Éric Chevillard: Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur (2003)

Éric Chevillard's Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur is of particular note in Chevillard's work because it's a homage to his Minuit publisher Jérôme Lindon (1925-2001), who had once suggested that he write a story that everyone already knows. Chevillard understood by this that Lindon would have appreciated a more visible narrative thread in his works, although Chevillard didn't immediately know what to do with this advice.

And then the idea of the tale 'The Valiant [or Brave] Little Tailor' by the Brothers Grimm came to him, a story he appreciated, and of which the 'authors never pretended to be authors': this is after all a tale which has been handed down orally over the centuries. And needless to say, Chevillard will introduce numerous digressions in the novel, almost (but not quite) making the story unrecognisable.

There is a Préambule (or Foreword) in which the digression already plays fully into hands of the fans of digression: a précis of Hans Christian Andersen's folk story of 'Hans-My-Hedgehog',  which of course recalls Chevillard's previous novel Du hérisson (On the Hedgehog) (2002), and Chevillard's central interest in survival of all forms, in protection.

To recall, 'The Valiant Little Tailor' is a very brief tale of an unnamed tailor annoyed by flies around his marmalade sandwich. In a stroke he kills the seven flies around it, and permanently leaves his accommodation with a banner around him saying he's killed seven at a stroke. People (unaware of what the number refers to) are in awe, and then he meets a giant who is eager to display his talents, but the tailor defeats him through a mixture of intelligence and deception. Soon the king learns of the tailor's feats and invites him to deal with two giants in the forest wreaking havoc. The valiant little tailor sees them sleeping under a tree, climbs up it, throws stones at the giants, thus provoking them to argue, fight and kill each other, and so he wins the hand of the king's daughter and half of his kingdom.

Of course, Chevillard re-visits this story, re-re-visits it, re-re-re-visits and so on. If the story were originally a straight-line narrative, it is now full of digressions –such as a tale of modern-day sexual aggression on the métro, or a re-write of the traditional story of Tom Thumb.

Chevillard's books are resolutely, furiously, not just novels, they are a number of stories at the same time as they are a collection of anti-stories, or maybe anti-linear stories: they lead the reader into cul-de-sacs, spread false trails, meander.

Chevillard twists things, represents the novel as palimpsest, with the hero as the writer rather than the subject, but self-denigrates, creates amusing situations out of the frivolous, but also the serious, the vitally serious. Éric Chevillard is a writer for this century, and mercifully he isn't going away.

My Éric Chevillard posts:
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Éric Chevillard: Oreille rouge | Red Ear (2005)
Éric Chevillard: L'Explosion de la tortue (2019)
Éric Chevillard: La Nébuleuse du crabe | The Crab Nebula (1993)
Éric Chevillard – Au plafond | On the Ceiling
Éric Chevillard: Le Désordre azerty
Éric Chevillard: Dino Egger
Éric Chevillard: Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur
Éric Chevillard: Le Caoutchouc décidément
Éric Chevillard: Palafox
Éric Chevillard: Un fantôme
Éric Chevillard: Du hérisson | Of the Hedgehog
Éric Chevillard: Démolir Nisard | Demolishing Nisard