Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés (2007)

Christian Gailly’s Les Oubliés (lit. ‘The Forgotten’), as expected, is written in his recognisable, compelling style: truncated, telegraphic, pointilliste, repetitive, parenthetical. Not that Gailly would use long words, though: he prefers short simple words in short simple sentences, as in this short paragraph that Albert Brighton addresses to his dead work partner:

‘Here we are, he said. These words were addressed to Paul Schooner. And Brighton asked himself how Paul. If he were there. Present at the side of him. In contact with this woman. On approaching the house. Would have reacted. What would we have seen in his gaze?’ (My translation.)

Albert and Paul are reporters for a weekly cultural paper and this (like Gailly’s book) is their thirteenth mission. They are reporting for a series called ‘Que sont-ils devenus’ (‘What has become of them?’), cultural figures once famous but now forgotten. Gailly deals with big themes such as life, death, love, memory, forgetfulness, age, etc.

And on the way to see the forgotten cellist Suzanne Moss in Britanny their car is involved in an accident. They continue by train, but Paul dies in the toilet so it’s left to Albert to let his wife know, and he decides to take the journey to make the interview with Suzanne by himself. As it happens, he’s obviously done the right thing.

Suzanne is more than welcoming, perhaps too welcoming in a sense: when Albert gets a good old-fashioned fire going, she tells him he’s gifted, and that such people are supposed to make the best lovers. Albert senses danger.

The interview starts, and then Suzanne decides that they should go for a walk along the sea shore, which they do, Albert struggling hard to keep pace with her. And then it rains, they get drenched and take refuge in a café, and on the way back to Suzanne’s house he says something. Funny, but many important things happen in or after visiting the toilets in Quentin Tarantino’s films, and since the death of Paul, Albert has often thought of his work colleague when going there. He tells Suzanne that he made a decision when in the café toilet: Paul died in a toilet, but he wants to continue to live, which means continue to love. He concludes by saying that he’s decided to love her, that he already loves her, is she going to slap him?

They return to the coastal house with the three stray cats of varying ages that Suzanne didn’t have the heart to reject. She’s pre-cooked a lovely meal for them both which only needs re-heating, so they get a little drunk on whisky, it’s understood that Albert is staying the night, and Suzanne says that they’re sleeping together, OK? Albert says he’s very old, Suzanne shoots back ‘Me too […]. We’ll do what we can’.

In fact they do much better than that, in spite of Suzanne’s reluctance to get naked because of her wrinkles, and after all she’d had ten years of celibacy since the death of her pianist husband. But the reader gets the impression – as Albert wakes up to Suzanne next to him and not just three cats on the bed, but to the cat Franklin licking his hair and saying ‘Mia-mia’ (which Suzanne translates as ‘I love you’) – that Albert will be waking up like this for a long time to come. Yup, this is no one-night-stand.

By far the best Christian Gailly book I’ve read, and I’ve been through six others.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés

Christian Gailly: Dernier Amour (2004)

Christian Gailly's Dernier Amour (2004) isn't really even about what it announces in its title – a last love. Rather, it's a combination of narratives – the narrator's, words spoken by the characters, thoughts of Paul the protagonist, all melded into one short novel.

What's actually happening comes in fits and starts, and the narrative itself is like that: generally short sentences, frequently of only one or two words, which often interrupt themselves, tangle around each other, as if in suspension, waiting for an answer, or waiting for nothing.

And Paul is waiting for nothing, or rather nothingness, as his life seems extended by days, his death a long wait. Meanwhile he lives on, going to Zurich to see the first performance of his music which is only greetd by hoots of derision. And he goes back to Paris, from there to the north coast where he'll die, where his wife has, following his wishes, left him to die.

But yet there's a revival of sorts, in which Paul picks up his wife's bathrobe on the beach, although it isn't her bathrobe, it's an American's, who comes to pick it up. And who returns to the skeletal Paul and takes him for a ride in her car. A Mercedes, of course.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés

Christian Gailly: L'Incident (1996)

This being a Christian Gailly novel, the reader can't not be swayed all over the place. So, Marguerite Muir loses her purse in a supermarket, Georges Palet finds it elsewhere minus mainly cash, tries to contact her, fails, and informs the cops. So what?

This is a very short (253 big-paged) book, although it took me several days to read, but I was in transit all the time, so maybe I missed something? Like Alain Renais's 2008 film (Les Herbes folles) of the novel, is what follows in the world of fantasy? The married Georges seems to have a thing for Marguerite, who tries to shrug the much older guy off, but then there's a 'rebondissement' and she seems to have a thing for him. Yeah? Maybe I oughta re-read this, although I think I'll see the same story: Christian Gailly is weird stuff.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés

Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine (2010)

After the war, after months in the military hospital, Braine returns to 'normality', at least to his family, his wife Lily, his son Louis, and his car-sick dog Lucie. Only at first he can't speak, a little I thought like Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) in Wim Wenders's Paris, Texas (1984), but soon Braine fits back in to Lily's father's car firm job, and surely things will be fine?

Although La Roue was published after Lily et Braine, it seems quite clear that the lead story 'La Roue' was written well before, and is to a certain extent the inspiration behind this novel. Braine goes to fix the wheel of stranger Rose Braxton's car and his life's suddenly changed.

Yeah, music enters the scene, Braine's life takes a huge swerve (ah, the power of music for Gailly), and soon Braine's former jazz band is being re-formed, and oh the spunk in Rose Braxton!

And such is her power that she will unwittingly destroy the relationship between Braine and his wife. That gun is just waiting to go off, the reader is quite clear of that, although who will pull the trigger and on whom is the mystery. Christian Gailly may not be the best of the Minuit writers, but he sure as hell pulls a punch.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés

Christian Gailly: La Roue: et autres nouvelles (2012)

Without going into the details of the other seven short stories here, La Roue is well titled, as the first story, 'La Roue', is certainly the best, although nothing much really happens in it: it's the way the story, such as it is, is unveiled that is of importance.

Of great importance, too, are the digressions, and this is very digressive writing, every tiny and often insignificant detail being used up in the making of it. The narrator, the unnamed man in the story, agonises about the exact nature of  the temperature when he goes to fetch an unused hammer from his shed. This is after a tortuous discussion about the kind of hammer needed – in other words what it is needed for – after a well-dressed woman who has randomly knocked on his door and finally tells him that she can't loosen the nuts from her car wheel, and that the tyre is punctured.

When the narrator goes to see the car in a field there is a sizeable digression about the man's hand-bell, and how he loves the sound and the nature of it, refusing to cede to his partner Lily's wishes to install an electric one. We even have a short description of what he looks like carrying his big hammer – like a workman (although he's a writer) – and of the nature of country roads.

Eventually a well-dressed man (albeit a little oil-besmirched) appears, and as the narrator (in detail, of course) changes the wheel he learns that the man has walked out of his own wedding ceremony and chosen the woman he loves rather than marry someone he doesn't.

So there we have it. This seemed very promising, but unfortunately none of the other stories were anything like as interesting.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés

Christian Gailly: Un soir au club | Evening at the Club (2001)

Christian Gailly's Un soir au club is narrated by an unnamed artistic painter friend of the protagonist Simon Nardis, a heating engineer from the Paris area who really knows his profession and is married to Suzanne. Simon imagines that a job on the (presumably Breton) coast will take a short time and he'll be on the homeward bound train in a few hours. But it's more difficult than it seems and he's more likely to be back in the early hours of the following morning.

Simon's grateful one-off employer (an engineer too but whose name is not given as he really doesn't matter) treats him to a meal before he goes and then a final drink in a night club before he takes the late train. Simon really couldn't be bothered to make small talk with this man, but plays along with him because it would be rude not too. The man's hobby is philately, and he asks Simon what his 'violin d'Ingres' (hobby) is, and (when pushed) Simon lies and says that his is jazz.

But jazz is far from being Simon's hobby: it was his life, and he was a great influential jazz pianist until the realisation that his sex, alcohol, drugs and fame lifestyle would kill him soon, so he settled down to what most people see as normality: a steady professional job away from the bright lights of international cities. And he's approaching retirement almost teetotal without any more cock-straying. But his narrator friend knows he's missed his old life: 'I knew of Simon's sadness, of his semblance of life, his semblance of being, the dead soul that he trailed along behind him'. Until, that is, Simon sees that the night club has an American jazz trio and misses his last train home by playing an incredible piano solo, re-filling his veins with the jazz narcotic.

He's welcomed with open arms of course, in particular by the owner of the club Debbie, an American 'cultural refugee' who remembers thrilling to him at a stint in Copenhagen when she was a teenager, back in her globe-trotting days. Well, it's as if they've known and loved each other all their lives, although Simon knows he must return home on the early train the next day, back to Suzanne and away from ageing groupies, so he chastely refuses to go back to Debbie's place and she drives him to a hotel, so drunk she has to undress him and leave him to fall back to sleep but perhaps meet her on the beach before he goes home.

And meet her he does, and make love to (not fuck) her he does, and the time of going back just stretches out even longer until the very reasonably jealous and suspicious Debbie decides to drive to the coast and pick him up. But even about half way through we know she dies and some time later do we learn its in a car accident on the way to meet Simon, but only in the end do we learn that the pet cat Dingo is more faithful to Debbie than Simon has ever been to her.

Un soir au club is written in the similar minimalist style of several other writers in the Minuit stable, and is really riveting, hugely readable.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés

Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze (2000)

Christian Gailly (1943–2013) is often mentioned in the same sentence as Jean Echenoz, Christian Oster and Jean-Philippe Toussaint, all of whom are published by Minuit, all of whom are roughly of the same generation, all of whom can be said to write against the mainstream, and are all in a sense literary sons of the nouveaux romanciers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marquerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, etc.

This is the first book I've read by Christian Gailly, and although in some respects it's a disarming, dark novel resembling a detective story it's at the same time very funny and charmingly playful. The story is not sequential and plays about with time, we don't discover the name of the narrator – Sylvère Fonda – until the penultimate paragraph, and he says things then frequently qualifies or contradicts them as if writing what he's thinking as he goes along, forgets what he's said and then picks up the thread, frequently repeats himself, tells the reader he'll talk about something later on (which he does), and so on.

Sylvère – although we don't of course know that's his name – is the narrator who describes the painful hazards of driving along a narrow, bumpy stretch of road in the Vendée when he sees his friend Lucien's car and he flashes recognition to him but Lucien's not driving, it's a girl on her own. And she's smeared in blood, and the book he's writing later comes to be called Nuage rouge, or Red Cloud, like the Indian chief, or the war, or for that matter Mondrian's painting or Yves Bonnefoy's critical work. Not that all these are mentioned, but there are many allusions in this book, such as to Gailly's love of jazz. But where was I?

Ah yes, the narrator's friend Lucien, who's really his enemy but we'll come to that later. Lucien's never married, and never will because he picks up a girl on the road – in fact the same girl and the same road that Sylvère's seen her on – as she's blocking the narrow road because she's run out of petrol, so he drives her to get some and drives her back with rape in mind, and then she cuts his sex organs off and throws them into a pond, although we don't find out what happened to them until later. But that's it, that's how she comes to be driving Lucien's car, after doing the cutting and then driving back to her own car and pouring the petrol Lucien bought her into her own tank.

So that's the end of Lucien's sex life. In fact the end of his life really, as he just goes downhill. Then a coincidence happens, and Father Prouteau sees the girl, who's a curator of a museum in Copenhagen, on French TV. She's Rebecca Lodge. But we knew that from the beginning because Sylvère (who of course wasn't known as Sylvère then) has told us so. Prouteau even took photos of her. Instead of the birds he usually takes. He shows them to Sylvère and Lucien. In that order, as a matter of fact: not Lucien first.

Anyway, Sylvère is sent at Lucien's expense to seek Rebecca out, which he does and has a number of conversations with her over lunch, although there's certainly no sex as she's a one-man girl even though her beloved sea captain's dead. Back in France Lucien is feeling suicidal, Sylvère's betrayed him and he wants him to assist him to die. By pistol. Which he does. But did Sylvère kill him, did Lucien kill himself, or was it a joint effort? Academic question anyway: Lucien's sent a letter to the police saying Sylvère killed him.

And no amount of fine arguments about euthanasia will wash. Sylvère is guilty of 'deliberate homicide'. So Sylvère's dead. He actually says it: 'I was born 14 January and I died the day before'. Not the same year of course, but he later makes one of his qualifications: 'Prison isn't death but all the same.' At least he won't be stuttering there, but I forgot to mention that one.

My Christian Gailly posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Gailly: Un soir au club
Christian Gailly: Lily et Braine
Christian Gailly: La Roue et autres nouvelles
Christian Gailly: Dernier amour
Christian Gailly: Nuage Rouge | Red Haze
Christian Gailly: L'Incident
Christian Gailly: Les Oubliés