Gérard Oberlé: Palomas Canyon (2002)

This isn't so much a book as a runaway train, or an indefinable piece of literature which I can't even begin to sum up. There's a wonderful almost hour-long radio program online on France Inter in which François Busnel interviews Oberlé and he talks about his wanderlust, the Morvan, his working on medieval books, his being sacked from teaching in school (pre-'68) for wearing a roll-neck sweater instead of a tie and being chummy with the kids, his love of good food and wine, and so on.

Here we have a modern day western, or detective story, or thriller, or horror story, or a buddy movie, or I don't know what else. This is about one of Claude Chassignet's visits to his good friend Tom Kenton in Arizona, and although he went to school with Kenton in Switzerland and although Kenton is a former film director, he much resembles the American novelist Jim Harrison, whom Oberlé didn't go to school with but met in a restaurant terrace: Harrison too was a bon vivant.

We're in hunting territory, although Claude has seen so many horrors wielding a firearm that he can no longer do it. But there is also human quarry here, poor Mexican immigrants to pot shots at, and this is all masterminded by a thug who has interests in the sleaziest dive in nearby Araucania.

A large amount of this is about food and especially good wine, getting drunk and, er, trying to find the owner of a pair of blue panties. In retrospect all the characters are larger than life, perhaps in particular (in one part of his anatomy) Big Dick. There are also many allusions to writers and quotations from them. Frequently, the often old slang reminds me of the writer San Antonio (Frédéric Dard).