Dominique Fabre: Fantômes (2001)

Dominique Fabre's Fantômes is of course about visions, although these are the protagonist Edgar's own visions, springs of life in his adolescent world to which he feels he hardly belongs: he doesn't know his father, he lives in boarding school most of the time, and his mother Isabelle (whom he actually calls 'Isabelle') is very much an absentee mother. Fringe areas of Paris, Ménilmontant and Asnières (where his mother lives) are frequently mentioned: Edgar lives on the fringes of himself.

This novel has a first and third person narrator, a 'je' and an Edgar, although the two are physically but not mentally the same: Edgar exists (or in part exists to be more exact) with a kind of double called 'I': reality is a slippery subject, and the two not-quite-the-same narrators are often merged in one sentence. Edgar is often the negative side of the protagonist. The novel is also very autobiographical and some readers (but not me) have previously met the five-year-old Edgar in Ma vie d'Edgar (1989).

Edgar is fourteen going on fifteen, he smokes, has spots of puberty, and wants a girlfriend. He's on the cusp of adulthood, but life isn't treating him well. So his ontological insecurity causes him to invent people, to daydream, imagine that he meets people on the train, such as Aline Soviétique, whom he chats to and kisses goodbye after she's left him her address in Saint-Germain-des-Près: in the heart of Paris, not the fringes. The wildest daydream is with the baker's wife, who makes Edgar lick her breasts, then between her legs, pointing out where her clitoris is and telling him to slow down, and then she comes noisily as the baker himself looks on. The slippages between 'reality' and fantasy happen so subtly that occasionally the reader has to think for a second which world he's in. But then, this is Dominique Fabre.

Before writing this novel, Fabre read the back page of an Henri Calet book, in which Francis Ponge describes Calet as 'boss of the linguistic three-card trick', and Fabre, in an interview for Le Matricule de anges, notes that when you always see the same three-card trick it no longer works, so you have to change the way you cheat. Um.

My other Dominique Fabre post:
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Dominique Fabre: Photos Volées

Dominique Fabre: Photos Volées (2014)

Dominique Fabre writes in an original way: sentences are left unfinished, there's no obvious structure to the book apart from being divided into many sections, the narrator frequently says 'Nous ne sommes pas nés de la dernière pluie' ('We weren't born yesterday'), there's a great deal of rambling and navel-gazing, dialogue often merges with the narration, the present merges with the future, and yet it works: it all seems so natural, written as thought, observations (sometimes slightly absurd) spring forth as casually and as life-like as if the reader can imagine being the protagonist himself.

The narrator here is Jean, who at the age of fifty-eight is fired from his insurance job because he's too old, costs the firm too much, and is left on the scrapheap, even though, in order to continue receiving unemployment benefit, he's forced to attend meaningless courses via Pôle emploi. He learns to sit in cafés over a beer, makes friends with someone who attended a stupid course with him, and looks at old photographs.

Before going into insurance, Jean was a freelance photographer, and taking photos remains something of a hobby for him: through old photos, he can link the past with the present, reminisce and contemplate about the ageing process, mull over past relationships he had with women, some of whom he's still in contact with on a platonic basis: he's old now, of course, wasn't born yesterday, and it's two, then three years since he last had sex.

Then along comes Hélène, and he's known a few Hélènes in his life. That was his wife's name. He even managed to have sex with the new Hélène, and maybe there's hope for the future. Maybe there's hope for him making himself known as a photographer even. We're left guessing, there are no happy-ever-afters, as life's not like that is it? No, but I'd like to read some more of this writer.

My other Dominique Fabre post:

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Dominique Fabre: Fantômes