Éric Chevillard: Un fantôme (1995)

Two years after La Nébuleuse du Crabe (1993), 'starring' the polymorphous Crab, came Un fantôme, which also 'stars' the character Crab. A character like Crab of course can be expected in a novel by Chevillard – which isn't in any way a conventional novel (again, as is expected), being a collection of often contradictory observations about Crab. In his article 'Crab ou la pêche au gros' in the multi-authored Poétiques de l'indéterminé : le caméléon au propre et au figuré (1999) edited by Valérie-Angélique Deshoulières, Pierre Jourde suggests Palafox (of the eponymous novel of 1990) and Furne (of Le Caoutchouc décidement (1992)) are avatars of Crab.

Un fantôme is full of paradoxes, of absurdities. Crab takes out a plaster in a paper wrapper, can't open it, tries to bite into it without success, sets scissors to it, cuts his finger, then manages to open it and applies the plaster to his cut finger. Crab seems to have always existed and to have invented everything, be everyman, or rather everyone who has ever existed, is so fertile that he can make women pregnant just by brushing past them, make animals pregnant, even the sea, etc. Un fantôme abounds in surrealism and Crab can sculpt fire, joins queues not to buy anything but just to give himself a sense of being alive, and so on. Normality is seen almost as a disease, and there's a huge amount wrong with the world as it's been given to us.

Un fantôme is also about writing and survival, two major themes of Chevillard's work, which often has endless sentences. For instance there's a story within a story within a story within a story: Crab is accosted at a dinner party by a big guy who insults him for no reason, so Crab calmly mentions that the day before when he was walking along the street a car pulled up and a medium-sized guy got out and started insulting him, appearing to want a fight, and Crab calmly told the guy that the day before he was sitting at a café terrasse when a dwarf knocked his chair over and start hitting him for no reason, but Crab calmly told him that the previous day he was peacefully smoking his pipe when a mosquito began to buzz around with the intention of biting him but he just put his hands around it and splat! The guy at the dinner function made his apologies.

Crab is famous, well known by everyone and constantly receives unsolicited mail, but then he's the fall guy, or is anonymous, shunned by all around him. Crab is everyone and everything, and when he dies he'll come back and haunt you. Forever.

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