CounterPunch’s Favorite 100 Nonfiction Books in Translation, Published in English Since 1900, a follow-up to 100 books of nonfiction first published in English.
Robert Monell on Alain Robbe-Grillet
Anicée Alvina in Glissements progressifs du plaisir (1974)
Alain Robbe-Grillet‘s 1974 Glissements progressifs du plaisir… breaks numerous aesthetic and cultural boundaries and is not an easy film to watch as I found out during a mid 1970’s screening in Manhattan, with Robbe-Grillet in attendance, where I suddenly found myself so repulsed by the film’s transgressive imagery and atmosphere that I had to suddenly bolt the theater for fresh air. In the lobby I found myself faced with Robbe-Grillet himself, who was awaiting the post-movie discussion. He smiled as our eyes met for a second. I wanted to apologize or explain, but I didn’t say anything. He seemed to understand and proved to be a very modest and witty commentator on his own work. —Robert Monell
Anicée Alvina died last November. She was 52.
Anicée Alvina est morte le vendredi 10 novembre 2006, à l’âge de cinquante-deux ans, a-t-on appris hier. Comédienne par passion, plus caméléon que carriériste, « plutôt du genre rock’n’roll », selon ses propres termes, Anicée Alvina, l’égérie d’Alain Robbe-Grillet et de Gérard Blain, avait réussi à mener un parcours exigeant et multiple, passant même un moment à la chanson et à la scène au sein du groupe de rock Ici Paris. –via Le coin du cinéphage
Staying with Alain Robbe-Grillet, I just found a very interesting interview with him:
A.R.-G. Quand on [Alain and Catherine] s’est mariés j’étais pour la fidélité conjugale et c’est elle, tout de suite, qui m’a expliqué que c’était une idée assez sotte et probablement peu viable, que les messieurs avaient besoin de chair fraîche, et les dames aussi. Que ce qu’il fallait, c’était s’entendre bien. Le premier livre de Catherine, L’Image, écrit en 1957 peu avant notre mariage, endossait mes fantasmes sado-érotiques de la même façon que le livre de Dominique Aury, Histoire d’O, décrit, en réalité, ceux de Jean Paulhan. Peu à peu, Catherine a découvert qu’elle aimait inverser le fantasme et même, maintenant, se spécialiser dans la domination. Elle est une dominatrice passionnelle, le contraire d’une professionnelle, il n’est jamais question d’argent et comme c’est assez rare, sa cour est très étendue. —lire.fr
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
I watched Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events with the girls yesterday evening and loved it. Loved Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep and even Dustin Hoffman’s cameo appearance.
The film is based on this series of comic books.
On its steampunk qualities:
Although the books can be classed as ‘steampunk‘, in that they involve young people struggling against great odds in an anachronistic setting, the addition, in later books, of the mysterious organization known as V.F.D. have begun to push the story into the new genre of post-steampunk (in the same way that later additions to the cyberpunk genre are now classed as postcyberpunk). –wikipedia
On its macabre and black comedy qualities:
The books can also be classified as absurdist fiction, due to their eccentric characters, quirky writing style and generally improbable storylines. Some might argue that these books could also be classified as black comedy, because of the mix of humorous and macabre elements.
In the words of my favorite Amazon critic Jeff Shannon and one of my favorite film critics tout court:
If you spliced Charles Addams, Dr. Seuss, Charles Dickens, Edward Gorey, and Roald Dahl into a Tim Burtonesque landscape, you’d surely come up with something like Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Many critics (in mostly mixed reviews) wondered why Tim Burton didn’t direct this comically morbid adaptation … but there’s still plenty to recommend the playfully bleak scenario, … a variety of fantastical hazards and mysterious clues, some of which remain unresolved. Given endless wonders of art direction, costume design, and cinematography… –Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
One more thing: loved the self referentiality of the intrusive narrator of the film (such as is commonly displayed in 18th and 19th century literature.)
The Man Who Laughs (1869) – Victor Hugo
The Man Who Laughs (1869) – Victor Hugo
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Victor Hugo’s novel The Man Who Laughs is a horror story of a young aristocrat kidnapped and disfigured by his captors to display a permanent grin.
In the novel, Hugo gives his own account of the work of the Comprachicos:
“In China, since time immemorial, they have achieved refinement in a special art and industry: the molding of a living man. One takes a child two or three years old, one puts him into a porcelain vase, more or less grotesque in shape, without cover or bottom, so that the head and feet protrude. In the daytime, one keeps this vase standing upright; at night, one lays it down, so that the child can sleep. Thus the child expands without growing, slowly filling the contours of the vase with his compressed flesh and twisted bones. This bottled development continues for several years. At a certain point, it becomes irreparable. When one judges that this has occurred and that the monster is made, one breaks the vase, the child comes out, and one has a man in the shape of a pot.”
This example clearly displays all of the most common elements of the legend: first, association with outsiders (the Chinese); second, the victim being a young child; and third, assertions of the methodology that stretch the limits of credibility but seem to remain within the domain of the possible. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprachicos [Dec 2006]
La coquille (1912) – Odilon Redon
La coquille (The Seashell) (1912) – Odilon Redon
“The concept that corresponds to a shell is so clear, so hard, and so sure that a poet, unable simply to draw it and, reduced rather to speaking of it, is at first at a loss for images.” –Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space
Intertextuality between Faust and Don Juan
Certainly Faust is a reproduction of Don Juan. … Like Don Juan, Faust is a demonic figure, but at a higher level. .. —Either/Or, Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard, who had been working up an abandoned project on the three great medieval figures of Don Juan, Faust and Ahasuerus (the wandering Jew) incorporated much of the work he had done into Either/Or.
The literary characters that most influenced Kierkegaard were Don Juan (representing pleasure), Faust (doubt) and the Wandering Jew (despair); he used characters based on them in his writings. For example, both Don Juan and Faust personify the demonic in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, Part One ..
“Baudelaire en vers et Flaubert en prose”
“”Baudelaire en vers et Flaubert en prose” said Péladan in 1885: the analogy could not be juster and is today taken for granted. Baudelaire and Flaubert are like the two faces of a Herm planted firmly in the middle of the century, marking the division between Romanticism and Decadence, between the period of the Fatal Man and that of the Fatal Woman, between the period of Delacroix and that of Moreau.” —The Romantic Agony
Les Mémoires du diable (1838) – Frédéric Soulié
Les Mémoires du diable (1838) – Frédéric Soulié
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Frédéric Soulié is another writer of the roman frénétique. In his time he was as well known as Balzac or Eugène Sue. His Les Mémoires du diable (1838) is mentioned in Colin Wilson’s Misfits and the Romantic Agony.
Who knows who did the painting on the Robert Laffont edition shown above? It looks like something done by Daumier.
The French frenetic school of the 1820s/1830s
Cover to Janin’s Dead Donkey
Inspired by The Romantic Agony, I bring you some 19th century cult fiction by the likes of Jules Janin and Charles Nodier of the “frenetic school”.
“The Dead Donkey” & “The Guillotined Woman” by Jules Janin, Honore de Balzac, Terry Hale (Editor), Tony Johannot (Illustrator)
Paperback – 168 pagesThis story features probably the most nauseating narrator in the entire history of literature.
In nineteenth century France there flourished a literature of horror on a par with the English Gothic novel or the German Schauerroman. It was christened ‘the frenetique school’.
The frenetique was at its peak in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Of this short-lived literary movement Jules Janin’s The Dead Donkey and he Guillotined Woman is one of the finest and certainly one of the most unpleasant examples. Jules Janin is supposed to have begun the tale as a spoof of the fashionable frenetique style. However, with its wealth of horrible incident and its sinister and claustrophobic atmosphere, it seems likely that the author actually fell in love with his subject. The bizarre duality of the novel is one of its most striking qualities.
This edition comes with Balzac’s extraordinary spoof sequel, Chapter XXX, published in an all-English edition for the first time. Masterly in-depth commentary by Terry Hale, and the celebrated illustrations by Tony Johannot. —http://www.theadamsresidence.co.uk/gothsoc/gothsoc.html [Nov 2006
Notes:
‘The frenetique school’: frenetic means fast, frantic, harried, or frenzied
In the category of “la littérature frénétique”, most frequently cited are Jules Janin, Charles Lassailly, Charles Nodier (Smarra, or the Demons of the Night (1821)) and Pétrus Borel. Its peak was the late 1820s and early 1830s.
La France frénétique de 1830: Choix de textes (1978) – Jean-Luc Steinmetz
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Some French language notes:
A côté du romantisme officiel qui occupe le devant de la scène existe un autre courant, encore marginal mais porteur d’avenir. Influencée par le roman gothique et ses images de caveaux humides, fantômes blafards et cul-de-basse-fosse ensanglantés, une certaine tendance friande d’horreur et de frissons s’épanouit en France, la littérature “frénétique”. Elle se teinte d’ailleurs assez vite d’aspects parodiques (Jules Janin, Charles Lassailly), ou alors accentue son côté sombre et pervers accompagné d’un humour très noir (Pétrus Borel “le lycanthrope”, 1809-1859). —http://gallica.bnf.fr/themes/LitXVIIIIk.htm
Every European country had its own terminology to denote the sensibility of the gothic novel. In France it was called the roman noir (“black novel”, now primarily used to denote the hardboiled detective genre) and in Germany it was called the Schauerroman (“shudder novel”). Italy and Spain must have had their own, but I am unaware of their names as of yet.
Dedalus European Classics, who’ve also lovingly published works by Rachilde has Smarra by Nodier in print in what I think is a lovely painting by Gustave Moreau:
Smarra & Trilby (1821, 1822) – Charles Nodier
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Last night was the night when the wind came
Last night was the night when the wind came and changed autumn into winter, taking with it all the leaves that crowned the trees.
I’ve added a list of protagonists and themes/tropes to the page dedicated to Praz’s Romantic Agony, a remarkable book, especially considering that it was written during the late 1920s, when the decadent movement wasn’t even cold yet.
As far as its quality goes, it is way up there with Todorov’s The Fantastic, Colin Wilson’s The Misfits, Ludwig Marcuse’s Obscene and André Breton’s Anthology of Black Humor.
Definitely one of my favorite works of literary criticism.
Todo: the thematic criticism of Jean-Pierre Richard (Littérature et Sensation, 1954) and the Geneva school as it applies to the works above. See theme. Maybe start here; or with Horst Daemmrich Themes and Motifs in Western Literature and with the criticism by Todorov on Richard?