different book, and then Jodel has sex with Jeanne's mother Jaumette. I don't think the description of sex lasted more than two pages, and for those looking for masturbation go elsewhere, but the description of Jaumette's multiple (and I mean multiple) orgasms stunned me by the realism: Belinda Cannone, er, knows how to write.

Links to my Belinda Cannone posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Belinda Cannone: Entre les bruits
Belinda Cannone: La Chair du temps

L214 and Veganism

Just bought these car stickers from the French vegan group L214. Brilliant!

Richard Brautigan: The Abortion (1973)

Richard Brautigan has this kind of casual, digressive way of writing that makes you want to follow him. The cover is black and a sort of silver with a multi-colored title and author name but no coffee stain. Oh, and it mentions that he's the author of Trout Fishing in America.

I'd better stick to short paragraphs in keeping with Brautigan's style, but that last book is alluded to by the narrator. See, the narrator is the librarian at the unpublished books library in San Francisco, where people go when they've written books that won't be published. And the librarian says a Richard Brautigan has deposited three or four books there, the first one being something to do with America.

He works from nine in the morning to nine at night, although some people come at any time and the librarian (who isn't given a name ) is only too willing to receive unwanted books which are cherished even if not read.

One such donor is the elderly Mrs Charles Fine Adams, who gifts her 'Growing Flowers by Candle Light in Hotel Rooms' at three in the morning. As she's walked such a long way to get to the library, the librarian gives her a coffee and some cookies. That's the kind of guy he is: he lives at the library and has been there for three years, oblivious to the goings on in the outside world.

He's probably not had sex for three years either, until Vida happens to walk into his life with a book on the horrors of beauty, and she should know because she's unbelivably beautiful, although the librarian – can we now call him Honey as that's what Vida comes to call him? – feels uncomfortable about getting naked with someone he doesn't know.

And she stays, at least until she has to have an abortion, which means taking a trip to Tijuana because it was illegal in the States. So Honey slightly reluctantly leaves his only work associate to mind his precious library. Honey, as the narrator, is as self-deprecating as ever as he tries to describe what Vida is wearing:

'Vida put on a simple but quite attractive white blouse with a short blue skirt – you could see easily above her knees – and a little half-sweater thing on over the blouse. I've never been able to describe clothes so that anyone knows what I'm talking about.'

Two main events, or rather chains of events happen on the way to Tijuana and back: Vida arrests the attention of every male (including young boys) she comes across, even to the point of causing minor accidents. And Honey has great problems adjusting to a world he's forsaken for what Vida describes as a 'monastery'.

Also on the way, Vida starts thinking of what Honey can do for a proper job. But that's really another story, or another life.

Famously (if we can use such a word for a writer people were beginning to forget), Brautigan blew his brains out in 1984 at the age of 49. But his wish to have a library for unpublished books has florished as the Brautigan Library, and unlike the library in the novel, anyone can read the newer .pdfs online.

Christine de Rivoyre: Reine-Mère (1985)

Last month my partner Penny left several large books in the boîte à lire in the park of the Hôtel de ville in Épernay. This is one of the books I picked up in exchange as it looked interesting, which I suppose it is in a way, but.

La Reine-Mère is called so not because she's a queen mother but because her name is Reine, and she's the mother of three more or less grown kids: Viviane who's a shrink with (to Reine at first, and then almost to the whole family) an awful husband lawyer Thierry; a younger son Vincent, a painter who's shacked up with a scatty philo student Linda, who's not interested in their son Clovis, no more than she's interested in tidying up or doing the washing; and finally the militant (and almost violent) animal welfarist Camille, who changes boyfriends very regularly.

So we have a family story, although not really a greatly disfunctional one. Apart, that is, from Diego, Reine's loutish former husband who's disappeared from the scene (except in brief flashbacks) a long time before the book starts, and the orgy-loving Thierry who disappears from the book about halfway in after Viviane discovers pornographic photos of him in action. Oh, and Linda runs off too, but then that was to be foreseen, and she was hardly a member of the family anyway.

No, this isn't a disfunctional family, it's a family in which the members care for each other, especially for Reine towards the beginning when she stabs a yob in the solar plexis with her keys near the Saint-Michel fountain at five in the morning, when Reine's dog l'Oiseau (as a small puppy, he looked like a blackbird when she picked him up from SPA) decides he wants to go walkies.

The yob of course survived, but here an element of France in the 1980s is clearly brought to light: along with the motor-bikes parked around the fountain at Saint-Michel, this is where drug addicts are plainly visible, where – as her progeny keep telling Reine in their morbid stories of muggings and casual murder, etc – modern life is dangerous, frightening, full of menace around every corner. But Viviane, Vincent and Camille all rally round, protecting her.

So we have a novel of the ups and downs of family life and the horrors that the outside world holds. We also have sympathetic friends, frequent slap-up meals, and beautifully sketched characters. So, a successful book then. Er, no.

As a novel it is highly enjoyable half of the time, but about halfway in I wondered where it was leading, what I was expecting. In fact, the book could have ended there and I wouldn't have missed anything. It just seems to go nowhere, only the characters hold it together, there's no momentum. A very odd book.

Christine de Rivoyre died on 3 January 2019. I saw a two-minute clip of a very young newscaster announcing her death, saying that many young people wouldn't remember her. At 97, Christine de Rivoyre had a long life, but it seems a relatively short literary one.

Alexandre Vialatte: Pas de H pour Natalie (2019)

Greatly enthused by Marie-Hélène Lafon's inclusion in Le Pays d'en haut of an article by Alexandre Vialatte (1901-71 (the dates are revealing)), I opened his collection of many articles (chiefly from La Montagne) and prepared for the fun. Alas, there wasn't any, as I scarcely knew what Vialatte was talking about: the digressive articles, most of between four and six pages each, mostly speak of other people, but unfortunately people who were known in Vialatte's day, but who now are mainly forgotten.

However, I don't give in easily, and although it's far beyond me to take in so much detail of unknown people at one go, I shall continue to dip into this book, and no doubt discover many interesting characters. One such person has been the cartoonist Chaval (1915-68), whose real name was Yvan Francis Le Louarn, and who killed himself a few months after his wife killed herself after he'd told her of his numerous infidelities. His cartoons are odd, often without words, and often (to me at least) impenetrable. Vialatte felt the same, particularly the one of three chemists fleeing from a storm. They could be anyone, but what is comical about this? It provides Vialatte with much fodder for thought. As I'm sure this book will provide me with when I pick it up again.

Links to my Alexandre Vialatte posts:
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Alexandre Vialatte and Amélie Nothomb
Alexandre Vialatte, 13e arrondissement
Alexandre Vialatte: Pas de H pour Natalie