Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers: Icons of Marginalization in Post World War II Narrative 9781472542427, 9781441170057

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Citation preview

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers Icons of Marginalization in Post World War II Narrative

Mary Jo Muratore

vi Continuum International Publishing Group 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com © 2011 Mary Jo Muratore All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the permission of the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 9781441170057

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand

vii

Contents

Credits/Acknowledgments vi Introduction vii 1.

Contagions of Conformity in Camus’ L’Étranger1

2.

The Art of Betrayal in Sábato’s El Túnel

14

3.

Poeticizing Vice: Genet’s Querelle de Brest

27

4.

In the Shadows of Significance: The Dissolution of Character in Wright’s The Outsider

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The Exemplum of Empathy in Langevin’s Poussière sur la Ville

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Miscast Utopia: Rewriting Cultural Paradigms in Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia

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Habitat for Inhumanity: The Legacy of Conquest in Naipaul’s Guerrillas

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The Enemy Within: The Politics of Self-Destruction in Zongo’s Le Parachutage

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

The Scattered Self: The Dislocation of Identity in Wiesel’s Le Cinquième Fils

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Afterword 126 Appendix: Translations to Quotations from the Primary Sources 128 Notes 169 Bibliography of Works Cited 186 Index 193

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Credits/Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Research Council of the University of Missouri for generous support during the final phase of this project. I would also like to thank the University of Missouri’s Center for Arts and Humanities and the Arts and Science Alumni Organization Faculty Incentive Grant program for assistance in helping to defray expenditures related to securing permission to reprint from original materials. For permission to reprint from textual sources cited in the book, I acknowledge gratefully: Théâtre, Récits, Nouvelles by Albert Camus, copyright © 1962 by Gallimard (Pléiade, Paris). Reprinted here by permission of Gallimard. Jean Genet, Oeuvres complètes by Jean Genet, copyright © 1953 by Gallimard (Paris). Reprinted here by permission of Gallimard. Guerrillas by V. S. Naipaul, copyright © 1975 by V. S. Naipaul. Random House (Knopf). Reprinted here by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. L’Exil selon Julia by Gisèle Pineau, copyright © 1966 by Editions Stock. Reprinted here by permission of Hervé Chopin Éditions and Gisèle Pineau. Le Parachutage by Norbert Zongo, copyright © 2006 by L’Harmattan (Paris). Reprinted here by permission of L’Harmattan. Le Cinquième Fils by Elie Wiesel, copyright © 1972, 1985 by Elie Wiesel; copyright © 1984 by Éditions Bernard Grasset (Paris). Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., for the author, and Éditions Bernard Grasset. The Outsider by Richard Wright, copyright © 1953 by Harper and Row, renewed in 1981 by Ellen Wright. Reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers. I would also like to thank the following journals and their editors for permission to re-print portions of previously published material: Revista Letras, 60 (2003), “Distanced by default or the mandates of marginalization in Camus’ L’Étranger”, 111–32. Francofonia: Studi e ricerche sulle letterature di lingua francese, 51 (2006) “Emancipating narratives: the diasporic struggle reframed in Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia”, 3–14. Journal of Caribbean Studies, 21 (2007), “Rhetoric and redemption in Gisèle Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia,” 33–49. Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, “Authorial irrelevance in Sábato’s El Túnel,” (2008), 205–19.

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Introduction

As we trace the history of Western literature from the medieval period to the present, we confront a matrix of recurring themes and refrains, in some contexts residual or secondary, in others primordial or, perhaps more precisely, obtrusive by their stirring presence. Among the pervasive and omnipresent phenomena with which we, as readers, must grapple, none perhaps is more contemporary, more compelling and yet more elusive than that dubbed the poetics of alienation. A problematic seemingly all-embracing, of broad strokes and without fixed confines, one which creeps subtly through the imperceptible crevasses of some works while overtaking others. The problem of alienation continually evolves, always defining and redefining its own space—a space founded upon the pillars of its own private remoteness, its under-girdings of disassociation. Yet, ultimately, it is in the process of assemblage, of compilation, of gathering or grouping that each of the following nine chapters develops a co-extensive significance. For it is by the expanse of this spectrum of breakages, of disassociations, and by necessity of the critical imperative, that each succeeds in adding to, building up and, in and of its own volition, redefining all that precedes and all that follows. Thus, it can be argued, and I hasten to contend, that the study here presented is one in which synergy is in full operation. Every apparent apex becomes but a false peak, inasmuch as it is but a contextual variant. Assigned such status inevitably and by default, any single segmented unit only emits its totality of meaning when bonded to and decoded within the larger plexus of which it is a mainstay. Thus, the enterprise here proposed leads us, as readers, not merely to a redeciphering of textual events, but to a refractive posture, an incessant oscillation: the readerly experience is a composite of the writerly multiplicity that is discharged as the by-product of that movement. The work requires proactive participation in the ever-shifting exponents which continue to evolve as the process of reading accrues. The theme of alienation reached an unprecedented level of sophistication and, concomitantly, ambiguity in post World War II narratives. For many writers, the twin vistas of apocalyptic horror—the Holocaust and Hiroshima—forever altered how they viewed themselves and those around them. After reading Wiesel’s account of his experiences in Auschwitz, Lawrence Langer confirmed that everything had changed: Wiesel’s Night is the terminus a quo for any investigation of the implications of the Holocaust, no matter what the terminus ad quem; on its final page a world lies dead at our feet, a world we have come to know as our own as well as Wiesel’s, and whatever civilization may be rebuilt from its ruins, the silhouette of its visage will never look the same.1

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Introduction

After Hiroshima, Camus proclaimed in an editorial on August 8, 1945 of Combat that man’s barbarity had reached its apex: “La civilisation mécanique vient de parvenir à son dernier degré de sauvagerie.” The unimaginable brutality of genocide and the efficient and deliberate slaughter of millions whose only “crime” was to have been designated as the “other” brought the issue of outsiderness to the forefront of public consciousness. A new awareness emerged regarding the dangers posed by viewing the world through the binary optic of an “us versus them” mentality, of blithely determining who would be entitled to full rights as citizens and who would not. The precursors of this questioning were no doubt the existentialists who maintained that identity was a function of contingent conditions rather than an unchanging essence. In the post-war era, many writers whose status was compromised or diminished by their perceived “apartness” used the literary artifact to challenge the prevailing myths responsible for their exclusionary status, to exploit the very issues of gender, race and sexual orientation that have emerged as major themes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In the pages that follow, I seize the broad paradigm of alienation and apply to it specific parameters and conditions so as to bring coherence to a topic innately resistant to order, but one which lends itself to a controlled analysis if adequately constrained. The defining principles at play extend to both writer and work. All are post World War II novels and, more importantly, all the authors included in the study are representative of a counter-culture—that is to say, they are linked to a subordinate group that is socially, politically or culturally outside the mainstream. The “outsider” status of each of these authors is quite different. Two writers who at first glance appear to belong to the white majority are actually minorities in the culture in which they wrote. Camus—a Pied-Noir—is fundamentally a foreigner in his native Algeria; Sábato—a transplanted European of Italian descent—writes from within a geographical space dominated by members of an opposing class and culture. Richard Wright—an African American—provides a view of racism from the perspective of a black man in exile in Paris. Langevin’s writing is influenced by the complex issue of French–Canadian identity. Naipaul, Pineau and Zongo are all former colonial subjects. Elie Wiesel offers an example of social and religious non-inclusiveness. Genet speaks to us from the anti-establishment perspective of a homosexual and social rebel. Despite their obvious differences, what these authors have in common is their depiction of characters who manifest a palpable, even inescapable, sense of foreignness—a failure, at times a refusal, to fit within, to adhere, to conform. All the novels place center-stage—some more blatantly than others—the painful experience of some kind of estrangement, some form of disaffection, of separation, of distance, of isolation or rupture. Author and subject collide and, in each case, this coupling of strangers writing about strangers provides a pluri-dimensionality that would otherwise not be possible. The disaffected writer, extradited to the margins, chooses to write about characters adrift, decentered and splintered. This compelling project undertakes a study of exponential fracture, of the fractured by the fractured and the striking consequences of that awkward union. Each chapter presents a different set of exponents which in some sense is set apart from the others. The unicity of the work and what constitutes its appeal to readers is the effacement of equivalencies within the text, an effacement that leads ultimately

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to a debunking of conventional mythologies. Because each of these somewhat unwieldy narratives is penned by a disenfranchised creator intoning a disenfranchised creation, the narrative codes embedded in the text are not merely author-specific, but text-bound as well. There lurks within the analysis of each work under review an examination of the fundaments of an exclusive problematic. As indicated above, the theme of alienation exploded in the post-war period. Many writers, themselves alienated to some degree in the society in which they wrote, took this opportunity to explore the theme of alienation in their works. Camus’ L’Étranger (1942) is the first work to be examined. Camus was a Pied-Noir—a Frenchman born in Algeria. But as Christopher C. Robinson points out, in reality he was a man without a country.2 His father died at the Battle of the Marne while Albert was still an infant. The remaining family members were poor and valued physical labor over intellectual achievement. In this sense, Camus had more in common with the native Algerians than the well-to-do French who colonized and controlled the country. He was, however, a Frenchman and, as a privileged child of Empire, he was viewed with some suspicion by the Algerians whose cause he generally supported.3 Although Camus enjoyed all the benefits provided by the French colonial power structure, he was a tireless advocate for equal rights for native Algerians. His defense of Algerians made him an enemy of the French ruling class; his insistence on an inclusive and composite Algeria earned the mistrust of militants. Jenn McKee writes that “Camus often hinted at an overriding sense of always being an outsider in the world, no matter his location or circumstances.”4 In the Mythe de Sisyphe he writes: “Pour toujours, je serai étranger à moi-même.”5 Camus’ most famous hero, Meursault, appears to the reader as an alien figure, one who prefers to remain on the periphery of society rather than engage with it directly. Meursault seems quite unperturbed by his marginalized social status, however, and even appears strangely unaware of the fact that others view him as odd or eccentric. As the novel progresses, Meursault begins very tentatively to establish a fairly strong social relationship with his neighbor, Raymond, and with a former co-worker, Marie. These relationships transform this independent free-thinker temporarily into an ideological conformist. As the group of friends bonds together during a beach outing, Meursault begins to adopt their values, and in so doing he demonstrates how quickly allegiance to personal principles can fade when it comes into conflict with the priorities and/or prejudices of one’s social network. The more socially entrenched Meursault becomes, the more he is unable to disentangle his desires from those of his companions. When Meursault fails in his mission to warn Raymond in time about the knife-wielding Arab, the group’s solidarity begins to collapse. Meursault decides to abandon his newly found social network and reaffirm his independence, but he is not quite able to do so. An unconscious compulsion to remain loyal to his group causes Meursault to kill Raymond’s enemy when he suddenly comes upon him. It is only in the isolation of his prison cell that he manages to regain his intellectual independence and his lucidity—that is to say, his authentic self. Ernesto Sábato (El Túnel) was the son of Italian immigrants who moved to Argentina to help industrialize the country. As a gringo, he was viewed with some hostility by the native Creole population. Because his family was more bourgeois than wealthy, however, he had little in common with other Europeans who formed part of the Argentinean social elite. Sábato belonged wholly to neither of these worlds and

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became extremely introverted. He was sent to secondary school in La Plata, a much larger city than Rojas, where he felt abandoned and isolated. He found some solace in the certitudes of science and mathematics and even considered a career in one of these disciplines. He later joined the Communist Party, but after traveling in Europe he became disillusioned with both science and communism. Sábato’s hero Castel, like Camus’ Meursault, is a social loner. But unlike Meursault, Castel is well aware of society’s negative attitude towards him. Castel accepts (somewhat begrudgingly) his social alienation until he meets a woman named María. After noting her interest in one of his paintings, he craves increased contact with her, perceiving her as a soulmate capable of filling the void in his life. Unfortunately, María is a married woman and is interested only in Castel the artist, not Castel the man. Increasingly frustrated by María’s preoccupation with his paintings and her indifference to his physical presence, Castel rages against all those who admire his works yet reject the man responsible for their creation. In the end, an embittered Castel chooses to destroy the painting that brought María into his life and then murders her as well. Jean Genet (Querelle de Brest) is one of the twentieth century’s most notorious outsiders. He was an incorrigible thief, an outspoken homosexual and an occasional drug-smuggler who celebrated evil in all its manifestations. An illegitimate child whose mother abandoned him, he was placed in an orphanage at an early age. At the age of seven he was sent to live with foster parents who already had a family of their own and who spoke a radically different dialect than Genet’s Parisian French. Although his relationship with his foster father was strained, he seemed to develop a strong bond with his foster mother. She died, however, just as he was entering his teens, and at about the same time he discovered his homosexuality. He had already begun stealing while living with his foster parents, and because they were unable to break him of this habit he was sent to reform school. From that point on, the pursuit of evil became something of a vocation. He was a male prostitute for a time in Marseilles, a black marketer in Germany, a beggar in Spain, a drug smuggler in various parts of Europe and an accomplished thief wherever he went. In his autobiographical account of his crimes, Journal du Voleur, the line between truth and fiction is impossible to establish. What is indisputable, however, is his acute and unremitting awareness of always being an outcast. He spent many years of his life in reform schools and prison, and began to hone his literary skills in prison. He probably would have died there had not Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau petitioned the president of France to issue a pardon. Genet risked deportation to the concentration camps by writing some of his most provocative texts during Hitler’s occupation of Paris. Even after becoming a celebrated writer, Genet chose to live on the margins of society. Genet’s hero, Querelle, like the author himself, is the quintessential outsider, and proud of it. But the most alienated relationship in the novel is not between Querelle and his society but between Genet and his text. If Genet had hoped to escape, however temporarily, his quotidian vulgarity, Querelle de Brest demonstrates the futility of such an endeavor. In this novel, “reality” triumphs over and corrupts art, ensconcing the hero ever deeper into the sordid messiness from which his “art” (that is to say, his murders which he regards as a creative act) had appeared to promise some deliverance. The failure of the aesthetic enterprise to provide a barrier between lofty idealism and vulgar reality is metatextually represented in Querelle de Brest, a novel

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wherein the narrator is unable to prevent the aesthetic and the profane from leaching into one another—a process that proves mutually destructive to both. Richard Wright (The Outsider) was born in Mississippi, a state he once labeled the most backward in America. After his father abandoned the family, his mother struggled to make ends meet and she was forced to put Richard and his brother in an orphanage. Though she retrieved her children a short time later, the experience provoked early fears of abandonment and anxiety. Wright grew up in the segregated south but refused to manifest a submissive posture when dealing with whites. His brazen confidence set him apart from his black peers, and it infuriated southern whites. Wright spent a lifetime trying to escape the debilitating consequences of American racism. In Black Boy—his semi-autobiographical account of his early years—he depicts the anguish resulting from his fractured sense of self: “I was a non-man, something that knew vaguely that it was human but felt that it was not.”6 Eventually he moved to Chicago, then to New York, and then traveled to Paris where, for the first time, he felt liberated from the burden of being black. When he returned to New York, he was distressed to find that racism in America had increased. His early attachment to communism and his outspoken criticism of American racism caught the attention of both the CIA and the FBI. He often felt he was being watched, and his feelings of paranoia doubtless affected his health and contributed to his early death. There are some who believe his death was engineered by the government, though there is no hard evidence of foul play. Although he traveled all over the world, Wright never escaped the feeling of being an outsider. The apartness of Wright’s hero, Cross Damon, can be traced back to his racial distinctiveness. Paradoxically and problematically, what makes of Cross a singular emblem of alienation is what I term the hyper-embeddedness of the narrative in which the protagonist is steeped, and by which he is speciously dissolved. The novel thus becomes a form of literary subterfuge—one that in no way fulfills the promise of its hypothesis. It is a narrative that embeds and buries its ostensibly central personage, who from outset to conclusion recoils, recants, recasts and regresses until the stuff of what might have been his very being is rescinded. Cross’ narrative is one of defeat and self-defeat in which the ostensible hero, decentered by the centrifugal force of a narrative unable to accommodate him, loses his footing and ultimately his place. André Langevin (Poussière sur la Ville) lost both his parents at the age of seven and spent seven years in an orphanage. This experience was in itself quite alienating but Langevin was also québecois—part of a francophone minority living in an anglophone country. Ever since the British gained control of Canada in the mideighteenth century, French Canadians have resisted assimilation in order to preserve their cultural heritage and language. Initially, this manifested itself in a self-protective isolationism. In the wake of World War II, French Canadian writers embraced a more worldly perspective. André Langevin was part of this new wave of novelists who were intent on moving the literature of Quebec beyond familiar themes. Langevin’s Poussière sur la Ville is existential in tone and focuses on the quest to find solidarity and meaning in a hostile, unwelcoming environment. The protagonists, Madeleine and Alain Dubois, are geographical outsiders and social misfits in the small mining town to which they have relocated. What is interesting in this text is that outsiderness is ultimately transformed into a force for good. Alain Dubois’ commitment to defending his wife’s adulterous relationship with a handsome local

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boy earns him universal contempt. Pushed from the social periphery to the very edge of inconsequentiality by hostile compatriots, Dubois stubbornly defends his wife’s behavior—a defense that demonstrates the depth of his commitment to ensure her happiness. His pledge to minister to all, even to those who oppose him, demonstrates that the true spirit of community resides not in the artificial repression of individual differences but rather in the capacity to look beyond them to locate the points of commonality that unite us all. After World War II, formerly colonized nations clamored earnestly for independence. Liberation from the legacy of colonization, however, proved much more difficult. The racism, class rivalry and linguistic domination imposed by the colonizers remained, creating a host of identity problems for the indigenous population. Gisèle Pineau (L’Exil selon Julia)—one of two Caribbean writers to be studied in this work— suffered from the consequences of the collapse of colonialism, even though she was born and educated in Paris. Her parents emigrated to France from Guadeloupe shortly after World War II and her family lived in a housing project, isolated from mainstream Parisians. While in France, Pineau was exposed to the most virulent forms of racism due to the color of her skin. Her classmates taunted her; her teachers demeaned her. The family returned to the Caribbean after the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle. Pineau later returned to France to attend college but she found that little had changed. She was consistently made to feel like an intruder, an outsider who would never belong, no matter how well she spoke French or how culturally assimilated she appeared to be. Because of her Caribbean origins, she was always deemed inferior to those born in the métropole. The “arbitrariness” of outsiderness is forefronted in Pineau’s novel L’Exil selon Julia. The novel is structured around the narrator’s quest to recover that part of her identity that was lost in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade. The recovery of a fundamental sense of self—a self beyond the superficiality of racial stereotypes— prompts the narrator to try to uncover the person beneath the persona. It is only when she meets her paternal grandmother—Man Ya—however, that the narrator discovers a means by which to break free from the prison of being either white and French or nothing at all. Through the example of Man Ya, the narrator learns to perfect the art of extrapolating reality from the remnants of discarded truths. Transposed into emancipating narratives, these extrapolations ultimately ensure that an authentic black perspective remains accessible to countless victims of colonial conquest. V. S. Naipaul (Guerrillas) was born in the British colony of Trinidad to parents active in the Indian community. Chandra B. Joshi affirms that “West Indians, whether they are Negroes or Whites or Asians—are all exiles born into exile.”7 Quoting from a letter to Henry Swanzy, Naipaul’s biographer Patrick French encapsulates the sense of non-belongingness that affected Naipaul throughout his career: “Nobody loves me, nobody wants me. In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1000 sq. miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.”8 A member of neither the white ruling class nor the dominant black population, Naipaul felt doubly marginalized in Trinidad. He grew to resent the power and influence of the black majority—an attitude that some maintain surfaces occasionally in his interviews and writings. As a result of this perceived bias, many black Trinidadians are reluctant to consider him as one of their own. Others argue that his writings often seem to defend rather than criticize colonial society. In truth, he had little regard for any of Trinidad’s

Introduction

xv

ethnic groups and was eager to leave the stifling squalor of island life. After World War II, he was awarded a scholarship to study in England where he took up residence. Though his departure was voluntary, he is often classified under the rubric of exiled writers. A long-time resident of England, he sees himself even today an alien in an alien land. Dagmar Barnouw refers to him as “the archetypical homeless intellectual, the eternal wanderer, the ‘ultimate exile.’”9 Naipaul’s novel Guerrillas focuses on the unhappy legacy of colonial conquest, a legacy that has left entire nations alienated from themselves and their culture. In the novel, the island’s dominant white minority, despite the passage of time, continues to wield political, economic and cultural control. European control is so entrenched that even post-independence, a brutal murder by a local black activist can be transformed into inconsequentiality by the manipulative discourse of the cultural elite. Norbert Zongo (Le Parachutage) was born in Burkina Faso. He was a journalist who championed democracy, human rights and free speech in a country held hostage by a corrupt and dictatorial government. He was dismissed from the University of Abidjan because of his outspoken political opinions. As a journalist and writer committed to telling the truth, he became something of a political untouchable. He wrote under the pen name of Henri Segbo and served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper l’Indépendant. He frequently attacked government policies in his articles and survived a number of attempts on his life. He was investigating the brother of President Blaise Compaoré when his car was firebombed by government officials. His death was never fully investigated and no one was officially charged with his murder. In Le Parachutage, the corrupt political leader Gouama is cast as the novel’s outsider. The first president of his country post-independence, Gouama shows scant concern for the welfare of his newly liberated country or its people. During the course of the novel, Gouama is overthrown in a coup and is forced to reintegrate himself into his culture in order to survive. He appears briefly to regain his faith in Africa and its people, but this “rehabilitation” proves to be short-lived. Once he finds asylum and political support in a neighboring country, his only thought is how to regain the presidency and continue to exploit his people for personal gain. Le Parachutage thus inverts the paradigm of the traditional Bildungsroman. At the end of his odyssey, Gouama is as narrow-minded, intolerant and self-centered as before—a circular structure that reflects Africa’s tragic lack of progress in the post-colonial era. Elie Wiesel’s Le Cinquième Fils is, appropriately, the final chapter of this investigation into the theme of outsiderness in post World War II narrative. As a boy, Elie Wiesel experienced no feelings of estrangement, though he acknowledges that his close-knit community of orthodox Jews was quite isolated from the European mainstream. Born in Sighet, Transylvania (now part of Romania), he felt nurtured by his family and his religious teachers. He took delight in his studies and immersed himself in studying Jewish mysticism while preparing for life as a Talmudic scholar. In 1933, when Wiesel was only 5, those outside the walls of Sighet began to view Jews as a dangerous threat to European stability. With Hitler’s rise to power, anti-Semitism raged unchecked. Eventually, the Jews of Sighet were rounded up, sequestered in a ghetto and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. Wiesel survived, but after liberation he had no home to which he might return. He was sent to France where he was obliged to learn a new language, the language in which he now writes. He would become a citizen of the United States in 1963. Since the time of his internment, Wiesel has

xvi

Introduction

seen himself as an exilé, and in his writings and interviews he admonishes the world for having done nothing to prevent the extermination of six million innocent men, women and children. As a Holocaust survivor, the sense of alienation that emerges in his writings is in a category all by itself. Le Cinquième Fils suggests that alienation might be the only heroic option in a world where monsters constitute the mainstream. The child of parents who survived the Holocaust, the unnamed narrator feels estranged from both parents. Because he did not share their horror, he finds it difficult to engage with either his mother, who looks past him, or his father, who buries himself in scholarly pursuits. His feelings of alienation are intensified when he discovers he had a brother who was killed by the Nazis. In order to establish a bond with his parents, he chooses to conjoin himself to their past by returning to Germany to kill the man who killed his brother. In the end, he chooses life over revenge, but also chooses to “become” the brother whose life was taken. As a consequence of his decision to take on the identity of his murdered brother, the narrator is unable to move forward and have a life of his own. Suspended in time, he waits patiently for redemption or closure, neither of which is likely to come. What he comes to understand, however, is that, as painful as history is for the Jews, their identity remains rooted in the past, and in the absence of history they can have no identity at all. Throughout this study, the reader will engage in a journey of sorts—an odyssey—while encountering newly cast rereadings from an internationally diverse group of prestigious writers: Camus (Algeria), Sábato (Argentina), Wiesel (Romania), Genet (France), Naipaul (Trinidad), Langevin (Canada), Pineau (Guadeloupe), Wright (US, but writing from Paris in self-imposed exile) and Zongo (Burkina Faso). At the conclusion, the foundational substance which the perspicacious reader should take away from this multicultural agglomeration is the quintessence of difference. For above and beyond the likenesses that conjoin each to the other (chronology, geography, periodicity, modernity, estrangement, disaffection, isolation, art, genre and fundamental dualism), each is compellingly disjointed from all the others, and it is therein that resides the specificity that privileges the text as a narrative unto itself. The fundamental disjunction so invoked is multifariously compounded by the dyadic structure that over-determines each work: the severed writer at counterpoint with the severed figure as crafted. Difference takes on not merely the prowess borne of a non-derivative paradigm, but a centrality whose operations collaborate obligatorily, unoptionally, in the confluence that emerges from the larger enterprise. Poetically, semiotically, philosophically, even philologically, the nexus or contiguity of structures otherwise ill at ease, each in the presence of the other, turns Derridean difference into something other, as yet resistant to definition and surely marked by the very defiance that it begets. Exponential difference is the only victor, the cipher of yet unnamable triumph and the underlying link, forcefully heaving beneath the surface of this study of works otherwise characterized by their very apartness.

1

1.

Contagions of Conformity in Camus’ L’ÉTRANGER1

L’Étranger was published in France in 1942 during the German occupation.2 Consequently, it is not technically a post-war narrative, but the work offers nonetheless an ideal starting point for an examination into the evolving concept of “outsiderness.” Camus’ enigmatic protagonist has preoccupied readers for over a half a century, and there is little danger that critics will exhaust any time soon the interpretive possibilities that his narrative provides. Because of Camus’ pivotal role in the existentialist movement, L’Étranger is often read as a kind of philosophical Bildungsroman wherein the protagonist moves from a state of self-indulgent unawareness towards metaphysical lucidity as a result of his experiences. In such readings, Meursault’s detached egocentrism, so prominently in evidence in Part One, is supplanted by his discovery of an indifferent universe in Part Two. The problem with this reading is that it suggests that Meursault undergoes a fundamental intellectual shift, when, in truth, he simply confirms what he already suspected (“J’avais eu raison, j’avais encore raison, j’avais toujours raison” [1208]).3 One of Meursault’s metaphysical certainties is that the inevitability of death nullifies any sense of purpose in life, making it hardly worth living at all (“Mais tout le monde sait que la vie ne vaut pas la peine d’être vécue” [1204]). But this rather banal observation from a condemned man provides scant evidence of a metaphysical transformation. Indeed, its very lack of sophistication underscores the fact that neither Meursault nor his thought can be said to evolve much within the novel.4 Meursault’s fundamental intellectual perspective and his situational reality remain fairly static from beginning to end. We first see him within the prison-like setting of the retirement home wherein death stalks the residents, and we last see him on death row, awaiting execution. His dispassionate impartiality, his preoccupation with sensual gratification and his ineloquent and depersonalized narrative manner remain unaltered. Meursault in prison is very much the same character we saw at his mother’s funeral. He remains almost pathologically observant: Malgré la chaleur (j’étais en manches de chemise), il avait un costume sombre, un col cassé et une cravate bizarre à grosses raies noires et blanches. (1170)

considerate of others: J’ai trouvé qu’il était très commode que la justice se chargeât de ces détails. Je le lui ai dit. (1169)

2

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

brutally honest: Il m’a demandé s’il pouvait dire que ce jour-là j’avais dominé mes sentiments naturels. Je lui ai dit: “Non, parce que c’est faux.” (1170) J’ai réfléchi et j’ai dit que, plutôt que du regret véritable, j’éprouvais un certain ennui. (1174)

and frustratingly unengaged: Au début, je ne l’ai pas pris au sérieux. (1169) J’allais lui dire qu’il avait tort de s’obstiner: ce dernier point n’avait pas tellement d’importance. (1173) Et même, dans un sens, cela m’intéressait de voir un procès. Je n’en avais jamais eu l’occasion dans ma vie. (1182)

More importantly, throughout the novel he maintains his defiance of authority and resists most of the attempts to encourage a change in him. When the chaplain enters his cell hoping to extract the conventional mea culpa from the repentant captive, Meursault very nearly strangles him. The only slight change in Meursault’s behavior (although this is short-lived) is that his social life gains momentum just after he returns from his mother’s funeral. As the novel progresses, his social entanglements intensify, obliging him increasingly to mimic the behaviors and attitudes of those around him or face the social consequences (social exclusion) of his non-conformity. When he later tries to reclaim his individuality, however, he finds that he is no longer able to untangle his attitude from that of his friends, to separate his ideology from that of his counterparts. Torn between competing allegiances to self and others, he fatally wounds the Arab adversary of a friend, although this is a man with whom he has no personal quarrel whatsoever. Meursault’s temporary surrender to social conformity offers an example of the socially bred impulse to demonize those designated as “outsiders” by others in a position of some authority.5 Just as Meursault kills an Arab because Raymond dislikes him, so does the state execute Meursault on the strength of the manipulated and contorted testimony of the director of the retirement home and the corroborating accounts of impressionable elderly residents who are under his control. During the course of the novel, Meursault makes two fatal errors. First, he audaciously breaches protocol at the retirement home. He then surrenders his individuality to the needs of the group when he kills Raymond’s enemy on the beach. L’Étranger, then, can be read as a commentary on the totalitarian impulses of the time. Christopher C. Robinson notes, “Albert Camus saw and fulfilled a need to reconceptualize traditional philosophical activities—judging, moralizing, and theorizing, for example—to meet the unique conditions of his totalitarian and genocidal age.”6 In this novel, the primal need to align oneself with the views of the majority extorts the moral capitulation not only of the prejudiced, but of the ambivalent and fair-minded as well.7 L’Étranger thus exposes how the need to belong can corrupt the personal judgment of even those for whom impartiality constitutes a cherished and inviolable principle. These individuals include Meursault himself, who briefly surrenders his individuality in order to protect the interests of his group; his mother

Contagions of Conformity

3

who, though not religious, insists on a church burial after being placed in the retirement home; and the supposedly impartial judges at Meursault’s trial who ultimately condemn him for behavioral non-conformity rather than for his crime. Yet what is even more striking is how the readers who are called upon to witness Meursault’s demonization actually participate in the process—a partisan reaction that reveals their own surrender to the power of presumed authority. Although the title of the novel leads the reader to assume the hero is some sort of social misfit, the initial depiction of Meursault as an “outsider” derives primarily from his seemingly casual indifference to the news of his mother’s death and his awkward mannerisms and behavior during her funeral. However, Meursault’s odd behavior at the home does not accurately reflect his typical demeanor. Though the title predisposes the reader to anticipate atypical behavior on his part, Meursault is in fact quite ordinary. The death of his mother and his visit to the home are extremely uncharacteristic situations for Meursault, and the novel takes care to depict this entire episode as a disconcerting interlude in his otherwise uneventful existence. In order to underscore the “foreignness” of the experience, the home is geographically displaced from Meursault’s home and comfort zone. This establishes Meursault as a geographical and cultural intruder in a foreign arena, with customs and rituals that are unfamiliar to him. Not surprisingly, Meursault seems woefully out of place immediately upon arrival. To begin with, his relative youth contrasts sharply with the grotesque tatters of human beings with whom he is called upon to interact. Moreover, Meursault’s fundamental ignorance of the home’s prevailing customs solidifies his outsider status (“J’ai voulu voir maman tout de suite. Mais le concierge m’a dit qu’il fallait que je rencontre le directeur” [1126]). All the routine protocols that the residents take for granted must be painstakingly explained to him, and this causes the elderly residents to view this uninformed intruder with unbridled suspicion (“Ils se taisaient quand nous passions. Et derrière nous, les conversations reprenaient” [1127]). From Meursault’s perspective, everything in the home has a distorted, unfamiliar air about it. The nurse in charge is disfigured by disease, and her jerky movements are but a source of conjecture for the mystified Meursault (“Je ne voyais pas ce qu’elle faisait. Mais au mouvement de ses bras, je pouvais croire qu’elle tricotait” [1129]). His sense of alienation is augmented further by his inability to understand the language of the residents (“On aurait dit d’un jacassement assourdi de perruches” [1127]). He cannot even say with any degree of certainty whether they are making an attempt to communicate at all: De temps en temps seulement, j’entendais un bruit singulier et je ne pouvais comprendre ce qu’il était. A la longue, j’ai fini par deviner que quelques-uns d’entre les vieillards suçaient l’intérieur de leurs joues et laissaient échapper ces clappements bizarres. (1130)

While, on the one hand, the residents of the home clearly view Meursault as an outsider in their midst, those in the home can hardly be seen as a cross section of mainstream humanity. Although they may constitute a clear majority inside the home, the residents appear to be quite eccentric, grotesque, even inhuman (“Pourtant je ne les entendais pas et j’avais peine à croire à leur réalité” [1129]). The alien portraits offered by Meursault seem to be expressly drawn to convey a sense of awe in the

4

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

company of the elderly residents. Meursault’s descriptive accounts are brutal and devoid of any sympathetic nuances that might logically be attached to these pathetic creatures who are guilty of no other crime than having grown old: Presque toutes les femmes portaient un tablier et le cordon qui les serrait à la taille faisait encore ressortir leur ventre bombé. Je n’avais encore jamais remarqué à quel point les vieilles femmes pouvaient avoir du ventre. Les hommes étaient presque tous très maigres et tenaient des cannes. Ce qui me frappait dans leurs visages, c’est que ne je ne voyais pas leurs yeux, mais seulement une lueur sans éclat au milieu d’un nid de rides. Lorsqu’ils se sont assis, la plupart m’ont regardé et ont hoché la tête avec gêne, les lèvres toutes mangées par leur bouche sans dents, sans que je puisse savoir s’ils me saluaient ou s’il s’agissait d’un tic. (1129–30) Ses lèvres tremblaient au-dessous d’un nez truffé de points noirs. Ses cheveux blancs assez fins laissaient passer de curieuses oreilles ballantes et mal ourlées dont la couleur rouge sang dans ce visage blafard me frappa. (1133)

In fact, though the residents clearly view Meursault as an intruder, they, too, are depicted as inconsequential outsiders, unwanted beings exiled to the distant edge of their social reality. In many respects, the elderly residents in the home at Marengo seem no better off than prisoners. Involuntary detainees rather than welcome residents, they are under constant surveillance by officials who control all aspects of their daily lives. The soldier seated next to Meursault on the bus foreshadows this notion of forced internment (“Et quand je me suis réveillé j’étais tassé contre un militaire qui m’a souri et qui m’a demandé si je venais de loin” [1126])—a foreshadowing that is concretized by the structured and codified reality Meursault discovers within the home. A grim combination of suspicion, fear and discomfort prevails. At times, the elderly appear to be the vulnerable victims of sadistic and controlling administrators who program, monitor and control routine behaviors. Rituals at the home allow for no variation or exemption; every move is scripted with chronological exactitude. Compliance with established protocols is enforced regardless of an individual’s preference on the matter. For example, inmates are permitted to attend the wake but not the burial when a fellow resident dies. Because Thomas Pérez has been granted special permission to attend the burial, he is therefore barred from keeping vigil over the body. Often, the conditions under which the residents and visitors are obliged to operate seem expressly designed to inflict pain, such as the grueling yet requisite vigil over the body (“. . . j’étais fatigué et les reins me faisaient mal” [1130]) and the arduous march to the distant graveside (“L’éclat du ciel était insoutenable” [1134]). Under these conditions, it is difficult to determine whether the perceived conformity of behavior is due to voluntary mimicry or brutal coercion. Small wonder that Meursault is eager to leave the home as quickly as possible. Back home, Meursault resumes easily his normal routine. Aside from a few relatively minor eccentricities, the unremarkable Meursault seems hardly worthy of the title imposed upon him.8 In fact, the unassuming Meursault seems an unlikely candidate for distinctiveness of any kind. Passions and principles are ephemeral concepts to this anti-hero who lives life in the most minor of keys. Empathetic and sensitive, he is loathe to offend others and is therefore quick to acknowledge the validity of opposing viewpoints. Meursault is notably careful to avoid articulating

Contagions of Conformity

5

extreme or oppositional views of any sort and is committed to living as frictionless an existence as possible. Even his sensual pleasures tend towards the mundane and the unspectacular: an occasional café au lait or bottle of wine, dry hand towels at work, a refreshing swim in the ocean, a sexual encounter with a pretty woman. He reveals no spectacular talents, no flamboyance of personality, no conversational brilliance, nothing that might serve to particularize him from anyone else.9 It bears noting also that Meursault is well liked by his co-workers and neighbors. Likewise, he makes a positive impression on those who meet him for the first time. Masson and his wife, for example, take an immediate liking to him, as does Marie. This indicates that, despite the titular designation, Meursault has excellent social skills. In fact, virtually everyone considers that he is charming and pleasant to be around. Even the juge d’instruction who initially decries his atheism is subsequently drawn to him (“le juge me reconduisait à la porte de son cabinet en me frappant sur l’épaule et en me disant d’un air cordial: ‘C’est fini pour aujourd’hui, monsieur l’Antéchrist’” [1174]). In prison, he quickly earns the sympathy of fellow Arab inmates, and even the gardien-chef. Meursault’s most, if not his only, distinctive characteristic is his pathological impartiality, his unwillingness to condemn or even to judge others. A man of few words and fewer convictions, Meursault prefers to observe the world from his window rather than to engage with it directly.10 In striking contrast to his opinionated and occasionally prejudiced counterparts, Meursault is reluctant to accept even the most fundamental tenets of conventional wisdom. More moralist than moralizer, he is alone in refusing to condemn Salamano for beating his dog (“Céleste dit toujours que ‘c’est malheureux,’ mais au fond, personne ne peut savoir” [1142]). He also fraternizes openly with his neighbor Raymond who is reputed to be a pimp (“Je trouve que ce qu’il dit est intéressant. D’ailleurs, je n’ai aucune raison de ne pas lui parler” [1143]). When offered an opportunity for professional advancement, Meursault declines the offer, refusing to concede that Paris is in any way preferable to Algiers despite conventional assumptions (“C’est sale. Il y a des pigeons et des cours noires. Les gens ont la peau blanche” [1154]). He will not even articulate the meaningless and unbinding emotional clichés that serve to “legitimize” sexual relationships. Meursault seems in fact to support indiscriminately the cause of everyone he meets, refusing to privilege one position or person over any other, even on the emotional plane: Elle voulait simplement savoir si j’aurais accepté la même proposition venant d’une autre femme, à qui je serais attaché de la même façon. J’ai dit: “Naturellement.” (1154)

Meursault’s narrative manner, like the man himself, is a rather drab conglomeration of impersonal nuances. The hero is not one to dominate by the frantic force of rhetoric. On the contrary, he offers neither linguistic enigmas to disentangle nor elliptical pronouncements to interpret. He is, in fact, so obsessed with narrative precision that he often corrects his own initial observations: J’avais même l’impression que cette morte, couchée au milieu d’eux, ne signifiait rien à leurs yeux. Mais je crois maintenant que c’était une impression fausse. (1130) J’ai eu l’impression que Raymond savait où il allait, mais c’était sans doute faux. (1163)

6

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

During the trial, Meursault’s inability to articulate coherently his thoughts compromises his defense. His discourse often appears diluted and tentative. It is not, in other words, a discourse capable of defending a position or offering a persuasive argument—goals which are, in any case, incompatible with his personality. Meursault’s non-partisan stance is itself a distinguishing feature in a narrative context in which judgmental opinions are everywhere in evidence. It seems that everyone in the novel makes, and is in turn subject to, some sort of evaluative assessment. For example, the neighbors have all concluded that the well-dressed man Meursault watches from his apartment window has made a poor marriage choice. Everyone complains about how Salamano treats his dog. Rumor has it that Raymond is a pimp (“Dans le quartier, on dit qu’il vit des femmes” [1143]). Meursault, too, we discover, is the target of opinionated commentary. Salamano reveals that the neighborhood was quite critical of his decision to send his mother off to a rest home (“Il m’a dit alors, très vite et avec un air gêné, qu’il savait que dans le quartier on m’avait mal jugé parce que j’avais mis ma mère à l’asile” [1157]). In such a judgmental arena, it is not surprising to discover that most of the characters in the novel worry about the impression they make on others. At the home, the concierge is quick to underscore his apartness from the others, and to point out to Meursault his “elevated” status: Dans la petite morgue, il m’a appris qu’il était entré à l’asile comme indigent. Comme il se sentait valide, il s’était proposé pour cette place de concierge. Je lui ai fait remarquer qu’en somme il était un pensionnaire. Il m’a dit que non. (1128)

Raymond, too, is eager to protect his tough-guy image and worries that Meursault’s opinion of him will be diminished when he is humiliated by the policeman: Il m’a demandé alors si j’avais attendu qu’il réponde à la gifle de l’agent. J’ai répondu que je n’attendais rien du tout et que d’ailleurs je n’aimais pas les agents. Raymond a eu l’air très content. (1150)

Even Meursault betrays a strong desire to be viewed favorably by others. Like his counterparts, he is concerned about his image and how his actions are perceived. He is particularly eager to be reviewed favorably by his boss. He makes a point of being punctual (“Il était tard et j’ai couru pour attraper un tram” [1142]) and is even hesitant to ask for time off from work to attend his mother’s funeral (“J’ai demandé deux jours de congé à mon patron et il ne pouvait pas me les refuser avec une excuse pareille. Mais il n’avait pas l’air content” [1125]). He is also loathe to accept personal calls at work for fear of displeasing his boss (“J’ai voulu raccrocher tout de suite parce que je sais que le patron n’aime pas qu’on nous téléphone de la ville” [1153]). When his lack of enthusiasm for a promotion angers his boss, Meursault regrets having jeopardized his employee standing (“J’aurais préféré ne pas le mécontenter, mais je ne voyais pas de raison pour changer ma vie” [1154]). For a man eager to please, all these negative assessments are troubling. Meursault’s self-consciousness sheds light on why he is so discomfited at the home. The critical scrutiny of the elders and staff at Marengo makes him extremely anxious, and he is quite upset about the poor impression he knows he is making:11

Contagions of Conformity

7

J’ai cru qu’il me reprochait quelque chose et j’ai commencé à lui expliquer. (1126) Il s’est interrompu et j’étais gêné parce que je sentais que je n’aurais pas dû dire cela. (1127) Je ne sais pas quel geste j’ai fait, mais il est resté, debout derrière moi. Cette présence dans mon dos me gênait. (1128) J’ai eu un moment l’impression ridicule qu’ils étaient là pour me juger. (1130)

In a society where one’s social standing is determined largely by visual indicators, resemblance constitutes the outward sign of one’s inclusiveness. Straw hats, bow ties and dapper clothing convey signs of good breeding and an elevated social status. Social groups can be recognized by their conventional manner of dress and behavior. The popular young men in the neighborhood all sport similar hair and clothing styles (“Un peu plus tard passèrent les jeunes gens du faubourg, cheveux laqués et cravate rouge, le veston très cintré, avec une pochette brodée et des souliers à bouts carrés” [1138]). The girls share similar gaits and gestures (“Les jeunes filles du quartier, en cheveux, se tenaient par le bras” [1139]. Members of the town’s athletic team have similar-looking suitcases (“Les tramways suivants ont ramené les joueurs que j’ai reconnus à leurs petites valises” [1139]). Meursault’s desire to please others, to fit in with his peers, causes him, too, to prize resemblance over distinctiveness. He expresses the desire to be seen as just an ordinary man, indistinguishable from those with whom he regularly interacts: J’avais le désir de lui affirmer que j’étais comme tout le monde, absolument comme tout le monde. (1171) Sans transition, il m’a demandé si j’aimais maman. J’ai dit: “Oui, comme tout le monde . . .” (1172)

This latent desire to belong, to resemble his peers, is evident in Meursault’s tendency to replicate the gestures of those around him. He is depicted as a follower rather than a leader. Shortly after he returns home from his mother’s funeral, we see him alter his sitting posture to mimic that of the tobacconist (“J’ai retourné ma chaise et je l’ai placée comme celle du marchand de tabac” [1138]). He confirms his desire to enter into a relationship with a former office secretary by following her lead and replicating her gestures (“Je me suis hissé à côté d’elle sur la bouée” [1136]; “Quand le soleil est devenu trop fort, elle a plongé et je l’ai suivie” [1136–7]). As the liaison progresses, Meursault continues to pattern his actions after hers (“Marie m’a appris un jeu. Il fallait, en nageant, boire à la crête des vagues, accumuler dans sa bouche toute l’écume et se mettre ensuite sur le dos pour la projeter contre le ciel” [1148]). Similarly, his allegiance to Raymond is confirmed when he assumes the latter’s identity and writes a letter on his behalf.12 This impulse to imitate others, however, is in conflict with Meursault’s only distinctive trait: his characteristic ambivalence. As the novel progresses, Meursault’s desire to belong triumphs briefly over his ambivalence. Whereas his early encounters with Raymond are characterized by impartial neutrality (“Je n’ai rien dit et il m’a demandé encore si je voulais être son copain. J’ai dit que ça m’était égal: il a eu l’air content” [1144]), this indifference shades slowly but perceptively into biased partisanship (“Il m’a demandé si je pensais qu’il y avait de la tromperie, et moi, il me

8

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semblait bien qu’il y avait de la tromperie, si je trouvais qu’on devait la punir et ce que je ferais à sa place, je lui ai dit qu’on ne pouvait jamais savoir, mais je comprenais qu’il veuille la punir” [1145]). Partisanship then evolves almost seamlessly into advocacy. When cries from Raymond’s battered mistress can be heard coming from his apartment, Meursault makes no effort to help or even to call the police. He later agrees to act as Raymond’s character witness at the police station (“J’ai accepté de lui servir de témoin” [1150]). The ease with which Meursault’s heralded ambivalence turns into active complicity offers a chilling confirmation of Marie’s earlier observation regarding the inconstancy of his convictions (“Après un autre moment de silence, elle a murmuré que j’étais bizarre, qu’elle m’aimait sans doute à cause de cela mais que peut-être un jour je la dégoûterais pour les mêmes raisons” [1154]). Meursault’s acceptance of Raymond’s abusive behavior demonstrates how effortlessly passive neutrality can develop into active support. Despite his ostensible commitment to impartiality and evenhandedness, Meursault is easily persuaded to become Raymond’s partner in crime in exchange for one or two bottles of wine and some black pudding.13 A grateful Raymond later invites Meursault to spend the day at a friend’s beach house. The episode with Raymond, Marie and Meursault at the beach constitutes a palpable turning point in the novel. This section contains some of the novel’s most lyrical passages and it is the moment when Meursault appears at his most natural, most well adjusted, most contented.14 The multiplicity of sensual pleasures at the beach (intimacy with Marie, refreshing swims, copious wine, culinary gratification) seems to have a positive effect on Meursault. At the beach, he almost appears to be a changed man, and for the first time seriously considers marrying Marie (“Pour la première fois peut-être, j’ai pensé vraiment que j’allais me marier” [1160]). He even makes tentative plans to spend the entire summer at the beach with his new friends (“Masson, Raymond et moi, nous avons envisagé de passer ensemble le mois d’août à la plage, à frais communs” [1161]). Meursault’s clearly altered viewpoint is troubling because it demonstrates how quickly allegiance to personal principles can fade when they come into conflict with the priorities and/or prejudices of one’s social network. The more socially entrenched Meursault becomes, the more persuaded he is to adopt the perspectives of his peers. His transformation from an independent-thinking individualist to a conforming automaton is particularly evident during the scuffle on the beach. When Raymond, Masson and Meursault meet up with Raymond’s adversary, the two long-standing friends (Raymond and Masson) accept Meursault as one of their own, and he is assigned a role in their battle for territorial (and perhaps racial) supremacy. 15 Meursault is to act as the group’s lookout and to take on any additional adversaries should they appear on the scene. Meursault’s eager compliance with Raymond’s directives demonstrates the strength of his desire to be a contributing member of the group, and how eager he is to execute successfully his somewhat marginalized but critical assignment.16 During the fight, he notices that one of the Arabs is armed and he calls out a warning. Unfortunately his call comes too late, and Raymond is wounded by his adversary. Despite his best effort, Meursault fails in his assigned task to protect his group. In the aftermath of the assault, Meursault finds himself isolated once again. The wound Raymond suffers has the effect of fracturing the intense feelings of fraternal

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bonding that surfaced during the confrontation. While Masson and Raymond go for medical attention, Meursault is left behind to deal with the crying women. He is feeling emasculated and abandoned: Il est parti avec Masson et je suis resté pour expliquer aux femmes ce qui était arrivé. Mme Masson pleurait et Marie était très pâle. Moi, cela m’ennuyait de leur expliquer. J’ai fini par me taire et j’ai fumé en regardant la mer. (1163)

Further evidence of fraternal unraveling can be seen in Raymond’s hostile attitude upon his return. As Raymond heads back towards the beach, he angrily rejects Meursault’s offer to accompany him (“Masson et moi avons dit que nous allions l’accompagner. Alors, il s’est mis en colère et nous a insultés” [1163]). Not yet ready to accept ostracism, Meursault follows. When they meet up with the Arabs a second time, Meursault’s use of the first person plural reveals that Meursault continues to view his friend’s enemies as his own (“Là, nous avons trouvé nos deux Arabes” [1163]).17 The opportunity for a redemptive second battle and renewed social bonding presents itself, but again the moment of solidarity passes. There is no longer a definite consensus of opinion, no cohesive commitment to a course of action. Raymond, the group leader, has lost his alpha-male sense of confidence. Rather than bark orders as he did during the initial encounter (“S’il y a de la bagarre, toi, Masson, tu prendras le deuxième. Moi, je me charge de mon type. Toi, Meursault, s’il en arrive un autre, il est pour toi” [1162]), he is uncertain. He no longer commands but seems ready to follow, asking Meursault for advice (“Je le descends?” [1164]). During this second encounter, there are not three minds acting as one but rather two separate entities making separate determinations on the basis of isolated perspectives. Freed from the hypnotic power of group consensus, Meursault recovers his initial ambivalence (“J’ai pensé à ce moment qu’on pouvait tirer ou ne pas tirer”; “Rester ici ou partir, cela revenait au même” [1164]). Meursault now counsels Raymond to do nothing.18 When the two men return to the beach house, Meursault slowly reverts to type. He plans to leave his friends behind and return to his apartment. The social outing on the beach has demonstrated that social commitments always entail a concomitant loss of individuality, and Meursault seems uncertain as to whether or not the rewards of comradeship compensate for the loss of self-mastery. His ambivalence recalls the earlier Meursault—the detached, impartial colleague and neighbor who preferred passive observation to active engagement: Je l’ai accompagné jusqu’au cabanon et, pendant qu’il gravissait l’escalier de bois, je suis resté devant la première marche, la tête retentissante de soleil, découragé devant l’effort qu’il fallait faire pour monter l’étage de bois et aborder encore les femmes. Mais la chaleur était telle qu’il m’était pénible aussi de rester immobile sous la pluie aveuglante qui tombait du ciel. Rester ici ou partir, cela revenait au même. (1164)

Meursault does in fact decide to leave the entangled responsibilities of the collective behind, and he walks away from the cabin towards the beach. Determined to regain his lost identity, he moves determinedly back to his former life where he was responsible for himself alone. His decision to liberate himself from the group proves more difficult than anticipated, however. Every step away from the cabin requires

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

effort, and the journey is fraught with images recalling the memory of combat partnership and his failed role in the struggle. He observes that “C’était le même éclatement rouge” (1165); in other words, it was the the same hot sun that presided over the group’s original departure for the beach—a moment when Meursault felt the exhilaration of inclusiveness but also an odd disconnectedness from himself as the sun seemed to hit his face “comme une gifle” (1158). As he progresses along the beach, flashes of light teasingly recall the glistening knife he tried to call to Raymond’s attention (“A chaque épée de lumière jaillie du sable, d’un coquillage blanchi ou d’un débris de verre, mes mâchoires se crispaient” [1165]). He continues to forge ahead, however, and he almost breaks free (“J’avais envie de retrouver le murmure de son eau, envie de fuir le soleil, l’effort et les pleurs de femme, envie de retrouver l’ombre et son repos” [1165]). But just as he is on the threshold of liberation, Raymond’s Arab enemy suddenly reappears, blocking his path back to freedom and the absence of social responsibilities. The intense light, heat, fear and mental exhaustion weaken Meursault’s defenses and compromise his quest for independence. “C’était le même soleil, la même lumière sur le même sable qui se prolongeait ici” (1165), he observes again. It seems as if the sun were a call to arms, as if nature itself were conspiring against his attempt to regain mastery over his identity. Meursault tries to resist, tries to distance himself from a man who is essentially Raymond’s enemy, not his. Desperate to reach the shadows of self-exile, he wants only to move beyond this final reminder of his failure to fulfill his social obligations. The sun now fuses images of his mother’s burial with memories of the fight on the beach—both instances wherein he experienced painful feelings of alienation. The recollection of his mother’s burial conjures up images of his awkward outsider status in the rest home at Marengo. The memory of the confrontation with the Arabs recalls his belated warning to Raymond. Meursault thinks the Arab might be mocking him (“Peut-être à cause des ombres sur son visage, il avait l’air de rire” [1166]). Some inexplicable force—perhaps a lingering desire to belong, an underlying urge to renew his allegiance to Raymond and the group—drives him forward.19 The Arab reacts to Meursault’s menacing aggression by drawing his knife. The sun’s rays against the blade release a flash of light that transposes Meursault back in time to a moment when he was an “insider” and assigned responsibility for his group’s protection: La lumière a giclé sur l’acier et c’était comme une longue lame étincelante qui m’atteignait au front. Au même instant, la sueur amassée dans mes sourcils a coulé d’un coup sur les paupières et les a recouvertes d’un voile tiède et épais. (1166)

He will not fail the group a second time. As Meursault surrenders to his desire for social inclusion, the trigger gives way. In a disassociative fugue of misguided group loyalty, Meursault kills a man with whom he has no personal quarrel whatseover.20 The ease with which the independent-minded Meursault assumes the hatreds and prejudices of his social network contrasts sharply with his behavioral nonconformity during the funeral and burial of his mother. Immediately after the fatal shot, Meursault acknowledges his moral defeat. The surrender to the impulse of collective loyalty has eviscerated his quest for independence.21 In proper existentialist fashion, Meursault refuses to allow his last significant action to be a gesture of mindless capitulation to another man’s cause. When he realizes what he has done, he fires four

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additional shots into the corpse of the Arab. In so doing, Meursault takes ownership of his deed, symbolically denouncing his temporary surrender to ideological control.22 Meursault’s outsider status is formalized by the state. He is imprisoned and put on trial for murder. The courtroom scenes are reminiscent of those in the home at Marengo as he is once again subject to ritualistic protocols and faces a group of hostile onlookers seated directly across from him. Then, as now, he has the uneasy sense of being an accessory to the proceedings (“Je me suis expliqué aussi la bizarre impression que j’avais d’être de trop, un peu comme un intrus” [1183]). More significantly, he will be condemned a second time for the behavioral infractions he committed in the rest home. At the trial, it is not his murder of the Arab that is the focus of inquiry, but rather his earlier failure to express grief in a conventionally acceptable manner.23 In French-controlled Algeria at the time, the murder of an armed and threatening Arab by a Frenchman would have been deemed wholly justifiable. The refusal to mourn the death of one’s mother, on the other hand, is a clear indication of moral depravity. Behavioral non-conformity warrants the death penalty in this case. In prison, Meursault’s life begins to resemble that of the elderly residents imprisoned in the home at Marengo. There are a number of parallels linking the prison-like setting of the home to the actual prison wherein Meursault awaits his execution. In both locations, residency is involuntary.24 In both, inmates await an imminent rendezvous with death. Both the home and the prison maintain order through the establishment and enforcement of stringent rules and the deprivation of comfort. Linguistic cacophony, loss of identity, isolation and the omnipresent reality of lives being extinguished characterize the two environments. In both the home and the prison, the inmates ponder an imposed death sentence that is perceived by others to be logical and appropriate. The prisoners, like the elderly, are deemed by society to be expendable. Consequently, they are forcibly removed to the periphery of civilization where they hover at the edge of mainstream consciousness, out of sight and therefore out of mind. Not surprisingly, visitors rarely opt to frequent either the home or the prison. Just as Meursault admits to having rarely visited his mother in the home, he suffers the same infrequency of visits to the prison from Marie. Society’s reluctance to acknowledge the blighted existence of those designated as “outsiders” is underscored during Meursault’s trial as well. The reporter who stared at him so intently during the trial suddenly averts his gaze when the guilty verdict and sentence are read. Many critics have pointed out commonalities that link the novel’s three primary episodes: the burial of Meursault’s mother, the murder on the beach and Meursault’s imprisonment.25 In all three episodes, “outsiderness” is linked to a communal bias that is deliberately drawn to appear illogical or inappropriate. At the home, Meursault is condemned for behaviors that are in fact quite understandable (not wanting to look at the rapidly decomposing body, wanting to smoke a cigarette, drinking a café au lait). The camaraderie in evidence during the scuffle obscures the merits of the “other’s” cause (the brother’s defense of his sister who was brutalized by Raymond). Meursault’s presumed depraved indifference toward his mother, the crime for which he is to be executed, is belied by reality. In fact, Meursault loved and respected her. In other words, the evidence used to determine outsiderness is demonstrated to be flawed. These three primary episodes of the novel also demonstrate persuasively how ostracism ultimately confirms its own legitimization. The abusive treatment of the

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elderly is deemed necessary for their own protection; Arabs have no social standing and are therefore expendable; Meursault’s failure to express grief in a conventional manner during his mother’s funeral and burial suffices to justify his execution. A denatured son, Meursault, it is argued, deserves his punishment. Meursault’s sentence serves as a cautionary tale to those whose behaviors and attitudes run counter to those of the social mainstream. Outsiders are always easy targets for the irrational wrath of others. The victim is blamed ultimately for his own ostracism; ostracism is then used to validate punishment.26 Once alienated from the majority, the victims, guilty by reason of marginalization, are of no further consequence.27 This self-serving rationalization allows witnesses to self-exculpate, to hide the traces of their moral capitulation. Once Meursault’s distinctiveness is placed in evidence, a contagion of contempt prevails over evidentiary insufficiency (“j’ai eu une envie stupide de pleurer parce que j’ai senti combien j’étais détesté par tous ces gens-là” [1187]). Disgust legitimizes condemnation. Even Meursault begins to see himself as culpable (“J’ai senti alors quelque chose qui soulevait toute la salle et, pour la première fois, j’ai compris que j’étais coupable” [1187]). It bears noting that the trial’s verdict only confirms a culpability that the reader has been anticipating all along. Meursault was deemed guilty in the reader’s eyes from the outset on the basis of the titular designation. This initial characterization, provided by an authoritative narrator, predisposes the reader to view Meursault as a social misfit even before he/she reads his account of events. In consequence, Meursault’s first-person narrative is emptied of legitimacy in advance. The reader, having accepted in good faith the narrator’s assessment, unconsciously tries to justify the narrator’s verdict by scrutinizing the text for evidence of Meursault’s flaws.28 He or she tends to fasten upon an ambiguous initial comment and a few minor eccentricities in an attempt to bring title and primary character into close congruence. The reader’s unblinking complicity with the narrator’s prejudicial evaluation demonstrates how effectively a dominant opinion can persuade, even in the absence of evidence. Although the reader is provided with a number of examples that refute the titular assessment, he/she continues to read Meursault’s account through the prism of the narrator’s biased opinion. Readers allow themselves to be persuaded that the account they are about to consider is from the pen of a socially defective and therefore culpable being just because he has been so depicted by someone invested with the power to title the work. As a result of his outsider status, Meursault is twice denied the possibility of an impartial hearing: first by the narrator, who prejudices the reader against him, and second by the judges at the trial who believe that even the rumor of ideological nonconformity is sufficient cause to establish guilt. Likewise, the reader’s concurrence with the narrator’s judgment in the absence of evidence makes him or her an accomplice in Meursault’s victimization. Those who prejudge Meursault on the basis of the narrator’s unsubstantiated opinion are as morally culpable as the judges who condemn him.29 Outsiders often legitimize their excluded status by accepting their imposed subordination, thereby becoming willing accomplices in their own demise. The elderly and those in prison offer no real protest against their involuntary subordination. In fact, the chaplain insists that all prisoners eventually express remorse and ask for forgiveness. Meursault and his mother, on the other hand, constitute two exceptions to the rule. Both refuse ultimately to concede that their marginalized status provides proof of

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culpability, and both continue to believe firmly in their right to happiness. Despite her exile and imprisonment, Meursault’s mother brazenly takes on a fiancé late in life—an affirmation of her worth and her entitlement to experience pleasure. Meursault, too, continues to find contentment in everyday activities. His self-affirmation bursts forth when the chaplain forces his way into his cell in the hope of extracting the mea culpa that will confirm his guilt. The chaplain’s patriarchal and patronizing attitude is an attempt to establish a tautological link between condemnation and culpability, but Meursault refuses to legitimize his ideological casuistry. On the contrary, he finds a way to transform victimization into triumph. Like his mother, he too refuses to acknowledge the validity of the death sentence imposed upon him and is determined to live out his few remaining days as an innocent man.30 Indeed, for Meursault, alienation constitutes a badge of honor in that it puts him in opposition to those who condemn him—that is to say, in opposition to hypocrites eager and able to manipulate prejudice in order to sanction murder. Freed finally from the need to please others, Meursault regains exclusive domain over his thoughts and actions. His murder of the Arab resulted from a misguided desire to be part of a more powerful collective that included Raymond and Masson. He was condemned because the prosecutor was able to transform his characteristic detachment into active villainy. Communal prejudice, then, is responsible for at least two deaths in the novel—the Arab’s and Meursault’s. It is therefore with a sense of principled integrity that a clear-headed Meursault now embraces his outsider status and the ability to think for himself (“Comme si cette grande colère m’avait purgé du mal, vidé d’espoir, devant cette nuit chargée de signes et d’étoiles, je m’ouvrais pour la première fois à la tendre indifférence du monde” [1209]). Meursault’s emboldened attitude raises the possibility that those who capitulate to prevailing prejudices are the real prisoners. As evidenced by Meursault’s father’s reaction to an execution, rational murder, no matter how popular or appealing, is a denatured act—one that nauseates rather than satisfies. In the wake of Meursault’s death, the clamoring mob will experience no reassuring faith in the certitude of justice. They will confront only the palpable certainty of human loss and a foreshadowing of the death that awaits them all. As Meursault prepares to become one with the universe, he goes forward with the lucid awareness that the Meursault vilified by the mob has nothing in common with the Meursault who actually dies. His execution will, however, by alchemizing prejudice into moral necessity, provide yet another example of man’s willingness to capitulate to the psychic pressure to condemn and punish outsiders, no matter how arbitrary or erroneous the designation.

14

2.

The Art of Betrayal in Sábato’s EL TÚNEL1

Camus’ influence on Ernesto Sábato is suggested by the title to one of the English translations of this work—The Outsider.2 Although as Arthur Scherr points out, Castel is in many ways Meursault’s opposite, there are a number of similarities linking the two heroes.3 Both are misunderstood loners, both are obsessed with alienation and death in an unforgiving universe and both tread warily along the existential edges of their textual societies. Arguably, Sábato’s is the more alienated and anti-social of the two—an alienation that reflects the increasing sense of isolation and solitude of many contemporary novelists of his time. Hugo Méndez Ramírez observes, “Es importante señalar también que este paso de la simple soledad al desequilibro total del individuo concuerda con el desarrollo y evolucíon de la narrativa moderna.”4 What these two heroes have most in common is their violent response to the threat of ostracism. Both heroes resort to murder in a desperate attempt to extort significance from textual counterparts reluctant to include them.5 Juan Pablo Castel’s hyper-alienation in Sábato’s El Túnel has been attributed to a variety of neurological and psychological sources. Yet perhaps one of the more interesting and least explored aspects of Castel’s alienation is linked to his choice of profession: artistic representation. The conflict between the artist and his society is a threadbare concept, one dating back to Antiquity. Like many artists whose uncommon talent and elevated perspectives isolate them from the pedestrian mainstream, Castel appears as a consummate loner, ill at ease in most social settings (“Todo era tan elegante que sentí vergüenza por mi traje viejo y mis rodilleras. Y sin embargo, la sensación de grotesco que experimentaba no era exactamente por eso sino por algo que no terminaba de definir” [21]).6 Even his former friends consider him something of a misfit (“En la época en que yo tenía amigos, muchas veces se han reído de mi manía de elegir siempre los caminos más enrevesados” [59]). But if Castel shares some traits with traditional aesthetic loners, he also reveals at least one important distinction. As an aloof artist who regards the viewing public with unmitigated contempt, Castel engages only indirectly with his “audience” through the prism of the aesthetic artifact. In this, he does not differ appreciably from other eccentric artists. But what is unique to Castel is that he appears equally distanced from the works he creates, works he is unable to fully comprehend. In opposition to other misunderstood artists who find in their works an aesthetic connection that compensates somewhat for their social alienation, Castel is distanced not only from the public with whom he attempts to communicate via his works, but from the works themselves. At war both with society and with the higher imperatives of his artistic impulses, Castel wrestles with an increasingly debilitating need to connect with either

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his art or those it reaches. What he discovers, however, is that he is destined to remain alienated from both. Dually disconnected from the world beyond the canvas and the paintings for which he bears sole responsibility, Castel is not only socially and psychologically decentered but also aesthetically alienated as well. Consequently, the art that often provides solace to other creative artists serves only to augment Castel’s sense of fragmentation and marginalization. From the outset, Castel appears to the reader as a schizoid figure beset by antithetical needs and desires.7 By his own admission, he is plagued by irreconcilable moods and tendencies (“¡Cuántas veces esta maldita división de mi conciencia ha sido la culpable de hechos atroces!” [86]). At various moments, he appears both self-deprecating and elitist; sadistic and sensitive; cruel and compassionate; insightful and naïve; self-sacrificing and hedonistic; anti-social yet emotionally needy. Castel’s contradictory temperament betrays an odd and unsettling blend of Pascalian contempt and Cartesian grandeur. His loathing for mankind (“siempre he mirado con antipatía y hasta con asco a la gente, sobre todo a la gente amontonada” [49]) reveals unmistakable traces of Jansenist self-loathing. Castel regards man as an innately corrupt and self-serving species, fundamentally incapable of doing good or avoiding evil. Indeed, his disgust with the human race is so intense that the mere sight of people congregating together suffices to provoke physical discomfort: . . . pero, en general, la humanidad me pareció siempre detestable. No tengo inconvenientes en manifestar que a veces me impedía comer en todo el día o me impedía pintar durante una semana el haber observado un rasgo; es increíble hasta qué punto la codicia, la envidia, la petulancia, la grosería, la avidez y, en general, todo ese conjunto de atributos que forman la condicíon humana pueden verse en una cara, en una manera de caminar, en une mirada. Me parece natural que después de un encuentro así uno no tenga ganas de comer, de pintar, ni aun de vivir. (49)

Castel’s loathing for humanity, it must be emphasized, is not linked to a corresponding sense of behavioral or moral superiority on his part. His antipathy for human nature extends to himself as well. Castel is careful to point out that he is equally vain (“Y yo sentí dentro de mí, oscuramente, el vanidoso orgullo de haber acudido tan pronto” [12]) and every bit as self-serving (“Confieso este secreto para que vean hasta qué punto no me creo mejor que los demás” [12]) as the loathsome characters with whom he interacts. Castel harbors no illusions regarding his fundamental unworthiness or his capacity for evil, and he is painfully aware of his own behavioral failings. Indeed, he sees these flaws as the one thing he has in common with the wider community of depraved humanity (“Pero en aquel momento, como en otros semejantes, me encontraba solo como consecuencia de mis peores atributos, de mis bajas acciones. En esos casos siento que el mundo es despreciable, pero comprendo que yo también formo parte de él” [88–9]). Although Castel is quick to point out his innate resemblance to other men, he does admit to one distinguishing trait: intellectual superiority.8 Castel’s Cartesian pride of intellect is what he believes distinguishes him from the general population. He boasts of his capacity to draw conclusions from the most subtle of inferences, to make causal connections where the less intellectually agile see only random occurrences or coincidences:

16

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers Alguno podría creer, efectivamente, que es descabellado imaginar la remota posibilidad de que un conocido mío fuera a la vez conocido de ella. Quizá lo parezca a un espíritu superficial, pero no a quien está acostumbrado a reflexionar sobre los problemas humanos. (23–4)

This intellectual superiority allows him to transform social rejection into heroic martyrdom, to rationalize in part his social ostracism (“Generalmente, esa sensación de estar solo en el mundo aparece mezclada a un orgulloso sentimiento de superioridad: desprecio a los hombres, los veo sucios, feos, incapaces, ávidos, groseros, mezquinos; mi soledad no me asusta, es casi olímpica” [88]).9 His extraordinary intellect, he reasons, naturally elevates him above the general mediocrity that surrounds him. Delivered from the fog of incognizance and muddled reasoning that confounds his peers, Castel is better able to apply the brakes to the headlong surrender to innate instinct that is so prevalent in others. Endowed with a superior intellect and acute sense of awareness, Castel reveals an almost Cartesian conviction in the efficacy of intellectual self-discipline. The complexity of his intellectual faculties enables, even requires, him to continually order his thoughts, thereby enabling him to make enlightened decisions (“Mi cerebro es un hervidero, pero cuando me pongo nervioso las ideas se me suceden como en un vertiginoso ballet; a pesar de lo cual, o quizá por eso mismo, he ido acostumbrándome a gobernarlas y ordenarlas rigurosamente” [36]). Castel’s intellectual acuity convinces him that through sheer strength of will he can marshal the forces of real-life chaos into conformity and convert random contingency into malleable form. Linking intellectual will with behavioral mastery, Castel interprets pure coincidence as the realization of a carefully crafted scenario (“por ejemplo, en esta misma historia ¿no me había pasado meses razonando y barajando hipótesis y clasificándolas? Y, en cierto modo, ¿no había encontrado a María al fin, gracias a mi capacidad lógica?” [41]). Castel’s desire for control explains, perhaps, his choice of profession. As an artist, he endeavors to transform sordid reality (“Que el mundo es horrible, es una verdad que no necesita demostración” [10]) into ordered works of art, into ultra-disciplined representations wherein reason and order triumph over the messy chaos of existence. Proud of his ability to master his creative instincts with the force of reason, Castel applies the same mental rigor to his aesthetic practices that he uses to control his thought processes. Consequently, as he orders images on his canvas, he appears more committed to creative restraint than to free expression. Painting for Castel is a demanding (rather than a liberating) dictum, one that pits his predilection for intellectual control against the savage force of artistic expression. In this unrelenting battle between intellect and inspiration, schematic precision appears to triumph over the waywardness of impulse. The act of painting provides Castel with the opportunity to intellectually master contingency, to order experience, to defeat ambivalence. This preoccupation with aesthetic discipline results in paintings that appear modulated by intellect, architecturally balanced and purged of all trace of emotional authenticity. Thus the creative act for Castel becomes less an act of communication or an occasion for cathartic self-expression than an exercise in mental self-discipline. His mission in painting is to ensure that restrained reason is ever the victor over creative instincts. One consequence of this rigorous self-control, however, is that Castel remains as distant from his own works as he is from the public that views them.

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Castel’s tightly controlled images appeal strongly to viewers and critics who are drawn to the superficial certitudes and thematic cohesiveness of his works (“Era por el estilo de muchos otros anteriores: como dicen los críticos en su insoportable dialecto, era sólido, estaba bien arquitecturado” [14]). Surprisingly, the critical acclaim heaped on his paintings does nothing to diminish Castel’s sense of social alienation. On the contrary, it seems to increase it. He manifests nothing but contempt for these viewers with whom he is obliged to share his work yet who demonstrate so little interest in or understanding of the man who painted them. Consequently, Castel takes no pleasure in the fact that his paintings are well received by the public—a public intent on excluding him. The viewers’ ability to divorce creator from creation is particularly vexing for a man like Castel who is obsessed with maintaining control over his environment. As viewers appropriate his works and invest them with their own meanings, Castel finds himself further distanced from the aesthetic exchange he initiated and is now powerless to influence. Indeed, in the encounter between audience and constructed artifact, Castel remains an unwelcome outsider, fundamentally excluded from the process he initiates and enables. It is therefore not surprising to find that Castel harbors intense resentment towards all who “intrude” upon his private aesthetic universe. The artist himself has no voice in this interpretive process and is fundamentally irrelevant. Castel’s hostility, it will be noted, extends well beyond the casual viewers who interact emotionally with his works. He resents all who come into contact with his paintings—even the workers hired to hang the paintings and prepare the gallery (“Pero, en fin, ya está hecho, aunque todavía tendría mucho que decir acerca de ese asunto de las exposiciones: las habladurías de los colegas, la ceguera del público, la imbecilidad de los encargados de preparar el salón y distribuir los cuadros” [22]). He even resents the attention his work is accorded by fellow artists (“Sin embargo, de todos los conglomerados detesto particularmente el de los pintores. En parte, naturalmente, porque es el que más conozco y ya se sabe que uno puede detestar con mayor razón lo que se conoce a fondo” [21]). But Castel’s most acerbic contempt is reserved for art critics, despite their lavish praise of his works. If these mediocre minds find something to admire in his work, Castel is convinced that his work must be lacking in genuine artistic merit (“¿No comprende? Es una de las cosas que me han amargado y que me han hecho pensar que ando por mal camino. Fíjese por ejemplo lo que ha pasado en este salón: ni uno solo de esos charlatanes se dio cuenta de la importancia de esa escena” [42]). These so-called experts who presume to evaluate works they themselves are incapable of producing are surely incapable of judging Castel’s work: Es una plaga que nunca pude entender. Si yo fuera un gran cirujano y un señor que jamás ha manejado un bisturí, ni es médico ni ha entablillado la pata de un gato, viniera a explicarme los errores de mi operación, ¿qué se pensaría? Lo mismo pasa con la pintura. Lo singular es que la gente no advierte que es lo mismo y aunque se ría de las pretensiones del crítico de cirugía, escucha con un increíble respeto a esos charlatanes. (21–2)

Castel’s possessive attitude towards his paintings is a reflection of his general obsession with controlling his environment. He is reluctant to surrender ownership of his painstakingly deliberated creations to anyone else, particularly those from whom he is so socially isolated. Society’s embrace of Castel’s works only serves to exacerbate

18

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

his sense of isolation and fuels his antipathy. The outside world’s eagerness to accept his paintings while rejecting the artist responsible for their construction eventually drives a wedge between the rejected artist and his more socially accepted works. The bond between Castel and his paintings, always tenuous at best, is further fractured by the antithetical reception accorded to each. Ever the outsider, even in the aesthetic world wherein he ought logically to be center staged, Castel resents increasingly his marginalized status in the aesthetic process. Like the postal worker who refuses to return Castel’s letter to him when he experiences a sudden change of heart, the viewers take full possession of Castel’s works of art, leaving the man responsible for their creation relegated to the sidelines, unnoticed, unwelcome, irrelevant. The frustration of being summarily excluded from the aesthetic exchange reaches a crisis point just after Castel reads a disturbing story about a musician in a concentration camp being forced to eat a live rat. Castel’s admiration for music is expressed in a number of passages within the text. Indeed, the same tunnel metaphor that is used to depict the artist’s alienation from the viewing public is used to juxtapose the uncommon beauty of music with the common sordidness of listeners (“¡Dios mío, si era para desconsolarse por la naturaleza humana, al pensar que entre ciertos instantes de Brahms y una cloaca hay ocultos y tenebrosos pasajes subterráneos!” [136]). It is therefore anticipated that Castel would evoke chagrin upon reading that a talented musician was forced to eat a live rat after complaining of hunger. Castel, the socially alienated artist, appears to identify with the debased musician whose works, however exemplary, fail to raise his status. Despite his artistic contributions, the musician remains just another prisoner in the eyes of his captors. Like Castel, the musician is disconnected from the aesthetic pleasure his works provide to the world at large. After reading the story about the rat, Castel experiences a cognitive breakdown of sorts. Overwhelmed by the isolating despair of his solitary condition, he struggles to forge an emotional connection both with his paintings and with the viewers who gaze upon them. Whereas in the past he sought to repress his natural impulses and purge his paintings of their emotional undertones, he now gives free rein to his creative instincts and paints with wild abandon. In a painting entitled “Maternidad,” which he created shortly after reading the story about the rat, the balance and precision so characteristic of his former paintings give way to an antithetical and unplanned juxtaposition of images, each vying for attention from the attentive viewer. In the foreground of this painting, a mother watches her child at play on the beach. This foreground is painted in Castel’s characteristically objective style and with architecturally balanced restraint. But in the background of this same painting is depicted a second woman, lonely and looking forlornly through a window to the open sea. This incongruent corner of the painting appears to have no relevant connection to the central image. Castel himself readily admits that he is unable to account rationally for its presence on the canvas: Antes los pensaba mucho, los construía como se construye una casa. Pero esa escena no: sentía que debía pintarla así, sin saber bien por qué. Y sigo sin saber. En realidad, no tiene nada que ver con el resto del cuadro y hasta creo que uno de esos idiotas me lo hizo notar. (43)

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All he knows is that the woman looking out the window is an integral component of the painting and that she is a tangible expression of something deep and hidden within himself: Esa escena de la playa me da miedo—agregué después de un largo rato—, aunque sé que es algo más profundo. No, más bien quiero decir que me representa más profundamente a mí . . . Eso es. No es un mensaje claro, todavía, no, pero me representa profundamente a mí. (45)

Castel, however, is no more able to interpret the image’s significance than he was to dictate its form. The unplanned background figure in the painting “Maternidad” reveals a truth that control-obsessed Castel has been reluctant to acknowledge: that the artist is incapable of fully mastering the inspirational forces motivating his art.10 The structuring imagination inevitably directs, transforms and distorts the artist’s deliberate intent. Despite his much-vaunted force of aesthetic willpower, Castel is not the master of his creative impulses. His aesthetic intentions are inevitably undermined by the process itself. The artist, in fact, is always at the mercy of the all-powerful creative force (“Nunca, hasta ese momento, me había puesto a pensar en este problema; ahora me daba cuenta hasta qué punto había pintado la escena de la ventana como un sonámbulo” [44]). Castel’s former pride in his aesthetic control is revealed to have been nothing but a comforting illusion. Despite his self-assurance, he was actually never fully in control of his painting. Upon closer scrutiny of his past productions, he detects traces of unconstrained impulses that escaped both his and the critics’ attention (“¡Como si un hombre pudiera cambiar de verdad! ¿Cuántos de esos imbéciles habían adivinado que debajo de mis arquitecturas y de “la cosa intelectual” había un volcán pronto a estallar? Ninguno” [141]). The impulses he believed he had mastered were actually mastering him all along. The aesthetic impulses responsible for the involuntary insertion of the background image reveal a second heretofore unacknowledged truth: despite his misanthropic aloofness, Castel desperately wishes to connect emotionally with the outside world. Castel acknowledges that the corner image communicates an unconscious need of which even he was not wholly aware. For Castel, the painting marks a startling and abrupt turning point in his aesthetic and social development. The artist who once labored to eliminate all traces of the personal from his paintings is now compelled by forces beyond his control to inject his innermost feelings into his work. The woman at the window—a kind of metatextualized self-portrait—reflects an unconscious and incomprehensible desire to connect with his audience, to insert himself in the aesthetic exchange that brings viewers into contact with his works. In contradistinction to the image of the haughty recluse we initially encountered, Castel emerges here as emotionally needy, even self-pitying. As it turns out, despite his arrogant aloofness, it is not Castel who first rejected society. Rather, it is society that rejected him. Castel’s celibate lifestyle is not so much a deliberate choice as an imposed necessity. Ill at ease with women, he expresses envy of men who are able to interact effortlessly with the opposite sex: Confieso que en un tiempo les tuve mucha envidia, pues, aunque nunca fui mujeriego, o precisamente por no haberlo sido, en dos o tres oportunidades lamenté no poder

20

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers comunicarme con una mujer, en esos pocos casos en que parece imposible resignarse a la idea de que será para siempre ajena a nuestra vida. Desgraciadamente, estuve condenado a permanecer ajeno a la vida di cualquier mujer. (16)

Despite this metatextual plea for attention, Castel’s effort goes largely unnoticed. Most viewers take no heed of the woman in the corner—that is to say, the part of the painting that says something personal about the artist. Rather, they prefer to concentrate on the mother in the foreground, the center portion of the canvas that is painted in Castel’s detached and more familiar style. Those who do acknowledge Castel’s metatextual “presence” in the work register unqualified displeasure (“No, en realidad hay otra persona que le ha dado importancia, pero negativa: me lo ha reprochado, le tiene aprensión, casi asco” [42–3]). Castel’s attempt to communicate with viewers via the metatextualized image clearly fails to strengthen the bond between painter and public. There is one woman, however, María Iribarne, who does take positive note of the artist’s “presence” on the canvas. Unlike the other patrons, María focuses exclusively on the lonely woman at the window, ignoring the center-staged mother and child. Because she fixes her rapt attention on the part of the painting that expresses Castel’s repressed needs and desires, Castel is convinced that María’s response to the woman reveals a desire to connect with him personally. In other words, her fixation on the woman looking out to sea is interpreted as a yearning to connect not just with the painting itself but with the artist who painted it. Confident that he has found in María a like-minded loner eager to establish a deeper relationship, Castel unleashes the full force of his sublimated passions (“Sentí que el amor anónimo que yo había alimentado durante años de soledad se había concentrado en María” [61]). Conflating María’s aesthetic interest with emotional attachment, he fantasizes about a future relationship. In his mind, he visualizes their initial encounter and rehearses a number of possible greetings and introductions. As he ponders plausible scenarios, it becomes clear that Castel makes no distinction between Castel the man and Castel the artist. Metonymically speaking, Castel equates María’s positive reaction to his work with an interest in his person: Confusamente, sentí que surgían en mi conciencia frases íntegras elaboradas y aprendidas en aquella larga gimnasia preparatoria: “¿Tiene mucho interés en el arte?,” “¿Por qué miró sólo la ventanita?,” etcétera. Con más insistencia que ninguna otra, surgía una frase que yo había desechado por grosera y que en ese momento me llenaba de vergüenza y me hacía sentir aun más ridículo: “¿Le gusta Castel?” (27–8)

María’s focus on the metatextual image convinces Castel that she not only desires him but that she also understands both him and his work in a way that he, the artist, cannot. He concludes therefore that María will be able to cure not only his social isolation but his emerging aesthetic bewilderment as well. Perhaps María can even help him understand the as yet inexplicable motives that prompted him to paint the marginalized image in the first place. In contradistinction to the other patrons, María senses that Castel’s “woman at the window” is not just baroque embellishment but rather an integral and vital component of the total canvas. Her focus on the background image prompts Castel to place great faith in her interpretive potential

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(“Hubo una sola persona que le ha dado importancia: usted. Y usted no es un crítico” [42]). He is convinced that her superior powers of observation can help him clarify the motives and significance that underpin his suddenly incomprehensible aesthetic impulses. In short, María can bring congruence to Castel’s fragmented sense of self by linking the artist, his artwork and the viewer together in one seamless and satisfying entity (“Mejor podría decirle que usted siente como yo. Usted miraba aquella escena como la habría podido mirar yo en su lugar. No sé qué piensa y tampoco sé lo que pienso yo, pero sé que piensa como yo” [43]). Castel’s grand plan for aesthetic and social integration has one major flaw, however. María’s interest in the woman in the background derives primarily from its ability to give expression to her own personal feelings of solitude—feelings she and the painter have in common. María does feel a sense of camaraderie with the artist who painted the scene: Cuando vi aquella mujer solitaria de tu ventana, sentí que eras como yo y que también buscabas ciegamente a alguien, una especie de interlocutor mudo. Desde aquel día pensé constantemente en vos, te soñé muchas veces acá, en este mismo lugar donde ha pasado tantas horas de mi vida. (113)

But María’s attachment to Castel is linked only to his ability to articulate feelings she is unable to express. She does not regard Castel as an ideal or even a potential mate. Her interest in Castel does not extend beyond the canvas. Their lives intersect only via the transcribed images that express in tangible form the tangle of repressed emotions they share. In other words, María’s interest in the woman in the background of the painting derives more from what the image says about herself than what it has to say about Castel. That María’s interest in Castel is limited to Castel the painter (as opposed to Castel the man) is evident from the outset. During their initial encounter, when Castel first approaches her at the elevator in the T. Company, a frightened María backs away from Castel’s aggressive and intrusive approach. It is only when she realizes that Castel is making reference to one of his paintings that she elects to pursue him and engage in a continuing dialogue with him (“‘No advertí que usted preguntaba por la escena del cuadro,’ dijo temblorosamente” [31]). During their subsequent meetings, it is noteworthy that María continually tries to coax their conversation away from personal matters and back to the subject of Castel’s art: “No hablemos de mí: hablemos de vos, de tus trabajos, de tus preocupaciones. Pensé constantemente en tu pintura, en lo que me dijiste en la plaza San Martín. Quiero saber qué hacés ahora, qué pensás, si has pintado o no.” Le volví a estrujar el brazo con rabia. “No,” le respondí. “No es de mí que deseo hablar: deseo hablar de nosotros dos, necesito saber si me querés. Nada más que eso: saber si me querés.” No respondió. (66–7)

Even María’s invitation to Castel to join her at the estancia has an aesthetic (rather than a personal) motivation. Her goal is to share the beauty of the rugged coastline with someone who can fully appreciate its aesthetic dimensions—with an artist like

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Castel (“‘Cuántas veces,’ dijo María, ‘soñé compartir con vos este mar y este cielo’” [113]). Castel’s assumption that he and María have similar emotional needs is wholly imaginary. María’s needs are, in fact, quite limited; Castel’s are all-consuming. In contrast to Castel, María already has an extensive social network. She is married to a man she greatly respects and who provides her with a comfortable lifestyle. Although her relationship with her husband appears to tend towards the platonic, there is evidence that she is involved in at least one extramarital affair that provides her with an outlet to satisfy any sexual needs her marriage fails to provide. Based on her conversations with Castel, she has a variety of friends, both male and female, that she regularly entertains.11 The only thing María lacks is an aesthetic outlet—a means of sharing with others her acute sensitivity to the world around her—a lacuna that explains her interest in Castel. Indeed, so intense is María’s keen sensual awareness that it almost frightens Castel: Me pareció, también, que aparecía en ella una sensualidad desconocida para mí, una sensualidad de los colores y olores: se entusiasmaba extrañamente (extrañamente para mí, que tengo una sensualidad introspectiva, casi de pura imaginacíon) con el color de un tronco, de una hoja seca, de un bichito cualquiera, con la fragancia del eucalipto mezclada al olor del mar. (112)

The dilemma for María is that her social network does not provide any outlet for aesthetic expression. Her husband is blind and oblivious to nuance or subtleties of any sort. Her friends, such as Mimi and Hunter, are pompous bores. No one in María’s life is capable of exchanging literary or artistic insights with her. It is for this reason that Castel the artist is of such interest to María, whereas Castel the man, on the other hand, is of little consequence. In fact, in a letter, María implies that Castel’s physical presence diminishes rather than augments her aesthetic appreciation. The actual presence of the artist blunts her aesthetic appreciation by fragmenting her focus: El mar está ahí, permanente y rabioso. Mi llanto de entonces, inútil; también inútiles mis esperas en la playa solitaria, mirando tenazmente al mar. ¿Has adivinado y pintado este recuerdo mío o has pintado el recuerdo de muchos seres como vos y yo? Pero ahora tu figura se interpone: estás entre el mar y yo. Mis ojos encuentran tus ojos. Estás quieto y un poco desconsolado, me mirás como pidiendo ayuda. (63)

During the initial stages of their relationship, Castel remains blind to the fact that María’s interest in him is limited to his identity as an artist.12 She has no interest in Castel the man. The intensity of Castel’s passion (“Amaba desesperadamente a María y no obstante la palabra amor no se había pronunciado entre nosotros” [64]) contrasts sharply with the cold reserve and detached manner that characterize María’s attitude towards him (“Miré ansiosamente su rostro duro, su mirada dura. ‘¿Por qué esa dureza?,’ me preguntaba, ‘¿por qué?’” [45–6]). Castel slowly begins to suspect that María is deceiving him, just as she deceives her blind husband. In fact, Castel’s role in María’s life is quite similar to that played by her husband Allende.13 She respects both men (for different reasons) but has no genuine physical passion for either. When pressed, María admits that her feelings toward her husband are more fraternal than romantic. Castel fears María’s love for him is equally “familial” (“yo

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vivía obsesionado con la idea de que su amor era, en el mejor de los casos, amor de madre o hermana” [71]).14 The link between Castel and María’s husband is further solidified by their mutual “blindness”—real in the case of Allende, metaphorical in Castel’s. Both are unable to see the obvious. Blind to the reality around him, Allende serves as the unwitting go-between for his wife’s clandestine affairs. Similarly, Castel’s vaunted powers of observation (“Quizá cosas así me pasen por ser pintor, porque he notado que la gente no da importancia a estas deformaciones de familia” [19]) prove to be almost comically overstated. After spotting María on the street, he follows her into the building of the T. Company. Once inside, he asks her if this is indeed the T. Company, apparently not having noticed a “cartel de varios metros de largo, que abarcaba todo el frente del edificio, proclamaba que, en efecto, ese era el edificio de la Compañía T.” [29]). In the end, Castel is forced to admit that he is no more able to distinguish the true from the false than a blind man (“¡Yo, tan estúpido, tan ciego, tan egoísta, tan cruel!” [64]). When Castel begins to sense María’s aloofness, he tries to force a more intense emotional bond through physical intimacy. The more he tries to control the relationship, however, the less satisfying it becomes. The brief moments of pleasure he derives from the physical relationship do nothing to strengthen the emotional or spiritual ties between them (“sólo lográbamos confirmar la imposibilidad de prolongarla o consolidarla mediante un acto material” [73]).15 As demonstrated by María’s relationship with her husband, there is no correlation between sexual activity and emotional intimacy (“He dicho que me acuesto con él, no que lo desee” [84]). For Castel, however, the inability to establish a meaningful and exclusive connection with María intensifies his desperation. It is during an encounter with a prostitute that Castel finally becomes convinced of María’s physical disinterest and her aesthetic exploitation of his artistic talent. After observing a resemblance between the prostitute’s and María’s facial expressions when making love with him, Castel concludes that both have agreed to a sexual relationship only in exchange for some other desired commodity. For the prostitute, the pay-off is monetary; for María, it is aesthetic fulfillment. Like the prostitute, María feigns physical pleasure in order to profit from Castel’s artistic insights. The similarity of facial expression that links the prostitute and María (“¡Y esa sucia bestia que se había reído de mis cuadros y la frágil criatura que me había alentado a pintarlos tenían la misma expresión en algún momento de sus vidas!” [135–6]) conflates their identities in Castel’s mind. An angry Castel abuses the prostitute (“la saqué a puntapiés de mi taller y le dije que la mataría como a un perro si no se iba en seguida” [133]) using the very same language he recently launched against María (“‘Si alguna vez sospecho que me has engañado,’ le decía con rabia, ‘te mataré como a un perro’” [74]). Newly enlightened, Castel makes plans for his revenge and sets out to murder the woman who deceived him by preferring his art to the man himself. It is significant that before setting out to kill María, Castel elects to destroy his “rival” for María’s affection—the painting “Maternidad.” In a jealous rage, he slashes the painting that brought them together with the very knife he intends to use against her: Pero había algo que quería destruir sin dejar siquiera rastros. Lo miré por última vez, sentí que la garganta se me contraía dolorosamente, pero no vacilé: a través de mis lágrimas vi confusamente cómo caía en pedazos aquella playa, aquella remota mujer ansiosa, aquella

24

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers espera. Pisotée los jirones de tela y los refregué hasta convertirlos en guiñapos sucios. ¡Ya nunca más recibiría respuesta aquella espera insensata! ¡Ahora sabía más que nunca que esa espera era completamente inútil! (141)

It is only after destroying the painting that Castel sets out for the estancia to murder María. Equally significant is that, after murdering her, his rage does not extend to Hunter, her presumed lover. Castel rages only against his painting and María, demonstrating that Castel regards his artwork as a far more dangerous rival than Hunter. Castel’s decision to destroy his first “expressive” painting and then María herself— the one woman who understood the painting—constitutes a final surrender to the alienation his craft imposes upon him. The mediated nature of the aesthetic exchange brings the artist and viewer together only indirectly, no matter how desperately the artist attempts to interject himself into the process. The contemplative act is always conducted in solitude, even when others are present. Castel is obliged to concede that the sense of communion provoked by mutual observation is too ephemeral and fleeting to constitute genuine intimacy: Yo tenía la certeza de que, en ciertas ocasiones, lográbamos comunicarnos, pero en forma tan sutil, tan pasajera, tan tenue, que luego quedaba más desesperadamente solo que antes, con esa imprecisa insatisfacción que experimentamos al querer reconstruir ciertos amores de un sueño. (73)

Even the much-anticipated visit to the coast at the estancia turns out to be more isolating than connective. As María and Castel contemplate the scene, both retreat to the privacy of self-reflection, oblivious to what the other is thinking or saying (“Pero, extrañamente, no pareció oírme: también ella había caído en una especie de sopor, también ella parecía estar sola” [115]). In prison, Castel seems to abandon the quest to bond with either his art or the viewers. His paintings become increasingly incomprehensible and he appears once again to be the consummate outsider, an artist separated from his work by creative urges he can no longer master, and separated from viewers by the mediating presence of the work of art. Castel senses that his relationship with his audience is destined always to remain distant and indirect, as metaphorized by the image of the tunnel that provides the novel with its title:16 Y en uno de esos trozos transparentes del muro de piedra yo había visto a esta muchacha y había creído ingenuamente que venía por otro túnel paralelo al mío, cuando en realidad pertenecía al ancho mundo, al mundo sin límites de los que no viven en túneles; y quizá se había acercado por curiosidad a una de mis extrañas ventanas y había entrevisto el espectáculo de mi insalvable soledad, o le había intrigado el lenguaje mudo, la clave de mu cuadro. Y entonces, mientras yo avanzaba siempre por mi pasadizo, elle vivía afuera su vida normal, la vida agitada que llevan esas gentes que viven afuera, esa vida curiosa y absurda en que hay bailes y fiestas y alegría y frivolidad. (145–6)

Castel’s surrender to solitude does not diminish his desire to communicate the depth of his alienation, however. In order to better articulate his perspective, Castel changes genres, abandoning painting for the confessional narrative (the text entitled El Túnel):

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. . . pensé que podrían ser leídas por mucha gente, ya que ahora soy célebre; y aunque no me hago muchas ilusiones acerca de la humanidad en general y de los lectores de estas páginas en particular, me anima la débil esperanza de que alguna persona llegue a entenderme. AUNQUE SEA UNA SOLA PERSONA. (13)

Though on the surface the confessional narrative appears to be a more direct form of communication, it will prove no more able to link Castel with his audience than his paintings were. In fact, Castel’s confessional narrative has many traits in common with his later artworks. Its fragmented, disjointed structure suggests that he is no more able to control his narrative impulses than his disorderly brush strokes. The narrated account, not unlike his paintings, is a jarringly disordered tangle of contradictory assertions, blatant inconsistencies and frustrating ellipses.17 Despite his avowed commitment to narrative linearity (“Basta de efusiones. Dije que relataría esta historia en forma escueta y así lo haré” [64]), his account is a formless, meandering structure that continually escapes Castel’s efforts to keep it under control. Moreover, in his narrative, as in his paintings, Castel makes no effort to engage his audience. In fact, the monologic nature of his ramblings reveals more a desire to augment, rather than narrow, the distance between author and audience. Castel’s readers are made to feel more like eavesdroppers overhearing a man’s confession than privileged listeners in whom the author deliberately confides. Indeed, Castel does not hesitate to express disdain for his readers throughout the text:18 Piensen lo que quieran: me importa un bledo; hace rato que me importan un bledo la opinión y la justicia de los hombres. Supongan, pues, que publico esta historia por vanidad. (11) “¿Por qué,” se podrá preguntar alguien, “apenas una débil esperanza si el manuscrito ha de ser leído por tantas personas?” Este es el género de preguntas que considero inútiles. Y no obstante hay que preverlas, porque la gente hace constantemente preguntas inútiles, preguntas que el análisis más superficial revela innecesarias. Puedo hablar hasta el cansancio y a gritos delante de una asamblea de cien mil rusos: nadie me entendería. ¿Se dan cuenta de lo que quiero decir? (13)

Castel’s blatant and contemptuous disregard for the needs of his readers is borne out by the fact that the novel does not so much end as stop—a final acknowledgment perhaps of the alienating nature of the aesthetic enterprise. No matter how the artist tries to insert himself into the aesthetic exchange, he remains outside the text. Even in a confessional narrative where the writer speaks directly to the readers about actual events, he remains victimized by the imprecision of language and overshadowed by the narrative persona who speaks on his behalf and in his stead. Like the man transformed into a parrot in his dream, Castel is unable to convince others that the squawks they perceive (and appear to understand) distort rather than translate his intended communication.19 As a metaphor for the misunderstood artist, Castel’s man/parrot exemplifies the plight of the artist who is obliged to communicate indirectly with his audience in a medium of which he is more slave than master. Excluded from the aesthetic exchange that brings together consumers and text, the author strives in vain to interject himself into the process. Compounding his sense of isolation, inspirational forces dictate

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images that the artist is unable to order or even fully comprehend. It is perhaps only when Castel’s narrative drifts off into silence, when the alien and partially convergent experiences uniting Castel, his art and his audience come to their unnatural end, that we perceive the terrible destiny of aesthetic genius. The artist becomes in this sense the hyper-emblematic symbol of the alienated outsider. He is responsible for creating an aesthetic artifact that might, if only he/she were capable of deciphering its hidden codes, facilitate self-understanding. These personal works are then appropriated by textual consumers who use the artist’s work to try to illuminate the hidden corners of their own psychic wilderness. In the aesthetic exchange, the artist finds himself excluded, inconsequential. It must be acknowledged, however, that the artist’s sacrifice of self is what unleashes the hermeneutic struggle to understand, and it is in that process, however imperfect, that the true significance of the aesthetic enterprise can be located.20 Art derives its power not from the ability to clarify but from its capacity to engage its readers/viewers in a mutual quest for an ever-receding and elusive significance. In the aesthetic encounter uniting an absent author, a quixotic text and a textual consumer who grapples to make sense of it all, conclusions matter less than the struggle to identify the conjuncture between the explicit and the poetic, the accessible and the impenetrable, the chaotic and the coherent that endows the aesthetic enterprise with its enduring omnipotence. These aesthetic realities do little to diminish Castel’s cosmic anguish, however. In fact, the unwelcome discovery that art is unable to provide answers to any of life’s most existential questions renders the artist’s solitude perhaps the most unremitting of all.

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3.

Poeticizing Vice: Genet’s QUERELLE DE BREST

For a number of decades, contemporary theorists and textual practitioners have duly highlighted the need to prioritize the artistic object without the proliferation of extrinsic and often misguided indices that vitiate or disfigure traditional readings. In so doing, they have brought significant contributions to the analysis of texts whose “messages” were compromised by the attempt to weld links between creator and creation. Yet the nature of literary enterprise is, in the broadest sense, so compellingly diverse and complex that we must at once adhere to judicious counsel while digressing from it where alternate truths override the occasion, as in the indelible parallel, indeed the blatantly stunning congruence, that exists between Genet the artist and Querelle the protagonist who appears to be fashioned in his likeness.1 Not as simple as a mirror image with the taint of autobiographical reductionism but, quite otherly, the inner and outer mutilation of self, the auto-excoriation of one’s being heaved upon the personage who takes center stage in the novel to which he lends his name. The outsider writer fashions an outsider protagonist—a renegade, distant, suffering and misunderstood artist who confronts the plight of art at risk, and who is irascibly rebellious. Creator and creation are fused, awkwardly, into a brand of exponential outsiderness, self-exile and an odd confluence of ostentatious selfconfidence and self-effacing insecurity congealed. Rather than liberating the writer from the grounding reality to which he is tethered, the aesthetic enterprise serves as a counterweight, an additional encumbrance. The failure of the aesthetic enterprise to liberate the writer is metatextually represented in Querelle de Brest, a novel wherein the commingling of the aesthetic and the profane effectively destroys both. Querelle de Brest (1947) incorporates all the familiar themes that have come to characterize Genet’s opus: pornographic depictions of homoerotic encounters, contempt for the reader, a non-linear plot development and the unsettling union of base vulgarity and stylized refinement. But, in addition, Querelle de Brest is a novel that focuses explicitly on the creative process itself. As has been widely observed, this is the first of Genet’s novels where the metatextual intrusions are not those of the author himself. Rather, they are attributed to the text’s narrator—an intrusive presence who intervenes repeatedly to comment on the progress and effectiveness of his current project. The narrator even identifies a target audience. His novel is designed to appeal to homosexuals (“Nous voulons encore dire qu’il s’adresse aux invertis” [173])2—a group who would presumably find a novel about virile sailors engaged in mischief-making and murder to be quite interesting. The plot, he continues, will revolve around the closely linked (in his mind anyway) concepts of sailors and murder (“L’idée de meurtre évoque souvent l’idée de mer, de

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marins” [173]). He indicates further that the sea provides the ideal backdrop for this imaginary account in that it constitutes a master trope for the notion of freedom—a pre-requisite of creative writing (“Si la mer est naturellement le symbole de la liberté, chaque image l’évoquant se charge de cette puissance symbolique, se charge à soi seule de toute la puissance symbolique de la mer” [284]). The narrator takes care to assert that the novel he is undertaking is grounded in the free-floating signifiers and random images evoked by the water and waves of the sea. Indeed, he repudiates from the outset any possible link between events that occur in the novel and any reality external to it. The characters and plot outline, he insists, derive solely from the deep recesses of his imagination. Querelle de Brest, then, is first and foremost a product of cognitive activity, the result of an amalgam of free-flowing ideas and mental linkages that the artist cobbles together to create a story: Mer et marins ne se présentent pas alors avec la précision d’une image, le meurtre plutôt fait en nous l’émotion déferler par vagues. Si les ports sont le théâtre répété de crimes, l’explication en est facile que nous n’entreprendrons pas, mais nombreuses sont les chroniques où l’on apprend que l’assassin était un navigateur, faux ou vrai et s’il est faux le crime en a de plus étroits rapports avec la mer. (173)

Because the work is grounded in his imagination, the narrator warns the reader that he is not always able to control his characters. Their actions are necessarily determined by the demands imposed upon them by narratorial necessity. The narrator makes repeated references to the freedom of his characters, to his inability to control their movements (“le personnage échappe à son auteur. Il se singularise” [334]). The author cannot, therefore, predetermine his characters’ behavior because the work of art is free (“Non que nous ne croyions pas à ceux-ci [pressentiments] mais qu’ils relèvent d’une étude qui n’est plus de l’oeuvre d’art—puisque l’oeuvre d’art est libre” [333]). In consequence, the reader is asked to give the characters the freedom they need to grow and develop as independent beings within the text: Nous aimerions que ces réflexions, ces observations que ne peuvent accomplir ni formuler les personnages du livre, permissent de vous poser non en observateurs mais en créateurs de ces personnages qui, peu à peu, se dégageront de vos propres mouvements. (184)

Once a character has taken root in the artist’s imagination, he develops (theoretically) a will of his own: Après cette découverte de Querelle nous voulons qu’il devienne le héros même du contempteur. Poursuivant en nous-même son destin, son développement, nous verrons comment il s’y prête pour se réaliser en une fin qui semble être (de cette fin) son propre vouloir et son propre destin. (182)

These characters may bear some resemblance to the creator from whose mind they emanate: Peu à peu, nous reconnûmes Querelle—à l’intérieur déjà de notre chair—grandir, se développer dans notre âme, se nourrir du meilleur de nous, et d’abord de notre désespoir

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de n’être pas nous-même en lui mais de l’avoir en nous. (182)

But the narrator insists that the main protagonist, Querelle, is wholly separate from himself (“Querelle doit être montré hors de nous-même” [182]). Throughout the novel, the narrator takes every opportunity to destroy any illusion of reality that the novel might project. He makes his presence known by routinely interjecting himself into the text.3 Occasionally he intervenes to clarify his intentions (“Cette aventure, nous l’avons voulu présenter au ralenti. Notre but n’étant pas de causer au lecteur une impression d’effroi, mais de faire pour ce meurtre ce qu’obtient quelquefois le dessin animé” [215]). At times, he offers a critical self-assessment (“Dans la très longue phrase débutant par: ‘il enveloppe de nuées . . .’ nous nous sommes abandonnés à une facile poésie verbale, chacune des propositions n’étant qu’un argument en faveur des complaisances de l’auteur” [173]). Often, he finds it necessary to provide clarification for an obscure entry (“En disant qu’il était naturellement grave, nous entendons que jamais il ne recherchait la gravité” [205]; “Nous disons sentir comme un assassin célèbre, un peu après son arrestation que rien apparemment ne laissait prévoir, dira au juge: ‘Je me sentais sur le point d’être pris’” [214]). As the novel progresses, the narrator admits that his novel is progressing too slowly (“Le mouvement de ce livre doit s’accélérer” [327]). At one point, he even provides a number of plausible scenarios he might have included, but did not: Toutefois, afin de ne point trop agacer le lecteur, et certain qu’il complétera, par son propre malaise, le contradictoire, le retors cheminement de l’idée de meurtre en nousmêmes, nous nous sommes refusé beaucoup. Il est facile de faire le meurtrier visiter par l’image de son frère. De le faire tuer par son propre frère. De lui faire tuer ou condamner son frère. Les thèmes sont nombreux sur lesquels on pourra broder une broderie écoeurante. (215)

The fictional status of the work is also emphasized by the narrator’s remarks relative to the invention of his two primary protagonists—Georges Querelle, a sailor assigned to the ship Le Vengeur, and Lieutenant Seblon, his captain. Both, he insists, are products of his imagination, and consequently their adventures must be viewed as being quite distinct from that of “lived experience”: Il fallait qu’en nous-même nous pressentions l’existence de Querelle puisqu’en certain jour, dont nous pourrions préciser la date avec l’heure exactes, nous résolûmes d’écrire l’histoire (ce mot convient peu s’il sert à nommer une aventure ou suite d’aventures déjà vécues). (182)4

Querelle’s status as a character in a novel, a figment of the writer’s imagination, is repeatedly underlined: La scène que nous rapporterons est la transposition de l’événement qui nous révéla Querelle. (Nous parlons encore de ce personnage idéal et héroïque, fruit de nos secrètes amours.) De cet événement nous pouvons écrire qu’il fut comparable à la Visitation. Sans doute ce n’est que longtemps après qu’il eut lieu que nous le reconnûmes “gros” de conséquences mais déjà, en le vivant, fûmes-nous parcouru d’un frisson annonciateur.

30

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers Enfin, pour être visible de vous, pour devenir un personnage de roman, Querelle doit être montré hors de nous-même. (182)

Like Querelle, Seblon, too, is presented as being a product of the narrator’s imagination, one inspired to the narrator by writings found in a journal (“Après ces quelques notes relevées, çà et là, mais non au hasard, dans un carnet intime qui nous le suggère . . .” [177]).5 A select few of these journal entries are scattered throughout the text, italicized to distinguish them from the primary narrative. These entries call further attention to the novel’s constructed quality. The fictional status of the protagonists is augmented further by their link to the sea. These sailors are depicted as hailing from a realm of myth, a world that has little in common with the land of mortal men: Qu’ils descendent du ciel, ou remontent d’un domaine où ils connurent les sirènes et des monstres plus étonnants, à terre les marins habitent des demeures de pierres, des arsenaux, des palais dont la solidité s’oppose à la nervosité, à l’irritabilité féminine des eaux. (174)

The narrator’s decision to link his novel with the literature of Antiquity (the sea and Sirens of Greek and Latin epics) provides evidence of his high aesthetic ambitions. Querelle and Seblon belong to this fictional realm and are therefore invested with all the connotative associations that these legendary literary precedents evoke in the mind of the reader. These mythologized icons of Antiquity are updated in the narrator’s novel, but like their literary precedents, they arrive from afar to mingle briefly with the world of quotidian reality. They will then return to the imaginary world from which they set sail. When Le Vengeur docks briefly at the seaport town of Brest, the worlds of reality and fiction necessarily collide, forcing the somewhat reclusive Seblon and Querelle to become entangled in the rather seedy escapades that characterize harbor towns. The fictionality of Querelle is emphasized all the more by the superficial nature of his representation in the text.6 Querelle is portrayed as being all form and no substance.7 The narrator focuses almost exclusively on his external form: his coat, his blue denim sailor pants, his belt, his shoes, his beret. His speech and gait are borrowed and denatured, designed purely for aesthetic affect (“Plus tard, il marcha à pas plus courts, les jambes serrées, les cuisses se frôlant, mais les bras écartés du corps comme s’ils en fussent éloignés par les muscles trop puissants des biceps et des dorsaux” [193]).8 In consequence, he comes across as an exaggerated caricature of studied poses and affected mannerisms. He even sees himself primarily as a performance artist, playing a variety of roles for a variety of imaginary audiences: C’est elle [Mario’s hesitation] qui se communiquait à lui, lui donnant le trac dont il tirait ce jeu, une marche périlleuse, une apparence fragile, une force invincible aussi. Ce trac pouvait le précipiter du trapèze volant où il s’accrochait par des griffes de cristal au-dessus de la cage aux panthères. (301)

The narrator goes to great lengths to portray his protagonist as a carefully constructed artifact, more the sketched outline of a sailor than a mimetic reflection of the genuine

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article (“Il fut soudain dessiné par de mouvantes lignes brisées, et par l’officier, dessiné de main de maître” [225]). Querelle’s internal components exist only in relation to his external form (“Nous essaierons de tenir compte de ce détail pour bien comprendre Querelle dont la représentation mentale, et les sentiments eux-mêmes, dépendent et prennent la forme d’une certaine syntaxe, d’une orthographe particulière” [178]). Even his words are empty ciphers that obscure more than they reveal (“Ces expressions n’étant pas projetées, son langage n’éclairait pas Querelle, si nous l’osons dire, ne le dessinait pas” [178]). At one point the narrator notes that Querelle is best defined by his absence (“Querelle brillait par son absence” [179]). His murders, too, are hyper-fictionalized in order to diminish their “reality” and blunt their violent effect on the reader. The narrator insists that in the scene where Querelle murders Vic, his goal is to convey the impression of cartoon characters acting in slow motion (“Cette aventure, nous l’avons voulu présenter au ralenti. Notre but n’étant pas de causer au lecteur une impression d’effroi, mais de faire pour ce meurtre ce qu’obtient quelquefois le dessin animé” [215]). The two protagonists are linked to the aesthetic world also by their portrayal as artist figures. Seblon is the author of a journal in which he describes in lurid detail his secret passion for the sailor Querelle. Querelle is thus the protagonist in two literary accounts: Seblon’s and the narrator’s. In contrast to Seblon’s journal writing, Querelle’s art is less conventional. His artistry is linked to his ability to commit serial murders with awesome efficiency. Although the link between murder and art is not readily apparent, the narrator highlights one feature that they both have in common: murder, like art, has its own internal consistency (“Il ne pouvait savoir que chaque meurtre obéit quant à son exécution et au mobile qui le commande, à des lois qui font de lui une oeuvre d’art” [267]). It bears noting, however, that unlike conventional art forms (the narrator’s included), neither Seblon’s nor Querelle’s aesthetic renderings are intended for public consumption. Seblon, a closet homosexual, would be ruined if his writings were ever discovered (“le contenu de son carnet intime suffirait à le perdre” [176]). Querelle, a serial murderer, would be arrested and imprisoned if he were ever to be linked to his “artistic” productions. For both artist figures in the text, then, the aesthetic artifact is an end in itself. Art for them is not an attempt to communicate with the outside world but is rather a wholly narcissistic, self-contained enterprise—one intended to remain private and uncontaminated by the biased judgments of pedestrian viewers. Querelle does “perform” rather histrionically during his murderous escapades, but only before an imaginary audience. Just before killing Vic, he acknowledges the presence of an audience (“Après ce signe qui avertit le public qu’un travail dangereux jusqu’à la mort est entrepris par l’acrobate, Querelle ne pouvait reculer” [210]). After the murder, he likens the act to the knock-out blow of a prize fighter (“L’assassin renifla deux fois très vite, comme font les boxeurs, il fit ses lèvres remuer où doucement Querelle vint se poser, se couler dans la bouche, monter aux yeux, descendre aux doigts, emplir l’objet” [211]). The desire to keep their activities secret is partially responsible for Seblon’s and Querelle’s marginalized status within the text. Not only are they distinguished from their real-world counterparts in Brest by virtue of their “fictionalized” status as mythologized sailors, but they see themselves as superior to rank and file landlubbers by virtue of their aesthetic talent. Seblon’s arrogance when talking to the police

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers

officers is a function of his pride in the histrionic excess of his performance (“Le lieutenant Seblon insulta le commissaire. Il osa le gifler. Lui-même sentait que de méprisables cabotinages sont à l’origine des beautés graves qui font l’oeuvre d’art” [308]). Querelle’s sense of aesthetic superiority also isolates him from the untalented non-artists around him (“Querelle avait donc le sentiment d’une autre solitude: celle de sa singularité créatrice” [257]). His artistic achievements are what allow him to feel superior to his brother Robert, with whom he has had an ongoing rivalry since childhood: En face de Robert il se demandait s’il était criminel. Il le craignait et l’espérait. Il l’espérait car il serait beau qu’un tel miracle fût réussi, existât dans le monde. Il le craignait car il eût fallu perdre son sentiment de supériorité à l’égard de Robert. (278)

The protagonists’ social isolation is linked also to their artistic vocation. The need to maintain an aesthetic detachment from their subjects requires them both to avoid any emotional entanglements with the “subjects” of their art. The lurid prose of Seblon’s diary is in diametric opposition to his real life experiences on board Le Vengeur. There is a clear demarcation between the lieutenant’s desires as expressed in his journal and his actual comportment among crew members. In fact, the diary entries do not reflect reality in any way. His aloof and distant manner towards the sailors under his command runs counter to the intellectual fantasies he depicts in writing. The depersonalized nature of the journal is augmented further by his refusal to identify the primary object of his affection (“Une partie de son corps est-elle nue, Il (Querelle, dont l’officier n’écrira jamais le nom . . .” [176]). At one point, it is not even clear whether it is Querelle who is the object of the lieutenant’s fantasies or the composite image of an Ur-sailor that Querelle appears to exemplify (“Tous les matelots m’apparaissent-ils vivants, présents, à la fois, tous, et aucun d’eux séparément ne serait le marin qu’ils composent et qui ne peut être que dans mon imagination, qui ne peut être qu’en moi et par moi” [263]; “Aimé de Querelle, je le serai de tous les marins de France. Mon amant est un comprimé de toutes leurs vertus viriles et naïves” [341]).9 The gap between art and reality widens further whenever the lieutenant finds himself in Querelle’s company. He is often curt and harsh when addressing Querelle (“Il lui donna encore, d’une voix trop sèche, quelques instructions banales” [195]). Moreover, he goes out of his way to avoid revealing his feelings for Querelle (“Le lieutenant Seblon jamais ne fit rien—crût-il et crût-il même le contraire—pour établir entre son ordonnance et lui quelque familiarité” [196]).10 In truth, Seblon cannot really envision himself making love to any of his sailors. In this sense, his diary is as fictional as the narrator’s own novel: A l’égard des voyous que je tiens dans mes bras, ma tendresse et mes baisers passionnés aux têtes que je caresse, que je recouvre doucement de mes draps, ne sont qu’une sorte de reconnaissance et d’émerveillement mêlés. Après m’être tellement désolé de la solitude où me garde ma singularité, se peut-il, est-il vrai, que je tienne nu, que je retienne serrés contre moi ces garçons que leur audace, leur dureté mettent si haut, me terrassent et me foulent aux pieds? Je n’ose y croire et des larmes viennent à mes yeux pour remercier Dieu qui m’accorde ce bonheur. (176)

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Aesthetic detachment is also an essential component of Querelle’s artistry. Querelle murders his victims at random; he has no personal motive for choosing one over any other. The inspiration for Querelle’s work, as for any artist, is external to himself (“Querelle sentit dans tout son corps la présence du meurtre. Cela vint d’abord lentement, à peu près comme les émois amoureux, et, semble-t-il, par le même chemin ou plutôt par le négatif de ce chemin” [208]). The impulse to murder his victims is likened to a spiritual communiqué, a visitation of sorts (182). When called upon by his muse to murder his victims, Querelle assumes the detached numbness of an insensate object (“Il était l’objet d’un monde où le danger n’existe pas—puisque l’on est objet. Bel objet immobile et sombre dans les cavités duquel, le vide étant sonore, Querelle l’entendit déferler en bruissant, s’échapper de lui, l’entourer et le protéger” [211]). In order to commit his murders with maximum efficiency, Querelle purges himself of all emotional attachments (“Plus rien de Querelle n’était présent dans son propre corps. Il était vide” [209]). He literally divests himself of corporality in order to assume the ethereal lightness of purified thought (“Il était libre d’abandonner son corps, support audacieux de ses couilles” [210]). The two protagonists are isolated from their textual counterparts in other ways as well. Seblon and Querelle are depicted as social outsiders, loners whose odd mannerisms set them apart. Although Lieutenant Seblon is generally admired and respected by his crew, his speech occasionally betrays disturbing traces of excessive refinement (“Jamais il ne souriait. Les autres offficiers, ses camarades, le trouvaient sévère, légèrement puritain, mais sous sa dureté ils croyaient reconnaître une étonnante distinction à cause du ton précieux dont malgré lui il prononçait certains mots” [186–7]). His solitude among his crewmates derives in large part from his fear of revealing his homosexuality (“Cette féminité, le lieutenant le savait avec une tristesse immense, pouvait se répandre immédiatement dans ses traits, dans ses yeux, au bout de ses doigts, marquer chaque geste en l’amollissant” [186]). This fear of exposure prompts him to maintain a distant relationship with his sailors—not only for professional reasons, but in an attempt to ensure that his sexual orientation remains hidden. Consequently, the man the crew perceives has little in common with the reality underneath.11 Seblon labors to portray himself as other than he is, to affect an outwardly masculine appearance (“D’un ordre donné sec au coiffeur du bord, le lieutenant Seblon se faisait couper les cheveux très courts afin d’obtenir une apparence virile—moins pour sauver la face que pour traiter d’égal à égal (croyait-il) avec les beaux garçons” [186]). Inside, however, he sees himself as a feminine being, and imagines himself as a woman with well-endowed breasts, gliding about in flowing robes (“Je caresse ces deux seins d’air. Ils sont beaux. Ils sont lourds: mes mains les soupèsent” [232]). Significantly, Seblon’s self-loathing serves to alienate him not only from his crewmates but from himself as well. When he goes on shore, Seblon’s sense of alienation is even more acute. He takes his walks under the cover of darkness, hoping to engage in a clandestine erotic adventure. He moves so quickly, however, that it is virtually impossible for an opportunity to present itself (“Mais il devait à ses galons de passer très vite, avec un seul coup d’oeil rapide” [307]). His interactions with the residents of Brest accentuate the idiosyncratic mannerisms of an outsider. During an interview with city officials, his rhetorical pretentiousness evokes universal contempt:

34

Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers Il se trahit cependant, aux yeux de tous les hommes quand il prononça devant nous la phrase: “s’emparer du fusil,” car il prononça fusil comme “asile” et avec tant de grâce que toute sa personne paru s’agenouiller devant le tombeau d’un bel amoureux. (186)

His oddly flamboyant manner identifies him quickly and clearly as an undesirable pederast in the eyes of city officials (“les policiers ne se trompèrent pas et le reconnurent pour un pédé” [231]). Querelle, like Seblon, is a loner both at sea and on land. His vulgar antics offend his crewmates who tend to keep their distance from him (“Il étonnait ses camarades. Il les inquiétait. Par sa force d’abord et par la singularité d’un comportement trop banal” [194]). Querelle, in turn, attaches himself emotionally to no one. A thief, opium smuggler, snitch and serial killer, Querelle has a few accomplices but no friends. He is not eager to involve himself in a relationship, even when one is presented. Aware of his captain’s attraction to him, he is somewhat disgusted rather than flattered by the attention. He flaunts his disrespect for his superior with indecent abandon, taking pleasure in fanning the flames of Seblon’s illicit passion: Malicieusement Querelle cherchait à l’exacerber; avec beaucoup de naturel il trouvait les poses les plus suggestives; soit qu’il s’appuyât contre le chambranle, un bras soulevé pour montrer son aisselle, soit qu’il s’assît sur la table en ayant soin d’y écraser ses cuisses et de relever le pantalon pour montrer ses mollets musclés et velus, soit qu’il cambrât ses reins, soit qu’il prît pour répondre à l’officier une posture plus audacieuse encore et qu’à son appel, il s’avançât, les mains dans les poches tendant l’étoffe de la braguette sur la verge et les couilles, le ventre insolent. (258)

At one point he even lies about having a sexually transmitted disease, for the sole purpose of further arousing the lieutenant (“Querelle mentait. Spontanément, afin d’augmenter encore le désir du lieutenant, il venait de s’inventer une maladie de mâle, de ‘baiseur enragé’” [227]). Querelle is emotionally distanced from his brother Robert as well. And although at one point Querelle insists he has developed an emotional attachment to a young mason named Gil, he willingly suppresses these feelings in order to serve his art. The authorities believe that Gil (who murdered another mason for mocking him) is responsible for Vic’s murder as well. Gil’s arrest will therefore ensure that Querelle’s role in Vic’s murder will never be discovered. In truth, Querelle has no desire for relationships of any kind, being totally invested in the art of murdering unsuspecting victims. These murders provide Querelle with a number of imaginary friends who fill the gap left by the absence of real ones. Querelle creates an avatar of himself at each and every murder (“Ses crimes avaient multiplié la personnalité de Querelle, chacun d’eux lui en accordant une nouvelle qui n’oubliait pas les précédentes” [248]). These spectres provide him with the illusion of company, in the same way as he imagines there is an audience on hand to appreciate the perfection of his murderous performances. In the absence of an audience of real supporters, Querelle takes comfort not only in the knowledge of a job well done but in a booty of stolen treasures he appropriates from his victims. These treasures, carefully buried or hidden away in various parts of the world, sanctify the murder by providing material compensation for and tangible

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evidence of his efforts. His talent as an artist is also validated symbolically by his lucky star, a kind of spiritual deity that allows him to avoid being implicated in any of his crimes, even though he leaves tell-tale clues at every crime scene (“Querelle apercevait un détail qui, à ses yeux seuls, devenait une erreur capable de le perdre” [215]). His ability to elude the authorities is interpreted as a sign that the gods themselves approve of his work. Consequently, he never fails to acknowledge his lucky star for having delivered him from detection (“Querelle offrait son erreur en hommage à l’étoile qui le protégeait” [260]). On shore, Querelle, like Seblon, is made painfully aware of his alienated status. He is discomfited by a profound sense of alienation when he enters La Féria—a brothel whose perverse and illicit activities have achieved legendary status around the world (“Le nom de ‘La Féria’ et de ‘Nono,’ si celui de la patronne est ignoré, aura fait le tour du monde, murmuré par les lèvres des matelots, lancé dans une apostrophe moqueuse” [175]). Querelle hopes to find a buyer for some opium he plans to smuggle ashore, but once inside, he is intimidated by Mario, the police inspector and friend of the brothel proprietor Nono (“Querelle était gelé par le regard de Mario. Ce regard et l’attitude de Mario étaient plus qu’indifférents: glacials” [188–9]). Though Querelle might fancy himself as a master in the realm of aesthetic endeavors, Mario clearly reigns supreme in the pedestrian world of Brest (“Il n’était pas douteux que le domaine où régnait ce type fût terrestre” [189]). Querelle is in fact so distressed by his feelings of estrangement that, for the first time in his life, he affects the familiar swagger of a virile and brawny sailor in order to bolster his self-confidence. This pose calms him somewhat by enabling him to cultivate a short-lived sense of belonging (“Querelle marcha comme doit marcher un vrai matelot, et qui se veut absolument matelot. Il roula, de droite à gauche mais sans excès, ses épaules”; “La certitude sensible d’être totalement marin le rassura un peu, le calma” [191]). Seblon’s and Querelle’s social alienation strengthens their status as fictional characters by opposing them to the real-world landlubbers with whom they come into contact. Unfortunately, their detached elitism and sense of aesthetic superiority cannot be maintained. At the levels of both content and form, Querelle de Brest is ultimately contaminated by the vulgar reality from which it labors to distance itself. Querelle becomes hopelessly entangled with harbor reality as a direct result of his most recent aesthetic endeavor: the murder of a fellow sailor who helped him smuggle his opium ashore. As is his custom after committing a murder, Querelle fantasizes about being caught and he imagines his capture, trial and execution. He sees himself before the court (“Maintenant il comparaissait devant la Cour d’assises qu’il se composait après chaque meurtre” [212]) and he hears the verdict (“La Cour vous condamne à la peine capitale” [214]). In order to purge himself of guilt, Querelle elects to undergo a “symbolic” execution by allowing himself to be sodomized by Nono. Querelle is aware of Nono’s practice of having sexual relations with men who want to make love to his wife, Madame Lysiane. Querelle therefore feigns interest in Madame Lysiane in order to lay the foundations for his “execution.” To ensure that Nono sodomizes him, Querelle manipulates the throw of the die that will determine which of the two will be sodomized by the other. Nono discovers Querelle’s ploy, and this causes Querelle to lose stature in Nono’s eyes (“Dis, m’le fais pas à l’influence. Pass’ qu’avec moi ça va jamais bien. Tu m’prends pas pour un miraud, non? J’t’ai vu. T’as triché” [218]).

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After this sexual escapade, Querelle’s reputation in the town of Brest spirals downward even further. His imaginary execution sets in motion a series of degrading encounters that ensconce him solidly in the seedy underworld of Brest. First, a number of humiliating couplings with Nono ensue. When his brother Robert learns of these encounters, he verbally berates Querelle for being a shameless homosexual (“Se faire enculer par un patron de bordel! Sale petit con! Et ça crâne, encore. Ça se fait dorer la lune et ça se donne pour un caïd. J’ai bonne mine, moi, avec un frangin qui en prend plein le cul” [250]). In the ensuing fight with his brother, Querelle barely escapes with his life, then shortly thereafter Mario initiates an altercation. As it happens, Nono has told Mario all about Querelle’s penchant for homoerotic encounters and Mario is now eager to embark on a sexual adventure of his own. Querelle, in fear for his life, is drawn into a sexual encounter with the police chief Mario (“La verge du policier fatalement traversait sa bouche quand le rapide traversa le tunnel avant d’entrer en gare” [305]). Additional rendezvous with Mario follow, until a humiliated Querelle is obliged to try to restore his sullied reputation and sense of virility by making love to Madame Lysiane—his brother’s mistress and wife of the brothel owner, Nono. In this way, he hopes to re-establish his superiority over Robert and salvage his image in the eyes of the public. Most readers see Querelle’s tryst with Nono as evidence of his evolution from heterosexual to homosexual. This derives in part from his own musings on how the experience will transform him (“En quoi serait-il transformé? En enculé” [217]). But in Querelle’s eyes, this transformation is clearly intended to be metaphorical rather than real. He does not see himself as any more connected to this “homosexual” charade than to the hide of an alligator. Querelle hardly intends his transformation into a “fairy” to be a lifelong commitment. Moreover, Querelle is not, unlike Seblon, a closet homosexual. He does not harbor homosexual feelings of any kind. He chooses this particular form of punishment not because of any latent homosexual tendencies but rather because this is the form of punishment that readily presents itself. The narrator takes care to emphasize the random nature of the “death sentence” he has chosen for himself (“Si un enchaînement logique des faits n’eût conduit Querelle à ‘La Féria,’ nul doute que l’assassin n’eût agencé, en secret de soi-même, un autre rite sacrificiel” [216]). It is only by chance, not by design, that he chooses sodomy. Moreover, it will be remembered that his homosexual encounter is deemed a punishment, not a pleasure. In fact, nothing in this encounter is natural for Querelle, who is unsure of the protocols involved in homoerotic couplings (“Querelle se demanda si lui-même devait essayer de plaire à l’exécuteur par des caresses”; “Mais quels gestes faire de douceur? Quelles caresses?” [220]). The fact that he seems to take pleasure in the encounter may have as much to do with the expiation of his crime as sexual gratification. What pleases Querelle during these homosexual encounters is the degradation it entails, the lewd debasement, the unnatural nature of the act (“Ce mataf écrasé sur le tapis, qui lui présentait des fesses musclées et velues au milieu des champignons de velours, avec lui accomplissait un acte qui aurait pu appartenir à des orgies de couvent, où les nonnes se font baiser par un bouc” [313]). The more debasing the punishment, the more purged he feels. Moreover, Querelle maintains throughout that he is not a homosexual—a credible statement in light of the fact that, in this work, homoerotic activities do not provide definitive evidence of one’s sexual orientation. Nono, Mario, Dédé and Gil all have homoerotic encounters of some type although none claims

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to be a homosexual. The problem for Querelle is that his private fantasy enters the public domain where it is appropriated and misinterpreted, or rather reinterpreted, by others. In other words, he loses control of what was intended to be an essential component of a private aesthetic endeavor. The unnatural and undesirable confluence of art (Querelle’s imagined execution for the murder of Vic) and reality (his being branded a homosexual by the outside world) is duplicated in the enduring conflict between Robert (representing reality) and Querelle (representing art). These two seemingly identical characters come into active conflict whenever their paths cross. The repulsion generated by this incongruent pairing is revealed by Madame Lysiane’s (and to a lesser extent Mario’s) alarm at the uncanny and unsettling resemblance between the two. This strong adverse reaction highlights the oppositional nature of art and reality—their fundamental incompatibility. When the two realms intertwine, both art and reality are compromised. What was supposed to bring Querelle relief (his symbolic execution and expiation for the murder of Gil), brings only shame and debasement. Querelle discovers to his chagrin that when art merges with reality, the latter always seems to triumph. In a passage describing the blunted (and therefore useless) knife found in Roger’s possession, the aesthetically biased narrator maintains that a dull knife is more powerful than a sharpened one (“Il n’avait pas deviné que d’être fausse et pratiquement inutile, l’arme, en devenant symbole, était plus dangereuse” [269]). A dull knife, he argues, symbolizes the bearer’s acceptance of criminal activity (“le couteau symbolique n’offre aucun danger pratique mais, employé dans une multitude de vies imaginaires, il devient le signe de l’acquiescement au crime” [269]). A real weapon, on the other hand, can be wielded by an unwilling assailant, as in the case of Gil. Although Gil does kill a man, he had no intention of doing so, and he later tries to justify the murder as the logical outcome of a series of insignificant events. The “symbolic knife,” on the other hand (the one wielded primarily by artists), betrays the possessor’s underlying approval of crime, making him/her more culpable than those who commit crimes of opportunity. It will be remembered that Seblon, too, believes that those who imagine crimes are just as guilty as those who commit them. For this reason he sees himself as culpable just for having imagined sexually explicit scenarios (“Je me sens une nature démoniaque à force d’avoir imaginé des sujets de scandale” [176]). Despite the narrator’s theoretical musings, Querelle soon discovers that, in the real world, a symbolic knife is no match for a real one. As a result of Querelle’s fantasy (his symbolic “execution”), he finds himself involved in two violent altercations wherein real knives are drawn against him. In these confrontations, Querelle is forced to confront the limits of aesthetic symbols (“Querelle soupira, vaincu. L’arme née de l’intelligence avait fait bon marché de la noblesse du corps, de l’héroïsme du guerrier” [301]). Just as fantasies of heroism are easily destroyed by real-life weapons, the aesthetic artifact is always subject to perversion and contamination when it comes into contact with pedestrian reality. For an arrogant and self-impressed artist like Querelle, the need to accept defeat at the hands of such lesser beings is particularly humiliating. Throughout the novel, Querelle reveals an abiding need to distinguish himself from the general population. The need for “apartness” is revealed early in the novel when he physically assaults a sailor who has the audacity to wear his beret in the same odd manner as he does (“De la main, Querelle fit sauter le béret sur le pont, mais avant que le matelot se fût baissé

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pour le ramasser, rapide, vengeur, Querelle lui martela le visage de ses poings” [193]). Querelle even labored to develop a special “gait” in order to distinguish himself from his crewmates (“Cette recherche d’une attitude qui le dessine, qui empêche la confusion de Querelle avec le reste de l’équipage, relève d’une sorte de dandysme terrible” [193–4]). It is his need to distinguish himself from the mainstream that explains in part his vocational calling. He is committed to his art (his murders) because this “singularité créatrice” distinguishes him from humanity in general, and his brother in particular. Moreover, when intimidated initially by Mario and Nono, he thinks about his hidden stash of wealth and buried treasure—material gains that provide him with a sense of distinctive superiority over these brothel masters (“Précipitamment, avec un peu de mélancolie, Querelle songea qu’il possédait, sur l’aviso mouillé en rade, dans le poste avant, ce qu’il fallait pour être l’égal de ce mâle. Cette pensée le calma un peu” [189]). Seblon’s artistry is also compromised when his interests become entangled with those of the real world. After Gil robs him at gunpoint (wounding him in the process), Seblon becomes infatuated with his bold and handsome “ravisseur” (“Ce n’était qu’un gosse. Il avait du cran” [341]). Concomitantly, the lieutenant’s attachment to Querelle, the motivational muse that inspired his journal, begins to wane (“Querelle l’agaçait. Son visage présent ne pouvait dissiper l’image de l’audacieux voyou s’évanouissant dans le brouillard du matin” [341]). When questioned by police officers about the robbery, Seblon refuses to identify Gil, whom he recognizes as his attacker. Seblon concludes ultimately that the realm of the imaginary (his poeticized passion for Querelle) is less compelling than reality itself. He therefore takes personal responsibility for the theft of the money (“Enfin, emporté par son soufflé généreux, soutenu par la présence lumineuse du vrai coupable, il s’accusa lui-même du vol de l’argent” [309]), after which he is arrested and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. This turn of events removes him permanently from the realm of the aesthetic. The mingling of art and reality has an adverse effect not only on the lives of the novel’s artist figures but also on those of the real-world characters. Before she meets Querelle, Madame Lysiane, proprietress of La Féria, is quite happy in the brothel and delighted with her new-found lover, Robert. But once Querelle arrives from the enchanted realms beyond the horizon, she has difficulty distinguishing fiction (Querelle) from reality (Robert)—a confusion that manifests itself in physical distress (“Le trouble qu’elle éprouvait en songeant à l’identité—pour elle de plus en plus parfaite—des deux frères, atteignit un degré tel d’exaspération, qu’elle sombra” [344]). Querelle causes her powers of imagination to accelerate into overdrive, and she fantasizes that Robert and Querelle are two impassioned lovers who have a child together. This “child” is Roger—a fifteen year old boy who was a friend of Gil. Compared to the unbridled fantasies unleashed by her imagination, the real world seems deficient and unsatisfying. Moreover, Querelle’s presence has diminished her status in Brest. Since his arrival, she has been obliged to cede center stage to Querelle and his brother who are the focus of everyone’s attention. She is no longer in control of her theatrical universe and has become little more than a facilitator of the more compelling drama involving Querelle and Robert (“Lentement, Madame Lysiane en vint à considérer la vie avec ses mille incidents comme parfaitement stupide, sans aucune importance comparable à l’ampleur du phénomène dont elle était le témoin et le lieu” [311]). As the book closes, Madame Lysiane contemplates burning down the brothel wherein she formerly reigned supreme.

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The confluence of art and reality can also be found in the link between the aesthetic and the illicit that undergirds the narrative. For both artist figures (Querelle and Seblon), crime and art are inextricably linked. Querelle’s art is homicide; Seblon’s journal is a poetic rendering of pornographic passion. In Seblon’s view, criminality enhances beauty, an enhancement of which the handsome Querelle has no need (“Querelle est trop naturellement beau pour s’ajouter encore la beauté du crime. Que ferait-il de cet ornement?” [227]). The link between beauty and crime manifests itself when he becomes infatuated with the armed thief who shoots him. It is not only the artists who are attracted to criminality, however. For the real-world characters as well, crime has an aesthetic dimension. Mario, the police inspector, is drawn to the art of criminality despite his duty to eradicate it (“Cette sensibilité très voilée à l’égard, non de la beauté formelle, définitive, mais de l’indication fulgurante d’une manifestation sans autre nom que la poésie, le rendit certains jours pendant quelques secondes perplexe” [206–7]). His reluctance to arrest certain criminals, we learn, is also aesthetically driven (“Et l’on peut dire qu’il n’arrêta le voleur que par un souci esthétique” [207]). He revels in consorting with underworld figures and worries that his betrayal of Tony the Docker will deny him access to the criminal world that provides grist for his fantasies: . . . mais sa trahison envers Tony le coupait du monde criminel, lui interdisait de se référer à lui, face auquel il devait rester, s’y tenir en juge, et non plus le pénétrer comme un élément sympathique capable d’être travaillé. Cet amour que tout artiste doit à la matière, la matière le lui refusait. (332)

For Gil, too, art and crime are linked. He refers to the journalistic accounts of his murder of Theo as “poèmes” (315). The mere act of associating with the criminal element suffices to raise one’s stature. Roger’s mother, for example, regards her son’s close association with Gil—a murderer—as evidence of maturity (“Aux yeux de sa mère, Roger avait pris une singulière maturité du fait d’être si intimement, si simplement, mêlé à un crime ayant les moeurs pour mobile” [310]). The very thought of crime is thrilling in itself, which explains how La Féria has earned its legendary status (“La nuit, ‘La Féria’ accordait encore à l’imagination les joies du crime étincelant” [187]). At the level of form, too, the realms of art and reality collide and coalesce in an awkward merger of opposing registers. Although the narrator begins his story in the lofty ambiance of the “Grande-Ourse, L’Etoile Polaire” and “La Croix du Sud,” the erotic quickly invades the text, corroding the pristine purity of the clichéd surface.12 Throughout the work, rhetorical elegance mixes uneasily with profane vulgarity. Jeremy Reed observes that it is precisely “this collision of opposites that accounts for the extraordinary oscillation in Genet’s novels between extreme lyric beauty and a violent machismo that brutalizes every trace of aesthetic.”13 This admixture of the lyrical and the profane is prominent in Seblon’s journal writings as well. The hyperpoeticized obscurity of many of the metaphors and linkages conveys the impression of a writer surrendering to the hyperbolic power of poetic fervor.14 These passages are so stylistically overwrought, so drenched in symbolism and so metaphorically strained that they are often incomprehensible.15 The aesthetic effect of these highly stylized passages is routinely undercut by the obscenity of their content, however. Graphic, at times disgusting, Seblon’s depictions of his frustrated desires appear more

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pornographic than lyrical (“Je pleurerais de ne pouvoir empoigner une bitte” [234]; “Qu’il dispose ses cuisses et qu’assis, j’y appuie mes mains, comme aux bras d’un fauteuil!” [264]). Finally, the incompatibility of art and reality is reflected in the heavy concentration of antitheses that punctuate the narrative.16 The gentle waves of the sea and the instability of fog are opposed by the solid impenetrability of granite and rocks that dominate the port city of Brest. This primary antithesis is sustained by a series of self-annihilating images, competing realities that clash and collide in a futile attempt to communicate meaning. The end result is not clarification, but obfuscation. Ships in the harbor are “perdus ou sauvés” (174); workers feel friendship and animosity towards one another (“Une obscure amitié—obscure pour eux—les lie, et une haine légère” [175]); a mouth appears to be both cruel and soft (“la cruauté et la mollesse des bouches de séducteurs” [184]). The lieutenant wants his love for Querelle to be both revealed and hidden (“Le lieutenant crut ne jamais avoir révélé son amour et en même temps espéra l’avoir clairement avoué” [226]). Chains in the old prison are both weighty and soft (“si pesantes qu’elles paraissent molles” [245]). Querelle’s vulgar antics are admired though he himself is scorned (“On admirait la vacherie de Querelle, que l’on haïssait” [259]). The world of the homosexual is perceived as a universe “à la fois abominable et merveilleux” (268). Homosexuality is widely practiced yet adamantly condemned (“Pasque faut pas te tromper, moi, je suis régulier. Et y a pus d’un mec qui pourrait te le dire. Faut pas croire” [302]). The only avowed homosexual in the work, Seblon, is one of the few characters who does not engage in homoerotic activities. Unable to make any sense of the relentless proliferation of oppositional pairings and doublings, the reader ultimately abandons the effort to make sense of it all.17 The one message that the text consistently presents, however, is that the imagination is a powerful force—one capable of both self-liberation and self-destruction.18 If Gil had had a richer imagination, the narrator insists, he would not have felt obliged to kill his adversary (“Avec un peu d’imagination Gil aurait pu détruire ce qui s’était passé, mais sa méchanceté étant sèche, il était sans imagination” [239]). It is only after he meets up with Querelle and finds himself isolated and bereft that his imagination begins to develop (“Chez le gosse enfermé dans les murailles, le meurtre et l’adolescence, suffoqué par l’angoisse et l’odeur du goudron, l’imagination se développait avec une extraordinaire vigueur”; “Gil faisait (sans qu’il s’en doutât) l’apprentissage douloureux de la poésie” [284]). In contrast, too much imagination can lead to thoughts of suicide, as in the case of Madame Lysiane. It is, of course, primarily the artist who has the responsibility to help unleash the power of the imagination. By scrambling conventional meanings and reassembling them in altered form, the artist allows others to view reality from a different perspective (“Il [Querelle] était apparu au milieu d’eux avec la soudaine promptitude et l’élégance du joker. Il brouillait les figures mais leur donnait un sens” [346]). The aesthetic enterprise is not accomplished without sacrifice, however. Querelle understands that his aesthetic endeavors render him “monstrous” (“Il connaissait l’horreur d’être seul, saisi par un enchantement immortel au milieu du monde vivant. A lui seul était accordé l’effroyable privilège d’apercevoir sa monstrueuse participation aux règnes des grands fleuves boueux et des jungles” [180]). But to the extent that Querelle sustains his criminal fury as a function of aesthetic commitment,

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his embittered resolve to stand firm as he evolves or devolves with his own choices, his art endures, almost as a by-product of his stalwart indifference and apartness. It is his decision to include others in the realization of his aesthetic endeavors that ultimately compromises and then undermines his art and his stature. Once he cedes to the fantasy of his symbolic execution, once his art becomes indistinguishable from the teeming reality of the port city of Brest, life and art are forever metamorphosed. The devolution that ensues does not allow for recovery or redemption. In Querelle de Brest, one outsider constructs an image of likeness, as though in an act of self-purging, but with notable failures galore. There is no liberation for the author—he, like the character who echoes him, drifts into a realm of yet greater and more insufferable alienation, only to end up in a wasteland of hellish repudiation from within and without. All that remains is the work of art—the novel—which pits the hideous descent into lascivious and perverse episodes against the polish of sculptured metaphoric prose of the highest caliber. At bottom, the pairing does not mitigate the effects, does not efface the images of ugliness, but forges a deeper, more sinful abyss as the poeticization of blight and vice unchecked intensifies the universe of doom in which the reader is steeped.

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4.

In the Shadows of Significance: The Dissolution of Character in Wright’s THE OUTSIDER

Perhaps because the title of Richard Wright’s The Outsider (1953) is identical to the title of a well-known translation of Camus’ L’Étranger, it is tempting to draw parallels between the two works. But whatever disparate and oft-flawed comparisons readers are tempted to put forth, one truth cannot be tweaked or wrangled: Meursault is in no sense nor at any moment alien to himself. In fact, it is his disarmingly cadenced sang-froid, his almost patent regularity, his unswerving comfort level that imbues this figure with the enigmatic persona that others forever foist upon him. Meursault offers the unparadigmatic portrait of homo fictus, a character who quests little and who finds a brand of self-sown peace which is unknown to those around him. In the superficial life which is his existence and from which he would have neither reason nor means to diverge or digress, the very concept of divergence or digression, like innovation or inspiration, is unknown in the minimalized world he inhabits. Each event or momentary swing is as unenduring as it is uncompelling. Difference is repealed. There is neither void nor repletion here, no analytical credo, no reflexivity and surely not a mote of self-conscious acuity. Much like Robbe-Grillet’s beachcombers, whose symmetric stride along the sandy beach is the totality of their being, Meursault strides through life, not quite robotically or narcoleptically, yet in a manner akin to both. His gait is that of an automaton, a stride that leads nowhere really, foreign to passage, for it is not and cannot be burdened with the plight of destination or purpose. Like Meursault, Cross Damon is a product of the margins. But Wright’s hero embodies in textualized form the very antithesis of his Camusian sibling. Meursault’s effortless gait is superceded in the universe Wright forges by a weighty and painful limp. For Cross, the plight of existence, in its most ponderous and raw of configurations, never ceases to erupt. An ill-defined vacuity pervades and awkwardly subsumes the text. We witness the seemingly irrevocable discomfort of a man who is always out of place. Whereas the tension borne of difference is absent from the universe of Camus’ Meursault, Wright’s protagonist is in essence nothing but difference. Confronted by the limitless space that distances quest and hopefulness from the essence of unfulfilled desire, he remains from beginning to end paralyzed by the impossibility of plenitude. Kierkegaard’s telling circumscription of the void, posed as epigraph to Book One, points only in part to the anguish and eternal wanting that is Cross Damon’s lot: “Dread is an alien power which lays hold of an individual, and yet one cannot tear oneself away, nor has a will to do so; for one fears what one desires.” If Meursault’s passivity in the presence of those who surround him is justly the result of his unconcern, his functional ambivalence, Cross’ lack of reactivity to events, to the jibes and insults of co-workers, to the books invoked, to work and play, derives from quite another source—that of

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uncontained and undefined alienation, which, by its absence of bounds or contours, resists remediation, proscribes plenitude and forbids closure. Cross Damon is thus ultimately distanced, not only from the likes of Meursault, whose otherness obtrudes before us, but from a prolific crew of pseudo-kinfolk to whom, on first glance, he would appear fundamentally analogous. Des Esseintes, Bardamu, Roquentin, Estragon, Butor’s Delmont, Simon’s Marie-Thérèse, to invoke but a few among the many, are each engaged in a dark journey, enveloped by a pervasive sense of being lost. Such shadowy paths notwithstanding, these anti-heroes are without exception the stuff of a narrative that births and sustains them, of a text in each instance that, however tortuously, lays them bare and offers keys to some, albeit imperfect, reading. Not so in the case of Wright’s novel. Paradoxically and problematically, what makes of Cross a singular emblem of alienation is what I will term the hyperembededness of the narrative in which the protagonist is steeped and by which he is speciously dissolved. We confront in Wright’s quasi-epic a brand of textuality that excises the very concept of substance or of alignment. Characterization, for all that one has conjured up in its name is, to be sure, imperilled, minimalized. Ultimately, the agglomeration of mini-tales, each conspicuously disjointed from what succeeds or follows, is offered like an unending barrage of possibilities, none of which holds or is sustained. In some sense, one might venture to juxtapose Wright’s massive undertaking as an exponential form of Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropismes, wherein scant images shift untransitionally from one instantaneous and brief snapshot to another. This seeming parallel is short-lived, however, for Wright’s vast enterprise, obtrusively framed like a post-Balzacian adaptation, proves as non-tropismic in intent as it does in outcome. The Outsider turns out to be a form of literary subterfuge—one that in no way fulfills the promise of its hypothesis. It is a narrative that embeds and buries its ostensibly central personage who, from outset to conclusion, recoils, recants, recasts and regresses until the stuff of what might have been his very being is rescinded. Initially enigmatic though extant, Cross is inevitably insignificant and effaced. This is in sum the art of a narrative that maneuvers, embeds and ultimately undoes readability. It is a narrative of defeat and self-defeat in which the ostensible hero, decentered by the centrifugal force of a narrative unable to accommodate him, loses his footing and ultimately his place. Consequently, even within the subset of letters where outsiders lurk—Cross Damon stands alone. Quintessentially, the text subsumes and obliterates the markers which conventionally guide and anchor the typical process of decoding. We, as readers, are derailed and disarmed, extradited to the vacant margins from which minimalized space we are, by default, the eponymous victims of the novel’s ploy. The center eradicated, roles are semiotically reversed. Otherly formulated, Cross all but gone (in terms of any coherent, sustainable presence), we are the outsiders, alienated by a text that undermines its own readability.1 The narrative momentum consistently stalls, leaving the reader to grapple with a sequence of episodic possibilities, none of which is ever fully realized. It is in view of this epistemological shift, of this explicit battle against all the novel would ostensibly embrace, even in its most sparse and post-modern of configurations, that we are called upon to summon the tools of semiotics if we are to restore any manner of readability. Confronted late in the work by one who discerns many of Damon’s former and unhinged ills, the district attorney, in a moment of disenchanted lucidity, concludes, “I knew that you were beyond the pale of all the little

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feelings, the humble feelings, the human feelings . . . I knew you could do anything! Not in a towering rage, not to save falling mankind, not to establish social justice, not for glory . . . But just because you happen to feel like that one day” (542).2 Here a fictional officer of the state, though well over 500 pages into the swerving text, offers the key to semiosis. Cross’ freedom is that of a fictional icon, an indeterminate prototype who, in the end, represents nothing but the act or word of that moment. In consequence, The Outsider is ultimately a narrative whose only structuring principle is the aimless meanderings of its center-staged hero, a hero who is, by dint of the same text, a prototype of dissolution. And it is this amorphousness of character, not the meaningless acts of a fettered figure, that ultimately informs a novel so long anchored in the subjugation of ideological readings. Cross’ marginality within a text of which he is the ostensible hero reveals itself in the opening sequence of the narrative. A group of friends is presented to the reader as a coherent, indistinguishable entity: four black postal workers in similar dress, moving in cadence with a similar gait. The only slight distinction Cross can claim within the group is that of hyperbolic excess. More physically sensitive to the elements, visibly more fatigued, Cross also surpasses his friends in the ability to consume alcohol, to rack up debts and to seduce women. In fact, Cross’ behavioral excesses have become something of a legend in his South Side Chicago community: “Somebody said,” Joe began, “that Cross was trying to imitate the United States Government. They said the trouble with Cross was his four A’s. Alcohol. Abortions. Automobiles. And alimony.” Joe laughed so violently that his eyes were buried in fat. Jerking out his words, he continued: “They called C-cross the Q-q-quadruple-A Program! Said that the best thing for Cross w-was to plow h-himself under . . .” (4)

Although he does emerge finally as the text’s central figure, he does so by virtue of narrative monopoly rather than personal accomplishment. Displaced, misunderstood and at times even ridiculed by his comrades, Cross reveals early on such an extreme inadequacy of self control and such a profound absence of motivation that the reader struggles to discern in him any well-defined identity at all. Based on his own recollections, Cross’ bland indistinctiveness is a recent phenomenon. If we are to believe his version of events, the Cross Damon the reader initially encounters is but the defeated remnant of an earlier, more vibrant character. There was a time when Cross was better known for traits that distinguished him from, rather than aligned him with, his African-American peers. His friends allude to Cross’ more “unconventional” persona when they mock his erstwhile passion for books and ideas: “Say, remember all them big, deep books he used to read and tell us about?” Joe asked, looking from Cross to the others. “He used to use so many big words I thought he’d choke! Every time I saw ’im, he had a batch of books under his arm.” (7)

Even now, though Cross’ interest in books has clearly waned, his friends continue to ridicule his previous obsession with what they consider to be a useless, impractical endeavor:

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“I told ’im,” Booker continued, “Crossy, you better find a gal to sleep with you, ’cause them books can’t keep you warm!” Man, in the clothes closet: books. In the bathroom: books. Under the bed: books. I said, “Crossy, you ain’t got no flu germs, you got book worms!” (8)

To his friends, who are grounded firmly in the static reality of their limited options, Cross’ mental creativity strikes them as almost “otherworldly” (“Any man who can do things like that is a man standing outside of the world!” [7]). Cross’ bookish curiosity was not his only distinguishing trait in earlier times. The defiant temperament he revealed as a child is in sharp contrast with the submissive posture so characteristic of his African-American peers. At a very early age, Cross vowed to reject, not hyperbolically confirm, the conventional expectations attached to his behavior. Rebellious and independent, he expressed an almost pathological aversion to any and all manner of behavioral or intellectual constraint. Cross would not allow any authority, divine or otherwise, to regulate his actions or his thoughts. When his mother attempted to curb her son’s sexual instincts through the threat of divine punishment, Cross sought to deliberately transgress these arbitrary controls that threatened his individuality.3 After all, what sort of tyrannical or irascible God would instill desire in his creations only to prohibit them to act upon that desire? In a defiant denunciation of piety and self-subordination, Cross commits himself early on to the secular quest for self-gratification: His adolescent fantasies had symbolically telescoped this God into an awful face shaped in the form of a huge and crushing NO, a terrifying face which had, for a reason he could never learn, created him, had given him a part of Himself, and yet had threateningly demanded that he vigilantly deny another part of himself which He too had paradoxically given him. This God’s NO-face had evoked in his pliable boy’s body an aching sense of pleasure by admonishing him to shun pleasure as the tempting doorway opening blackly onto hell; had too early awakened in him a sharp sense of sex by thunderingly denouncing sex as the sin leading to eternal damnation; had posited in him an unbridled hunger for the sensual by branding all sensuality as the monstrous death from which there was no resurrection; had made him instinctively choose to love himself over and against all others because he felt himself menaced by a mysterious God Whose love seemed somehow like hate. (22–3)

Cross’ rejection of divine authority ultimately expands to include all laws and ideological systems that are designed to blunt desire or control behavior.4 Man’s pervasive attachment to religious commandments and laws, he theorizes, is motivated by irrational fears—a remnant of early man’s attempt to give meaning to a vast and largely unintelligible universe.5 Over time, this fear led to a predilection for convention that was, in reality, just an ill-fitting mask worn to cover a moral vacuity too painful to confront: “Maybe man is nothing in particular,” Cross said gropingly. “Maybe that’s the terror of it. Man may be just anything at all. And maybe man deep down suspects this, really knows this, kind of dreams that it is true; but at the same time he does not want really to know it. May not human life on this earth be a kind of frozen fear of man at what he could possibly be?” (174)

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Because it is much easier to live within the familiar confines of totalitarian conformity and cling to comforting delusions and myths than to confront the reality of one’s spiritual emptiness, society remains largely addicted to its illusions despite centuries of scientific progress. Even in the post-modern era, legal mandates and religious beliefs continue to control society’s comportment and attitudes because they create a lulling assurance of coherence and order in an otherwise frighteningly disordered world: All the church had to do was predict that life would be terrible, that man would become overwhelmed with contradictory experiences. They could drill this simple, elementary truth of life into the hearts of impressionable children. Then the fathers of the church could sit back and watch the generations of the sons and daughters of men grow up and go forth on their little voyages of proud, vain desire, could watch them with soft, ironic smiles, for they knew that sooner or later they would come crawling back to the faith of their childhood, seeking solace, wanting mercy, forgiveness. (530–1)

Cross is convinced that, even though most people recognize that the laws and customs they respect and obey have no intrinsic validity, they would rather submit to the tyrannical dictates of external authorities than acknowledge the terrifying reality of their own unlimited freedom: Now, this real world in which we live today has a strange tone and aspect. We twentieth century Westerners have outlived the faith of our fathers; our minds have grown so skeptical that we cannot accept the old scheme of moral precepts which once guided man’s life. In our modern industrial society we try to steer our hearts by improvised, pragmatic rules which are, in the end, no rules at all. If there are people who tell you that they live by traditional values and precepts—as the English sometimes pretend—then they are either lying to you or to themselves; maybe they are lying both ways . . . (457)

Despite his self-proclaimed hyper-lucidity, Cross appears no more accomplished than his less enlightened counterparts. Moreover, he no longer possesses the aggressive defiance and intellectual curiosity that once served to distinguish him from his social peers. When the reader encounters the hero, he appears as just another financially strapped black postal worker with limited ambition and even more limited options. Like his friends, Cross is now wholly preoccupied with physical (as opposed to metaphysical) needs, and the only “freedom” currently weighing on his mind is his freefall into an ever-deepening abyss of legal and financial woes. Although such an extreme character devolution begs for clarification, none is forthcoming. Cross himself seems unable to account for his collapse of character. All he knows for certain is that the life he is currently leading is most certainly not the one he envisaged for himself. The downward spiral seems to begin when he meets Gladys as a university student and is “trapped” into marrying her. Children, debt and despair soon follow. He manages to regain his freedom briefly by feigning insanity. Separated from his wife, he then allows himself to be lured into a sexual relationship with a minor who becomes pregnant. Because he is unable to obtain a divorce from his embittered wife, Cross is unable to marry the pregnant teenager and therefore faces the likelihood of prison for the crime of statutory rape. This predicament is the root cause of Cross’ distress in the opening scenes of the novel.

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The enigmatic disjunction between Cross’ adolescent resolve to live life on his own terms and his adult entrapment endows the hero with a self-annulling ambivalence that he is never quite able to shed. His abstract self-assessment always seems to be at odds with his concrete actions, and this gives him an inconsistency of character that defies easy resolution. His passive–aggressive attitude towards his mother, Gladys and Dot renders him at once cowardly and cruel, compassionate yet cold. Hesitating between his commitment to self and his allegiance to others, Cross ultimately betrays both. Even after the subway accident that ostensibly provides Cross with a chance to establish a unifying set of principles by which to live and an opportunity to move textually from the margins to center-stage, Cross proves curiously unable to maintain any consistency of character. Having just heard the report of his death by the media in the wake of the subway accident, the newly liberated Cross is confident that he will be able to make the most of the opportunity to make a fresh start. Magically freed from all the commitments that had been imposed upon him in the past without his consent, Cross sets out to renegotiate his place in a refreshingly unfamiliar world: His repudiation of his ties was as though his feelings had been water and those watery feelings had been projected by his desires out upon the surface of the world, like water upon pavements and roofs after a spring rain; and his loyalty to that world, like the sun, had brightened that world and made it glitter with meaning; and now, since last night, since he had broken all of the promises and pledges he had ever made, the water of meaning had begun to drain off the world, had begun to dry up and leave the look of things changed; and now he was seeing an alien and unjustifiable world completely different from him. It was no longer his world; it was just a world . . . (117)

However, Cross’ faith in second chances is remarkably short-lived. Disappointingly, he proves no more able to master the chaos of existence in his new world than he did in the old.6 Whether he calls himself Charles Webb, Addison Jordan or Lionel Lane, he is unable to manipulate events to his advantage. His attempt to construct a new identity ex nihilo fails, obliging him to “borrow” the identity of a recently deceased black man in order to be able to function in society at all. Ironically, the man whose identity he usurps—Lionel Lane—is not all that different from the Cross Damon the world believes to be dead and buried. Like Damon, Lionel Lane was a debt-ridden drunk whose devout and pious mother was intent on saving her son’s immortal soul. Cross’ lack of agency in the novel manifests itself both at the level of theme and structure.7 At various points in the novel, Cross seems to be in conflict not only with other characters but with the narrative itself. When the text opens, for example, the narrator shifts the focus of attention away from Cross, the ostensible hero, and onto his more conventional (more “readable”) friends. As his friends mock his oddities, Cross recedes so far into the background that he becomes almost a forgotten entity. Even he is obliged to concede that he is more absent than present (“Cross stood aloof as the others bent double with their laughter. Cross didn’t resent what had been said; it was as though they were laughing at the foibles of an absent man who was well known to him” [4]). After the subway accident, the narrative and the hero remain locked in an adversarial position. Chidi Maduka notes that the narrator seems intent

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on undermining Cross’ self-reinvention by insisting on referring to him as “Cross” no matter what new alias he chooses to use.8 In Maduka’s view, the narrator’s reluctance to participate in Cross’ quest for self-reconstruction contributes to his underlying ambivalence as a character: In other words, there seems to be a doubling in the function of the author’s persona: one half asserts something that the other half negates. The result of this ironic relationship between the author and his protagonist is that when the “dam bursts,” one feels an impasse.9

Even the trite and abruptly contrived nature of Cross’ death connotes textual insignificance, as if he were unworthy of a more cleverly designed ejection from the text. Eliminated by pure contrivance in a kind of narrative deus ex machina (Cross is felled by a bullet from a non-identified source), he is definitively silenced after stammering out a few rushed and incomprehensible statements that serve more to obscure than clarify his position. The narrator’s apparent disdain for the hero is shared by those within the text. Damon is unable to bond significantly with any of his textual counterparts. His character is too unconventional, his mind too restless and turbulent and his attitude too obstinate and strong to fit within the conventional categories, particularly the category of race, occupied by his fellow characters. In fact, his lack of racial consciousness—his refusal to allow race to constitute the essence of his character—is perhaps his only truly distinctive trait. Unlike his peers, Cross refuses to allow himself to be defined by race or to base his vision of self on the prejudices of others.10 Although he feels a strong bond to the African-American community in general, he refuses to allow this solidarity to shape his identity: Militating against racial consciousness in him were the general circumstances of his upbringing which had shielded him from the more barbaric forms of white racism; also the insistent claims of his own inner life had made him too concerned with himself to cast his lot wholeheartedly with Negroes in terms of racial struggle. Practically he was with them, but emotionally he was not of them. He felt keenly their sufferings and would have battled desperately for any Negro trapped in a racial conflict, but his character had been so shaped that his decisive life struggle was a personal fight for the realization of himself. (182–3)

Cross’ lack of racial consciousness reveals itself even in his rejection of authority. His rebellious attitude is rooted not in the racially delimited quest for social equality but rather in the more universal quest for freedom: It was not because he was a Negro that he had found his obligations intolerable; it was because there resided in his heart a sharp sense of freedom that had somehow escaped being dulled by intimidating conditions. Cross had never really been tamed. (481–2)

Cross sees himself not as a black man but as a free man (“That all men were free was the fondest and deepest conviction of his life” [111]), and he therefore demands the right to establish the principles and values by which he intends to live:

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Cross had to discover what was good or evil through his own actions, which were more exacting than the edicts of any God because it was he alone who had to bear the brunt of their consequences with a sense of absoluteness made intolerable by knowing that this life of his was all he had and would ever have. (158)11

Cross convinces himself that, at some unconscious level, the rest of the world shares his race-neutral attitude. Racism, like religious belief and blind obedience to legal mandates, is just another one of those well-entrenched habits, a conventional response without substantive foundation. Surely, he reasons, whites know that blacks are not as devoid of intelligence as they claim to believe: He knew that deep in their hearts those two white clerks knew that no human being on earth was as dense as he had made himself out to be, but they wanted, needed to believe it of Negroes and it helped them to feel racially superior. They were pretending, just as he had been pretending. But maybe men sometimes pretended for much bigger and graver stakes? (204)

Cross’ assessment proves wholly inaccurate. In reality, his race-neutral viewpoint is shared by no other character—a fact that confirms his identification as the text’s “outsider.”12 Finch, the postmaster, articulates early the text’s conventional viewpoint towards blacks. Cross is just one more intellectually stunted and sexually hyperactive member of a homogenous underclass (“‘You colored boys get into a lot of trouble on the South Side.’ Finch gave a superior smile. ‘You must have a hot time out there every day, huh?’” [90]). In such a race-conscious environment, Cross’ muted presence and his inability to take and hold the dramatic center appear wholly comprehensible. No matter what the context or the audience, Cross cannot free himself from the stereotypes attached to race. This inability to counter the racial perceptions of others with an opposing yet credible image of self accounts for at least part of his lack of definition within the narrative.13 Arguably, even the erroneous report of his death reveals an unwillingness to distinguish one black man from another.14 The mangled subway rider presumed to be Cross does not resemble Cross or any other human being in any way. But because Cross’ identity papers are found in the vicinity of the body, no further effort is made either to corroborate the initial identification or to link the death of the man on the train to that of another black man reported missing shortly after the accident. In a textual realm so overdetermined by racial prejudice, Cross labors in vain to project an image of self which is unlinked to race. In order to “legitimize” his existence after the subway accident, he is obliged to participate in the humiliating masquerade of black inferiority. Donning the mask of a witless but harmless buffoon, Cross succeeds in obtaining the assistance of sneering white bureaucrats: In the end Cross decided that a simple, an almost silly reason was the best reason that an ignorant Negro could have for demanding a birth certificate; it would have to be a reason that whites, long schooled in dealing with Negroes as frightened inferiors, would accept without question. (200–1)

It is noteworthy that only by enacting the stereotypical role of a grinning and hapless Negro is he able to obtain formal social recognition. This passage is of particular

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importance because it foreshadows what the text ultimately confirms: that Cross can either agree to play the stereotypical role society has scripted for him or have no identity at all: In his role of an ignorant, frightened Negro, each white man—except those few who were free from the race bias of their group—would leap to supply him with a background and an identity; each white man would project out on him his own conception of the Negro and he could safely hide behind it. (203)15

As Cross moves through the text as Lionel Lane, he encounters no one who is willing to look beyond the stereotype of race to engage with the individual underneath. On the train to New York he meets a priest—Father Seldon—who boasts of his benevolence toward disadvantaged black youths. However, the priest’s pose of racial tolerance collapses when he rushes instinctively to defend a white woman against a perceived threat from Cross and a black waiter. Ely Houston’s liberal attitude is no less superficial. His professed interest in blacks derives primarily from a commonly held aesthetic prejudice. Because he automatically links beauty with white traits, this odd-looking hunchback identifies with the physical “deformity” of being black. The communists, too, see in Cross only a man whose color serves their ideological goals. Even the soft-hearted Eva is blinded by her faith in racial stereotypes.16 In Eva’s eyes, Cross is a vulnerable and powerless Negro destined to be victimized by his more clever communist handlers. The naïve impressions she records in her diary are so counter to reality that they appear almost laughable (“Another victim? I wish I could talk to him and tell him something. Colored people are so trusting and naïve” [271]).17 The hyper-racialized atmosphere in which he operates obliges Cross to camouflage his non-stereotypical attitudes behind a variety of masks and poses in an attempt to blend in with his surroundings. This need for self-concealment perhaps explains why Cross is unable to progress within the narrative. After the subway accident, as before, Cross is a performer whose words and actions appear calculated to achieve a desired reaction. Just as he feigned insanity to free himself from his marital prison, Cross now adopts whatever posture is required to deceive his audience. Indeed, Cross discovers that he is believed only when he lies; when he speaks the truth, his words are immediately discredited. Jenny, a hotel prostitute, refuses to believe Cross when he tells her about the erroneous report of his death. Similarly, Eva Blount refuses to believe him when he confesses to the murder of her husband. Cross remains convincing as a character only when his responses conform to the prejudiced expectations of others. Gil Blount believes all blacks to be inherently ignorant, uninformed beings. Consequently, Cross’ feigned ignorance of political theory is readily accepted. Likewise, the communists initially lend credence to Cross’ wholly fabricated version of how Blount and Herndon died. The notion of a fearless Negro committing acts of gratuitous violence counters too drastically entrenched stereotypes to merit serious consideration: Cross listened with amazement. Yes, sane men did misread reality. Just as he had once had fantasies, so now he was looking at men who were passionately arguing about their own fantasies, trying to decide which fantasy was to be taken for reality. (352)

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Even the shrewd Ely Houston is for a time taken in by the deceptive manner of this artful imposter. Cross’ inability to move beyond prejudiced perceptions, to be perceived for the individual he is and not the stereotype he is presumed to be, is at the root of his social alienation. The narrative context in which he operates is simply ill-equipped to accommodate his race-neutral attitude. Cross longs to connect with other like-minded souls, characters who, like himself, are able to look beyond the categories of race: Weren’t there somewhere in this world rebels with whom he could feel at home, men who were outsiders not because they had been born black and poor, but because they had thought their way through the many veils of illusion? But where were they? How could one find them? (35–6)

Throughout the text, Cross is consumed by the need to locate a confidant to whom he can reveal his true self (“He yearned to talk to someone; he felt his mere telling his story would have helped” [17–18]). Even as a child, Cross wrestled with a deepseated need to be properly identified, so much so that he actually craved his mother’s admonishments. Her disapproval would at least confirm that her perception and his reality coincided seamlessly with one another: Because he really wanted her to rail at him, denounce him, and he would suffer, feel his hurt again, and, in doing so, would know intuitively that somewhere in the depths of his raw wound lay his salvation or his disaster. (23)

His initial attraction both to his wife Gladys and to his underage mistress Dot is fueled by what turns out to be an erroneous belief that they understand the complexity of his singular personality. Because he is so consistently misidentified by others, confession seems to be the only means by which he can affirm his identity (“Dammit, he had to tell somebody just to make sure that his situation was not a fantasy of his own mind. He was too much alone and it was insupportable” [133]). It is this need for self-affirmation that compels him to tell Eva that he murdered her husband and very nearly to make a full confession to the ever-inquisitive district attorney (“He had a foolish desire to reach forward and grab Houston’s shoulder and say to him: All right; I know you’re after me . . . Let’s get it over with” [164]). The disjunction between Cross’ self-perception and the identity imposed on him results in a psychic breakdown of sorts.18 His view of self is so compromised by the distorted viewpoints of others that he becomes a stranger to himself (“Now more than ever he knew that he was alone and that his problem was one of the relationship of himself to himself” [10]). Unable to convince others to accept the image of self he tries to project, he develops an increasingly murderous relationship with his textual counterparts.19 Those who refuse to acknowledge the “real” Cross are methodically destroyed.20 Even those with whom he has close emotional ties—his mother, his wife Gladys, Dot, Jenny, Eva—provoke within him momentary bouts of destructive rage borne of his desire to be correctly identified.21 These violent tendencies serve only to fracture further his already tentative view of self. Throughout the text, Cross proclaims a non-violent benevolence (“Lady, I never really hurt anybody in my life but myself” [113]); a profound humanity (“‘That’s the trouble,’ he almost hissed.

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‘I’m simply too damned human’” [52]); a zest for living (“I wanted to be free . . . to feel what I was worth . . . what living meant to me . . . I loved life too . . . much” [561]); and a fundamental innocence (“Because in my heart . . . I’m . . . I felt . . . I’m innocent” [563]) that his actions routinely belie.22 No wonder that his self-perception, already at odds with society’s and the reader’s views of him, begins to lose clarity even to himself: What was the matter with him? He was, yes, he was trapped in the coils of his own actions. He had acted, had shattered the dream that surrounded him, and now the world, including himself in it, had turned mockingly into a concrete, waking nightmare from which he could see no way of escaping. (295)

The hero’s self-perception at times becomes so clouded and his sense of reality so tenuous that he is compelled to verify that he is not a figment of his own imagination. After the subway accident he risks detection by watching his own funeral from a preselected vantage point. He can also be found reading documented accounts of events related to his recent activities: the obituary recounting his death, the article about Booker’s demise, the report of Herndon’s and Gil’s murders, the account of Hilton’s death. He also pores over Eva’s descriptions of him in her diary. These metatextual episodes wherein Cross reads about Cross serve to embed the character further within the text by making him the consumer, rather than the agent, of his own actions. Cross’ identity crisis appears to resolve itself finally when Ely Houston pieces together the tattered threads of his criminal past. Cross is in some sense relieved to be formally accused because the world will finally be forced to reckon with Cross the man rather than Cross the stereotype. Again, however, Cross’ designs are thwarted. His arduous journey towards self-affirmation comes to an end when Houston chooses not to prosecute him for his misdeeds. Although Houston is convinced of Cross’ culpability, he elects to suppress the evidence rather than to expose Cross’ unconventionality to an unsuspecting world. To bring Cross to justice would threaten the validity of the racial stereotypes by which men live, and Houston is too aware of the consequences to take the risk (“And woe to the man who dares to try to reveal that pretense! He is the criminal” [174]). Houston elects therefore to feign ignorance of reality rather than to contest prevailing myths and stereotypes (“And I won’t give you the satisfaction of sitting in a court of law with those tight lips of yours and gloating at me or any jury while we tried to prove the impossible” [549–50]). Cross’ quest for identity thus culminates in social invisibility. Houston’s inaction condemns Cross to live out the rest of his days as a phantom being—a man whose substantive reality will forever be known only to himself: “Listen, Damon, you made your own law,” Houston pronounced. “And, by God, I, for one, am going to let you live by it. I’m pretty certain you’re finished with this killing phase . . . So, I’m going to let you go. See? Yes; just go! You’re free! Just like that.” (549)

For Cross, it is the ultimate defeat. Throughout the text he struggles to become the architect of his own identity, to be seen as an individual and not a stereotypical cliché, to overcome the racial categorization that so limits his options and constrains his character. And just when victory appears to be at hand, just when the world will

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finally be forced to contemplate the radically liberated monster that is Cross Damon, Houston nullifies his triumph by refusing to identify him: The ludicrous nature of his protest came to him and he smiled wryly at his own self-deception. Always back deep in his mind, he had counted on their railing at him, storming, cursing, condemning. Instead, nothing, silence, the silence that roars like an indifferent cataract, the silence that reaches like a casual clap of thunder to the end of space and time. (551)

Despite all his efforts, Cross is destined to remain an unseen, unknown, anonymous entity. His irrelevance now ensured, he burns the last visible record of his misunderstood persona—the naïve impressions Eva articulated in her diary. Cross is obliged to exchange the trauma of being consistently misread for the even greater tragedy of being invisible: He had broken all of his promises to the world and the people in it, but he had never reckoned on that world turning on him and breaking its promise to him too! He was not to be punished! Men would not give meaning to what he had done! Society would not even look at it, recognize it! This was not fair, wasn’t right, just . . . (551)

In the end, Cross has no choice but to reconcile his vision of self with that of society in general: He, like others, had to pretend that nothing like this could ever happen; he had to collaborate and help keep the secret. He had to go forward into the future and pretend that the world was as tradition said it was. (552)

Mercifully, Cross’ life as a stereotype is short-lived. Not long after being released from police custody he is gunned down by fellow communists who, like Houston, prefer to erase from the public record that which they are unable to understand. Cross’ death, it must be confessed, elicits little compassion from the reader who finds him as frustratingly incomprehensible as the communists who forcibly eject him from the text.23 Cross’ character commits the unpardonable heresy of imagining himself in opposition to prevailing myths and conventions, and it is a transgression that the narrator, Cross’ fellow characters and the reader are not prepared to forgive.24 The character of Cross Damon is situated too far outside the matrix of social, legal and interpretive codes for the reader to be able make any sense of him at all.25 For those within the text as well as those outside it, Cross’ most vexing trait is his break with precedent, his failure to live up to the stereotypes imposed upon him. In this, Cross has something in common with the author himself. Wright’s second and much anticipated novel departed radically from its highly acclaimed precedent, Native Son. Assessments of the work, especially from American readers, were particularly harsh.26 Native Son, with its more conventional and recognizable product of America’s black underclass, compels the reader’s compassion and understanding in a way that the more educated but less stereotypical Cross Damon does not.27 Whereas Bigger’s deficiencies in judgment evoke empathy in the reader, Cross’ arrogant (and fundamentally useless) percipience breeds only frustration and

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animosity.28 Cross Damon’s impotent rebellion and shifting structure of self strikes no consuming emotion within the reader; the unstable amalgam of fragmentary and tendentious episodes in which he is involved disperses focus and quells interest.29 Based on the overwhelmingly negative assessments of The Outsider, one might be tempted to suggest that Wright was no more able to break with precedent than his beleaguered hero.30 There may be more at play than just readerly intolerance for unconventional sequels, however. In reading The Outsider, one senses that the author is himself in conflict with his own narrative enterprise.31 Wright surely knew that his decision to expand his creative horizons would provoke resentment from readers who anticipated a naturalistic novel in the tradition of his first. In choosing to mute the fusion of race and aesthetics that informed Native Son, Wright chose to exercise his creative right to explore less familiar themes, to write narratives that moved beyond the limited context of race. The intrinsic limitations imposed on an author are in fact metatextually suggested within the text. Cross’ reinvention of himself after the subway accident is initially cast as a daring narrative enterprise, one that is intended to provide the hero with unlimited options for self-reconstruction (“He would have to imagine this thing out, dream it out, invent it, like a writer constructing a tale, he told himself grimly as he watched the blurred street lamps flash past the trolley’s frosted window” [110]). Cross soon discovers, however, that he is unable to create a character unlinked to precedent, and he must settle for mimetic duplication by borrowing the identity of a dead man who, ironically, closely resembles him. This burdensome need for mimetic duplication, the author points out, is unique to those committed to the art of character (re)construction. Whereas other artists, musicians and abstract painters, for example, are quite liberated from the subject matter of their compositions, the writer remains tethered closely to it.32 The metaphysical byways of jazz in particular allow for the reconciliation of antithetical and irreconcilable realities, a coupling that the real-world setting would never allow:33 Blue-jazz was the scornful gesture of men turned ecstatic in their state of rejection; it was the musical language of the satisfiedly amoral, the boastings of the contentedly lawless, the recreations of the innocently criminal . . . Cross smiled with depressed joy as he paced about his room, his ears full of the woeful happiness of the blues and the orgiastic culpability of jazz. (180)

Unlike his musical counterparts, Cross is bound by the limits of mimetic representation when he undertakes to “rewrite” his life.34 Significantly, Cross flees the intoxicating seduction of the rebel art forms that are found in the home of the unconventional and sexually alluring widowed landlady in order to take up residence with an older, more conventional African-American woman preoccupied with death.35 It is she who inspires Cross’ idea to locate a “new” identity in a nearby black cemetery—a strategy that fosters regression rather than evolution. Cross’ decision to recycle a pre-existing identity links the concept of mimetic duplication to conventionality and death, and foreshadows Cross’ ultimate failure to move beyond the confines of convention, despite his ardent desire to do so.36 Not unlike his hero, Wright, too, confronts the difficulty of distancing present from precedent, perhaps because, like his hero, he benefits from the special circumstance

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of being a “psychological man.” Like any gifted novelist, Wright is endowed with a prodigious imagination and the rhetorical capacity to inspire faith in narrated illusions. But, unlike most other novelists, Wright is endowed with what Ely Houston refers to as “double vision”—that is to say, an enhanced means of seeing the world by virtue of his insider/outsider status. As an African American, Wright is both an assimilated member of his social community and a self-conscious outsider—a man for whom the jagged and imperfect outlines of his assimilation remain always and ever totally visible. This hyper-lucidity inevitably infiltrates Wright’s second novel, where race is neither as irrelevant or as inconsequential as either the author or his hero would have us believe.37 Perhaps, then, The Outsider falls short of expectation not because it departs too radically from precedent, but because in his attempt to reconcile the purity of his aesthetic vision with the world’s cringing devotion to stereotypes, Wright creates a hybridized hero that strikes no consuming emotion within the reader, perhaps not even the writer himself. The dissolution of substance into absence that characterizes the hero’s trajectory derives at least in part from Wright’s conscious attempt to distance himself from his aesthetic creation. In so doing, however, he failed to take into account a singular, unique, and compelling truth: unlike the average weaver of tales, Wright, with his uncommon blend of aesthetic genius, hyper-lucidity, breadth of intellect, and racial self-awareness is a more compelling fictional subject than any he could possibly create.

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5.

The Exemplum of Empathy in André Langevin’s POUSSIÈRE SUR LA VILLE

Poussière sur la Ville was published in 1953, several years before the first performance of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. There are, however, more than a few points of commonality to be found in these two works. The title of Langevin’s novel foreshadows the omnipresent clouds of dust raised by Ionesco’s stampeding rhinos that choose to leave their humanity behind in a mindless rush towards bestial purity. The herd-like contempt for weaker beings so characteristic of the residents of Macklin aligns them with Ionesco’s marauding beasts. Like Ionesco’s animals, Langevin’s townspeople prize the uniformity of the pack over isolating distinctiveness, strength over frailty and mind-numbing conformity over deliberated nuance. The novel’s hero, Alain Dubois, reveals the same weakness for alcohol as Ionesco’s only human holdout, Bérenger.1 Both works end with an alienated human surrounded and outnumbered by hostile adversaries. However, unlike Ionesco’s Bérenger, Langevin’s outsider hero does inspire at least one of his jaded and desensitized compatriots to reaffirm his humanity. As the novel ends, the town taxi driver’s sudden penchant for alcohol reveals a capacity for psychological suffering that is uncharacteristic of Macklin residents. Jim’s recourse to alcohol to blunt the pain of emotional suffering offers a glimmer of hope that his counterparts might one day recover their humanity as well. The novel’s protagonists, Madeleine and Alain Dubois, are outsiders by nature (“Aliénée, elle l’était depuis sa naissance, comme moi” [195]).2 When they move from the cosmopolitan city of Montreal to the industrial town of Macklin, their alienation is placed prominently in evidence. The newlyweds relocate to Macklin so that Alain Dubois can take over the medical practice of the aging Dr. Lafleur. Geographical and cultural strangers, the two are physically distinct as well. Madeleine’s bright red hair contrasts sharply with the drab and grayish hues that predominate in this fog-drenched valley. Alain, slight of stature, appears even more diminutive when viewed alongside the town’s burly miners (“Je ne suis pas un monstre. Taille moyenne. Cheveux et yeux bruns. Un gars de la ville, bien sûr. A côté des mineurs, je dois paraître malingre” [24]). Alain’s positive self-assessment notwithstanding, his small frame prompts Kouri, the restaurant owner, to refer to him as “le petit docteur.” Initially, the townspeople view Madeleine more favorably than her husband because her proletarian background is more closely aligned with their own working class roots (“Mais Madeleine ignorait d’insinct les différences de classe. Fille d’ouvrier, elle n’avait connu avant notre mariage que le quartier populeux d’une grande ville, des restaurants syriens ou grecs, une humanité dense et grise où elle se mouvait à l’aise” [31]). However, it becomes quickly apparent that neither Madeleine nor Alain is destined for quick assimilation. The class-conscious Alain, a physician,

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considers himself superior to his prospective patients and bemoans the absence of a separate neighborhood wherein he and other notables could isolate themselves from the general population (“Toutes les petites villes de la région ont un quartier préservé où les notables habitent des maisons cossues entourées de pelouses et de fleurs. Ici, point” [27]).3 Madeleine, an impassioned and impulsive hedonist, has nothing but contempt for the stultifying conformity of the automatons around her. Ideologically, the Dubois both hold views that run counter to those of the vast majority of Macklin residents. The all-consuming materialism of the townspeople is at odds with the meditative introspection of Alain and the romantic idealism of Madeleine. Whereas the townspeople value practicality and industriousness, the Dubois place a higher priority on satisfying emotional and aesthetic (as opposed to physical) needs. Alain is reserved and intellectually nuanced; Madeleine craves escapist diversions. The Dubois distinctiveness from their fellow Macklinites is perhaps most in evidence in their disregard for the material realities with which the locals routinely grapple. Alain pays little attention to financial matters and appears unconcerned when Madeleine points out that he has at least four competitors vying for clients in a relatively small town. He also does little to compel his clients to pay their bills (“Si, mes clients me paient mal. Mais cela ne le regarde pas” [51]), and when he is unable to make payment on the loan extended to him by Arthur Prévost, one of the town’s notables, he assumes with cavalier insouciance that he will manage somehow to find other willing lenders. He is as insensitive to the weather as he is to his bank account. Although the ice and snow are major preoccupations for everyone else, he pays no heed to the severe climactic conditions. As the novel opens, Dubois becomes aware of the blustery conditions only when the disapproving glare of a neighbor brings the matter to his attention (“Un vent violent fait tournoyer une neige fine dans la rue déserte. Et, tête nue, sans pardessus, je contemple ma maison” [11]). Whereas fellow residents understand the need to protect their vehicles from the punishing cold and take care to place them under cover, Dubois routinely leaves his dilapidated old jalopy exposed to the menacing elements, despite the warnings of both Jim the taxi driver (“On ne laisse pas une voiture de cet âge-là dehors par un temps pareil” [45]) and Dr. Lafleur (“J’ai vu votre voiture dehors. Ce n’est pas prudent dans notre métier” [48]). Consequently, he is often obliged to rely on others for transportation. Dubois’ insensitivity to material realities is the result of his introspective manner, and this is another uncharacteristic quality among Macklin males. Even though as a physician he is professionally bound to the corporeal world, his focus tends toward the metaphysical. For Dubois, illness is itself a mysterious metaphysical conundrum (“Une intervention chirurgicale me laisse toujours oppressé, angoissé presque” [47]). The randomness of affliction prompts him to ponder the relationship between divine benevolence and human suffering (“Je ne crois pas à une justice qui assène elle-même les coups, quitte à se reprendre ailleurs, plus tard. Une justice qui brise l’innocent avant de le reconnaître” [127]). Whereas Dr. Lafleur worries only about the procedure at hand, Dubois can’t keep from focusing on the aftermath as well: Puis, quand on emporte le patient il recouvre à mes yeux son identité, son passé et son avenir d’être humain, avenir parfois de quelques heures, qui se déroule à une vitesse prodigieuse sous nos yeux dans la salle de chirurgie. (47)

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Madeleine, though less introspective than her husband, is equally obsessed with abstract (as opposed to materialist) concerns. Her husband reveals that Madeleine is a feeling rather than a thinking being (“A vingt-quatre ans, Madeleine ne pensait rien, elle sentait tout, plus prompte à désirer qu’à soupeser ce qu’elle recevait” [35]). Strong-willed and irrepressible, she refuses to be constrained in her behavior by either the social codes of Macklin or the divine codes of the church. In order to escape the stagnant milieu in which she finds herself, Madeleine immerses herself in escapist diversions such as watching films or listening to the jukebox. These pursuits are deemed trivial and non-productive by most Macklin residents, as evidenced by the dearth of cinemas (only two to serve all the residents of Macklin). At home, she occupies her time by going shopping or making dresses with her friend Thérèse that they copy from the latest fashion magazines. Boredom is not Madeleine’s only problem, however. Her aesthetic sensitivities are sorely challenged in her new home. The town is hideously ugly and, shortly after their arrival in Macklin, Dubois fears Madeleine’s reaction when she catches a glimpse of Macklin in the full light of day (“Que la ville fût laide, affreusement, elle le savait, mais j’appréhendais de la lui faire connaître de plus près” [27]). Moreover, because she takes no interest in her husband’s medical practice, she cannot busy herself by helping him. Though others, her mother included, are impressed by her husband’s profession, Madeleine finds his work to be physically repugnant (“L’indifférence, la répulsion même que ressent Madeleine pour mon métier je l’étends à tous et à moimême” [89]). She therefore spends as little time as possible in his office and refuses to offer even a modicum of assistance. Other doctors’ wives are eager to assist their husbands by cleaning specimen bottles and washing bandages for reuse. Madeleine will have nothing to do with such disgusting tasks.4 The couple’s outsider status is compounded further by their behavioral nonconformity. On their first night in Macklin, they dine out together—a violation of social protocols (“Les notables de Macklin, et même sans le sou j’en étais, ne dînent pas au restaurant, surtout pas en compagnie de leurs épouses” [31]). Once inside the restaurant, they are confronted by a prolonged assault of hostile glances from other diners. The rebellious Madeleine brazenly mounts a counter-attack with an offensive gesture of her own (“La dernière fois que ma femme le vit passer à côté d’elle, plus insistant encore, elle lui tira la langue” [33]). Dubois tries to persuade Madeleine to leave, but she refuses to do so. As restaurant patrons ogle his wife, Alain makes no effort to defend her honor, and his passivity lowers his stature even further in the eyes of the patrons (“En ne faisant rien moi-même pour la défendre, je leur cédais le terrain sur le seul plan qui les intéressait vraiment, celui de la virilité” [33]). Dubois’ inability to restrain his wife’s behavior contrasts sharply with the physical mastery revealed by other working-class males in Macklin. Accustomed to battling all manner of natural elements (both above ground and below) on a daily basis, the miners rely on physical force to achieve results. Whether working in the mines or simply navigating ice-covered streets, Macklin residents commit all their energies to the struggle to survive in an inhospitable environment. Their day-to-day concerns revolve around securing basic necessities: earning a living wage, obtaining food, finding shelter and combating the relentless assault of rain, snow, dust and noise that blanket the town. Because elemental survival constitutes the residents’ primary preoccupation, the qualities that are held in highest esteem are those that contribute

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to the realization of this goal—qualities such as stamina, endurance, willpower and force. It is therefore not surprising to discover that for men, virility is the attribute that is valued above all others. The emphasis on brute force and physical stamina results necessarily in a valorization of “masculine” characteristics. Muscular strength, massive girth, a steely strength of will and stoical self-mastery are highly prized. Equivocation, introspection, emotionality, and even compassion, on the other hand, are deemed irrelevant at best and at worst are perceived as being a clear and present threat to the established order. The residents’ intense focus on vanquishing environmental foes seems to have sapped their capacity to commiserate with others, leading Dubois to conclude that they are by and large a people without compassion (“Ils m’effrayent avec leurs visages terreux, durcis par l’effort quotidien, leur regard sans pitié” [106]). Even the local priest betrays a virulent and uncompromising temperament that seems ill-suited to his chosen vocation. Traditional religious concepts such as tolerance, empathy and forgiveness have no place in the unforgiving and harsh realities that beset Macklin (“Il n’a pas pitié et ne comprend pas la pitié parce qu’il est de leur race à eux, dur, courageux et cruel pour les faibles” [165]). Locked in struggle with the physical world, the practical-minded residents of Macklin have neither the time nor the inclination to indulge in sterile introspection or frivolous aesthetic pursuits. They make no attempt to blunt the external squalor of their homes or businesses (“Toutes les maisons ont l’aspect minable de bâtiments de mine, les couleurs délavées par la poussière d’amiante qui n’épargne rien, même pas la maigre végétation” [27]). Indeed, the ever-present dust from the mines would quickly destroy whatever effort they put into beautifying their residences. Refinement and elegance seem wholly out of place in an arena where basic survival commands all one’s attention. Though luxury items are available for purchase, their value is calibrated to suit the primitive tastes of the clientele. The gaudy and ostentatious accessories that find favor with materialistic-minded shoppers all lack elegance or finesse. What is essential is that the costly gemstones be glaringly in evidence (“Un bracelet incrusté d’agates onyx. Le travail n’a aucune finesse et vise à l’épate, mais rien sous les vitrines ne pèche par excès de raffinement” [70]). Even at Christmas, the depth of one’s spiritual commitment is gauged by superficial excess. Caught up in the general atmosphere of manic spending, even the poorest of Macklin residents rush to squander the little they have in order to provide the illusion of celebratory plenitude: C’est assez étrange cette façon de célébrer la naissance d’un enfant sur la paille par un débordement de mercantilisme. Prévost m’a confié qu’il réalisait le tiers de ses affaires de l’année dans le seul mois de décembre. On dirait que Noël les a dégoûtés à jamais de l’indigence, que la vue de la paille de la crèche les fait se lancer au galop dans les magasins. (89)

As a result of their common struggle against the forces of nature, Macklin residents have developed a strong sense of social solidarity.5 A homogeneous blend of likeminded individuals, they appear to have willingly discarded their personal identities in exchange for a communal one. Macklin residents live their lives in lockstep fashion, like automatons performing mechanically in a pre-scripted performance.6 Attitudes and judgments reflect those of the collective. Here, one’s daily routine must be uniformly similar to everyone else’s. Macklin residents tend to bathe (“A Macklin

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on se lave le samedi soir” [91]) and digest their food in unison (“Tous les dimanches, les habitants de Macklin déjeunent aussi bien que leur curé ou leur médecin. Ensuite, ils digèrent. Ça a un drôle d’air une ville qui digère” [97]). The ideological conformity of Macklin residents is strengthened, perhaps even necessitated, by the town’s geographical insularity. Self-contained and isolated from the world beyond its boundaries, Macklin gives the impression of an impregnable fortress that is closed in upon itself (“Macklin s’isole ainsi du reste du monde dix ou douze fois par hiver” [123]). Images of imprisonment and suffocation infiltrate Dubois’ early depiction of his new home: La ville est construite au fond d’une cuvette. De trois côtés des collines l’écrasent où on cultive un sol pierreux bon pour le pâturage et le fourrage. Du côté nord, elle s’achève sur un lac pas très grand, lui même encaissé dans les collines. (26)

Surrounded by mountains and submerged beneath an oppressive fog, Macklin residents have become accustomed to dust, noise and climactic extremes that have transformed the spontaneity of daily life into a series of predictable responses, uniform movements and well-entrenched habits.7 In order to maintain behavioral conformity, residents rely on ocular surveillance to keep one another in check. Pervasive stares emanate from the residents whenever transgressive behavior is detected, as the Dubois discover when they choose to dine at Kouri’s restaurant. Once inside, hostile stares from other diners reveal the seriousness of their infraction (“Les visages fermés, rudes considéraient calmement ma femme qui, entre deux bouchées, soutenait ces regards avec une tranquille assurance” [32]). Life in Macklin is lived under the constant scrutiny of judgmental witnesses. The concept of privacy does not exist. As the struggling Doctor Dubois quickly discovers, acceptance or rejection, success or failure, depend exclusively on one’s willingness to perform in strict accordance with accepted protocols. Alain is warned by Prévost that the couple’s every move is under constant scrutiny (“Dans une ville comme Macklin vous ne pouvez avoir de vie privée” [132]). If Dubois intends to succeed in Macklin, his conduct must be beyond reproach; that is to say, it must conform to expectations (“Tout ce que vous faites, vous et votre femme, est fait devant toute la ville. Il est impossible de faire une carrière à Macklin si l’on n’a pas une conduite irréprochable” [132]). The emphasis on visual surveillance emphasizes the superficiality and metaphysical void that are characteristic features of life in Macklin. The residents are too concerned with overpowering and controlling physical obstacles to contemplate metaphysical abstractions in any serious or prolonged manner. Their minds closed to introspection, they reveal no inclination to probe beyond the material boundaries of their dreary existence. They are impassive and complacent and manifest little interest in intellectual reverie or aesthetic escapes. Any distress Macklin residents experience is buried within the deepest reaches of their consciousness. Even when beset by tragedy, they exhibit the same reserved indifference that characterizes their everyday demeanor. When Dubois has to kill a hydrocephalic fetus to save the life of the mother, the would-be grandmother calmly inquires as to the dead infant’s gender. Similarly, when an elderly woman is informed she has a life-threatening heart condition, her thoughts turn not to the contemplation of her mortality but rather to the economic consequences of her disease.

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Despite the intensity of the pressure to conform, Madeleine and Dubois persist in acting outside the normative codes of conduct. In so doing, they reveal an astonishing ability to withstand the public outrage that their behavior engenders. Although Dubois is warned early on that his wife’s behavior is creating a scandal, he does little to try to bring her to heel. He does at one point command her to stop frequenting Kouri’s restaurant, but he does so only when he believes she is asleep. The following morning, he is so upset that she might actually have heard him that he delays his trip to the hospital in order to gauge her reaction. The fact is that Madeleine does hear his order but she pays absolutely no attention to his warning and continues to visit the restaurant alone. On one of these outings, she meets the handsome Richard Hétu and begins a romantic affair with him. The scandal becomes the talk of the town, but Dubois remains curiously passive. Eventually, he actually facilitates the affair by allowing Madeleine and Richard to meet in his and Madeleine’s apartment. Madeleine, who, according to Dubois, “évitait naturellement les attitudes de convention” (18), is wholly indifferent to the public scandal provoked by her behavior. She is surely aware that her frequent visits to Kouri’s restaurant are provoking gossip (“Question de bienséance sans doute. Macklin ne doit pas priser que Madeleine soit vue seule chez Kouri tous les jours” [13]), yet she continues to frequent the restaurant in order to listen to music on the jukebox. When she meets and falls in love with Richard Hétu, she makes no effort to hide her feelings. Walking arm and arm with her lover along the streets of Macklin, she appears completely indifferent to the disapproving stares of onlookers. The couple’s refusal to conform behaviorally intensifies their social alienation. The town’s disapproval manifests itself clearly in the increasingly hostile glances trained upon the transplanted newcomers.8 Accusatory stares accompany Dubois’ every move (“Partout où je suis allé aujourd’hui, les hommes m’ont contemplé comme un frère perdu” [138]). At the service station, attendants eye his comings and goings with menacing attentiveness: Celui du garagiste, qui, adossé contre sa pompe à essence, me contemple en se frottant le menton. [. . .] Quand c’est terminé, il se plante devant moi et me dévisage sans m’indiquer le prix que je dois lui demander. [. . .] Il ne me remercie pas et je vois encore dans le rétroviseur ses yeux cernés de cambouis lorsque je m’engage dans la rue Green. (137)

At the jeweler’s, the proprietor watches Alain’s movements with contemptuous scrutiny (“Le bijoutier, un gros homme au visage poupin, les yeux dissimulés sous des verres épais qui vous réfléchissent, me laisse faire en me regardant attentivement, comme à travers un microscope” [69–70]). At work, his colleagues monitor his comings and goings with increasing hostility (“A l’hôpital, les visages blancs des religieuses sous la coiffe noire. L’oeil pointu” [138]). Wherever he goes, Dubois is greeted by the malevolent glower of disapproving spectators (“Tous ces yeux sans pitié supputent ma capacité de résistance, me fixent un délai” [138]). Even the two people he considers friends—Jim and Kouri—keep a close eye on his movements. Jim scrutinizes his passenger’s reactions via the rear-view mirror (“Il se passe lentement la main sur la figure et m’observe dans le rétroviseur” [82]); Kouri seems at times to be stalking him (“Kouri me suit discrètement, attentif à ne me point troubler, mais veillant sur moi” [111]).

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Alain’s and Madeleine’s disregard for their social ostracism derives less from an unwillingness to belong than from a greater preoccupation with their emotional well-being. External manifestations of public disapproval matter less to them than forging a deeper connection with another human being. For his part, Dubois is too focused on repairing his deteriorating relationship with his wife to worry about the town’s opinion of his conduct. Dubois’ primary sense of outsiderness, then, is linked to his personal rather than his social situation. Whereas he appears immune to the hostility of the townspeople, he is extremely sensitive to his wife’s increasing detachment. Madeleine’s persistent aloofness leaves Dubois alienated and adrift and he admits to feeling as if he were an intruder in his own life: Je suis un intrus. Il faudrait que je me passe la main sur les yeux, que je secoue la tête pour découvrir que je n’ai rien à faire ici. Ce bureau n’est pas le mien et la femme qui dort ou lit en haut ne m’appartient pas. J’ai rêvé et, somnambule, je m’éveille dans la maison d’un autre. Je réussis presque à considérer ma nouvelle vie—mon mariage et mon cabinet de médecin—en étranger, comme au retour d’une absence de vingt ans qui me ferait ne reconnaître ni ma femme, ni la maison. (16)

Extremely distressed by the growing emotional distance between himself and his new wife, Dubois is consumed by the desire to reconnect emotionally and spiritually with Madeleine. Although he admits they both lacked romantic experience when they first met (“A vrai dire, nous ne connûmes guère le langage et le maniérisme des amants” [18]), he anticipated that their physical relationship would serve to strengthen their emotional relationship. This proved not to be the case, however. Their first physical conjoining was mutually disappointing, provoking no transcendent transformation for either party: Pendant un instant j’ai su que nous n’avions pas réussi à nous attacher l’un à l’autre, que le lien s’était rompu, que la minute n’aurait pas pour résultat d’avoir donné une nouvelle réalité à notre amour. Madeleine m’avait glissé des mains, son âme m’échappait. Je voulais peut-être étreindre l’éternité en elle, connaître la volupté de l’immortalité. Mes bras n’enserraient plus qu’une femme lasse qui pensait à autre chose. Madeleine, tu fuyais déjà ce premier jour. (147)

After only three weeks of marriage, their relationship has become increasingly fractured. Estranged and incommunicative, they are drifting steadily apart (“Entre nous subsistait une ignorance profonde. Deux compagnons de rencontre qui s’étaient joué la comédie une nuit et s’éveillaient patauds et cireux, qui n’avaient plus de désir de rien exiger l’un de l’autre” [34]). The more he tries to forge a deeper, more meaningful bond with Madeleine, the further she eludes his grasp: Il se terre en elle un être qui ne m’appartient pas, que je n’atteindrai jamais. J’ignore si cet être-là m’aime, mais je sais qu’il est sa part essentielle. Un peu comme si je ne la possédais qu’à bout de bras avec, entre nous, une opacité infranchissable. (19)

Dubois takes little comfort in the fact that there is a legal document that ostensibly binds them together in an eternal union (“Elle est à moi. Et pour la vie! Vous

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entendez!” [24]). For both Alain and Madeleine, external realities are insignificant relative to one’s personal sentiments. So despite the fact that they are bound together by a contract, Dubois must commit all his energy to closing the emotional gap between himself and his wife. In the absence of a significant and substantial emotional bond to Madeleine, Dubois feels he has no identity at all: Je ne défends pas un jouet, ni une possession, je défends une part de moi qui est en elle, dont je ne peux me laisser amputer parce que c’est la part la meilleure, la plus vivante, celle qui fait que je suis Alain Dubois. En me quittant Madeleine emporterait mon identité. (100)

When confronted with the evidence of his wife’s infidelity, Dubois remains consumed by the need to connect with her. Frustrated, he resorts to sexually assaulting Madeleine in order to re-fuse a connection that no longer exists (“Nous nous roulons sur le lit. Je n’ai aucune honte de la vaincre et de la tenir sous moi, tordue par la colère et l’humiliation” [104]). Ultimately, Dubois is obliged to concede that he is now and perhaps was always “hors du jeu” (97), and that his wife is fundamentally a stranger to him (“Je crois que j’aimai une image plutôt qu’elle même” [18]); perhaps she never even loved him at all (“Peut-être ne m’a-t-elle jamais aimé. Elle jouait peut-être et n’a pas su quand le jeu devait cesser” [131]). Madeleine’s outsiderness, like her husband’s, is linked to her failed quest to find emotional gratification. Her obsession with constantly nourishing desire inevitably leads to a rift between herself and Alain. Although her husband clings to the notion that she loved him once, however briefly (“J’ai su ce jour-là que Madeleine m’aimait, du moins en cet instant, que son être le plus intime vibrait, que je la possédais” [19]), her initial feelings of affection have clearly dissipated. In the absence of marital passion, Madeleine finds an oasis of retreat in the few aesthetic outlets Macklin has to offer. By listening to romantic ballads or watching films, she can withdraw into imaginary worlds where romance and passion emerge ever victorious. Films and song lyrics satisfy Madeleine’s frustrated yearnings and desires in a way that Alain’s well-intentioned caresses cannot. Ultimately, her fascination with films and music widens the chasm between the two of them even further: Ce besoin qu’elle avait de se dédoubler, de s’absenter d’elle-même par des moyens aussi gros que le cinéma ou la musique d’un juke-box m’inquiétait un peu sans que susse pourquoi. Au fond, elle ne vivait pas beaucoup parmi nous, et lorsqu’elle nous revenait, elle était agacée de nous trouver à ses côtés. (36)

Alain remains powerless to alter the situation, however. The pleasure Madeleine derives from these puerile amusements issues from a source deep within, a place where he has no possibility of access (“Cela appartient à cette part de son être que je n’atteins pas. Ce goût n’est pas vulgaire mais il a besoin d’un autre milieu que le mien pour s’épanouir” [62]).9 Unfortunately, the part of Madeleine’s being that Alain cannot reach is accessible to someone else—a local man named Richard Hétu. Madeleine’s attraction to Hétu is in truth inexplicable. No doubt his striking good looks align him with the movie stars she is accustomed to viewing at the cinema and consequently he perhaps responds to

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her fantasized notion of the perfect lover. Moreover, his immaturity no doubt plays a role in her attraction. A child herself, Madeleine is logically drawn to those whose outlook on life seems more spontaneous and less time-worn than that of the typical Macklin resident.10 It will be noted that her only other close friend in town, Thérèse (a woman who wears no bra and still lives with her parents), also reveals signs of immaturity. Alain Dubois frequently alludes to his wife’s childish temperament: Elle acquiesça d’un sourire, un sourire d’enfant qui pouvait encore tirer la langue, bouder jusqu’à ce qu’elle obtînt ce qu’elle désirait; une enfant à qui on imposait des gestes d’adulte et qui consentait de mauvais coeur parce qu’elle ne s’y sentait pas naturelle, qui aimait mal parce qu’elle n’était peut-être pas femme encore. (36)11

Her insistence on living in the moment, her self-centeredness, her uncontrolled temper and her unbalanced emotional responses to situations all provide evidence of a lack of maturity. Dubois is quick to attribute many of Madeleine’s actions, particularly her penchant for romantic films, to psychological immaturity. Like a child, she confuses the “happy endings” found in movies with real life, and is unable to cope with life’s inevitable disappointments (“Son mépris de petite fille qui ignore instinctivement la prudence et à qui le cinéma a enseigné que le risque n’est jamais dangereux en fin de compte” [21]). He also frequently finds parallels between Madeleine’s behavior and that of an undisciplined and unruly child. Her limited attention span (“Son impatience était celle de l’enfant qui piétine le jouet qui ne répond plus à ses désirs” [26]), her playful innocence (“Et la puérilité avec laquelle elle me harcelait la rendait plus humaine” [32]), and her egotistical self-indulgence all reveal a stunted psychological development. Even during moments of intimacy, Madeleine appears more an overgrown child than a fully mature woman (“Elle sortira tantôt et lui donnera le bras avec le naturel d’un enfant” [68]); “Elle se couche d’elle-même sur mes genoux, mais violemment, comme un enfant qui continue à faire la lippe quand il n’en a plus envie” [75]). Like Madeleine, Hétu is also referred to as a kind of overgrown child: Qu’est-ce qui a séduit ma femme en ce garçon fait pour couper des arbres en forêt et avoir une famille de quinze enfants? Je ne sais. La force physique sans doute. Et puis, peut-être aussi, sa nature primitive, son caractère de bon sauvage assez près de l’enfance. (175)

When the reader first encounters Hétu, he appears shamefully unable to navigate his truck through the icy streets of Macklin. After having managed to block traffic, Hétu must rely on the seasoned counsel of Jim, an experienced taxi driver, to extricate himself from the predicament (“Jim fume avec sérieux, regarde le garçon pousser les treillis sous les roues et consent à donner quelques conseils” [80]). Whatever it was that first attracted Madeleine to Richard, whether it was his striking good looks or his childlike nature, she has fallen hopelessly in love with him. Shamelessly, she flaunts her relationship with Hétu in full view of Macklin residents. Not unlike Emma Bovary to whom she is sometimes compared, Madeleine is unwilling to settle for a life that falls far short of expectations. She would rather bear the hostility of the townspeople and the anger of her husband than accept to live in an emotional wasteland of dutiful self-abnegation. Unlike her Macklin counterparts,

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Madeleine refuses to sacrifice personal happiness in order to keep up appearances or to respect some arbitrary and external code that mandates marital fidelity. She remains committed to living life hedonistically, without regard for the opinions of others and without consideration for the consequences her behavior might entail. She will not recalibrate her dreams to fit within the narrowly defined parameters of Macklin standards and she refuses therefore to surrender her fantasies, to lower her expectations or to make any compromise whatsoever in her quest for happiness. Madeleine is quite prepared to risk everything for one brief moment of unadulterated bliss (“Je sais qu’elle n’hésitera jamais à tout jouer d’un coup” [132]). Her passionate intensity will not accommodate the habitual, the routine or the conventional (“Au fond, le désaccord survient toujours entre Madeleine et les choses l’instant qu’elle les a connues” [17]). She craves the exhilaration of risk, the danger inherent in challenging boundaries and limits (“Forcément sa vie est faite de moments d’ardeur et de grands espaces vides où elle est d’une passivité déconcertante” [17]). Madeleine is not one to be satisfied with carefully measured sips of bland contentment. Rather, she insists on gulping down her pleasures in one orgiastic draft (“Elle ne goûte jamais avec économie. Elle exprime le suc de tout dès l’abord et connaît ensuite une dépression où elle s’abandonne avec nonchalance” [17]). Dubois’ feeble attempts to control Madeleine are all destined to fail because she responds only to her emotional needs. Material possessions are of little consequence; her commitment to self is greater than her sense of duty or propriety. It is precisely this uncompromising spirit that attracts Alain.12 Upon meeting her for the first time, he, like all men, feels compelled to subdue her dynamic spirit (“Je crois que Madeleine séduit toujours les hommes à première vue. Je ne veux pas dire que le coup de foudre crépite sans cesse. Non. Elle éveille plutôt l’instinct de domination. Elle agace comme le cheval sauvage en liberté” [17–18]). But Alain resists the instinctual impulse to diminish or restrain her exuberance. Indeed, rather than try to tame her unbridled spirit, he seems to take vicarious pleasure in her taste for reckless abandon: C’est à l’instant même qu’il lui importe d’être satisfaite, non pas dans un avenir problématique. Je l’ai aimée à cause de cela surtout, dangereusement peut-être. Elle était pour moi tout l’exotisme. J’étais chez elle en pays étranger et nous n’avons, ni l’un ni l’autre, renoncé à nos moeurs particulières. (63)

He admires her contempt for boundaries, her tenacious sense of individuality, her refusal to live life by another man’s rules. Soon after their marriage and en route to Macklin, Madeleine’s influence over Alain is strong enough to persuade him to try to beat a speeding train across the tracks. In the wake of this daring adventure, Madeleine becomes feverishly, even frighteningly, aroused. But in the safe and secure confines of their Macklin apartment, Dubois is disappointed to discover that Madeleine’s intense passion has already consumed itself. When he learns of his wife’s affair, Dubois first tries to rectify the situation by flexing his marital and masculine authority. He hopes initially to regain her favor with material rewards, just as a father might “acheter un cheval à un enfant pour l’empêcher de pleurer” (70). When expensive gifts fail to bring about the desired result, he resorts to verbal reprimands (“Je ne veux plus que tu ailles seule chez

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Kouri. Il m’a parlé” [25]). His verbal threats fall on deaf ears. Unable to bring about her emotional surrender, he tries to diminish her happiness by marring a bracelet he bought recently in order to coax her into compliance (“Je dirai à Madeleine que je lui ai dérobé une goutte de son bonheur” [149]). Ultimately, Dubois’ love for Madeleine overcomes his possessiveness.13 While spying on his wife one evening, he is pained by the visible traces of anguish etched upon her face: Et je fais une découverte qui m’abat et me trouble. Madeleine dérive; elle souffre. Toute seule sur le coin de la rue, enveloppée par les volutes de la neige, elle laisse couler sa souffrance, un peu hagarde, l’oeil fixé sur une désespérante image, un mur de geôle. (68)

The sight of his wife’s unhappiness transforms Alain’s jealousy into compassion: Je suis bouleversé par une émotion que je ne saurais définir, par la désespérante solitude où je la vois se débattre avec son puéril courage fait de fierté tenace, aveugle. Il me faut résister à l’impulsion de courir vers elle, de lui avouer que je sais tout, que je suis là pour la réconforter, pour être avec elle dans la vie, qu’elle a un ami dans la ville, grands dieux! (69)

Despite her love for another man, Alain feels he is bound legally, morally and emotionally to do all he can to safeguard her happiness (“Moi aussi j’ai charge d’âme. Je me tiens responsable de Madeleine, non pas de son salut, mais de son bonheur” [173]). Dubois accepts that he has lost his wife’s affection and is resigned to the fact that her passion is reserved for another (“Cette femme pantelante n’est plus la mienne, je ne me reconnais plus aucun droit sur elle. Je ne veux que la consoler, la soustraire à l’injustice divine, ainsi que disait le docteur Lafleur” [152]). But rather than continue to stand in the way of his wife’s chance for happiness, he chooses to become her ally and confidant, and even allows the two lovers to meet under his own roof (“Je ne peux rendre Madeleine heureuse, mais je n’ajouterai pas à son malheur. Je ne suis plus son mari, je sus son allié contre l’absurde cruauté” [153]). Ironically, Dubois’ efforts to protect Madeleine’s relationship with Hétu succeed in bridging temporarily the emotional gap between them. Throughout the novel, Dubois’ primary goal was to establish a deeper connection with his wife. He ultimately concedes defeat (“Je ne la rejoindrai jamais, jamais. Nous ne pouvons nous acharner à rapprocher nos deux lignes parallèles” [152]). But in choosing to suppress his own desire to ensure his wife’s happiness, he succeeds in establishing that elusive emotional bond he had been questing throughout the narrative. A grateful Madeleine confides openly to her husband (“Je l’aime, Alain! Je l’aime!” [152]), while admitting that her love for Hétu is not really reciprocated (“Je crois qu’il ne m’aime pas . . . qu’il m’a prise, parce que . . . parce que je m’offrais!” [154]).14 Emotionally reconnected, the two briefly reconnect physically as well: Elle m’entraîne dans la chambre et se donne à moi parce que c’est encore la meilleure façon qu’elle a de m’exprimer l’inexprimable. Nous avons joué la scène jusqu’au bout et je crois qu’elle a trahi l’autre. Je n’en ai aucune joie. (155–6)

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Dubois’ decision to facilitate his wife’s love affair is fraught with personal conflict, however. Despite her betrayal, he still loves her to the point of madness and suffers acutely at the thought of her making love to another man (“Le désir du corps de Madeleine, je ne peux m’en libérer d’aucune façon. Et lorsque je suis en proie à ce désir, l’orgueil sourd de moi tout naturellement. La présence de Richard me brûle et je hais Madeleine” [174]). In order to blunt the pangs of jealousy, he relies on the mind-numbing effects of alcohol. Not unlike Madeleine, who once eased her suffering by watching films and listening to music, Dubois uses alcohol to gain access to an alternate reality, one in which the pain of daily life is muted, perhaps even transcended. Consumed by angst and alcohol, Dubois comes to understand how Madeleine found solace by escaping into the otherworldly realm of the aesthetic.15 The town reacts with predictable outrage to Dubois’ “unmanly” acceptance of his wife’s infidelity (“La ville a bien travaillé. Elle resserre son étau sur nous, si bien que nous sommes comme deux fauves en cages dans l’appartement que nous ne quittons pas” [179–80]). Macklin’s notables warn Dubois of dire consequences if he remains complicit in his own betrayal. The priest threatens to make his life miserable if his wife continues to flaunt her adultery (“Je vous avertis loyalement que j’emploierai tous les moyens honnêtes, même si je dois vous forcer à quitter la ville” [164]). The merchant Prévost insists he has the means to ruin him (“J’ai les moyens de vous briser!” [172]). A dearth of patients imperils his financial situation (“Je ne dispose plus que de trois cents dollars environ, qui dureront à peine quinze jours” [180]); the few patients he continues to see refuse to pay him (“Et ces gens-là ne payent pas. Depuis que je réponds à leurs appels je n’ai pas reçu un seul chèque” [168]). Alain’s commitment to protect his wife’s happiness is thwarted when the priest arranges an advantageous marriage between Hétu and Prévost’s niece. Hétu is quick to accept the proposition and to abandon Madeleine. Rather than surrender to her fate and accept a life of compromise married to a man she respects but does not love, Madeleine tries to murder her lover with a gun stolen from Kouri’s restaurant. She then turns the gun on herself. Although Hétu survives, Madeleine’s wound is fatal. Her death appears initially as a victory for Macklin and its value system (“C’est bien triste, docteur. Mais elle est bien punie!” [206]). As Macklin onlookers contemplate her lifeless body, they remain wholly unsympathetic to the visible wreckage of her ruined life (“Elle est allongée sur la neige, dans la position où elle a dû tomber. Personne n’a songé à recouvrir le corps” [191]). No trace of empathy or compassion is visible on the faces of the bystanders (“Je vois tout à coup les visages autour de moi, tendus dans l’ombre. Le regard sans pitié des habitants de Macklin” [191]). Having rid themselves of the town’s most ostentatious transgressor, the residents anticipate that the man responsible for the tragedy will soon be leaving Macklin. Even Dr. Lafleur, Dubois’ most consistent and loyal supporter, urges him to take his practice elsewhere. Alain himself seems to recognize the extent of his unpopularity (“Je ne peux descendre plus bas” [201]). At the point of utter debasement and degradation, however, Dubois finds a way to transform personal tragedy into public service, to transform misanthropic introspection into altruistic compassion. 16 Although Dubois admits that his physical desire for Madeleine complicated, perhaps even compromised, his mission to protect her, he intends to make amends for his failure by serving other “flawed” beings who might resemble her (“Je panse des hommes. Forcément, nous n’avons pas le même point de vue. En les aimant eux, c’est Madeleine

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que j’aime encore” [213]). In the eyes of this beleaguered physician, the townspeople’s lack of compassion, their addiction to conformity, their instinctive condemnation of difference is not unlike a communicable disease—one that requires the healing power and wisdom of one who is not afflicted. As a physician, his obligation is to provide comfort, to minimize suffering, to heal. In his debate with the priest, he puts the equivocal and rival pulls of their separate vocations in concrete, human terms (“Le bonheur d’un être est plus précieux que votre indignation” [162]). Those who transgress God’s law may one day confront His wrath and final judgment, but in the meantime, Dubois will be their advocate.17 Despite the town’s hostility, he elects to remain in Macklin, convinced that those who are most excluded from society are also those who are best able to transform it (“Je resterai, contre toute la ville. Je les forcerai à m’aimer. La pitié qui m’a si mal réussi avec Madeleine, je les en inonderai” [213]).18 As the novel closes, there is evidence that Dubois’ exemplary magnanimity is having an effect. A few months after Madeleine’s death, as Dubois looks outside his window, he notices an inebriated figure—Jim the taxi driver—staggering towards his post. Although Jim was one of the first to express open hostility to both Alain and Madeleine, he came to befriend Dubois and even helped Dubois facilitate his wife’s rendezvous with Hétu. On the day of Madeleine’s suicide, it was Jim who drove Madeleine to Hétu’s home and it was Jim alone who witnessed the tragedy first hand. He is also one of the few people in Macklin who empathize with Dubois’ suffering in the wake of his wife’s death (“Jim renifle bruyamment. Par sympathie ou par besoin. Je ne le saurai jamais. Je ne savais pas qu’il pouvait avoir une telle décence” [193–4]). The fact that Jim now requires alcohol to blunt the psychological pain that accompanies his new-found empathy convinces Dubois that even those who seem to be too anesthetized by convention to understand the depth of their own insensitivity can in fact be rehumanized. Dubois’ altruistic defense of his adulterous wife demonstrates the depth of his commitment to protect and preserve her well-being and happiness. Though at the beginning of the novel he believes his responsibility is to Madeleine alone, he ultimately broadens that commitment to include humanity at large (“Mais moi je travaille à l’échelon de l’homme. Je ne brasse pas des mondes et des espèces. Je panse des hommes” [213]). Pushed from the social periphery to the very edge of inconsequentiality by hostile compatriots, Dubois mounts an opposition.19 Dubois’ refusal to abandon those who oppose him demonstrates that the true spirit of community resides not in the artificial repression of individual differences, but rather in the capacity to look beyond differences to find the points of commonality that unite all mankind. In the novel’s larger frame, then, Dubois refuses to allow the prejudices of the collective to diminish his humanity. Langevin’s unconventional, much maligned and misunderstood hero marks a turning point in our study of outsiders in that he refuses to resume his place on the peripheral edge of his society.

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6.

Miscast Utopia: Rewriting Cultural Paradigms in Pineau’s L’EXIL SELON JULIA1

Gisèle Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia (1966), not unlike Alex Haley’s Roots, is structured around the narrator’s quest to recover that part of her identity which was lost in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade. The sheer volume of texts and post-colonial criticism devoted to the issue of black identity attests both to its relevance and its complexity.2 It is, for all intents and purposes, a problem that emerged with the first involuntary separation of Africans from their homeland. Indeed, from the moment kidnapped slaves were deposited on foreign shores, the Africa of their birth was already too distant, too inaccessible, too far removed from the newly discovered horrors of slavery to recollect with any degree of accuracy or precision. Surely, the unfathomable horror of their new existence distorted whatever past they could vaguely recall. To surrender to the reality of their newly encountered circumstances, however, would effectively constitute collaboration in one’s own self-deprecation. Debased and dehumanized in their new homeland, transplanted Africans could recover a sense of self-esteem only through an act of deliberated reconstruction, through the willed restoration of the selves they left behind. Part distorted reality, part nostalgic fantasy, this past became increasingly idealized. Consequently, identity, like fading memories of happier times, emerged as a patchwork of imprecise and fleeting recollections, convictions and principles filtered through a prism of physical, cultural and psychological displacement. This reconstructed self—the only one on which slaves could rely to try to resist the alien identity imposed upon them—is what even today particularizes the notion of identity for the peoples of the black diaspora.3 The task of identity reconstruction is forefronted in Pineau’s novel. For Pineau, as for many of those affiliated with the Créolité movement, the quest to recover an authentic sense of identity begins not in Africa but in the Caribbean.4 The decision to link identity with an environment contaminated by involuntary enslavement is somewhat problematic, but no less so than trying to retain a spiritual or cultural connection to an Africa too temporally distant to even vaguely reconfigure. Many displaced Africans remain only nominally “African,” as the narrator’s mother reluctantly concedes (“Manman disait que l’Afrique nous avait pourtant toujours tenus à distance, comme si la couleur de la peau seule ne faisait pas la famille” [24]).5 For the French heroine of the novel, the daughter of Guadeloupian parents who relocated to France before she was born, the struggle to find her cultural bearings along the ambiguous border between assimilation and alienation constitutes the central theme of the novel. Africa, the country to which she is linked in the eyes of her racist schoolmates, appears as mysterious, impenetrable, hostile and mythical to her as it does to those with no ancestral link to the continent whatsoever:

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She feels equally estranged from Guadeloupe, the home of both her parents. Although she retains some fond memories of a visit there when she was a child, the narrator feels no special attachment to her parents’ homeland. France, too, appears as an alien land, even though she was born and raised there. Despite the fact that she is French by every conceivable definition, the country of her birth refuses to consider her as one of its own, leaving the narrator with no cultural roots to support her existence. The narrator’s excluded status, as it turns out, is not a function of any behavioral oddities or mannerisms on her part but is rooted exclusively in race. Despite her linguistic and cultural similarity to those around her, the narrator’s skin color prevents her from being fully assimilated into the community.6 The policy of assimilation may have been intended to ensure that blacks would no longer be seen as something other or, worse, as a vision of the negative, but for the narrator and her family it is an enterprise rank with hypocrisy. It is in part this distance between the promise of assimilation and the betrayal of reality that propels the narrative forward. An inescapable sense of non-belongingness haunts the heroine from the opening pages of the novel. French by birth, language and cultural practices, the child narrator is nevertheless subjected to the most brutal forms of racial ostracism from her earliest experiences. Like many upwardly mobile parents in former colonies, her Guadeloupian mother and father have placed their faith in the hollow promise of cultural assimilation. The narrator’s father, Maréchal, a military man, was given an assignment in France in recognition of his service and valor during World War II. This much-coveted post constitutes the apex of achievement for a dark-skinned Guadeloupian of humble origins, but Maréchal’s achievements fail to ensure full assimilation within his newly adopted homeland. Despite his patriotic allegiance to France and his documented heroism in war, the French are unwilling to look beyond his or his family’s racial distinctiveness. No matter how impeccable their French, no matter how light their skin, no matter how refined their manners, the family members continue to be regarded as intruding aliens in a foreign land. The narrator is painfully aware of her social and cultural ostracism, but unlike her parents, who were born and raised in Guadeloupe, she has no alternate identity to which to cling when she finds herself stripped of her “French” status by classmates and teachers. She retains only a few scattered memories of a prior visit to Guadeloupe, and even fewer of an earlier sojourn in Africa, the land of her ancestors. Unable to pass for French because of skin color, yet geographically and culturally distanced from both black Africa and Guadeloupe, the narrator remains culturally adrift: Je veux bien retourner dans mon pays. Mais quel pays? Quelle Afrique? L’Afrique du temps d’armée de papa ne revient plus à ma mémoire qu’en déballages irréels. Je veux m’approprier, pour mon restant de vie, des visions claires et palpables. (194)

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The recovery of some fundamental sense of self—a self beyond the superficiality of skin color—prompts the narrator to try to uncover the person beneath the persona, to locate the lost horizon of her identity. The search for authenticity amidst the post-colonial wreckage of France’s racist ideologies poses quite a challenge, however. Initially hopeful, the narrator struggles to control the spiritual vertigo that accompanies her attempt to construct a vision of self that is purged of the symbols and meanings imposed on her by her peers: Au début, quand tu chemines là, tout n’est qu’enchantement. Et puis, d’un coup, tu rentres dans des bois inconnus oppressants qui barrent même le regard du soleil. En un petit moment, tu comprends que tu n’as jamais su quelle personne tu étais, ce que tu es venue chercher sur cette terre. Tu suspends ta vie aux grosses lianes que te jettent des arbres. Tu cours, tu vas. Des feuilles mortes crient sous tes pieds. Tu ramasses des cailloux pour gagner ta maison, ta famille perdue. Est-ce qu’ils t’ont abandonnée? Tu ne sais pas. (77)

Although she is convinced that there is a lost key that is capable of unlocking the secrets of a hidden self (“J’ai longtemps gardé le sentiment d’avoir perdu quelque chose: une formule qui perçait jadis les geôles, un breuvage souverain délivrant la connaissance, une mémoire, des mots, des images” [24]), the narrator hovers along the existential edge between being and nothingness. She might have remained trapped in this cultural no-man’s-land were it not for the fortuitous arrival of her paternal grandmother, Man Ya, or Julia. Unlike other Guadeloupians who relocate to France, Julia refuses to hide her authentic self beneath an ill-fitting French disguise. By virtue of her grandmother’s authentic example and imaginary tales, the narrator succeeds in breaking free from the prison of being either French or nothing at all. Julia’s character, grounded somewhere in the borderlands between myth and reality, commands the respect and allegiance of the child narrator who, like her grandmother and her grandmother’s mother before her, learns to perfect the art of extrapolating reality from the remnants of discarded truths. Transposed into emancipating narratives, these extrapolations ultimately ensure that an authentic black perspective remains accessible to countless victims of colonial conquest. L’Exil selon Julia, then, can be seen as the fulfillment of the narrator’s promise to her grandmother to preserve the family’s ancestral heritage: Un jour, crois-moi, cette Antille, qui nous porte à présent, ne sera pas plus qu’un canot perdu en pleine mer, ballotté, démâté, un pays évanoui qui vivra seulement dans les songes des Blancs, dans le souvenir des Créoles échappés en France ou en Amérique. Qui se souviendra de nous autres? Moi, je m’en souviendrai, Man Bouboule! (63)

Julia’s arrival introduces a counter-perspective towards France that enables the heroine to develop pride in her heritage. This antithetical perspective towards the métropole is grounded initially in language. The notion of linguistic relativity is introduced by the very title that emphasizes how differently Julia and the other family members view life in France. Julia regards her migration to France as a kind of exile and, like most people, she links this concept to images of isolation, alienation, sorrow and loss.7 However, for the other expatriated Guadeloupians encountered in the text, “exile” is understood quite differently: rather than conveying a sense

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of diminishment, life in France offers the promise of self-liberation, even cultural rebirth. Emigration provides the opportunity to alter the reality of a past linked to slavery. The fortunate cultural exiles who relocate to France regard their relocation as positive because it provides an opportunity to escape the historical shame, economic poverty and cultural primitivism of their native country. Not surprisingly, FrancoGuadeloupians tend not to focus on what they leave behind but choose instead to turn their attention to what they expect to acquire. The eagerness with which Guadeloupians abandon the language, values, cultural practices and spiritual beliefs of their homeland in order to assume a French identity establishes by default France’s superiority. Indeed, success for repatriated islanders is measured by the distance they manage to put between past and present. This cultural molting is viewed as pure enhancement and is presented as a kind of universal aspiration among Guadeloupian natives: Enfants! Rien, il n’y a rien de bon pour vous au Pays, disaient les grandes personnes. Antan, ce fut une terre d’esclavage qui ne porte plus rien de bon. Ne demandez pas après ce temps passé! Profitez de la France! Profitez de votre chance de grandir ici-là! Au Pays, la marmaille parle patois. Profitez pour apprendre le français de France . . . Combien de Nègres vous envient, vous n’en avez pas idée. Y a tant de jalousie.(36)

For males, the surest route to France is via the armed services, and Guadeloupian sons are urged to risk their lives in defense of the French tricolor with a view to becoming French military heroes (“Foukan De Gaulle! A yen pé ké rivé-w! Tu reviendras vivant dans la gloire du Seigneur” [21]). For women, a future in France is grounded in romantic daydreams: Mais elle sait, elle a toujours su, qu’elle ne restera pas ici-là, à fouler cette seule terre. Dans le couchant, les mornes de la colonie font comme les ailes cassées d’un oiseau qui ne prendra jamais son envolée. Elle veut aller de par le monde. Il lui faut des horizons d’hivers, des hirondelles pour ouvrir les printemps, des aubes rousses d’automne, des étés à Paris. Parfois, elle se voit sur un paquebot qui l’emmène loin. Ailleurs. En France. (32–3)

For all, a move to France constitutes the height of achievement and the ultimate validation of worth: Daisy et Maréchal croient encore qu’une vie nouvelle peut démarrer de chaque voyage. Sur cette photo-là, ils se montrent, hein! Ils ont sur la figure un air qui dit: “Messieurs et dames, nous avons eu raison de prendre le chemin de la Métropole. Nous sommes beaux, bien habillés, chaussés de neuf. Nous avons bien travaillé et formons belle famille.” Trois garçons, deux filles . . . Qui aurait pu penser . . . (27–8)

Whatever sacrifices are required by the process of assimilation, Guadeloupians appear quite prepared to make them. Most Guadeloupians unflinchingly agree to discard whole components of their identity in their quest to pass for French. Even those who are unable physically to relocate choose to mimic the manners and embrace the principles of their colonial masters. Asdrubal, the narrator’s paternal grandfather, is so eager to pass for French that he participates actively in the decimation of his own

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cultural and ethnic identity. Like the whites he idolizes and emulates, the light-skinned Asdrubal has no qualms about debasing and brutalizing non-white subordinates (“Peut-être à cause de sa peau claire, il se croyait un droit sur les travailleurs nègres ou indiens, sur les femmes aussi” [132]). Lacking the means to relocate physically to France, he simply uses language to reinvent himself by claiming an imaginary French ancestry: Lui, il disait descendre d’une famille des Charentes. En France, au cours de ses campagnes militaires, des Blancs lui avaient montré sur une carte l’endroit même d’où son nom était sorti. Son nom venait directement de France. C’était ni un nom fabriqué au jour d’abolition, ni un vestige d’Afrique. Il en était fier. C’est pourquoi il n’était pas parti en guerre comme un chien fou. Juste pour imiter les autres. Il était allé secourir la MèrePatrie, défendre la terre de ses ancêtres. (160)

The desire for assimilation obliges Guadeloupians to strive for resemblance and minimize difference. The goal is to become virtually indistinguishable from their cultural models. Consequently, light skin is preferred over dark. The narrator’s maternal grandparents, for example, are quite proud of their European ancestry and light pigmentation. Papa Bouboule, a chabin and former overseer, and his wife, a proud mulatto, are the parents of a light-skinned daughter whose pigmentation increases her opportunities for social advancement. When the darker-hued Maréchal tries to court her, Daisy coyly reminds him that her skin tone endows her with a significant advantage: “Vous êtes un Nègre, monsieur! Passez votre chemin! Ma peau est trop claire pour vous!” Elle avait le droit de voltiger toutes ces paroles-là sur lui qui mendiait une manman pour son orphelin et prétendait mettre une mulâtresse dans sa couche. (35)

Maréchal succeeds eventually in capturing Daisy’s heart, but only because he excels in the even more important arena of linguistic mastery. For Guadeloupians who are eager to assimilate successfully, mastery of French overrides any other attribute—even lightness of skin. Maréchal’s ability to speak French persuades the much lighter-skinned Daisy to marry him despite his darker skin color (“Déjà conquise, elle fait une seule sauce avec ses mots à lui, ses sentiments à elle et l’intuition aussi, l’emballement et la précipitation, ces amis d’un moment. Et puis, il parle si bien, si bien le français” [34]). Daisy’s marriage to Maréchal implies that of all the cultural characteristics discarded in the quest for assimilation, it is the sacrifice of language that is most essential and efficacious. Asdrubal’s easy conquests of women, we learn, is due not only to his light skin color and debonair manner but also to his perfect command of French (“Elles restaient prises dans son français et la façon qu’il avait de marcher raide et d’ôter son casque pour saluer les filles ordinaires” [167]).8 For emigrants, the ability to speak French is indeed an invaluable weapon in the quest for cultural assimilation.9 Even the ostracized narrator discovers that the ability to speak and write in eloquent French earns her fleeting moments of acceptance: Les élèves de ma classe me trouvent soudain intéressante. Ils n’en reviennent pas que

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers la seule négresse-bamboula d’Afrique de la classe les surpasse dans leur belle langue de France. Ils viennent me parler. Je les laisse approcher, je leur donne des explications et puis nous parlons d’autre chose. Ils ont tous oublié que Madame Baron me mettait sous son bureau. Je fais comme si j’avais oublié, moi aussi. (219)

But if mastery of French is a prerequisite of cultural assimilation, it serves also to cripple any attempt to retain one’s historical or authentic identity. The French language is fashioned to promote its own cultural agenda and is not configured to translate the aspirations or needs of bicultural Guadeloupians. To choose French as one’s language, then, is to lose the ability to communicate accurately the aspirations, dreams and memories of one’s non-French existence. Consequently, when expatriates try to articulate memories from the past they left behind, they find that they are unable to express themselves: Le dimanche, entre gigot et riz aux pois, ils racontent leurs aventures, dénombrent les fois où, se secourant mutuellement, ils ont couillonné la mort. Sauvés, ils en rient fort. Font de grands gestes épiques. Leurs récits traînent d’anecdotes en blagues militaires à deux sous et trois galons. Parfois, le temps révolu s’en vient bousculer les mots du présent. Alors ils bégayent, trébuchant dans l’émotion d’un discours enrayé. (13)

Worse yet, this linguistic sacrifice brings transplanted Guadeloupians no closer to assimilation. Skin color always serves to marginalize blacks, no matter how impeccable their language skills. The French language, as it turns out, is the property of whites alone. The only French words designed specifically for the black community are racial slurs and insults, a list of which opens Pineau’s narrative (11). The French language can be borrowed but never fully appropriated by black speakers. Consequently, when Guadeloupians adopt French as their primary language, they use a language which by definition excludes and demeans them. Excluded from participation if they speak Creole, but vilified by the very language they embrace in their quest for social inclusion, Afro-Guadeloupians are trapped within a linguistic and cultural huis clos. If they do not speak French they are condemned as outsiders; those who do master French, however, find that invisibility, rather than assimilation, constitutes the only tangible reward for their efforts. This painful reality is borne out by the narrator’s personal experiences. The more closely her behavior, language and values match those of her French peers, the more invisible she becomes. Initially rebuked for writing left-handedly and for writing from right to left, she quickly masters the art of writing letters. This triumph remains without formal acknowledgment by her teacher, however. Although her failure was raised to the level of public spectacle, her subsequent success evokes no commentary: Je deviens la Noire invisible. Tant pis, j’apprends quand même à lire et à écrire de gauche à droite en faisant des comédies de pleins et déliés. Tant pis si son regard passe sur moi sans me voir, si les enfants me tiennent à l’écart. (83–4)

One teacher even forces her to disappear under her desk rather than be obliged to acknowledge her intellectual talents (“Elle m’a dit que je souriais ironiquement quand elle parlait. Alors, elle m’a punie en m’obligeant à entrer sous son bureau.

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Maintenant, j’y vais presque à tous ses cours” [208–9]). In fact, the narrator earns the recognition of her teachers and peers only when she excels in activities deemed appropriate for her race. Her rope-climbing skills, for example, provoke laudatory comments (“C’est normal, ils grimpent aux arbres dans leur pays!” [205]) while her intellectual triumphs are patently ignored (“Quand je levais le doigt, elle ne m’interrogeait jamais. Elle me notait plus sévèrement que les autres” [208]). Blacks who resist the impulse to imitate the French retain their visibility, but in so doing become targets of contempt. The narrator’s grandmother offers a case in point. Unlike other Guadeloupians in France, Julia makes no effort to blend in with her new cultural surroundings and consequently is regarded as a kind of extra-terrestrial freak (“Tous ces Blancs-là comprennent pas mon parler. Et cette façon qu’ils ont à me regarder comme si j’étais une créature sortie de la côte de Lucifer. Faut voir ça pour le croire” [73]). Behaviorally and linguistically, she remains wholly Guadeloupian. She speaks Creole, she dries clothing outside on trees, she walks long distances rather than rely on others to transport her by car. Her attitude provides a radical counterpoint to the text’s prevailing ideology of French supremacy. In contradistinction to fellow Guadeloupians who revere France and all things French, Julia has nothing but disdain for the country and its people. As the title indicates, she does not regard life in France as a propitious advantage but rather as a penance, even a punishment. Virtually kidnapped by her son Maréchal who believes he is rescuing her from a life of misery (“‘Tu reviens de loin,’ dit-il. ‘Délivrée de l’enfer et des damnations’ et il lui fait comprendre qu’elle doit même se considérer comme une miraculée” [50]), Julia expresses only chagrin and bewilderment at being forced to leave her beloved country and the husband she loves, despite the hardships she was forced to endure: Elle ne comprend pas pourquoi on l’a menée en France. Elle ne sait pas combien de temps elle devra rester là. Pour quel office? Pour quelle mission? La tâche est rude, indéfinie. Et la France, pour Julia, c’est avant tout Tribulations et Emmerdations Associées . . . (73)

What Maréchal regards as deliverance, Julia sees as imprisonment and exile. She finds nothing in France to be superior to anything she left behind in Guadeloupe. Its trees are without leaves, its sky anemically pale, its sun weak and insignificant. Much to the narrator’s surprise, when the grandmother arrives in France, she marks the occasion not with jubilation but with despair: Non, elle ne relève pas les jupes pour danser comme elle devrait. Ne rit pas, ne chante pas. Elle n’est pas délivrée. Elle débarque tout juste en terre d’exil et cinq encablures de chaînes viennent d’être ajoutées à son existence. (48–9)

In fact, Julia makes no distinction between her involuntary separation from Guadeloupe and the forced migration of African blacks to far-away plantations in the Americas. Expatriation and enslavement are for Julia barely distinguishable concepts: Elle songe à la désolation et au désorientement qu’ont vécus et que vivent ceux, comme

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers elle, qu’on a enlevés à leur terre. Elle voit l’état du monde, ses guerres, la ruine, la faim, la mort violente. Elle revit sa traversée et s’embarque pour d’autres traversées, ultimes. Les longueurs de mer entre le pays perdu et le nouveau monde. Les longueurs de peine . . . (183)

Indeed, Julia’s activities in France demonstrate telling parallels with those of her enslaved ancestors. Once she arrives in France she is severely restricted in her movements (“Elle, qui n’a jamais su gâcher son temps dans la fainéantise, doit rester assise, enfermée jusqu’au soir” [87]), she is charged primarily with the role of caregiver or with domestic activities, and she is strongly warned to never endanger or harm whites: Un seul oubli et l’immeuble entier pourrait brûler, exploser et voir carbonisés tous les Blancs qui peuplent les étages supérieurs. Et si ce malheur arrivait . . . Mon Dieu, on dirait que des Nègres ont assassiné des Blancs. La geôle serait au bout de ce sacrilège. (112)

Julia’s distinctly unfavorable attitude towards France sets her apart from the family members with whom she lives—an apartness underscored by the lack of familial interaction. Isolated and marginalized, she is regarded as little more than an outdated piece of furniture relegated to the unfrequented corners of the Maréchal family’s life (“Elle est là, inoffensive en quelque sorte, pareille à un vieux meuble démodé taillé grossièrement dans un bois dur. Un genre de commode mastoc reléguée dans un coin de la cuisine depuis combien de générations” [17]). The children, who do not understand Creole, keep their distance and are wary of her coarse mannerisms and brutal frankness (“Nous ne la connaissons guère. Nous la considérons comme une créature d’un autre temps, si vieille, avec des manières brusques” [86]). The parents prove no more accommodating and spend most of their time either establishing physical limits to her movements or ignoring her outright. Despite Julia’s repeated requests that Daisy take her to see the church of the Sacré-Coeur, for example, her daughter-in-law routinely postpones the visit: Daisy explique qu’il s’agit seulement d’une grande église terrestre. “Un jour prochain, je t’y conduirai en auto. C’est promis . . .,” dit-elle à Man Ya. Les jours défilent. Man Ya attend. Un autre printemps dépose déjà fleurs et bourgeons en quantité aux branches des arbres. Man Ya prend patience. (117)

Even expatriated Guadeloupians who visit the Maréchal home appear reluctant to interact with Julia. For these upwardly mobile expatriates, this flawed and roughhewn remnant of the past is an unwelcome reminder of the cultural origins they are working so hard to suppress: Et tous les gens instruits qui viennent à la maison, gradés à deux galons, savants à certificat de fin d’études, inféodés au seul Français de France, regardent Man Ya sans la voir, avec un brin de compassion. A leurs yeux, elle représente un état ancien, l’époque reculée d’avant où l’on ne connaissait pas la ville, ses tournures de phrases, ses souliers

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vernis à hauts talons, ses beaux habits, toutes ses lumières, ses fards. Elle est une pauvre vieille femme de la campagne, illettrée, talons cornés, jambes écaillées, gros ventre. Ils ne peuvent pas admettre qu’ils viennent de là aussi et mesurent, en se mirant les uns les autres, le chemin parcouru par le Nègre. (114–15)

Julia’s linguistic rebellion in particular serves to distinguish and alienate her from those around her. When the grandchildren try to teach her French, Julia is unable to make any significant progress whatsoever. Although Man Ya insists her inability to learn French is a function of age (“‘I ja twota sé ti moun la! An ja two vyé!’ s’excuset-elle. ‘Il est trop tard, je suis trop vieille’” [133]), her lack of progress is rooted also in a deep-seated mistrust and contempt for a language she deems hypocritical and deceptive. French is, after all, the very same language that proclaimed freedom for blacks one day then reinstituted slavery the next (“La loi venait de France, c’était écrit, signé, tamponné” [157]). French is for Julia nothing but a language of lies; seductive yet wholly deceptive. She has ample evidence to support her opinion. When Asdrubal went to war, he wrote passionate letters proclaiming his heartfelt devotion and commitment. Julia hoped these words reflected a sincere change of heart on his part, that the war had somehow purged him of the demons that caused him to abuse her. Upon his return, however, Asdrubal was as brutal as ever, prompting Julia’s distrust of sentiments expressed in French: Sotte, j’ai cru que tu avais appris à vivre à cause de l’uniforme français. Je t’ai attendu, monsieur Asdrubal. J’ai même essayé d’apprendre l’alphabet, pour lire moi-même tes mots d’amour et jouir toute seule de l’odeur du papier. Hélas, quand tu es revenu, tu étais le même Bourreau que le Seigneur m’avait donné pour ma vie sur la terre. J’ai pas couru sous les coups. Mais j’ai plus cherché à comprendre les écritures. J’ai plus caressé les lettres de France. (135–6)

Asdrubal’s letters are not the only French documents in which language and reality fail to coincide. Julia also received countless testimonials from his French army superiors praising Asdrubal’s heroism and courageous service in battle (“Il avait rapporté de ses campagnes des Félicitations de ceci, Grades, Honneurs, Mérite, Reconnaissance de la France à son fils de Guadeloupe” [136–7]). In reality, however, his behavior manifests more cowardice than heroism: Menterie! Et tout ce prestige, cette pension de guerre, venait de la France qui lui avait ordonné de tuer des hommes pour son drapeau aux trois couleurs, pour quatre, cinq terres conquises de par le monde, pour la Patrie et la Nation et le rayonnement séculaire. (137)

From Julia’s perspective, the French language is no more consequential than the ink on the pages of her grandson’s notebook which vanishes quickly and completely under running water: L’une après l’autre, elle expose les pages à l’eau froide et, tranquillement, regarde couler les écritures défaites dans le trou de l’évier. Elle n’a pas besoin de frotter ni brosser. Juste laisser l’eau emporter l’encre violette des paroles couchées là, pour faire un cahier

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers vierge. (165)

Julia’s linguistic rebellion allows her to preserve a sense of self that would otherwise fall victim to language. In his work on countermodernism in Francophone literature, Keith Walker observes that the imposition of language on colonized subjects is particularly alienating and argues that it contributes to a sense of cultural transvestism.In L’Exil selon Julia, linguistic mimicry is cast as the most fundamental of the many borrowed attributes appropriated by Franco-Guadeloupians. In the end, however, all these cultural masks contribute to an inevitable fragmentation of identity. “Transvestism,” observes Walker, “like assimilation, is often a voluntary act undertaken with exuberance. It is the consciousness of one’s eternal lack, of the impossibility of ever becoming what one is imitating, that can lead to the tragic despair of feeling ridiculous.”10 The comical results of cultural transvestism are evident in the episode in which Julia is apprehended by gendarmes for wearing her son’s military uniform. One stormy day, as the grandmother sets out to escort the children home from school, she puts on her son’s heavy military overcoat and hat in order to better protect herself and the children from the cold rain. While waiting in front of the school for the children to emerge, Julia is approached by two gendarmes who take her to the police station in order to charge her with desecrating the French military uniform. Her crime is a metaphorical indictment of all Guadeloupians who attempt to hide their cultural identity beneath a borrowed façade.11 Underneath her son’s military cloak, Man Ya’s Guadeloupian self remains glaringly, even comically, apparent (“Man Ya figure soudain un épouvantail de bois mort costumé en soldat vaincu” [102]). The episode of the French military uniform constitutes a critical moment in the heroine’s quest to recover her identity. For the child narrator who witnesses the incident, it is Man Ya’s hybridity rather than her discordant and comical appearance that makes a lasting impression. Julia’s refusal to allow the new culture to totally subsume her past may make her appear ridiculous to the gendarmes yet fully congruent to her granddaughter. As pure masquerade, Man Ya’s donning of the coat appears an absurd parody, an attempt to become something she is not and can never be. But Man Ya’s decision to wear the army coat is not motivated by the desire to portray herself as something she is not—a French person of political consequence—rather it is prompted by the desire to protect her grandchildren from harm. Metaphorically, the gesture can be read as Julia’s insistence that France extend its “official” protection to the descendants of its colonial past. From the young narrator’s perspective, the grandmother’s action transforms the army coat from a purely symbolic into a utilitarian covering. As a result of the grandmother’s actions, the official cloak of the French military is forced to include rather than exclude, to protect rather than debase. The French/Guadeloupian composite that the child narrator beholds provides the essential starting point for self-recovery. Freed from the notion that identity somehow implies cultural consistency, the narrator is poised to recover her sense of self. As she looks at her grandmother, the clearly identifiable nature of each of the separate cultural components remains clearly visible, instilling a sense of bicultural pride in the self-doubting heroine. More importantly, however, the narrator discovers a way to combine cultural hybridity with yet another unique component of her grandmother’s character in the

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quest to resolve her identity crisis. As she watches her grandmother being led away by the gendarmes, the narrator notes with admiration that, despite the hostile glances trained upon her, the grandmother manages to access a hidden reservoir of mental resolve and rises above these contemptuous stares (“Mais Man Ya ne descendait pas à leur hauteur” [97]). She does so by an act of intellectual creativity that effectively separates the debasing reality of the event from its intellectual acknowledgment. Although Julia’s body suffers ignominious debasement at the hands of the gendarmes, her essential self-image remains intact through cognitive disassociation: Man Ya avance pareille à un zombi, le regard fixe. Elle ne marche pas comme unetelle qui connaît sa destination. Elle allonge un pied devant l’autre d’une façon mécanique, tandis que son esprit voyage, bagage épave d’un naufrage. Est-ce qu’elle ne va pas disparaître comme un de ces personnages de Routhiers dont elle nous dresse les épopées? (101)

Man Ya’s ability to conquer feelings of alienation through intellectual disengagement is an oft-witnessed characteristic. When she first arrived in France, she was able to bear the strain of exile only by retaining an imaginary connection to her homeland: L’esprit de Man Ya a coutume de monter et descendre ainsi entre Guadeloupe et France. Ce n’est pas une affaire pour elle. Même si son corps est condamné à rester ici-là, ça ne change rien. Il lui suffit de rentrer dans les profondeurs qu’elle couve au mitan de son âme. (92)

According to Man Ya, this mind–body separation is part of her cultural heritage, a technique inherited from African ancestors. As we learn from Julia’s anecdotes, spiritual migration was the only means by which slaves could retain a link to their lost homeland: Y en a qui s’en consolèrent jamais et repartaient, en songe, le nez au vent, les ailes déployées. Ils faisaient le voyage dans la nuit et revenaient dans les frais alizés, au matin, la tête recouverte des fleurs du baobab. Ils étaient parfaitement reconnaissables parce que tout chargés de gris-gris et sentant la bête fauve. De leurs tournées, ils rapportaient des contes dont ils étaient héros. Ils avaient soi-disant affronté et vaincu des lions, des tigres et des colonies de sauterelles. Ils avaient parlementé avec des chefs africains, signé des pactes et des alliances qui promettaient d’envoyer aux Isles à sucre des dieux plus forts que Jésus-Christ et le Saint-Esprit réunis. (156–7)

The ability to transcend the physical limits of bondage through the creative power of imagined scenarios provided slaves with an alternative to lived experience, however ephemeral. By accessing the power of their imagination, they found a ready means of escape that reality denied them. An imagined elsewhere peopled with soucagans, protective spirits and otherwise powerful and empowering entities created a comforting counterpoint to the reality of impotence. Inspired by the grandmother’s ability to conquer physical debasement through cognitive disengagement, the narrator develops her own strategy for combating the racism that surrounds her. Like her grandmother and her ancestors before her, the child narrator succeeds in transcending cultural alienation through a series of

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imagined scenarios. By translating the grandmother’s cultural anecdotes into French narratives, the heroine manages to reconcile the seemingly disparate and incompatible aspects of her French, Guadeloupian and African heritage.12 Not unlike Asdrubal, who invented a French ancestry to bolster his self-image, the narrator recreates her historical identity through the art of textuality. These narrative recreations serve as the basis for a reconstruction of the past that the narrator thought she had irrevocably lost.13 The use of French as the brush to paint the narrator’s visions of Guadeloupe, like the grandmother’s use of the French military coat to protect the children, forces the French language to extend its reach to include an Afro-Guadeloupian perspective.14 The language that once excluded the narrator’s race is now transformed into a language of inclusion that unites rather than divides the human community:15 Je suis un livre fermé bourré d’aventurières, de sorcières, où l’or, l’amour et la beauté se conjuguent sur tous les temps. Un livre qui ouvrirait des mondes fantasmagoriques, comiques et cruels comme la vie. Je suis un grand oiseau, je vole vers un pays où toutes variétés de personnes vivent ensemble: Gauchers, Arabes, Noirs, Chinois, Blancs, Africains, Marquise et Princesse, Droitiers, Cow-Boys et Indiens. (85–6)

Through the narrative enterprise, the heroine creates a sense of identity by creating a feeling of belongingness from the threads and fragments of a cultural past that were bequeathed to her yet that were formerly inaccessible.16 The recovery, or reconstruction, of this heritage could only be realized through a blend of undocumented anecdotes, unreliable memories and pure speculation: Je veux quitter cette terre-là qui me repousse. Alors, je deviens écriveuse d’après-midi, gribouilleuse de minuit, scribe du petit matin. Ecrire pour s’inventer des existences. Porte-plume voyageur, encre magique, lettres sorcières qui ramènent chaque jour dans un pays rêvé. “Ici-là, tu es chez toi!” entends-tu murmurer. Baume au coeur. Ecrire le fond brûlé d’une casserole de crème-caco, des souvenirs cerf-volant, des enfants qui dansent sous la pluie face à une savane bleue. (195)

The narrator’s tales are redemptive not only for her self-esteem but also for the language used to transcribe them. By including both black and white perspectives, the French language is transformed from a language of exclusion and lies into a language of unity and truth. For Julia, it will be remembered, the French language communicated nothing but deception and hypocritical sentiments. For the heroine, too, French was a language of ostracism and debasement. Her reappropriation of the French language—that is to say, her construction of French texts in order to communicate an Afro-Guadeloupian perspective—restores to the language its lost credibility. In her imagined and seemingly unlikely scenarios, she sees her grandmother back in Guadeloupe tending to a flourishing garden and accompanied by a repentant and adoring Asdrubal. In an odd case of life imitating art, the narrator’s visions prove prophetic. Against all odds, the grandmother does return to her garden and a subservient husband. The language of deception so derided by Man Ya has, via the narrative strategy of the narrator, become prophetic. After her grandmother’s departure, the narrator turns

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her artistic talents upon herself and proceeds to write herself into the Guadeloupian narratives she imaginatively constructs. Once again, rhetoric is transformed into reality. In yet another unanticipated turn of events, Maréchal decides to leave France for Martinique in the wake of De Gaulle’s fall from power. Cultural expansion has restored the power of the logos to French textuality. As the novel closes, we see the narrator reunited physically with her grandmother in Guadeloupe. There, she reclaims her lost childhood and unlearns the lessons of French superiority that so compromised her sense of identity. The upside-down world of cultural alienation she experienced in France is now properly aligned. The children, no longer impatient and ineffective teachers of French, take their proper place as enraptured students learning invaluable life lessons at the feet of the older and wiser matriarch:17 Nous laissa à terre, la tête renversée en arrière, hébétés, scrutant le mystère des feuillages. L’inquiétude pour ses os n’était pas en question. En France, elle nous avait dit et redit qu’elle entrait dans les arbres; ces paroles-là n’avaient pas crû en nous. À présent, elle était là-haut dans la lumière et nous en bas dessous l’ombrage, bien incapables de la rejoindre. Et l’insolence de sa vieillesse, sa science nature et la richesse de son jardin nous obligeait à l’humilité. (302–3)

For Pineau, L’Exil selon Julia is not simply an account of how the culturally alienated heroine recovers her underlying humanity and identity. It offers a strategy for restoring the missing chapters of the Afro-diasporic experience to the historical record. The narrator’s halting steps towards self-discovery and self-appreciation demonstrate that the individual can indeed reverse the slant of history. Pineau’s narrator finds a way to get beyond the horror of historical experience without having to falsify or suppress it. Through the power of poetic expression, blacks are center-staged as the protagonists of history, righting the inverse and unjust paradigms that deformed so many of her childhood experiences. In this autobiographical novel, then, Pineau masterfully succeeds in fusing the dreams of the self with the nightmare of history in an emancipating narrative that transcends both.

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7.

Habitat for Inhumanity: The Legacy of Conquest in Naipaul’s GUERRILLAS1

For many contemporary theorists working in the field of post-colonial studies, the quest to locate a “pre-colonial” identity has given way to the more practical need to move beyond the past in order to deal directly and practically with the consequences of colonial conquest. To that end, Créolité theorists believe that an increased focus on the concept of cultural hybridity provides an optimal strategy for moving forward. Ideally, cultural symbiosis—the amalgamation of formerly distinct traits and practices—will lead to a balanced fusion of competing components, one in which the polarities of superiority and inferiority are neutralized, even eliminated. As dominant and dominated cultures collide and integrate, former distinctions fade or dissipate, boundaries blur, identities morph. Hybridized societies—a natural consequence of multi-ethnic and multi-racial cultural integration—will arguably emerge more vibrant, more progressive and more evolved than “unblended” or “racially-pure” societies. The unrelenting transformation of distinctive traits and behaviors inevitably creates a constantly changing notion of cultural identity, one that is at once fluid and inclusive. This equalization process will allow formerly colonized subjects to achieve a kind of cultural parity with their former masters. Indeed, only when the contributions of all ethnic components are accorded equal value will Caribbean society finally be able to break free from the racial quicksand of the past. Naipaul’s novel Guerrillas (1975) offers a pessimistic counterpoint to any such naïve and utopian vision for multicultural assimilation.2 Here there is no happy merger of opposing cultures, no fortuitous blending of identities, no evolution of any kind.3 Prolonged cultural contact yields not the progressive and harmonious intermingling of distinct and separate traits envisioned by Créolité theorists, but rather an ever-widening chasm of polarized entities. In Naipaul’s novel, a toxic amalgam of hopelessly incompatible citizens constitutes the most notable and enduring legacy of colonial conquest. Competing and adversarial ethnic groups eye each other warily from within their separate enclaves, fearful of both the current oppressive status and the upheaval of change. For these fictional islanders, the post-independence era has not resulted in any appreciable change in status. Life remains bracketed, contained and controlled by foreign interests.4 Economically and militarily, it is the Americans who are in control. They own the bauxite mines as well as the weapons to protect them. Culturally, the influence of the former British Empire remains everywhere in evidence (“England, Roche thought: it was so hard to get away from England here. And there were so many Englands: his, Jane’s, Jimmy’s, Lloyd’s and the England—hard to imagine—in that old woman’s head” [104]).5 In order to attain mastery over their fate, to become politically or culturally relevant, the native islanders would somehow

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have to find a way to wrest control from foreign proprietors, to attain heightened visibility, to inscribe themselves into the dominant narrative, and they do not have the means, the methods or the opportunity to do so.6 Although the novel is set on an island in the Caribbean (an island of so little importance that it is not even named), the focus falls not on the native population but on three cultural outsiders: Jane, a Canadian who relocated to England before coming to the island; Roche, a white South African activist for black civil rights; and Harry de Tunja, an East Indian merchant.7 These three protagonists have little meaningful interaction with the locals who in turn appear to be almost as alienated from one other as from the transplanted foreigners. The natives tend to isolate themselves within narrowly defined ethnic parameters scattered throughout the island. In consequence, there are no prospects for cultural blending, no evidence of any shared value system and no utopian union of opposing races. All the reader encounters is a seemingly endless display of fragmentation and incompatibility. From the outset, disjunction constitutes the text’s most prominent characteristic. Even the title of the work seems disconnected from the textual reality it depicts. The title leads readers to believe that the novel’s focus will be on a group of like-minded political activists who are intent on bringing down, by whatever means necessary, a tyrannical and unpopular government. Instead, initial attention is drawn not to any ideologically minded terrorists but to two geographical outsiders, Roche and Jane, who have recently relocated to the Caribbean island from England.8 Neither of these two protagonists has any politically subversive intentions whatsoever. Roche is actually working for the government in trying to “rehabilitate” the island’s black underclass. Jane holds no fixed political perspective of any sort. As the novel opens, the two are en route to visit the compound of Jimmy Ahmed, a local man whom both Jane and Roche identify as a “guerrilla.” Jimmy, however, refutes this characterization (“I have no gun. I’m no guerrilla” [21]). Jimmy’s understanding of the term is that “guerrillas” are armed and disenfranchised individuals who violently pursue their own self-interests (“When everybody wants to fight there’s nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerrilla’ [82]). In the view of Roche and Jane, however, the term “guerrillas” refers not to armed political malcontents but to disconnected bands of mostly poor and disadvantaged black youths who create mayhem as they roam through the streets committing an assortment of petty crimes.9 The island’s foreign elite—a group of mostly immigrants who live in an exclusive housing area known as the Ridge—feel quite threatened by these predators. Consequently, these foreigners who are terrorized (and the media they control) have labeled them “guerrillas.” What is significant is that the polysemic term “guerrillas” is understood officially to refer to the rootless, indigenous vagrants who pose a threat to the wealthy minority living on the island: Wild men in rags, with long, matted hair; wild men with unseeing red eyes. And bandits. Police cars patrolled these hillside suburbs. Sometimes at night and in the early morning there was the sound of gunfire. The newspapers, the radio, and the television spoke of guerrillas. (25)

From the outset, then, it is clear that a minority (the media and the foreign elite) is vested with the power to manipulate and control discursive reality, a minority that is

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socially and culturally removed from the native population.10 By linking non-unified mischief-makers with political terrorists, the government can more easily justify the brutal methods used to dissuade social integration.11 Some of these so-called guerrillas have been persuaded by Roche to join an agricultural commune headed by a mixed-race local man, Jimmy Ahmed. A hybrid himself—half black, half Chinese—Jimmy appears at first glance to offer an example of multicultural progress. Unfortunately, it will be noted that, in this novel, hybridization is never linked to a positive outcome. On the contrary, in the rare cases where miscegenation occurs, there is no happy merger of opposing characteristics, no harmonious blending of traits, no neutralization of prejudices. The separate components of one’s composite identity remain conjoined but not combined, like oil mixed with water. Mrs. Grandlieu, for example—a mulatto herself—is as prejudiced towards blacks as any “pure-blooded” European. Embracing the prejudices and racist attitudes of her white landowner father, she routinely belittles and insults the better-educated blacks whom she invites to her home: At these gatherings Mrs. Grandlieu always managed to say “nigger” once, as if only with a comic intention, using the word as part of some old idiom of the street or the plantations which she expected her guests to recognize. (46)

Jimmy offers a second case in point. His multi-racial ancestry so fractures his sense of identity that he is unsure whether to link his identity to his Chinese father, his black mother, his British girlfriend or the African-American radicals whose ideological writings he admires and tries to emulate. Even his physical appearance communicates contradictory signals. The darker color of his face clashes with his lighter-colored chest; his outwardly controlled movements are at odds with the violent emotions seething underneath. In order to try to bring some unity to physical form and internal passion, he has his delicate Chinese features “Africanized” on publicity posters for his commune. Throughout the work, cultural mixing is presented as a failed endeavor. Even the sexual encounter between the mixed-race Jimmy and the extremely white Jane results in a failed conjoining. Neither is able to achieve sexual climax, leaving both parties frustrated and unsatisfied.12 Additionally, a sense of disconnectedness is metatextually conveyed by the fundamental incongruence of the narrative itself. There are essentially two stories in Guerrillas: one focusing on Jane, Roche and Harry de Tunja and the other focusing on Jimmy Ahmed and the native population. Jimmy’s working relationship with Roche is the ostensible thread that weaves these two plots together but, in reality, the two narratives never conjoin or coalesce in any significant way. A disproportionate emphasis is placed on the activities and viewpoints of the foreign intruders; the native population constitutes little more than a blurred backdrop. The reader’s contact with the local population is almost always filtered through the perceptions of the cultural outsiders. Jimmy Ahmed does his best to insert himself into the primary narrative, to create, as it were, a “hybridized” text—that is to say, one that gives as equal status and visibility to the island’s non-white majority as it does to the foreign elite. However, he is unable to do so. Jimmy does manage to inject his writings and perspectives into one or two chapters, but he is clearly subordinate to both Roche, his ostensible “boss,” and

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Jane, his more sexually aggressive antagonist. More importantly, in the end, Jimmy’s “narrative” is “rewritten” by Jane and Roche, both literally and figuratively.13 In the course of the novel, we learn that Jimmy is writing a novel—in truth it is a personal fantasy—about a British woman (inspired by Jane) who falls madly in love with a black man (Jimmy himself). In the novel, Jane concedes that the male hero (Jimmy) is her “superior” in every way. In reality, however, Jane’s failure to manifest the same adulation for Jimmy as her “fictionalized” counterpart makes a mockery of his authorial endeavor. Figuratively speaking, Roche is also able to negate Jimmy’s real-life narrative when he contends that Jane is still alive, even though he knows Jimmy murdered her. Despite Jimmy’s efforts, he cannot force his way into a narrative dominated by cultural outsiders.14 Disjunction reveals itself also in the lengthy descriptions of the island’s fractured landscape. The terrain’s inability to absorb the incompatible elements of the colonial past and the post-colonial present is prominent in the text. Nothing on the island blends together; everything remains in jarring opposition. Rather than merging and evolving, antithetical remnants of past and present remain separate and distinct from one another. These incongruent pairings dominate the landscape. Images of recent industrialization endeavors (“modern buildings in unrendered concrete” [4]) clash with the visible remnants of the island’s plantation and agricultural past (“remnants of the big estates, together with remnants of the estate villages” [4]). Much of the island’s current fragmentation, decentered sprawl and physical squalor can be directly attributed to recent economic initiatives, in particular the American bauxite industry. The American company is the most lucrative on the island but its success has taken a heavy toll on the environment by fouling the air and blemishing the view.15 The pollution created by the bauxite industry, like everything else in the narrative, reveals itself in a non-unified manner. Nature is unable to absorb the pollutants produced by industry and this leaves a toxic residue hovering visibly above the surface (“The sea smelled of swamp; it barely rippled, had glitter rather than color; and the heat seemed trapped below the pink haze of bauxite dust from the bauxite loading station” [3]). Environmental pollution is not the only visible mark of recent industrialization efforts. Aesthetically, the land is littered with the remains of failed economic initiatives. Lured to the island by lucrative incentives, many companies rushed in to make a quick profit, only to leave in haste when profits evaporated. Left behind is an industrial wasteland: savaged forests (“But the bush had a cut-down appearance and looked derelict in the drought”; “It was what remained of an industrial park, one of the failed projects of the earliest days of independence” [5]), abandoned housing projects (“rows of unpainted boxes of concrete and corrugated iron already returning to the shantytowns that had been knocked down for this development” [3]), ribbons of paved roads that lead nowhere (“There were still many roads; but one turning was like another, and it would have been easy for a stranger to get lost” [5]) and rusting vehicles dumped in the fields (“Sometimes there was a single rusting car in a sunken field, as though, having run off the road, it had simply been abandoned; sometimes there were heaps of junked vehicles” [5]). The incongruent features of the physical landscape find a parallel in the absence of meaningful cultural interaction. The island’s population is as unblended as the physical landscape. Nowhere in the novel can be found a dominant constituency of like-minded characters with unified traits and a shared value system. A random

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snapshot of the island’s inhabitants reveals an amalgam of odd and isolated characters most notable for their eccentricities: a beggar without eyes or legs, a dishevelled jogger who runs up and down the streets at all hours, a vendor who sells both peanuts and hardware, a cyclist who hurls random insults, a weird religious sect that worships in complete oblivion to the curious gaze of onlookers. Where everything is deviation, deviation itself becomes the norm. It is therefore not surprising that the narrator focuses most of his attention on the one cohesive social unit to be found in the novel: a small group of transplanted foreigners. The absence of a city center wherein the various social classes and ethnic groups might naturally converge exacerbates the ethnic compartmentalization that is characteristic of the island (“This was once part of the city center. But the city no longer had a center” [24]). Ethnic groups tend to isolate themselves from one another and come together only at each other’s peril. By way of example, Bryant, one of Jimmy Ahmed’s recruits, makes a point of registering his hostility when he enters a Chinese grocery: He went into the green Chinese café, a barnlike old wooden building, two unshaded bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and asked for a peanut punch, banging on the counter as he did so and shouting “Ai! Ai! Ai!” for no reason, only to make a little scene, and to see the look in the eyes of the Chinese man in vest and khaki shorts behind the counter. (30)

The discomfort engendered by social interaction can be seen again when Bryant is forced to share a cab with a woman of higher social class (“He sat next to a fat woman and he could feel her shifting away from the contact of their shoulders” [29]). Different ethnic groups interact only in the workplace, and even there, the pose of civility is discarded quickly at the end of the working day: Clerks were doing up bolts of cloth and straightening counters: young men in neat trousers and shirts with nicely knotted ties, men who during working hours gave an impression of great civility, but who came from houses like the one he had visited that afternoon, and whose manners now, after closing time, were already changing. (111)

The wealthy foreigners, industrial managers and influential politicians all live in wellguarded isolation up on the Ridge. At the other extreme, Jimmy Ahmed bars public access to his agricultural commune where he has gathered together a small band of physically deformed and intellectually challenged misfits who have nowhere else to go. Sandwiched between these two extremes are the rest of the island’s residents who have carved out separate territorial zones wherein outsiders fear to tread: As he [Roche] was locking the car door he heard a hiss. He began to turn, but then didn’t. A boy crossed the asphalt street and came directly toward him. Roche put on his dark glasses. The boy said, “You. Gimme a dollar.” (100)

It will be noted that the protagonists are poorly integrated into the geographical milieu in which the action takes place.16 The three of them—Jane, Roche and Harry de Tunja—hail from other countries and appear to be particularly out of place. They have only minimal contact with the native population and strive to place as much distance as possible between themselves and the locals. All three protagonists live

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in the elite housing section known as the Ridge, safely removed from mainstream islanders (“The Ridge was self-contained, shut off from the city” [45]). Of the three transplanted protagonists, Jane is clearly the most isolated from the general population, spending most of her time at the house on the Ridge. When not hunkered down at home, she travels in a car. In the safe confines of her moving vehicle, she engages with the locals only through the protective glass of the closed windows. When she does venture out, her estrangement is clearly visible. During her first visit to Jimmy’s commune, Roche is struck by how surreally out of place she appears (“When he saw Jane walking up the slight slope to the hut door he felt, as he had feared, that her presence there was wrong and looked like an intrusion”; “London, foreign, wrong” [8]). Her discomfort around the boys at Jimmy’s commune is so acute that she is easily persuaded to give a dollar to one of the more frightening and aggressive of the boys—Bryant (“White lady [. . .] Give me a dollar” [11, 12]). Even at social gatherings, Jane appears as an estranged and unwelcome intruder (“Jane, offering her casual nihilism, her casual outbursts about the coming crash and the disintegration of systems, was saying things people preferred not to listen to” [94]). Although she was originally quite enthusiastic when she followed Roche to the island just four months ago, she now regrets her decision. What she originally deemed exotic and exciting now appears vulgar and threatening: But in that vegetation, which to Jane when she had first arrived had only seemed part of the view, there was strangeness and danger: the wild disordered men, tramping along old paths, across gardens, between houses, and through what remained of woodland, like aborigines recognizing only an ancestral landscape and insisting on some ancient right of way. (24–5)

Roche’s work with underprivileged youth obviously compels him to interact more frequently than Jane with the native population but, like Jane, he clearly holds the island’s local residents in low regard. When tensions arise, underlying discomfort and fear force their way into his consciousness as he drives home from the city: His mood was wrong; and he was sufficiently alert to know that to go outside into that city, in that mood, was to invite physical attack. Drying his face and chest, he thought: I must drive carefully when I leave here. (111)

Although Roche was recruited to the island to help improve the lives of underprivileged blacks on the island, he appears to lack confidence in their potential for success. When Jane takes note of Roche’s obvious dislike for Jimmy, he admits his expectations are exceedingly low (“You have to work with what’s there” [23]). His commitment to underprivileged blacks is compromised further by the reputation of his employer— Sablich’s—a company that made its fortune from the slave trade. Moreover, his relationship with Jimmy Ahmed is cast as one between master and slave rather than between two equals engaged in a collaborative venture. In his interactions with Jimmy, Roche appears more like a plantation overseer than a business partner (“‘Every time I meet Jimmy,’ Roche said, as they drove away, ‘I make it a point to lose my temper with him at least once, to bring him back to earth’” [21]). Jimmy continually refers to Roche as “Massa”—an appellation Roche never contradicts or opposes. During a radio

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interview, Roche admits that he finds Jimmy’s ideas to be fundamentally preposterous, and that from the outset he believed the agricultural commune’s prospects for success were slim to none (“I had my doubts. I thought it was antihistorical” [200]). Moreover, even if the project were feasible in theory, Jimmy lacks the required skills to bring it to fruition (“Farming is a serious business. It requires a lot of boring application. It isn’t for someone who’s easily bored or wants quick results” [203]). Roche’s disgust with the island’s poor reveals itself on a number of occasions, most explicitly during a visit to the home of a local boy’s mother. Roche is so repulsed by the odor of dust and chicken dung that he can barely manage to drink his beverage (“The grapefruit taste in Roche’s mouth went bitter; he associated it with the smell of the chicken dung and dust that came through the window; and the saliva thickened nauseously on his tongue” [107]). At one point he admits to Jane that he loathes the place and the people (155). Harry de Tunja, a long-time resident on the island, interacts more frequently with the native islanders than either Jane or Roche. But Harry’s attachment to the island is more apparent than real. Although many believe Harry de Tunja to be one of the most established and well-anchored members of the community, he is actually quite eager to leave. Secretly, he has been working to obtain land-grant status in Canada—the country where his children are already attending school. Harry, as it turns out, is not so fond of the island after all. Rather than attempt to assimilate or adapt to his surroundings, Harry seems intent on maintaining a lifestyle that is wholly in opposition to the reality in which he finds himself. The overly air-conditioned bar in his home offers a case in point. As if to create the illusion of being elsewhere, Harry keeps the room so air-conditioned that it is necessary to wear a sweater, even in summer. Although he is moved by the natural beauty of the island which he likes to contemplate from the bluffs of his beach house, he harbors nothing but contempt for his compatriots. To begin with, he is distressed by their high tolerance for eccentric behavior: In any other country those guys would be put away. I don’t know how we start the fashion here that the moment a guy get mad he must hook up two big baskets on his arms, put on tennis shoes and start walking about the place, shouting, “Nuts, nuts.” (133)

The sight of a local religious ceremony so unnerves him that he suffers an asthmatic attack (“‘I don’t know why, but I don’t like seeing this thing at all.’ And he choked in the hot moist air” [116]). Harry is also annoyed by the reggae music that blares relentlessly from the houses down below. His most virulent wrath is in fact reserved for those who insist on listening and dancing to music: If I had my way I would ban music. And dancing. Make it a crime. Six months for every record you play. And hard labor for the reggae. Jane, I am serious. This is a country that has been destroyed by music. (125)

The contempt revealed by the three protagonists for the island’s inhabitants and customs is reciprocated. The native residents have little regard for the foreign intruders with whom they are obliged to share their geographical space. Jane is particularly loathed by the islanders. Her histrionic posturing and self-complacent vulgarity are dismissed by all (“And no one believed in her passion. She was from London; she

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had London to return to; she was not taken seriously” [94]). Harry de Tunja, though generally well liked, is nevertheless still viewed as an outsider. His “apartness” is underscored when a random passerby verbally assaults him: Old black feller, old rummy face—thousands like him. When he reach us he stop in the road, he raise his hand and point at me and he say, “You! You is a Jew.” Just like that, and then he move on, pushing his little cart. (126–7)

Moreover, it will be noted that Harry’s servant Joseph has little regard for his employer. During the traditional Sunday outing at Harry’s beach house, Joseph can be heard banging pots and pans in anger. During the brief island uprising, Harry is so uncertain of his servant’s loyalties that he finds it necessary to remove his own pistol from the home. Roche’s servant Adela manifests similar contempt for her employers. Adela—an extremely religious woman—is offended by Roche and Jane’s immoral cohabitation and makes a habit of registering her disapproval of their lifestyle (“In her white uniform, on which she insisted, she walked through the large house like a Friday night woman preacher, filling the rooms with her annoyance, and looking for fresh signs of sin” [55]). Despite his celebrated status as an author and civil rights activist, Roche fares no better than Jane in the eyes of the locals. In fact, he is viewed as little more than a posturing buffoon: He was not a professional man or businessman; he had none of the skills that were considered important. He was a doer of good works, with results that never showed, someone who went among the poor on behalf of his firm and tried to organize boys’ clubs and sporting events, gave this cup here and offered a gift of cricket equipment there. (47)

Though Roche was imprisoned and tortured for fighting alongside South African freedom fighters, he commands less respect from the locals than the racist and eccentric Mrs. Grandlieu (“It was strange that there should be patronage for Roche, and regard, almost awe, for someone like Mrs Grandlieu” [46]). As indicated above, the separate components of the narrative are ostensibly unified by the fourth protagonist, Jimmy Ahmed—a character intended to bridge the gap between the island’s local population and the foreign elite. In theory, Jimmy’s hybrid identity and cultural experience make him uniquely qualified to fill this position. His identity brings together two of the island’s most prevalent populations (black and Chinese) and his sojourn in England provides him with a broad understanding of British issues and customs. The problem is that Jimmy is unable to fuse successfully the disparate components of his identity. Although he tries to cast himself as a leader of his people, he continues to link his identity to England—a country he views as superior to his own. On the island, he is intent on replicating the British lifestyle. His home is made to resemble a typical London dwelling: A square of English carpet, electric blue with splashes of black and yellow, almost covered the floor. The furniture was also English and had a similar innocent stylishness; it was of a kind seen in the windows of furniture shops on the main streets of English market towns. (17)17

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When pressed, Jimmy does not hesitate to acknowledge the elevated status of British culture (“All the stuff here comes from England. You know what they say. You may not be able to make a living in England, but England teaches you how to live” [17]). Indeed, British classics line his bookshelves, one of which—Wuthering Heights— inspires the name for his agricultural compound—Thrushcross Grange. Having taken a few creative writing classes in London, he is now working on a novel of his own, one with a plot not unlike that found in the Brontë classic.18 Jimmy’s British mannerisms diminish rather than enhance his social standing. Among his British furnishings, Jimmy’s “outsiderness” is even more glaringly in evidence (“and the perception came to her that in this setting, which was his own, Jimmy was a diminished man” [17]). His multicultural identity does not conjoin him to a wider variety of social groups but rather serves to alienate him even further. Indeed, as a result of his composite ancestry and experiences, Jimmy has no discernable identity at all. Consequently he finds allies neither in the local population nor among the island’s more influential residents. His compatriots (who knew him as Jimmy Leung) have little respect for him or his agricultural farm, and he is obliged to rely on Roche to persuade or bribe potential recruits. Most of these leave, disillusioned, shortly after their arrival. Jimmy does manage to persuade several followers to march in protest after a young black man named Stephens is murdered by the authorities: But you should know that man Jimmy Ahmed start walking round the town with the body, picking up one hell of a procession. Everybody washing their foot and jumping in. Everybody carrying a piece of palm branch or coconut branch. (171–2)

However, his leadership status is quickly compromised when the victim’s mother refuses to allow him into her house. Like most of the other locals, Mrs. Stephens has nothing but contempt for Jimmy (“That is what they feed up that Chinee man on in England. That is the only sweetness he know. That is what they feed him up on and then they send him down here” [107]). Meredith, a local ex-politician, identifies Jimmy as “one of the more dangerous men in this place” (137). Even Jimmy’s lover, the deformed Bryant, turns against him when he discovers his liaison with “the white rat” Jane. Jimmy can count no supporters among residents of the Ridge either. Jane’s opinion reflects accurately the general consensus (“Of course, he’s having everybody on, isn’t he? And everybody’s having him on. Everybody is pretending that something exists that doesn’t exist” [23]). Roche, too, believes that Jimmy is little more than a fraud and he shamelessly exploits him in a futile attempt to acquire significance. The authorities, likewise, are skeptical of Jimmy’s sincerity and are convinced that his back-to-the land project is just an elaborate hoax designed to provide cover for the guerrillas. Though Jimmy does reveal a talent for intimidation (he somehow convinces Sablich’s to provide him with a large tract of land for his commune), his verbal skills are quite unpersuasive. During an early encounter with Jane, he refers to himself as a “playboy” when he means “plaything.” This glaring rhetorical error highlights convincingly his inferior status and prefigures his ultimate failure. Success in the former colonies depends on one’s ability to master the imposed vernacular. Well aware that discourse, like the economy and the military, is controlled by British and American

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interests, Jimmy does his best to mimic the phraseology and style of proven masters in an effort to inject his viewpoint into the master narrative. He first tries to pass himself off as an expert on Mao Tse-tung, then he turns to the writings of radicals working in the Black Power movement.19 Additionally, Jimmy’s writerly ambitions confirm the importance attached to mastering the rhetoric of former colonial masters.20 As many post-colonial critics have observed (and as the repeated references to British literature bear out), the colonists’ imposition of their own literary classics on native cultures facilitates their ability to dominate and control the local population. In Postcolonial Imaginings, David Punter makes reference to the linguistic powerlessness that confronts all colonized people—an aphasia that results from a “sense of ruin at the origin that attends these aftermaths of empire, the awareness that what was destroyed can never be reconstructed” (55). Although Jimmy works hard to mimic the style and flavor of his literary models, he is ill-equipped to master the discourse he parrots. His borrowed phraseology is not convincing and his efforts garner only mocking scorn from those who read his works.21 His manifesto for the commune is a rambling and incoherent conglomeration of unrelated ideas: But Jane, reading on, found that it soon became what Roche had said: a fairy story, a school composition, ungrammatical and confused, about life in the forest, about the anxieties, dangers, and needs of isolated men, about the absence of water, electricity, and transportation. (11)

His novel is a naïve pastiche combining elements of British classics with schoolyard yarns (a story he once heard about the gang rape of a white woman). A proposed series of articles about life on the island is rejected for publication. It is perhaps not surprising to find that Jimmy turns to violence when he is forced to come to terms with his rhetorical inadequacy. Because he is viewed as an outsider by both the native population and the foreign elite, Jimmy is an even more alienated figure than Jane, Roche or Harry. Consequently, having no credit or standing in any social arena, he is incapable of welding the separate narrative components together to “hybridize” the text. He is clearly unwelcome and untrusted by the local residents; likewise Jane and Roche dismiss him as an incompetent poser. He is effectively a man without a country. Expulsed from England—the country he most admires and where for a time he enjoyed a kind of celebrity status—he now finds himself exiled in a backwater he abhors: It is very black outside, in England you don’t know how black night can be here, I forgot myself when I was in London, and when I think of London and those places I cannot work out how I got here, so far from human habitation, and I cannot understand why I should end here like a ghost, this is my part of the world, I was born here, this is not London, it’s like a bad dream, but I know I’m not waking up. (222)

Despite Jimmy’s obvious shortcomings, it is not clear that his ineffectiveness is linked exclusively to his flawed character. A fundamental impotence defines other would-be leaders as well. Stephens—another local man who aspires to be a leader of his people—has none of Jimmy’s flaws, but he too meets with defeat. Stephens is

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a well-read, thoughtful and engaging character who commands respect from those around him. Nevertheless, he, like Jimmy, fails to unite the people in any meaningful way and is eventually gunned down by the police. The islanders’ lack of agency, it appears, is not wholly the result of the deficiencies of their leaders.22 Rather, their impotence is entrenched and institutionalized by a dismantled system that continues to affect adversely the lives of its victims. Economic, military and discursive control is located too firmly in external (primarily American and British) constituencies to allow for any meaningful change. Jimmy’s and Stephens’ efforts to inject themselves into the master narrative are therefore destined to fail because foreigners maintain control over both the message and the messengers. On this island, relevance and significance are vested in the foreign (mostly white) community. As Meredith points out, the reverse would never be the case. Unlike the accommodating islanders, whites would never agree to turn their interests over to a black intruder, no matter how noble or well-intentioned the cause (“You have so much room for error. I wouldn’t be welcome among white people, however much I wanted to work among them” [203]). The superior status of the foreigners illustrates the degree to which colonial attitudes continue to influence life on the island. Even in the post-independence era, the natives remain dependent on alien intruders (“We’re a dependent people, Peter. We need other people’s approval. And when people come to us with reputations made abroad we tend to look up to them” [202]). The ability of outsiders to control the discourse is nowhere more obvious than during the popular uprising. This brief threat to the established order is the only time in the novel where the locals appear united in a cause, and it is shrouded in mystery.23 The readers, like those living on the island, are woefully uninformed as to its causes, its progress, its proponents or opponents. Adela and Joseph prepare sandwiches, but it is not quite certain whether they are serving the police or the rioters. For that matter, the political allegiances of the police officers are in question as well. During the height of the uprising, Adela disappears, but we do not know where she goes or the motives behind her departure. Those living on the Ridge find very little information in the newspapers. What they do read is sketchy and/or overly reassuring because it comes from media controlled by European interests (in particular, the BBC). The suppression of so much vital information suggests that the lives of the natives have meaning only insofar as they affect the lives of the foreign protagonists. Because life on the Ridge is relatively unaffected by the violence (someone even remembers to open the taps that control their water supply during the riot), the event is hardly worthy of mention. The native islanders’ inability to move forward politically is emphasized by the patterns of repetition and circularity that dominate the narrative. The geographical reality of any island conveys an impression of directional circularity as opposed to that of linear progression. In Guerrillas, this sense of circularity is conveyed additionally by Jane and Roche’s frequent criss-crossing of the island in their car. The only way to move in a truly linear direction would be via an airplane, but this option no longer seems viable. The natives view the airport is being too distant (“Far away, the airport was just visible. The airplanes, their shapes not distinct, were little gleams of white” [52]) and too inaccessible to provide a feasible escape route (“Sometimes, I does just look at the airport and think it damn far, you know” [52]). In truth, the residents seem resigned to living out the rest of their days in “a place at the end of the world,” “a place that had exhausted its possibilities” (45). The island is portrayed

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as a geographical and cultural dead end for those with no other viable options. Roche admits he took refuge on the island after being threatened with bodily harm in England. Jane followed because she had nothing better to do. Jimmy was forced to return to the island to avoid prosecution in England. Circular patterns of repetition are also attached to the behavior of individual characters. Even in the era of post-independence, a master–slave dichotomy continues to impose itself in the workforce. Jimmy refers to Roche as “Massa.” Jimmy’s workers also appear to be entrapped in some anachronistic time warp: As if in parody of nineteenth-century plantation prints, which local people had begun to collect, the boys, with sullen downcast eyes, as though performing an unpleasant duty, were planting tomato seedlings which, as fast as they were set in their dusty little holes, quailed and drooped. (14)

The black versus white animosity so characteristic of the colonial era remains visibly entrenched. Unable to abandon his prejudices, Mrs. Grandlieu’s father instinctively accuses an innocent black servant of trying to poison him. Mrs. Grandlieu maintains the attitude and racist language of colonial times, despite her mixed-race heritage. No one in the novel seems able to move beyond his/her past and to reinvent him/herself. As Meredith insists during a visit to Harry’s beach house, “the setting may change, but no one will make a fresh start or do anything new” (144). As if in confirmation of Meredith’s hypothesis, Roche seems only to be trying to re-enact his role as a South African freedom fighter in a new environment. The radio interview with Meredith, who is now a government official, is conducted in the sweltering heat of an office cubicle and it seems expressly drawn to recall his imprisonment and torture in South Africa. Roche is in fact equally ineffective in both arenas. In South Africa, his “little acts of sabotage” are mocked by Meredith. Roche’s efforts to promote change on the island are similarly non-productive, evidenced by his lack of influence. It will be noted that his closing dialogue with Jimmy mirrors with eerie exactitude his opening exchange.24 Jane’s patterns of behavior are cyclical as well. As she did in London, on the island she trolls for male “candidates” who might be able to give meaning to her life. Her first sexual encounter with Jimmy is oddly reminiscent of an earlier episode with her ex-husband. Jimmy, too, is unable to make a clean break with his past. Once back on the island, he reverts to the sociopathic behavior that caused his expulsion from England. Even the riot is unable to alter in any way the status quo. Once the crisis has passed, the predictable routine of daily life resumes. Adela returns to Roche and Jane’s home on the Ridge. Mannie, armed with his trademark gunny sack and sickly tomatoes, resumes his place at Thrushcross Grange. The blind and legless beggar returns to his familiar station—a symbol of the isolation, stagnation and lack of vision that metaphorize the island’s inability to move forward. In the aftermath of the uprising, Jane and Roche, like Harry de Tunja, concretize their plans to leave. For some inexplicable reason, however, Jane decides to visit Jimmy one last time before leaving for London. Jimmy rapes and then murders her with the help of Bryant. Roche stumbles upon the crime scene (“This place has become a slaughterground” [244]), flees in fear, then feigns ignorance of the crime. The book closes with Roche telling Jimmy on the telephone that he and Jane will be leaving in the morning.25

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Roche’s refusal to acknowledge Jane’s death—Jimmy’s one real accomplishment in the narrative—nullifies any significance or relevance Jimmy might have hoped to acquire by his deed.26 Roche’s silence demonstrates also that reality on the island is a constructed concept, manipulated and controlled by foreign interests. Just as the title of the work transforms independent criminals into a cohesive band of political activists, so Roche’s refusal to acknowledge Jane’s murder transforms a white man’s fiction into reality. Roche’s silence dramatically alters an ending that both the reader and Jimmy believed to be definitive.27 Ironically, Roche’s decision not to report Jimmy’s crime to the authorities does not constitute a victory for him. On the contrary, it concretizes his defeat. Jimmy’s actions, no matter how bold or treacherous they may be, can be made to vanish without a trace if concealment serves the interests of those with the power to control the discourse. He may have the last word in the novel, but it is one of subordination rather than triumph. Jimmy’s last utterance (“Massa”) is identical to his first—a repetition that emphasizes both the native population’s inability to move forward and its subordinate status relative to former colonial masters. Whereas Jimmy’s earlier references to “Massa” may have been ironic in intent, his final articulation expresses genuine submission and defeat.28 In addition to economic, military and political superiority, discursive domination constitutes yet another powerful weapon in the colonial arsenal—one that allows outsiders to control and manipulate events, even in the era of post-independence. Whether the actions of the indigenous population are heroic or heinous, they are deemed inconsequential unless they advance the agenda of those who wield power and influence. In Guerrillas, this power and influence remains, as in colonial times, in the hands of foreign interests. Jimmy’s inability to take ownership of a murder for which he bears responsibility functions as a metaphor for the impotence of postcolonial subjects in the wake of independence. Trapped beneath the vague idealism of post-colonial optimism and the entrenched inertia resulting from subjugation, those living in lands once colonized are still struggling to ensure that their voices are heard and that their actions are entered into the historical record.29

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The Enemy Within: The Politics of SelfDestruction in Zongo’s LE PARACHUTAGE

Norbert Zongo’s Le Parachutage (1988) depicts an all-too-common problem that emerged throughout Africa in the wake of independence. The leaders who replaced the colonial masters turned out to be as corrupt, materialist and indifferent to their countrymen’s welfare as their foreign predecessors. Rather than work to improve the quality of life for their constituencies, the new African leaders sought only to amass personal wealth at the expense of the people and to solidify their power through ruthless oppression. In Zongo’s novel, President Gouama is an example of one of these modern-day dictator presidents. While his compatriots struggle for survival, he lives in lavish splendor at their expense. The first post-independence president of his country, Watinbow, Gouama manifests scant concern for the welfare of his newly liberated country or its people. An example of his indifference can be seen during a presidential visit to Zamb’Wôga. While his supporters suffer in the glare of a punishing sun, Gouama is seated “sous les caïlcédrats aux ombres avares et furtives” (37).1 After gliding past well-wishers who were no doubt persuaded by government officials to line the streets in a show of support, he stops his Mercedes Benz just long enough to give a brief speech. In his address to the people, pompous and hyperbolic assessments of Africa’s progress conclude with a promise to raise taxes and lower salaries. Gouama’s only real concerns as president are to acquire personal wealth in order to solidify his hold on the office and to satisfy his enormous appetite for food, liquor and women. Obsessed with projecting an illusion of prosperity, he uses the authority of his office to embezzle international funds earmarked for agricultural development. His callous disregard for the well-being of his constituents, his voracious sexual appetite, his overblown self-perception, his lethal gullibility and his habitual hypocrisy combine to create an alienated tyrant who is at once both frightening and comical. Despite his moral perversion and his self-serving political agenda, Gouama is not portrayed as a one-dimensional caricature. Infantile and comically inept, he occasionally reveals flashes of lucidity that serve to temporarily humanize, though not exonerate, him. There is evidence to suggest that he was not always so alienated from his fellow Africans. He was once, it appears, a man of the people. His populist roots appear in the many proverbs he articulates at various points in the narrative: Tout homme capable de distinguer l’or du cuivre comme on le dit dans ma langue, est capable de comprendre que le communisme est la pire chose vers laquelle un être humain puisse tendre. (15)

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers Les anciens ont dit: “Même si le chat n’attrape pas les poules, il ne doit pas élire domicile dans le poulailler.” (33) Mais la guêpe fait un nid qui ressemble à un rayon de miel, pourtant elle ne sait que piquer. (48) Ne défoncez pas une porte ouverte. (124) Un proverbe de chez moi affirme: “Ce n’est pas à la vieille femme qu’il faut apprendre à se coucher sur la natte d’un homme.” (124)

Gouama’s underlying humanity emerges briefly during his travels through the African countryside. After being deposed in a coup organized by one of his own military chiefs, Gouama takes refuge in a number of African villages as he heads toward Zakro. A former friend and ally is Zakro’s current president and Gouama hopes that, with his friend’s assistance, he can be restored to power. As Gouama travels on foot along the hostile byways of rural Africa, he is forced to reintegrate himself into the African community whose interests he abandoned when he was its president. During the journey, he is afflicted with a number of physical ailments and mental setbacks, but he is cured, sustained and nurtured by a host of generous compatriots, including a few communist students he had targeted for death. Slowly, Gouama’s love for Africa and its people re-emerges. Gouama appears to be just beginning to understand the harm he has inflicted on his people when he approaches Zakro’s border. But once he is in Zakro and deprived of the companionship of his compatriots, he rejects traditional African values for the second time. Sequestered in the presidential palace in Zakro, Gouama forgets the valuable lessons he learned during his flight to freedom—a memory lapse that proves to be fatal. Gouama is betrayed by his close friend and political ally who sends him back to Watinbow to a waiting firing squad. Before his execution, Gouama warns his successor Kodio that only by understanding the needs and aspirations of his own people can a president hope to succeed: Je disais donc que la meilleure richesse, la vraie, la seule qui vaille la peine d’être recherchée pour un homme, surtout pour un responsable, c’est d’avoir une place dans l’histoire de son peuple, de n’en être pas exclu. L’âge d’un homme digne de ce nom ne devrait pas se calculer en années, mais en services rendus à son peuple. (150)

Kodio pays no heed whatsoever to Gouama’s warning, and the people’s suffering begins anew.2 In the introductory paragraphs of the novel, the narrator takes great care to prepare readers for the “world of intolerable paradox” they are about to encounter. Watinbow is a country where starving masses beg for scraps while the corpulent president indulges his every sensory whim.3 As the people toil under the blazing sun to feed their families, their president and his privileged cadre of advisors isolate themselves in the air-conditioned splendor of their well-guarded palace. This oddly constructed building calls attention to itself both because of its distinctive architecture and its public inaccessibility (“Il se distinguait par son architecture et la haie d’hommes armés jusqu’aux dents qui entouraient la cour et en interdisaient l’accès” [10]). This inaccessibility, Zongo insists, is at the root of the problem. By placing a barrier between his government and the people it is intended to serve, President

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Gouama is able to turn a blind eye to their poverty and suffering while he squanders their resources on personal indulgences. At times it seems that Gouama no longer links his identity to Africa at all. Despite his humble beginnings, he now manifests contempt and disdain for the very people he takes credit for liberating (“Je saigne mon pays, mon peuple, pour payer gracieusement des gens à ne rien faire, sauf des coups d’Etat” [25]). Marcel, his trusted advisor, feels free to express fundamentally racist opinions without fear of contradiction or consequences. Occasionally, Gouama appears to concur with Marcel’s prejudiced assessments. He accepts the viewpoint that “l’émotion est nègre et la raison est Hellene” (94) and agrees with the minister of Zakro that blacks are indeed ungrateful (“Nous avons à faire à des peuples très ingrats” [114]). Since becoming Watinbow’s president, Gouama has become so distant from his compatriots that he no longer seems able to identify with them at all. When he asks Marcel to procure a prostitute for him, he requests specifically that she not be black (“Surtout pas les genres sahéliennes; les sécheresses je n’en veux pas. [. . .] Ah les Blanches! elles connaissent, elles. A part les filles de joie, nos négresses sont très ignorantes” [19]). Gouama’s contempt for fellow Africans is due in part to his intoxication with all things European. Heavily influenced by the values and opinions of his country’s former colonial masters, President Gouama identifies more with Europeans than with newly liberated Africans. In fact, when he assumes the presidency of his country, Gouama is clearly less interested in dismantling the colonial power structure than in “Africanizing” it. In this, he reflects a historical reality. In the power vacuum created by the collapse of the colonial system, some of Africa’s native sons, many of whom had been groomed for leadership positions by the colonial system, found their way back to Africa to take over where the colonial masters left off. In a radio address shortly after the coup, Kodio accuses Gouama of being just such a leader: less interested in liberating his people than in seizing the opportunity to oppress them in turn: Ils en voulaient aux colonisateurs par orgueil et pour des raisons strictement personnelles. Ils en voulaient aux colonisateurs parce qu’ils estimaient qu’ils étaient les éclairés et devaient désormais régner sur leur peuple qu’ils savaient esclave d’un obscurantisme total et morbide. (96)

Gouama’s administrative record seems to corroborate Kodio’s assessment. As president, Gouama’s most pressing political objective is to maintain power. In pursuit of this goal, he chooses to rely not on the African people he has been called upon to serve, but on Marcel, who serves the interests of the foreign ambassador of the country’s former colonial master. In his eagerness to please Marcel, Gouama readily incorporates his ideas and opinions into all matters of policy. Marcel’s influence on Gouama demonstrates the degree to which his country remains mired in its colonial past. Marcel is nothing but a political puppet for the ambassador of the former occupier, and because he has the ear of Gouama, the ambassador’s influence in the country’s affairs remains considerable. It is in fact the ambassador who is responsible for planning the coup that overthrows Gouama and it is he who sets events in motion (“Monsieur l’Ambassadeur a téléphoné, il a dit ceci: ‘Il y a trois oeufs dans le nid,’ il l’a répété trois fois” [53]). He has also preselected some of the men who will serve in Kodio’s new administration:

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Exiles, Outcasts, Strangers A présent je vous donne la liste des membres de mon gouvernement. Vous verrez trois noms de civils; ces hommes ont été choisis par Monsieur l’Ambassadeur. Ce sont des hommes sûrs et compétents. Ils ont tous fait leurs études universitaires en Europe et en Amérique. Ils ont toujours refusé de militer dans les mouvements estudiantins procommunistes. Ils sont tous d’éminents économistes. C’est Monsieur Marcel qui nous a aidés à faire ce gouvernement. (55)

Gouama’s desire to please Marcel is a reflection of his general fondness for European values and lifestyles. The president reveals an attachment to a number of status symbols similar to those that are prized by Europeans: expensive cars, champagne, caviar. Additionally, Gouama is eager to flaunt his European education as well, as evidenced by his reciting French Renaissance poetry in between gulps of champagne on a flight to Switzerland. As president, he takes care to pepper his speeches with a healthy dose of scholarly Latinisms in order to impress listeners with his knowledge of the Western classics. Gouama’s obsession with accumulating wealth also identifies him as a convert to the principles of Western capitalism. Gouama has amassed huge reserves of cash by routinely depositing funds that were intended to improve conditions in his country into personal bank accounts in Switzerland and the United States. As he works to augment his personal fortune, Gouama proves to be an equal opportunity thief. He steals not only from wealthy foreign investors but from his own impoverished people as well. Those with little or nothing are forced to pay increasingly higher taxes, accept reduced salaries and buy compulsory party membership cards in order to help fund Gouama’s lavish lifestyle. These monies are squandered on all manner of extravagant personal luxuries. He not only spends obscene amounts of money entertaining himself and foreign visitors but he also generously rewards the favored few within his inner circle. Marcel, for example, is paid one million dollars just for arranging Gouama’s visit to the African Unity Summit in Europe. Pilfered funds are also used to buy the affection of women. In addition to paying for prostitutes, Gouama uses money from his engorged bank accounts to purchase an additional wife (“Marguerite avait donné son accord. Il lui avait ouvert un compte en banque qu’il se promettait d’alimenter tous les mois” [128]). Gouama’s predilection for conspicuous consumption is related to his more fundamental desire to imitate the behaviors found in Western-style democracies. When Marcel scolds him for his excessive military spending, he insists he is simply following the Western model (“Et vous, ne dépensez-vous pas des fortunes pour de l’armement?” [29]). For Gouama, freedom is primarily an economic rather than a political concept. A “liberated” Africa is therefore one where bribery, theft and extortion are acceptable strategies for achieving financial gain. Gouama tends to measure his political progress by the quantity and quality of his own material possessions: expensive cars, a luxurious palace with well-appointed guest rooms, imported champagne and caviar. Convinced that the international community will be more impressed with the excessive wealth of a few than with the underwhelming sight of widespread (but minimal) self-sufficiency, he eagerly flaunts his riches on the world stage. Gouama’s capitalist ideology is prominently in evidence from the moment he assumes power. As he greets the citizens of Watinbow as its new president, he proudly

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displays a shiny leather bag: Marcel était dans le pays depuis le jour où le président de la nouvelle République de Watinbow avait débarqué d’un DC 6 en brandissant du haut de la passerelle à l’immense foule hystérique venue l’acclamer à coups de tam-tams, de cors et de fusils à pierre, une sacoche de cuir luisant en criant: “Je vous rapporte l’indépendance!” (13)

The leather bag—a symbol of wealth and entrepreneurship in Western societies— confounds those who witness it (“Mais la sacoche était très petite pour contenir un objet de valeur, pensèrent certains à haute voix dans la foule. Peut-être l’indépendance était en or, répondirent d’autres” [13]). Indeed, the bag represents economic but not political freedom and, as a Marxist student will later point out to the newly deposed Gouama, political and economic freedom must go hand in hand. In the absence of political freedom, no country can claim to be independent, no matter how great its wealth (“Il n’y a pas de libéralisme économique sans libéralisme politique” [105]). Gouama, it will be noted, is not the only government official to value the symbols of Western financial success. Keita, the leader of the parachute squad, had nothing in the way of material possessions when Gouama took office (“toute sa fortune se résumait à une vieille cantine rouillée, deux vieilles tenues kaki, trois boucs et quelques poulets” [26]). Now he drives a fancy Peugeot (“Sauvé par moi, aujourd’hui, il roule en Peugeot 505” [26]). Tiga, the president’s special advisor, has become a millionaire by smuggling gold, diamonds and drugs into the country. Like Gouama, he drives a Mercedes Benz. Despite Tiga’s close ties to the deposed president, he is certain he will always be welcome in Watinbow because, as a wealthy entrepreneur, he can help make the fortunes of many (“Il sera bien reçu. Et qui sait? Il sera un collaborateur sérieux pour les nouveaux hommes forts de Watinbow. L’affairisme et l’enrichissement rapide et facile sont les maladies infantiles des régimes des pays pauvres, conclut-il pour se rassurer” [113]). Even those serving in the military seem more concerned with financial gain than political security. Marcel notes that Watinbow’s soldiers are effectively nothing but mercenaries motivated by profit rather than patriotism: Cette armée, la vôtre, n’en est pas une [armée de mercenaires]? Le mercenaire est un soldat au service d’un homme ou d’un groupe d’hommes. Or vos soldats sont à votre service ou tout au plus, au service de votre gouvernement, comme beaucoup d’autres soldats à travers le continent qui sont payés pour garantir le pouvoir de certains responsables. Vous avez des mercenaires qui s’ignorent. (29)

Kodio, Gouama’s successor, also relies heavily on bribes to ensure the allegiance of fellow coup-makers. Despite the country’s deteriorating financial situation, Kodio promises to raise salaries once he is installed in power (“Nous rétablirons les salaires des fonctionnaires qui devaient être cisaillés. La mesure a été prise pour ça. [. . .] Personne ne sera oublié. [.  . .] Chacun de vous aura sa récompense” [55]). It is worth noting that greed is characteristic of other African government officials as well. In neighboring Zakro, for example, the president is easily persuaded to betray his long-time friend and ally Gouama in exchange for a diamond mine in the north of Watinbow. Consumed with the task of acquiring and squandering wealth, Watinbow’s political leaders inhabit a world that is wholly disconnected from the one in which

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they were born, and in which their constituents continue to live. In his sequestered palace, Gouama is blissfully unaware either of the suffering of his people or of how intensely he is loathed. His advisors go to great lengths to maintain his ignorance. Gouama basks in the empty praise of condescending flatterers who laud his every word and deed. Marcel waxes eloquent about Gouama’s leadership abilities (“Votre lucidité et toute l’estime conséquente que vous témoignent tous vos pairs seront le ciment qui comblera les lézardes de cet édifice” [14]). Tiga assures Gouama that he will do anything to protect him (“Mais personne ne vous ravira cette présidence. Personne!” [33]). Zakro’s minister of internal affairs praises Gouama for his service to his country, even as he is making plans to return him to Kodio and a waiting firing squad (“Nous avons suivi tous vos efforts pour avoir de l’aide en céréale. La stabilité est la plus grande richesse qu’un président puisse offrir à son peuple. C’est ce que vous aviez fait” [115]). Kodio, too, feigns submissive respect for the man he is about to destroy (“Nous n’étions rien Excellence. C’est vous qui aviez tout fait. Nous ne faisions rien. Nous n’étions rien” [24]). Kodio maintains his loyalty even when kicked and bullied about by the man he despises: “Excellence vous savez que je vous suis et resterai fidèle. Je le jure à nouveau.” Le lieutenant-colonel Kodio se mit à genoux, joignit les mains comme s’il voulait prier, baissa la tête. “Je jure sur l’honneur et sur Dieu de vous servir toujours avec conscience et dévouement. Je le jure sur la ceinture de mon père.” (23)

Significantly, the radio announcer’s report of the president’s visit to Zam’Wôga is so filled with empty hyperbole that he runs out of meaningless words to fill the the void (“Quelle générosité, quelle bonté, que, quelle, les mots me manquent pour décrire l’amour que notre Père bien-aimé témoigne à tout son peuple à travers les habitants de Zamb’Wôga” [39]). In order to dupe Gouama more effectively, his advisors make certain that when he does venture outside his palace walls, he encounters the illusion of widespread prosperity and popular approval. Prior to presidential visits, cities and their inhabitants are cosmetically enhanced. In Zamb’Wôga, the poorest residents are forced out of town. Those who remain are disguised as merchants selling cheap Chinese goods. Precious resources are squandered in order to beautify the landscape. Dusty houses are painted and repainted, even though the blustery winds of the harmattan repeatedly sabotage their efforts. This trompe l’oeil metamorphosis not only allows Gouama to turn a blind eye to the real problems of his country but it is designed to deceive European parliamentarians and the all-important foreign press as well (“Il ne fallait pas que la presse occidentale rapportât à travers le monde, les réalités choquantes d’une misère qui pourrait indisposer Gouama et des ministres lors de leurs nombreuses visites officielles ou privées. Cynique pudeur” [35]). Insulated from the external world by advisors working to destroy him, Gouama mistakes the constructed world of artifice for reality. He sees himself as a national hero, a liberator who freed his people from the yoke of colonial servitude. Gouama insists that he alone is responsible for the liberation of his people (“Président du Watinbow que j’ai créé de mes mains” [26]). As proof of his commitment to his countrymen, he stands ready to slaughter untold numbers in order to remain in power

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(“Tiga, j’ai le devoir de préserver mon pays et mon peuple. Même s’il faut sacrifier vingt mille femmes, n’hésite pas une seule seconde. N’hésite jamais” [33]). Like the Divine Creator himself, Gouama sees himself as the prime architect of his world—a gifted and inspired messiah who is revered by his subjects. Not surprisingly, the palace has been made to resemble a house of worship (“Vu de l’extérieur, on eût dit un temple, une église ou une mosquée” [10]). As he presides over his artificial empire, Gouama enjoys playing the role of president. He clearly prefers the trappings of governance to actual governance; political theater to political action. For Gouama, the presidency is largely a ceremonial role, one that provides him with an international stage on which to posture and perform. In truth, his thespian talents far surpass his leadership skills. He reads scripted speeches with enthusiasm, even when the articulated sentiments oppose his personal viewpoint.4 For example, he appears to agree personally with Einstein when he writes that the single greatest error Africa made was to create armies (“La pire des institutions grégaires se prénomme armée. Je la hais” [25]). Nevertheless, in his public addresses he vows to strengthen the military (“Toujours pour la bonne santé de notre économie, nous allons réformer notre armée afin qu’elle soit plus productive. Désormais, nos militaires auront leurs champs et leurs troupeaux” [43]). Similarly, his bombastic proclamation that Africa must solve its own problems (“Personne d’autre ne viendra construire ce pays pour nous” [42]) is belied by his actual behavior. Gouama gives free reign to Marcel (and the foreign ambassador) to control Watinbow’s political agenda. Even after the coup, Gouama continues to play the role of president (“La bouteille refermée sous l’aisselle, ‘le Père Fondateur’ commença à se ressentir président. Et ce fut avec une voix grave qu’il commença à ordonner” [62]). His theatrical talents are on display again as he thrashes about with histrionic excess in the early days of exile (“Comme un excellent acteur de théâtre, Gouama, les yeux hagards, la bouche ouverte, gesticulait, se martelait la poitrine” [66]). On the jet transporting him to Switzerland, he performs with heartfelt gusto in the belief that he will soon be restored to power (“Il se mit à réciter Odes à Cassandre de Ronsard, avec des gestes et une mime de comédien professionnel” [123]).5 Having exchanged reality for role-playing, Gouama is no longer able to distinguish truth from lie. His surrender to fantasy leaves him at the mercy of advisors who are pursuing their own personal agendas. No matter how preposterous the proposal, no matter how incredible the accusation, Gouama never questions his advisors’ judgment or the accuracy of their reports. Kodio and Marcel have no difficulty convincing him that his most loyal supporter, Keita, is working against him (“Le commandant Keiiitaa? Keiiita? Ke i i ita. Celui que j’ai aimé et admiré le plus. L’officier pour moi, jadis, le plus fidèle, le plus sûr” [22]). In order to ensure easier access to his enemy, Kodio even manages to persuade Gouama to dismiss his own personal guard (composed of loyal and devoted relatives)—a move that facilitates his demise. Gouama is so dependent on the advice of others that he has lost the ability to think for himself at all. He relies on Marcel to write his speeches (he even drafts Gouama’s remarks for Keita’s funeral oration). Marcel is also commissioned to draft some thoughts on his proposed budget cuts. When Gouama does try to articulate a thought, he confuses things. He makes reference to mud in the desert and sand in Vietnam—a linguistic transposition that provokes a derisive sneer from Marcel. The only clear and original thought Gouama manages to communicate is the type of sexual partner

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he wants for his evening’s pleasures (“Une poitrine bien développée, des fesses bien en relief. Peu importe le prix” [19]). During the coup, Gouama is not in the capital and he manages to escape. He makes his way across Africa hoping to find asylum in neighboring Zakro. As he travels through Africa, Gouama begins slowly to recover some of the humanity he lost while serving as president. In the bush, he comes face to face with the difficulties confronted every day by his compatriots—the very reality from which he labored to separate himself during his ten-year tenure as president. During the initial phase of his ordeal, Gouama’s alienation is painfully in evidence. In the bush, the values and principles by which he once lived are suddenly no longer applicable and he is barely able to function at all. He is particularly distraught by the lack of material comforts. In contrast to the plenitude to which he became accustomed in the presidential palace, food and water are scarce in the bush. Unable to cope, he reveals frequently his emotional despair. These dramatic displays of emotion are derided by his compatriots as “unmanly” (“Les passeurs s’indignèrent avant que Sanou ne leur expliquât les raisons de la haine de celui qu’ils appelaient ‘l’homme femme’” [101]). When a village chief witnesses one of these emotional breakdowns, he urges Gouama to adopt a more stoical attitude (“Un homme doit lutter jusqu’à son dernier souffle. Aucune situation n’est définitive et irrémédiablement perdue. Il faut toujours se battre. Toujours” [85–6]). As he travels across his country, the difference between Gouama’s own attitudes and those of his compatriots becomes increasingly evident. Despite their poverty, everyone he meets is eager to share with him the little they have.6 In every village, no matter how impoverished, tradition mandates that the chief provide food and shelter to visitors. The imperative to provide for others is so intractable that two students traveling with the ailing Gouama leave him behind in order to relieve the chief from the obligation to feed them all (“Ils voulaient surtout éviter de ruiner le chef pêcheur et ses sujets qui, selon la tradition, devaient vider leurs greniers pour les nourrir. Les règles de l’hospitalité étaient claires là-dessus” [81]). Something even more surprising is Gouama’s discovery that his compatriots are quick to forgive—an attitude that contrasts sharply with his own obsession with revenge (“Il règlera son compte à ce salaud de Kodio plus tard. Je déjeunerai avec son cerveau se promit-il, à haute voix” [94]). The students who save Gouama’s life are in fact some of the students he imprisoned and planned to execute. Although they are aware of his identity from the outset, their high ethical principles will not allow them to turn their backs on a fellow African in need: Nous t’avons reconnu bien avant de te soigner. Je peux même dire que nous avons risqué notre vie, avec beaucoup plus d’entrain, parce que c’était toi et pas un autre. Nous voulions savourer notre victoire. Tu nous avais condamnés à mort et c’est nous qui t’avons sauvé. (106)

In the African countryside, Gouama is quite surprised to encounter widespread contempt for Europeans and their lifestyles. In fact, Coulibaly insists that those who prefer European goods to those of Africa have lost their identity and abandoned their loyalty: En Afrique, les bourgeois, ce sont ceux qui ont passé de l’âne à la Mercedes, ceux qui jadis ne pouvaient avoir la bière de mil ou le vin de palme qu’exceptionnellment les

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jours de fête, et qui maintenant sautent le champagne pour célébrer leurs rêves, ceux qui subsistaient grâce à une boule de gâteau de mil et une sauce de potasse ou encore de tubercules sauvages grillés et, qui aujourd’hui ont le camembert ou le caviar, ceux qui jusqu’à l’âge de dix ans marchaient toujours corps nu et qui aujourd’hui importent des valises et des valises d’habits à des prix exorbitants . . . Ceux qui ont oublié comme qui ferait d’une vieille culotte, leur ancien état de misère qui est aujourd’hui celui du peuple, sont des bourgeois. (103)

Starving Africans deem the West’s imperative to eat a balanced diet to be patently offensive (“Conseiller la viande, le poisson, les oeufs et les fruits à des hommes affamés et pauvres, c’est la pire des injures” [79]). In the bush, donkeys, rather than Mercedes Benz, are the transport of choice. Millet wine substitutes for champagne. Aspirin, ubiquitous in the West, is scarcely to be found in African villages. Not only is it more costly than Africa’s indigenous healing plants and herbs but it is less effective. Even the personal habits of Westerners are ridiculed by Africans. An African priest mocks his white counterpart’s use of handkerchiefs and outhouses (“Nos parents le prenaient pour un taré, parce qu’il gardait sa morve et ses crachats dans ses poches. Pis, il se soulageait dans un trou au milieu d’une case” [79]). Gouama is equally dismayed by his countrymen’s attitude towards technology, something that is viewed in the West as an unmistakable indicator of a country’s progress and prestige.7 In the opening pages of the novel, Marcel reminds Gouama of the importance of including a section on the “New Order of Information” in his address at the African Unity Summit. Gouama is quite proud of the many technological advancements on display in the presidential palace: radios, televisions, giant clocks, electric chandeliers and telephones. In the big banks in the capital, technology is also of paramount importance. There the sounds produced by modernized equipment are indistinguishable from those made by yet another symbol of Western superiority—high-caliber weapons (“Les crépitements des machines à écrire, telles des rafales d’armes automatiques, s’ajoutaient aux grésillements des téléphones et aux voix humaines pour instaurer une ambiance de marché africain” [10]). The radio also plays a critical role in Gouama’s government. Not only does it allow him to control and manipulate public perception but it also serves to maintain distance between himself and his underlings. The reader’s first encounter with the president is filtered through the crackling static of his intercom system as he summons Marcel to his office. His entire visit to Zamb’Wôga is projected through the voice of the radio announcer—a strategy that allows the president to manipulate reality and promote the party line. Noteworthy also is the fact that Gouama learns the identity of the new president and the coup-makers from the radio, and he is obliged on occasion to hear his successor’s speeches—an intrusion that significantly alters his positive attitude (“Mais sa joie fut de courte durée: la radio annonça un discours du chef de l’État, le colonel Kodio. Son sang monta d’un coup” [94]). It will be noted also that it is the radio announcer who is given the responsibility of narrating the event that gives the novel its name: the parachute drop of Keita and Oudaouga. Both of their parachutes have been sabotaged and they both fall to their death. It is perhaps fitting that these two native sons of Africa die while attempting such a spectacular technological feat. Their loyalty to a president who has betrayed the values of the African people makes them traitors in turn. Having transferred their allegiance from

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their community to the government, they are forcibly plunged back into the nontechnological society they chose to betray. It is technology, also, that leads Gouama back to Watinbow and his execution. At the beginning of Gouama’s exile, Sanou sinks their Land Rover into a river, obliging Gouama to proceed on foot. The discarding of the vehicle signals Gouama’s impending reintegration into traditional African society where donkeys are the preferred means of transport. In Zakro, however, increasingly sophisticated modes of transportation foreshadow his repudiation of conventional African values for the second time. A ferry takes him to the border from where a dilapidated bus transports him to Aty. There he manages to convince officials that he is the ex-president of Watinbow because he has technological information of which the general population is unaware: he knows the private telephone number of Zakro’s president. A helicopter then takes him to the presidential palace. A few days later, he boards a jet headed for Switzerland to arrange a money transfer. After returning to Zakro, a small plane takes him back to Watinbow where he is imprisoned, then executed. It bears noting that Gouama’s successor, Kodio, will also choose to rely heavily on technology to manipulate and deceive his constituents.8 He stages an elaborate television spectacle designed to make people believe that Gouama had commanded a group of mercenary soldiers to take back the country. Generally, however, Africans are not so easily duped. In fact, they have little faith in technology at all. A village chief dismisses the information broadcast over the airwaves as nonsense (“Quand j’avais ma radio, j’écoutais les mêmes sottises” [79]). He in fact sold his radio to buy something more useful: school supplies for his son. Another trait that distinguishes Africans from their government officials is their self-reliance and their authenticity. In contrast to the pomposity of their politicians, Africans take pride in real accomplishments, not hollow flattery. As he makes his way through the bush with his traveling companions, Gouama is taken aback when he encounters criticism rather than praise for his accomplishments. Accustomed to the false flattery of his advisors, he is ill prepared for Coulibaly’s harsh indictment of his presidency. The students place much of the blame for Africa’s misery on Gouama’s insistence on collaborating with outsiders (“En Afrique tout vient de l’extérieur” [104]). It is not, as Marcel insists, the communists who are working against African interests. On the contrary, the Marxists are working to put Africa’s future back into the hands of Africans: A-t-on besoin de l’étranger pour savoir que le destin de son peuple est bloqué? A-t-on besoin de lire Lénine pour savoir qu’on est sans emploi? A-t-on besoin de lire Marx pour savoir qu’on a faim et soif? Faut-il avoir étudié la révolution bolchevik ou chinoise pour apprendre que les sociétés où sévissent la corruption, le népotisme, le tribalisme, l’affairisme, etc. sont pourries et que tôt ou tard, elles engendreront la violence, la haine, le crime avant d’exploser dans le chaos le plus total? Je ne connais pas plus assassin dans une société qu’un corrompu. Je ne connais pas plus tyran et plus criminel qu’un détourneur de biens publics. Je ne connais pas ennemi plus mortel du peuple qu’un tribaliste doublé d’un affairiste. (104)

During his long trek across Africa, Gouama’s attachment to Western values begins to loosen. Slowly, he reintegrates himself into African society and expresses

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increasing admiration for his countrymen. Just after the coup, Gouama is totally helpless and unable to fend for himself. At times, he is unable to walk on his own and his traveling companions are obliged to carry him—a symbolic gesture that reflects the burdens his presidency placed on the general population. During the voyage, he is afflicted by one ordeal after another. He is obliged to choose between being stung by a swarm of bees or stampeded to death by buffaloes; he contracts a serious case of diarrhea as a result of his changed diet; he is bitten so severely by leeches that he develops blood poisoning. Throughout these trials and tribulations, he is restored to health by the caring attentiveness of native villagers and the efficacy of herbal remedies. As he moves toward Zakro, Gouama begins to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of Africa’s natural resources, the strength of its people and the simple yet satisfying tranquillity of life in the African countryside. He is moved by the simple contemplation of the natural surroundings (“Il se décontracta et se mit à admirer le reflet de la lune sur l’eau. C’était beau, très beau, songea-t-il” [86]). Although at first he longed for the comforts of his palace, he now believes that the natural beauty of Africa surpasses anything found in the paintings on his walls: Gouama admirait ce spectacle qui rompait la monotonie de l’aube naissante. Le tableau magnifique du fleuve étalant son ruban bleu-sale, constellé de piroguiers ramant et chantant comme pour faire naître le jour, lui donnait le goût de vivre. Jamais il n’avait pensé trouver un tel charme, en dehors des tableaux des plus grands maîtres de la peinture qui ornaient son mur. Jamais il n’avait pensé être heureux, les poches vides comme le ventre, le corps meurtri, l’avenir incertain. (81)

He is inspired, even rejuvenated, by the example of strength and vitality offered by his countrymen: Leur jovialité rappela la vie à Gouama. Tout en eux était vie. Leurs bras, lianes tressées, leur poitrine large aux pectoraux en saillies, leurs pieds aux larges fentes, couleur de la vase du fleuve, . . . tout en eux était symbole de vie et de vitalité. (86)

He even tries his hand at farming (“Gouama guéri, participa à l’ensemencement de tout le champ de Sanou” [93]). Rather than recite Ronsard’s poetry, he regales his compatriots, as might a traditional African griot, with real-life anecdotes (“Il aimait raconter des anecdotes sur des fêtes, des réunions et des voyages” [94]). In the absence of manipulative advisors, engorged bank accounts, liquor and prostitutes, Gouama appears to be a changed man: C’était un Gouama amaigri mais décidé, la barbe hirsute, sale des pieds à la tête, une gourde de berger sur l’épaule et une canne de fortune à la main qui entamait le voyage ce matin, à travers la brousse épaisse. (86)

But Gouama’s rehabilitation—that is to say, his renewed faith in the fundamental worth of the African people—proves to be short-lived. As he approaches Zakro, he develops blood poisoning. For the first time during his trek across Africa, natural remedies fail to cure his symptoms. His friends are obliged to procure money in order to bribe hospital workers to give them Western medical supplies (aspirin and

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primperan). The need for Western medicine foreshadows Gouama’s impending character collapse. As soon as he reaches Zakro, his attachment to European values and his haughty sense of superiority re-emerge. Despite having just witnessed firsthand Africa’s widespread poverty, he is now contemptuous of the fiscal restraint he encounters in the marketplace (“Les mains au dos il faisait le tour du marché, regardant d’un air condescendant les marchandes et les marchands qui discutaient pendant d’interminables heures pour une réduction de prix de 5 F CFA” [109]). He also resumes the theatrical posturing that his compatriots belittled. Withdrawn and isolated, he speaks to imaginary guests at an imaginary cocktail party (“Il discourait, discourait, levait le verre—sa main vide—souriait aimablement et reprenait sa marche. Seuls quelques enfants prêtaient attention au nouveau ‘fou’ du marché” [109]). Whereas he earlier expressed admiration for the natural strength and beauty of the African people, he now finds more to admire in artifice and ornamentation: Il faut voir ce beau monde habillé à l’américaine ou à l’européenne pour savoir que l’Afrique a évolué depuis les indépendances. Voyez ces belles femmes dont les robes portent les griffes des plus grands couturiers du monde. Aux reflets des lumières de la vaste salle de l’aéroport, leur maquillage brille de mille feux. Leur parfum, leurs bijoux, tout en elles est signé du développement et du progrès de l’Afrique. Comment Mamadou pouvait-il penser un seul instant que son pays et son continent n’avaient pas progressé, se demanda tout haut Gouama? (121)

Although at one point during his exile he recalled with fondness an anti-materialist quote from an author whose name he could not recall (“Je suis riche de rien du tout. Et rien du tout c’est plein de richesse pour moi” [81]), in Zakro, he reaffirms his faith in the almighty dollar (“Mon cher ministre, connais-tu le nom de l’imbécile qui a dit que l’argent ne fait pas le bonheur?” [125]). Gouama again expresses delight at the sound of technology at work (“Ce beau monde des aéroports, le bruit des réacteurs, la voix des haut-parleurs . . .” [122]). Gouama’s character devolution and his re-emergence as a Eurocentric, greedy and opportunistic politician highlight the circular nature of the narrative. In effect, Le Parachutage inverts the paradigm of the traditional Bildungsroman. Gouama is unable to profit from his experiences in the African countryside, and at the end of his odyssey he is as narrow-minded, intolerant and self-centered as before. The simple pleasures of riverboat villages are forgotten as he hedonistically consumes gourmet meals and fine wine in Zakro’s presidential palace (“Il venait de renouer avec les discours, les repas pantagruéliques et les vins rares. Il venait de renouer avec la vie telle qu’il la concevait” [112]). Gouama even reaffirms his fundamental opposition to communism, despite the generosity and vital assistance provided to him by Coulibaly and Diallo. He is willing to make one concession, however: rather than kill or imprison communist students, he will first try to rehabilitate them in specially constructed camps. Those who earn an exit diploma (presumably, those who succumb to brainwashing tactics) will be allowed to participate meaningfully in society. Gouama’s sexual appetite is also restored (“J’en retiendrai deux, non trois ou même cinq pourquoi pas. De temps en temps il faut bien varier” [117]). As the former and soon to be reinstated president of Watinbow, he demands women befitting his privileged position (“Elle peut rester pour la cuisine mais je souhaiterais avoir

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quelque chose de plus tendre, de plus exquis, digne d’un président” [117]). He also re-acquires his taste for alcoholic beverages. Remembering the advice of a former counselor (“Il vous faut une bonne politique de la boisson. Encouragez l’implantation des brasseries” [118]), he decides that once he is back in power he will encourage public intoxication in order to enhance the opportunity for political malfeasance (“Il financera par personne interposée deux nouvelles grandes brasseries” [118]). As before, he plans to use deception to enhance his public persona: Au cours de la grande soirée qu’il organisera, il racontera aux convives l’épopée de sa fuite: comment il avait abattu plus d’une cinquantaine de soldats avant d’être contraint par leur nombre à abandonner le combat. Sa course héroïque à travers la brousse, bravant les fauves et les serpents. La dangereuse traversée—à la nage—du fleuve infesté de crocodiles. (122)

The novel’s circular structure is also revealed by Gouama’s inability to avoid his pre-ordained fate. Marked for death in the opening pages of the novel, he is executed finally in the last. He makes a vain, although at times valiant, attempt to alter his destiny, but he is powerless to change what even he recognizes as the inevitable cycle of violent revolution and dictatorial oppression (“Après cette troisième phase on revient à la case départ: et le cycle infernal recommence” [48]). Worse yet, Gouama’s execution has no effect whatsoever on the lives of the general population. Kodio proves to be as callously manipulative and exploitative as his predecessor. He, like Gouama, is at the mercy of the foreign ambassador who has only his own country’s interest at heart. Finally, the novel’s circular structure is highlighted by the people’s support of their new president. The press uses the same hyperbolic epithets for Kodio that it once reserved for Gouama (“Chers auditeurs nous allons vous faire suivre à présent une partie de la conférence de presse que notre libérateur, le Guide-éclairé, le Timoniernational, le président Kodio Etienne a donnée ce matin à la presse nationale et internationale” [98]). Just as the people once cheered for Gouama, they now cheer for Kodio: La foule: ce “peuple” qui organisait perpétuellement des séquences d’animation pour soutenir Gouama et son parti d’avant-garde, --comme la corde soutient le pendu,-- venait de détruire le mur de la maison du parti. La foule: ce “peuple” qui appelait son esclavage, une discipline et un soutien à la politique de l’irremplaçable Guide-éclairé, ce “peuple” qui jadis défilait en uniforme sous une forêt de pancartes rivalisant d’éloges à l’endroit du “sauveur” Gouama, venait de mettre le feu aux locaux abritant l’école du parti. La foule, le “peuple.” C’était la première fois qu’il se rassemblait sans uniforme, ce peuple. Il réclamait un sauveur. (69)

The circular structure of the narrative reflects Africa’s tragic lack of progress in the post-colonial era. Although Gouama certainly deserves his fate, it is not likely that the new president will be any more accountable to the people than Gouama. As in the past, he and his aides will prosper while the citizens struggle. It is precisely this betrayal of Africa by Africans that is forefronted in Zongo’s novel. Although there

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is no doubt that some of the blame for the current situation can be placed on the shoulders of foreign colonial powers, Africa’s current wounds are largely self-inflicted. The foreigners have disappeared, yet true independence remains elusive. Life under the rule of local leaders proves to be no better than life under foreign oppressors. As long as its presidents function as “outsiders” in their stewardship of their country’s affairs, as long as they are more interested in accumulating personal wealth than in public service, and as long as they take their counsel from foreign leaders and investors who profit from Africa’s misery, Africa will enjoy neither prosperity nor peace. For both Gouama and Kodio, the constituents they ostensibly serve are of import only to the degree that they can facilitate their rise to power. Once power is secure, the president views the people as nothing other than theatrical props to be exploited and manipulated to create the illusion of popular support. Despite the triumph of dictators in Le Parachutage, the novel does hold out the hope that a truly liberated Africa will ultimately emerge, but only if and when its leaders are willing to sacrifice their personal well-being for the benefit of the country.9 Although Gouama understands in theory that outsiders will do his country nothing but harm, his innate common sense is crushed beneath his insatiable lust for personal wealth and foreign approbation. Only when he is sentenced to death does Gouama appear to understand the error of his ways. Even then, one wonders if his conversion is just another cowardly charade designed for self-preservation. There is no way of knowing, since whatever authentic words of wisdom he might have articulated prior to his execution are forcibly muted, first by a gag, then by bullets. Like all dissident viewpoints, Gouama’s are silenced by military might. If Africa is ever to triumph, its leaders will somehow have to find the strength, like Diallo and Coulibaly, to resist the seductive lure of materialist corruption, to worry less about appearances and more about improving the quality of life for all Africans. In contradistinction to Gouama and Kodio, Africa’s true leaders will take for their models not the Europeans responsible for savaging their country in the first place, but the common sense and ethical principles of their own citizens—those whose words are always in concordance with their deeds. Diallo tried to warn Gouama that there could be no real happiness for anyone without happiness for all (“Pour certains, il n’y a pas de bonheur vrai en dehors de celui de tout le peuple” [107]). Gouama, the politican, responded by offering him a few million dollars in exchange for saving his life. Gouama is incapable of understanding that service is its own reward, that men can perform heroic deeds in the absence of financial gain. Gouama is therefore part of the problem rather than its solution. As Diallo insightfully observes, “Le vrai problème en Afrique ne doit pas être la lutte entre pseudo-‘modérés’ et pseudo-‘progressistes,’ mais bien la lutte entre exploiteurs et exploités, pillards et pillés” (107). The circular structure of the narrative demonstrates that those who choose to follow Gouama’s example are destined to suffer his same fate. Although Le Parachutage ends on a pessimistic note, Zongo was confident that the war for African independence would ultimately be won. Sadly, it was a day President Blaise Compaoré made certain he would never live to see.

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9.

The Scattered Self: The Dislocation of Identity in Wiesel’s LE CINQUIÈME FILS

Few artists have articulated so searingly the anguish of their time as Elie Wiesel. In Le Cinquième Fils, a novel published in 1983, he explores the lingering effects of the Holocaust on the second generation of victims—that is to say, the children of survivors. Though born after liberation, their identity remains tethered to a historical event to which they are emotionally and genetically linked but from which they are experientially estranged.1 Their link to the Holocaust may be distant and indirect, but many continue to suffer from the ricochet of deflected trauma experienced by their parents. As the voices of the first generation of Holocaust survivors fade, the second generation wrestles with the burden of honoring the memory of its victims—a burden that the young narrator in Le Cinquième Fils finds particularly difficult to bear. It is widely acknowledged that to know the Holocaust only from the testimonial accounts of others is to know but the murky surface. In From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences, Wiesel insists that only those who lived through the Event can possibly know what it was; the others can never fathom it.2 The victims’ sense of hopeless despair is too difficult to convey, the inhumanity of the atrocities too flagrant to be believed, the passive indifference of the watching world too depraved to contemplate. Only those unlucky enough to experience firsthand the events are in a position to take the true measure of its Dantesque grotesquerie. All others are necessarily “outsiders,” no matter how close their connection to those who bore the brunt of Hitler’s dreadful intentions.3 The unnamed narrator in Le Cinquième Fils is just such a historical outsider. A child of traumatized parents who survived the Holocaust, he feels alienated and bewildered, unable to understand the preoccupied detachment and emotional reserve of his parents. All he knows is that they suffered during the war, but he lacks specific details—an ignorance that contributes significantly to his sense of estrangement. His mother, Rachel Tamiroff, is so dysfunctional that she eventually requires institutionalization; his father, Reuven Tamiroff, is aloof and preoccupied by his scholarly research. Most of the time the narrator admits to feeling more like an alien intruder than a flesh and blood member of the family (“La voix de mon père me parvient d’un monde duquel je me sens exclu, refoulé” [16]; “Je me revoyais gamin, égaré dans des labyrinthes hantés” [43]).4 The reader, like the narrator, is slow to discover the reasons behind the parents’ detached attitude towards their son. The title of the work is linked to a text read at the Passover dinner, The Passover Haggadah. This text is included in the prefatory inscription to the novel (“Voici les quatre fils dont il est question dans la Torah: l’un est sage, l’autre impie, le troisième innocent et le quatrième ne connaît même pas la

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question” [8]). During one Passover celebration, a friend of the narrator’s father—a Kabbalist named Simha-le-ténébreux—proposes the existence of a fifth son, one who is not mentioned because he is dead (“Bien sûr, il y a aussi un cinquième, mais il ne figure pas dans le récit, car il n’est plus. Or, le devoir du père juif est envers les vivants” [33]). In fact, as we learn much later in the novel, Rachel and Reuven did have another son who was killed brutally by Nazis when he was but six years old. Letters addressed to this child are included in the novel—letters the reader initially presumes are intended for the narrator. It is, however, the dead son Ariel who is the addressee. The father’s loving attitude to Ariel, as evidenced by the emotional tenor of the letters, contrasts markedly with the dispassionate reserve he manifests for the narrator. The father’s emotional expressiveness towards the first son (relative to the second) is linked perhaps to the fact that the first son—a child of the Holocaust—is in a position to understand fully what his father endured. The second son, on the other hand, is fundamentally incapable of even imagining his experiences. The parents and Ariel share a bond of horror that isolates them from those who were not sequestered in ghettos or imprisoned in death camps. To say that Rachel and Reuven Tamiroff survived the Holocaust is perhaps an overstatement. They remain physically alive, but are psychologically damaged. A reclusive man, Reuven is wary of strangers (“On ne sait jamais: l’intrus est capable de regarder là où il ne faut pas” [22]). He entertains only one or two close friends from his past, principally Simha-le-ténébreux and Bontchek, both fellow residents of the Davarowsk ghetto. Reuven is particularly anxious around children. During a celebration of the narrator’s birthday, the mother offers an explanation as to why none of the narrator’s friends are invited to the party (“Ton père n’aime pas les étrangers: il n’aime que les siens” [22]). After that, no one bothers to celebrate his birthday at all. Reuven does seem more invested in the dead than the living, and at one point questions whether death might not have been the better option in the wake of all he has suffered (“Pourtant le doute persiste en moi: pourquoi n’ai-je pas tiré un trait et tourné la page? C’eût été tellement facile, tellement confortable de me laisser porter par le courant de la mort, de glisser dans le néant” [49])5. The narrator notes that his father is at ease only when he engages with dead or invented characters (“Il ne se sent à l’aise que parmi les personnages morts ou imaginés qui, enfermés ou affranchis dans mille et mille ouvrages, animent sa fantaisie” [18]). He spends most of his free time in isolation, writing a treatise on the Méditations Obliques of a medieval philosopher named Paritus-le-borgne. Oblivious to the contemporary world around him, Reuven buries himself in his research on this little-known scholar (“L’humanité courait à sa perte, le nuage nucléaire s’étendait jusqu’à l’horizon, mais lui analysait des phrases que sept fois sept personnes, lui compris, auront lues” [137]). As the narrator observes his father’s day-to-day activities, he likens him to an apparition moving imperceptibly through life: Sans doute préfère-t-il ses fantômes aux vivants. Peut-être se considère-t-il fantôme luimême. L’as-tu vu marcher dans la rue? Il flotte, il glisse, il se faufile parmi les passants sans les frôler. Aime-t-il la mort? Je ne le pense pas. Mais il aime les morts. Il m’aimera quand je serai mort. (132)

Though his living son yearns for his attention, the father seems unable to connect emotionally with him. He remains, however, passionately attached to the child who

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died. To Ariel he writes poignant, loving letters wherein he bares his soul. While his living son tries repeatedly to establish some sort of meaningful dialogue with the father, Reuven yearns to communicate only with the deceased Ariel: J’aimerais tant t’écouter, mais tu es silencieux. Aurais-tu peur de rompre le silence, ou plutôt le sentiment que le silence abrite? Aurais-tu peur de me parler? peur de m’effrayer? Mais, mon fils, rien ne me fait plus peur. Pas même la mort: elle m’oppresse sans me faire peur. Je la regarde, elle, et je suis content qu’elle soit muette. (11)

The father’s diametrically opposed attitude to his two children can be understood only in light of Ariel’s relationship to the catastrophe that transformed life into nightmare. Because his son experienced directly the indescribable evil of the Holocaust, the father is relieved of the burden of trying to explain the unexplainable. The living son, having never experienced the yawning hell of Hitler’s Final Solution, lacks the fundamental capacity to understand what the father is in any case unable to express. The dead son is fluent in Hitler’s idioms of atrocity; the living son, on the other hand, is not on familiar terms with death. Consequently, whereas the father is able to express his innermost fears and longings to Ariel, he can speak to his living son only about the most trivial of matters, about superficial happenings that are of little or no consequence (“Il se liait rarement, je l’ai dit, parlait peu, presque pas, c’est-à-dire seulement par à-coups, de manière imprévue et déconcertante, traitant des choses courantes, insignifiantes” [41]). In truth, the father appears to prefer silence to any kind of discourse at all (“‘Ah oui,’ dit mon père. ‘Rien ne vaut le silence’” [44]). When the son is reluctant to make a speech at his bar mitzvah, the father makes no objection. On the contrary, he assures him that the most eloquent speeches are often those not articulated (“Tu connais la parole du grand Rabbi Mendel de Kotzk? Le plus beau discours est celui qu’on ne prononce pas” [43]).6 Whenever the son does try to engage his father in more meaningful dialogues, the father becomes unresponsive (“Il ne m’avait pas entendu. Il évoluait dans un univers lointain. Et moi, là-dedans? Je voulais en faire partie” [47]). In the eyes of the narrator, the father is aloof, disconnected, not fully present (“Vous lui parlez, il semble vous écouter, mais tout d’un coup, au milieu d’une phrase vous constatez sa disparition. Dans le métro, aux heures de pointe, les gens le bousculent mais ne le voient pas” [17]). The mother, too, is emotionally inaccessible. In one of the letters to Ariel, the father describes her as “morte parmi les vivants, se croyant morte parmi les morts” (10). The narrator is passionately attached to his mother, however, and chafes anxiously at the invisible barriers that keep them apart (“Jamais elle ne saura la fragilité ni la violence de ce que sa vue m’inspirait. Bien sûr, j’étais petit, mais je savais aimer; et j’avais bonne mémoire” [24]). Both seem incapable of expressing their affection for one another unless armed with a suitable pretext for doing so (“Pour me manifester son affection, pour lui exhiber mon amour, il nous fallait un prétexte, un alibi. Elle ne m’embrassait que lorsque j’étais malade. Depuis son départ, je le suis moins” [24]). Many times, the narrator has the distinct impression that his mother is looking past him to engage with some invisible entity he is unable to visualize (“Parfois elle souriait et mon coeur se glaçait. A qui souriait-elle?” [24]; “ma mère me regarde et ne me voit pas; elle ne me voit pas, mais elle me parle; cela paraît étrange, mais c’est

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ainsi; et l’image est nette dans mon esprit” [25]). One evening, at Shabbat, the mother appears particularly distracted by this phantom “other”: Et alors je fais un pas en avant, encore un, je m’assieds à sa droite, je pose mon bras sur le sien, je veux qu’elle me regarde: elle me regarde; elle me parle; elle me dit des paroles qui devraient me rendre heureux tant elles sont douces et tendres; mais elles suscitent en moi une tristesse sans nom: car je sais, je sens qu’elle ne me voit pas . . . (26)

After her mental collapse, the mother is removed from the family home, and this causes the child to become even more unanchored and adrift. Now the separation between the two will be permanent; all the loving things he was hesitant to say are destined to remain forever unspoken: Elle est donc partie, ma mère. Sans que j’aie pu lui dire cette chose si simple, si vraie: que sa beauté grave me bouleversait, que son angoisse me déchirait, que ses doigts fins, ses cils longs m’appelaient comme d’un rivage crépusculaire. Savait-elle, sait-elle que j’ai besoin de voir son visage figé et fin pour vaincre les démons aux aguets? (24)

Their mutual silence is never to be broken. When he visits her in the institution, she remains as impervious to his presence as always (“Tous ces mots, les ai-je articulés, prononcés? Ma mère ne les a pas entendus. Depuis l’âge de six ans, je lui parle et elle ne m’entend pas” [152]). With the departure of his mother, the narrator tries even harder to get closer to his father and to try to understand the reasons for his emotional and social reclusiveness. He is convinced that only by informing himself about his father’s past can he ever hope to understand him. The father, however, refuses to break his silence: J’aimerais tant qu’il consente à ouvrir sa mémoire et la mienne. Je donnerais tout ce que je possède pour pouvoir le suivre sur ses sentiers obscurs. Qu’il parle et je l’écouterai de tout mon être, et tant pis si j’ai mal, pour lui, pour nous . . . Mais il ne parle pas. Il ne veut pas parler. Peut-être ne le peut-il pas . . . (20)

The narrator is unable to coax, prod or scold his father into revealing any details that might help to bridge the emotional gap between them. Too traumatized to speak about the past, the father maintains his stubborn silence despite his son’s pleas for enlightenment on the subject (“Rien à faire: il me dévisage d’un air de plus en plus sombre, de plus en plus tourmenté, il serre les lèvres, avale sa salive, et ne dit rien. Il ne veut pas se livrer, il ne peut pas” [133]).7 When pushed, the father only recedes deeper within himself: Il fit semblant de finir la phrase qu’il était en train de lire, puis il leva les yeux vers moi et me regarda: c’était un regard de vivant, une conscience bien sérieuse, digne, méticuleuse, décortiquée; c’était un regard qui se regardait, une conscience qui avait conscience de soi, puis le regard s’éteignit et le monde se fit noir, et je me dis: ici commence le mystère. (21)

While in college, the son resorts to desperate measures to try to gain insights into his father’s mysterious reserve. A friend, Lisa, suggests he take LSD in order to

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understand himself better (“Viens avec moi et tu domineras l’inconnu, tu sortiras de toi-même pour être toi-même, viens” [138]). He agrees to do so, but only because he hopes the experience will contribute to a greater understanding of his father: Soudain, j’eus une idée: au cours du “voyage” je pourrais peut-être me rapprocher de mon père; je verrais son univers invisible, je vivrais son angoisse de la mort, je vivrais sa mort. Ce qu’il me refuse par la parole, je l’obtiendrais par l’image, par la vision de l’âme. (138)

The experiment fails on both accounts. During his hallucinations the narrator becomes less, rather than more, in touch with himself (“Tu as dit des choses, des choses qui ne te ressemblent pas: tu n’étais pas toi” [140]). Worse yet, his father remains as elusive a figure as ever. Even in a drug-induced trance, the narrator is unable to imagine a meaningful conversation between the two of them (“Même dans ma vision d’halluciné, je n’avais pas réussi à le faire parler. J’avais parlé pour lui, mais lui n’avait rien dit” [140]). The reasons for the father’s reluctance to speak are never made explicit. Perhaps his hesitancy derives from his desire to shield his son from the horrors he endured (“Les choses que mon père aurait à me dire, aucun homme ne les révélera à son fils” [133]). Perhaps his silence confirms the unspeakability of all that he was obliged to witness.8 What is certain is that the father is visibly anguished whenever the subject arises. Physically unable to articulate his thoughts, he chokes under the crushing weight of his sorrow (“Il ne bronchait plus. Il devenait lointain. Subjugué par une grande tristesse d’autrefois où venait se mêler une innommable angoisse” [41]). Even when speaking to Ariel—who experienced firsthand the barbarity of the Nazis—the father finds it difficult to translate images into words (“Je ne te raconterai pas l’expérience de ces camps de rescapés; cela ne se dit pas aisément” [162]). Reuven’s linguistic impotence is not uncommon for Holocaust survivors.9 Even the talkative Bontchek admits that language is incapable of communicating that which is impossible to imagine (“Les malheurs quotidiens, les épreuves individuelles et collectives, les périls, les menaces, mais aussi les défis, les prières, les actes de solidarité et de résistance: tu n’imagineras jamais de quoi une journée était faite” [93]). The ghetto itself was a place beyond time (“En y entrant, on laissait derrière soi le XXe siècle” [103]) and beyond conventional notions of reality. Surely, the earth could not breed such men, create such circumstances: Pour la première fois de notre histoire, la connaissance devenait inutile au même titre que la fortune: elles ne servaient même de repère. Tout d’un coup, happé par l’événement imprévu, tu vivais une vie plus réelle et moins réelle qu’avant: chaque heure pouvait être la dernière, la somme de ton existence. (104)

The situation in which the Jews found themselves had no precedent (“nous allons vivre des temps singuliers; nous allons affronter des situations que n’évoquent pas nos livres” [75]). The situation was beyond both human and divine understanding: “Tu ne comprendras pas,” murmurait mon père. “Nul ne le comprendra.” Et ma mère, tout au début, d’acquiescer: “Moi, c’est Dieu que je ne comprends pas.” Et mon père lui répondait: “Et qui te dit que Dieu, Lui, comprend?” (19–20)

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Even if one were to locate words capable of representing the horror, they would still be incapable of encompassing the totality of what was lost. The malevolence was too prevalent, the degree of suffering too deep, the acquiescence of the civilized world too unfathomable to be harnessed successfully within the structured grammar of ordered discourse: Il y avait tant d’événements, tant de destins mutilés, enterrés, que je pourrais passer ma vie et celle de mon peuple à les évoquer. Même si tous les Juifs du monde ne faisaient rien d’autre que témoigner, nous n’arriverions pas à remplir plus d’une page. Or, le Livre compte six millions de pages. (219)

The narrator concludes that his familial estrangement is linked somehow to the fact that he was born after the war. Clearly, his belated entry into a world that is of no apparent interest to his parents is what is to blame for their indifference. For whatever reason, his mother and father see the modern world as irrelevant, insignificant, meaningless. They are attached only to those with whom they share a past. He, unfortunately, falls outside the sphere of historical relevance: Je le regrette. On n’a pas idée de venir au monde après. Si les écrits des Anciens disent vrai, si c’est Dieu lui-même qui décide du sort de chacune des âmes, si c’est lui-même qui les insère individuellement, précautionneusement, dans le temps humain, Il a mal fait les choses avec moi. Né après la guerre, j’en subis les effets. Les enfants des survivants sont traumatisés presque autant que les surivivants eux-mêmes. Je souffre d’un Evénement que je n’ai pas même vécu. Sentiment de manque: du passé qui a fait trembler l’Histoire je n’ai retenu que des mots. (196–7)

As a member of the post-significant world, the narrator can either disconnect himself from his indifferent parents by constructing a separate and distinct identity for himself or he can persist in trying to find a way to inject himself into their past—to attach himself to the historical event that defines and obsesses them. Because the novel is set in America—a country synonymous with the notion of rebirth and the rejection of one’s roots—one might anticipate that the narrator would opt to make a clean break with the past, his parents and the secrets they insist on hoarding. He could, in other words, follow the example of his friend Lisa. She, unencumbered by any historical or ancestral baggage, manages quite well. Wholly liberated in body and spirit, she embraces radical ideas and new experiences with gusto. Unlike the narrator, she appears to have no emotional attachment to her parents at all. In fact, she manifests little regard or respect for them whatsoever (“Mes parents ne sont pas à la maison. Ma mère voyage et mon père surveille ses investissements. Couple idéal: lui ramasse des millions et elle ramasse des amants. Je te choque? Mais dis donc, dans quel siècle vis-tu?” [98]). The narrator admires Lisa’s ability to move with ease in any and all situations. Lisa Schreiber is a fully assimilated, thoroughly liberated American woman who prefers to live in the moment rather than brood about events predating her existence. Unfortunately, the narrator’s psychological wiring will not allow him to follow Lisa’s example. The ties that bind him to his parents are too strong; the traditions they share too compelling. The sacred and biological bonds that link the son to the

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father transcend language, history, and experience: Je me sens à la fois happé et délivré par une force qui vient de loin. Chacune de ses paroles, chacun de ses regards constituent un lieu, un moment de fusion. Chaque contact avec lui devient reflet et rencontre. Deux exils s’unissent dans le même appel. (16)

He admits that in his stubborn attachment to his father, he is a bit old-fashioned and out of step with his more rebellious contemporaries. In contradistinction to some of his leftist and radical acquaintances, he remains attached to his father in intimate and intuitive ways (“Suis-je vieux jeu? Mon père, je l’aime. Je l’aime jusque dans ses lacunes. Loin de lui, il me suffit de l’évoquer pour que les choses autour de moi, les choses en moi deviennent transparentes” [15]). Despite the lack of intimacy between father and son, the narrator is biologically and spiritually welded to his father and he is unwilling to cast about for another identity. He and his father are fundamentally one and the same: Je sais qu’il se sentait coupable. Et je sais aussi qu’il avait tort. De qui est-ce que je le tiens? De moi, parbleu. De moi, son fils. Car nous nous ressemblons. Je porte en moi son passé et son secret. Les Anciens ont raison: tout est dans le moi. Je m’interroge, moi, pour comprendre mon père. (42)

In his refusal to move beyond the beliefs, traditions and conventions of his family, the narrator demonstrates that he is in fact his father’s son. Throughout the narrative, the perils of assimilation—that is to say, of moving beyond the confines of the Jewish community and faith—are demonstrated to outweigh by far any temporary benefits. The Jewish faith is as old as time; it has survived against all odds and against all manner of oppressors. Indeed, Judaism takes is steely strength from its historical tests and miraculous triumphs (“Cela signifie que notre histoire, notre prodigieuse histoire est un défi permanent à la raison et au fanatisme, aux bourreaux et à leur puissance! Et tu aimerais déserter cette histoire?” [38]). As with the fish on dry land in the Rabbi’s parable, a Jew cannot live for long without his faith (“Ton unique chance de survie est dans la communauté: elle a besoin de toi et toi d’elle” [37]). To renounce one’s Jewish identity—an identity that traces its roots back through a continuum of unbroken traditions and familiar rituals—is to risk isolation and alienation. Assimilation obliges one to forget (“s’assimiler afin de tout oublier, oublier afin de s’assimiler” [35]); the Jewish faith, on the other hand, compels the faithful to remember. In one of his few meaningful exchanges with his son, the father discusses his own flirtation with youthful rebellion and social assimilation. He managed to resist temptation only by reflecting on how his repudiation of the Jewish faith would distress his father (“Moi-même, je te l’ai dit, je fus un moment tenté, séduit par l’assimilation. Mais il me suffisait de me rappeler le visage de mon père—d’imaginer sa peine—pour ne pas accomplir l’irrémédiable” [61]). When Reuven announces his plans to marry, his father again fears that his son will drift away (“je te demande seulement de rester à l’intérieur de cette Loi. Souviens-toi de cela, Reuven. Souviens-toi de nous, souvienstoi surtout quand tu seras loin de nous” [64]). Because Reuven’s fiancée comes from a more prominent and assimilated family, one who believes that prosperity and salvation depend on the ability to conceal its Jewish roots, Reuven’s father fears his

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son will be unable to resist the temptation to conceal the traces of his Jewish identity. The soon-to-be in-laws speak German and Polish rather than Yiddish and they chose a non-biblical name, Régine, for their daughter (Reuven tells his parents that his fiancée’s name is Rachel in order to make her seem a more appropriate match for him). In fact, Régine’s parents are more than a little embarrassed by their daughter’s choice of a husband, and when the war breaks out they refuse to offer the Tamiroff family safe haven with them. Like her husband and in contrast to her own parents’ attitudes, Rachel rejects the deceptive lure of assimilation. Distraught by her parents’ attitude towards her in-laws, she leaves the relative safety of their own home to move in with Reuven’s family while he is engaged in military service. When the Jews are later confined to the ghetto of Davarowsk, Rachel’s parents persist in believing that assimilation will ensure their protection. They count on influential friends to shield them from the gathering danger, and they try to persuade Reuven and Rachel to accompany them to the capital. Both children refuse, and in the end the in-laws’ faith in assimilation proves to be but an illusion. Like it or not, Rachel’s parents are Jews and, despite their efforts to blend in with their non-Jewish acquaintances, they, too, are viewed as outsiders (“Juifs malgré eux, ils tombaient sous les lois antijuives. Leur place: dans la puanteur et la misère du ghetto” [81]). In a kind of ideological reversal, the Jews confined within the Davarowsk ghetto are presented as a cohesive unit struggling to keep the ever-encroaching alien threat at bay. Opposing those united inside the ghetto is the alien, sub-human Richard Lander, the Angel of Death. Although he is in control of the ghetto and wields the power of life or death over its inhabitants, it is he who appears as the alien intruder. Those within resent his unwelcome intrusions into their shared and sacred space (“Il s’arrête sur le seuil: une sorte de frontière, de no man’s land sépare les deux camps” [120]). Despite accumulating hardships, those in the ghetto quickly accustom themselves to living life in crowded conditions where like-minded people share a common value system (“A peine installé, tu étais un vétéran. Etrange, mon petit: notre communauté vieille de plusieurs siècles subissait un changement radical dans ses structures et ses composantes, et cependant, les premiers soubresauts passés, la vie redevenait normale” [104]). Reuven is reluctant to leave this sequestered space, even when presented with an opportunity to do so. When life inside the ghetto deteriorates further, those inside still remain reluctant to leave. Bontchek, like Reuven and Rachel, refuses to capitalize on the opportunity to leave the ghetto, unwilling to abandon his peers (“Je me disais: mes copains ont besoin de moi à Davarowsk; le Conseil compte sur moi; ton père ne pourra pas se passer de moi” [108]).10 The narrator, born after the war, knows nothing about life in the ghetto, the solidarity of the residents or their tenacious refusal to abandon their religious principles, even when threatened at gunpoint. But because the father is unwilling or unable to communicate his experiences, the son must rely on mediated sources for information. Textual accounts prove disappointing, however: Certes, j’ai lu d’innombrables livres sur le sujet: les romans où tout est faux, les essais où tout est prétentieux, les films où tout est embelli et fardé et commercialisé. Ils n’ont rien à voir avec l’expérience que les survivants portent en eux-mêmes. (197)

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The narrator longs to discover a more intimate conduit to the past in order to experience vicariously all that his father endured (“je désire entrer dans le ghetto et rencontrer ses habitants silencieux ou délirants. Je veux participer à leur agonie, adhérer à leur combat” [92]). Fortuitously, a former friend from the ghetto—a talkative man named Bontchek—turns up unexpectedly in New York. Through Bontchek, the narrator gains limited access to his father’s past. Finally he is able to glimpse what life was like for his father, to contemplate the circumstances responsible for his parents’ psychological and emotional impairment (“je veux savoir ce que tu éprouvais au milieu des fauves humains qui se réclamaient de l’histoire et de Dieu, je veux comprendre, je veux te comprendre” [133]). Bontchek becomes a kind of substitute father for the narrator—one who can bring the father’s past to life before his very eyes: Il surgissait toujours à l’improviste, m’emmenait au théâtre yiddish et à des concerts de chants liturgiques où il investissait des fonds importants, me gavait de sucreries et de friandises, et me parlait, me parlait de Davarowsk d’avant-guerre, la province juive engloutie, les jardins d’été, les montagnes d’hiver: par ses évocations, il me faisait revivre toute une société avec ses héros et ses vilains, ses géants et ses nains. C’est lui qui m’avait décrit, en détail, le mariage de mes parents. Et la suite. (65–6)

Bontchek’s story-telling prowess entertains, but his accounts also reveal some of the difficulties confronted by those called upon to narrate historical events of such magnitude.11 Bontchek himself makes reference to the distorting passage of time (“En premier lieu, nous étions plus jeunes” [71]). As time passes, the physical evidence disappears as well. When the narrator returns to Germany, he is surprised to discover how quickly the evidence of death and destruction has been effaced (“En une génération, les vaincus ont réussi à effacer les traces visibles de leur défaite” [214]). The narrator’s reaction to Bontchek’s stories suggests also that a heavy dose of embellishment corrupts these narratives. As Bontchek reminisces, the narrator reacts with rapt delight at the “grande aventure redoutable” (71) he describes.12 Heroes vie with villains, dwarfs engage in battle with giants. Bontchek’s narratives appear to have more in common with fairy tales than with the reality of life inside a Jewish ghetto. There is also the additional problem of narrator reliability. Bontchek likes to drink, and it appears that the more alcohol he consumes, the more talkative he becomes. Indeed, the narrator himself soon becomes aware of some gaping holes in Bontchek’s accounts. Bontchek’s knowledge is in fact quite limited. He left the ghetto before the cold-blooded massacre of the Jewish residents on the Day of Atonement and therefore has no direct knowledge about that particular event or its aftermath, the pact to murder the Angel of Death—the man responsible for the slaughter. Nor was he present when the Davarowsk Jews were deported to “the East.” It is Simha who tells the narrator about the incident on the Day of Atonement and about the pact made by Reuven Tamiroff, Simha-le-ténébreux and Tolka Friedman to murder the Angel should any of them survive the war. After the war, Simha and Reuven honor their commitment and locate then kill their old enemy by placing explosives in his path. They believe they have succeeded in killing him and both are consequently consumed with guilt for having taken the life of another in violation of their religious principles.

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In order to try to justify the murder, Simha and Reuven spend one Thursday each month researching precedents, discussing contemporary deeds undertaken in similar circumstances and arguing the merits of self-defense. The narrator’s reaction to the news that his father is a murderer is surprisingly muted. However, he is wholly disconcerted to discover that his father had another child—a son named Ariel—who was murdered not long after his parents were sent to the death camps. While paging through his father’s manuscript on Paritus, the narrator comes across the letters his father has been writing to his dead brother—letters wherein his father’s overwhelming love and grief are painfully apparent. Ariel, it appears, was an especially gifted child, the “enfant choyé et comblé du ghetto de Davarowsk . . . Ariel était la gloire et l’avenir de la communauté juive condamnée de Davarowsk” (168). For those within, he seemed to symbolize the promise of Jewish hope and renewal. Prior to their deportation, Rachel and Reuven tried to save their son from annihilation by committing him to the protection of a non-Jewish woman on the outside. But Richard Lander took note of the boy’s absence and, not persuaded by numerous assurances that that the boy had died recently of a fever, he vowed to find and then murder him. He kept his promise. The discovery that his parents had had another child, and that this child was brutally tortured and murdered, fundamentally alters the narrator’s perspective towards the war and his place in the family unit. Although he has finally learned the secrets that his parents were unable to communicate, he also realizes that his parents’ love, the love he so labored to obtain, was already spent before his birth. It was all consumed by Ariel, the favorite child of the Davarowsk ghetto. In the wake of his discovery, the narrator is even more estranged than before. He had hoped to be able to use the knowledge he acquired to establish a bond of empathy and understanding between himself and his father, but now that he is fully informed, he has absolutely no idea what to do with the demons he has exhumed from his father’s past (“Que suis-je censé faire d’une vie qui ne m’appartient pas, d’une mort qui m’a été volée par mon propre frère?” [170]). Even the little he thought he knew is now thrown into question (“Puisque je ne suis pas ton vrai fils, es-tu encore mon vrai père?” [173]). The chasm between father and son widens as the narrator struggles to find a place for himself in a family still mourning the loss of a brother he did not even know he had (“Tu as passé des années à écrire des lettres à quelqu’un que tu nommes Ariel: qui est-ce? Tu l’appelles: fils. Est-ce moi? Qui suis-je père?” [165]). When his father cries out for Ariel, the narrator suddenly decides to take his place. If his father can love only Ariel, then Ariel he will be. As Ariel, the narrator finds that the emotional barriers between them collapse (“Un instant, il se raidit; puis il lâche prise. Il éclate en pleurs, lui qui n’a jamais pleuré” [169]). The narrator’s encounter with the traumatic reality of the Holocaust alters his personality in significant ways. In fact, in his post-lucid state, he begins to resemble his father more and more. He becomes distrustful and paranoid (“Mes rapports avec mon père ont changé: je ne peux plus lui parler ouvertement. Je me méfie de lui” [170]). Like his father, he appears obsessed with the dead and begins writing letters of his own to Ariel. Like his father also, he spends much of his time locked in the library, doing research on a dead man—the Angel of Death, the man responsible for Ariel’s murder. And like his father, the narrator is overcome on occasion with the desire to join the ranks of the dead. In a letter to Ariel, the narrator admits that the

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more he tries to understand the Holocaust, the more he desires total oblivion (“c’est comme si je m’efforçais de me mettre à leur place, alors que, de toute mon âme, je voudrais être à la tienne” [182]). Shlomo Breznitz notes that once one crosses the threshold of Nazi horror, one can have difficulty finding one’s way back (“The problem is, that it is easier to enter the Holocaust state of mind than to exit from it. Once engulfed by its heavy presence, how can one deliberately stop thinking about it?”).13 This is particularly true for the narrator who, like the victims themselves, finds it impossible to find his way back to his former “reality.” Lawrence Langer observes: . . . the “way back” ceases to have meaning, and man must turn his attention to absorbing the nature of the fearful “way ahead,” and of finding methods to survive in spite of it, though the price he must pay for his survival is not calculable in figures inherited from the familiar past.14

Once the entertaining dwarfs and villains of Bontchek’s narratives are transformed into real human beings, delighted rapture is replaced by disgust and revulsion. The true narrative of the Holocaust is a bleak and barren text with no redeeming messages. The more the narrator plunges himself into the dark and sinister realm of Nazi atrocities, the more entrapped he becomes (“Je le [Richard Lander] traque, et pourtant je suis son prisonnier. Car, ainsi va la vie des survivants” [171]). Although he has sacrificed his youth to the quest to learn about the past, he now questions whether the knowledge so ardently sought and painfully acquired is beneficial or debilitating. The only thing of which he is certain is the infinite magnitude of wasted life and potential. So many meaningless deaths for such a meaningless goal: Et cela me désole et m’agace et j’en veux au monde trop insensible et à mon père qui comprend sans comprendre qu’il n’y a rien à comprendre, car le bruit se fait torture et la mémoire rend fou et l’avenir nous repousse au bord du précipice et la mort nous enveloppe et nous berce et nous étouffe et, impuissants, nous ne pouvons ni crier ni courir. (14)15

The narrator has one more devastating discovery to make, however. While searching the archives for information on the Angel of Death, he learns that Richard Lander is still alive. Though the father and Simha believed they killed him, he was in fact only wounded by the bomb they planted. Tragically, the Angel can score yet another triumph over those he victimized: L’Ange n’est pas mort comme nos morts sont morts, il n’est même pas mort comme nous le sommes; il est en vie et il se moque de toi, et de nous tous, et c’est normal: c’est lui qui gagne, comme il a toujours gagné. (173)

Ariel’s assassin is not only alive, but prospering. Living in Reshastadt under the name of Wolfgang Berger, he is a successful European industrialist. He was even awarded a medal by a philanthropic organization. The Angel’s ability to cheat death lures the narrator even further into the malevolent riptide of the Holocaust. After a brief struggle with his conscience, the narrator

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decides to complete his father’s revenge and thereby attach himself irrevocably to the historical event that, by excluding him, alienated him from his parents’ affection. But by linking himself to another’s narrative, he can only become even further estranged from himself. Nevertheless, he is convinced that by murdering the Angel he will be able to rewrite history, to transform his father’s defeat into victory, thereby earning his father’s gratitude and love (“Père, viens, regarde, tu n’es plus seul à hanter cette ville maudite au destin maudit, je suis derrière toi, nous sommes vainqueurs” [20]). What he learns instead is that the twisted nightmare of Holocaust reality cannot so easily be made right. When the narrator confronts the Angel, he realizes that one small triumph will count for nothing when measured against the loss of life yielded by years of systematized torture and mass murder. Killing the Angel will not compensate in any way the damage he inflicted. Nor will it provide any real measure of justice for the Holocaust’s victims. Even his father understood that the death of one killer could never atone for the deaths of so many others (“Même si l’on pouvait exécuter l’Ange mille fois, six millions de fois, justice ne serait pas faite: les morts sont morts, mon fils, et ce n’est pas la mort du tueur qui leur rendra la vie” [164]). In the end, the narrator is unable to deliver the death blow, unable to “corriger une page d’Histoire sinon l’Histoire elle-même” (213). The Angel no doubt deserves to die, but the son will not contaminate his hands with Nazi blood. In his failure to kill the Angel, the father and son now at least have something in common: Je te ressemble malgré tout. Aussi maladroit que toi. Un bon à rien. La tête dans les nuages. Incapable de mener une action à son terme. Incapable de conférer à l’acte un sens rédempteur. Ne me dis pas que je n’aurais pas dû venir, je le sais bien. N’as-tu jamais fait des choses que tu n’aurais pas dû faire? N’as-tu jamais entrepris des voyages absurdes qui ne menaient nulle part? N’as-tu pas parcouru ce même chemin, père? Avoue-le, avoue-le donc sans crainte ni honte: nous avons échoué ensemble. Ensemble nous savourons le goût de la défaite. (30)

Although the narrator views his failure to act as a defeat, his aborted assassination attempt does have symbolic and recuperative consequences. When his father and Simha believed they had killed the Angel, both agonized over the immorality of their deed. Their decision to kill Lander was after all a clear violation of Judaism’s most cherished principle: the sanctity of human life. They tried to convince themselves that the Holocaust gave them license to suspend the rules, to calibrate the moral principles underpinning their faith to suit the new realities. But it will be remembered that Rabbi Aharon-Asher refused to sanction any deviation from eternal truths. In all their time together, through all the crises they shared, the only time the Rabbi and Reuven disagreed was when the plan to murder the Angel was proposed (“Le Rabbi défend la tradition et la loi juives qui interdisent le meurtre; Reuven plaide pour les victimes” [159–60]). The Rabbi would not sanction murder, not even in a world devoid of moral principle. Cognizant of the fact that the taking of a life transgresses Jewish law, the son seeks guidance from the Rabbi Tzvi-Hersh. He, like Rabbi Aharon-Asher before him, refuses to lend support to any action that would violate traditional Jewish principles. Though Jewish law does make allowance for capital punishment in certain cases,

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tradition opposes its application. Moreover, the Rabbi warns the narrator that if he murders the Angel, he will bind himself forever to his victim—a consequence he cannot possibly desire (“Châtier les coupables, les châtier par la mort, c’est se lier à eux à tout jamais: est-ce cela que tu souhaites?” [194–5]). When the narrator finally confronts Lander, he makes a silent appeal for guidance from those he trusts most (“En pensée, je convoquai mon père et son ami Simha, ma mère malade et mon copain Bontchek: aidez-moi, conseillez-moi” [223]). In the end, the narrator chooses not to murder the Angel, thereby exculpating his father and Simha by proxy. Acting on their behalf, he recommits them to the pre-Holocaust principles of their Jewish faith. No matter how vile the enemy, no matter how justified the deed, murder is not an acceptable response. To allow Hitler and his henchmen to alter the eternal laws of Judaism would be to grant the killers one more unmerited victory. The Angel may have triumphed temporarily over Simha and Reuven by provoking them to commit murder, but the narrator restores their spiritual purity by breaching the terms of the oath. His refusal to take another’s life re-establishes the continuum that unites all the Jewish faithful in their respect for and submission to established moral principles (“Mes ancêtres sont présents à moi, à l’intérieur de mon projet: par ma décision, je les engage car à travers moi ils s’y associent. A ce niveau-là, la liberté individuelle, pourtant illimitée, paraît inconcevable” [213]). It is the task of God, not man, to enact retribution (“Une parole ancienne me revint à l’esprit: ‘Que le Seigneur veuille châtier, c’est Son droit; mais il m’appartient de refuser de Lui servir de fouet’” [223]). It is life, not death, that delivers justice (“C’est dans la vie que les paroles justes se muent en actes de justice; jamais dans la mort” [224]). Only by making the Angel’s crimes known to the world can Ariel be avenged. Once the monster beneath the mask is made visible, Lander will suffer a fate worse than death—he will be identified by all as an abomination among men, the ultimate outsider (“Vous vous sentirez partout un intrus pourchassé par les morts, dis-je. Les hommes penseront à vous avec répugnance; ils vous maudiront comme la peste et la guerre; ils vous maudiront en maudissant la Mort” [224]). It is to this course of action that the narrator commits himself: Je raconterai. Je parlerai. Je dirai la solitude des survivants, l’angoisse de leurs enfants. Je dirai la mort de mon petit frère. Je dirai, je rappellerai les blessures, les deuils, les larmes. Je dirai les voix du crépuscule, la violence muette de la nuit. Je dirai le Kaddish de l’aurore. Le reste n’est plus de mon ressort. (223)

After the narrator’s return home, the restorative power of his decision continues to reverberate. By virtue of his having assumed his parents’ burden, their suffering is diminished. Although he was not present at his mother’s death, Simha reports that just before she died, she regained her memory and capacity to speak. She asked for information about her living son but made no mention of Ariel at all. His father, too, finally makes progress. Having completed his research on Paritus, he is now making plans to publish his findings. Even Bontchek and Simha seem to have benefited from the narrator’s decision to return to Germany and re-enact the past. Bontchek seems happier, especially now that Revuen treats him with more respect (“Depuis que mon père le traite sur un pied d’égalité avec Simha, il est content, parfois heureux, même sans schlivowitz” [228]). Simha, too, appears to be making progress in his efforts to

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persuade the Messiah to emerge from the shadows (“il n’a pas encore hâté la venue du Messie, mais il y arrivera, je lui fais confiance” [228]). While the narrator’s decision to inject himself into his parents’ history has provided some measure of comfort to his parents and those closest to them, the narrator himself remains unsatisfied. In choosing to make his parents’ tragedy his own, he is obliged to sacrifice his own identity in order to subsume theirs (“J’ai essayé de vivre leurs vies en les assumant. J’ai dit ‘je’ à leur place. Tour à tour je me suis pris pour l’un, pour l’autre” [230]). It will be noted that Le Cinquième Fils, the narrative he chooses to write, is more his father’s story than his own: Je vois mon père qui me regarde d’un air désapprobateur. C’est son histoire, pourtant, qui m’a mené ici, dans ce train qui semble reculer au lieu d’avancer. L’histoire d’un homme qui a survécu par hasard et qui, par hasard, a retrouvé sa femme au destin défiguré. L’histoire d’un chef qui, par hasard encore, fut appelé à jouer un rôle qu’il n’avait jamais vraiment souhaité. (15)

As a consequence of having taken on the burden of recounting the apocalyptic horror of others, the narrator is unable to move forward. Suspended in time, he waits for redemption or for closure, neither of which is likely to come (“Cela fait des années, des siècles que j’attends. J’ai attendu pour retrouver mon père. J’ai attendu pour rencontrer mon frère” [229–30]). Thérèse—a German woman he meets on a train—admonishes him for his passive attitude, his willingness to sacrifice the future in order to wallow in memories of the past (“Vous fuyez le présent qui vous refoule vers l’avenir et vers le passé au point que vous n’êtes nulle part” [205]). But ultimately, the Jewish narrator understands something that the non-Jewish Thérèse does not: his identity is rooted in the past, and in the absence of that history he has no identity at all. Though his father might have wanted to keep his son at a safe distance from the macabre void that was l’univers concentrationnaire, the son is compelled by the call of blood to take on his father’s burden, to re-engage with his past, to confront, if need be, his father’s demons (“Pardonne-moi, père, de t’avoir ramené ici, mais je n’avais pas le choix” [13]). In this sense, then, the narrator in Le Cinquième Fils completes the duty to his father that Wiesel accused himself of abrogating in La Nuit.16 In La Nuit, the dying father’s call went unanswered. In Le Cinquième Fils, on the other hand, the son anticipates his father’s silent scream for help and willingly sacrifices his present and future in order to redeem his father’s soul. Like Wiesel, the unnamed narrator commits what remains of his life to the task of speaking on behalf of the silenced victims.17 The task proves more difficult than the narrator envisaged. Twenty years later, he remains disappointed with the results (“Ce que je souhaite articuler, jamais je ne le dirai. Ce que je désire comprendre, jamais on ne me l’expliquera” [229]). In one of his letters to Ariel, the narrator highlights how arduous he finds the obligation to testify (“Sais-tu qu’unir deux mots exige autant de pouvoir qu’unir deux êtres?” [178]). The difficulty he has communicating his thoughts is revealed in the many self-corrected passages found within the narrative (“Ai-je dit indifférent? Disons plutôt: inaccessible . . . Absent . . . Non, je me corrige une fois de plus: ailleurs” [19]). The frustrating inexactitude of language, its inability to depict accurately the intended message, is a thematic constant in Wiesel’s works. Language is simply not

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up to the task of narrating the unnarratable. In one of his letters to Ariel, the father, like the son, bemoans the hollowness of rhetoric: Tout ce qui me reste ce sont des mots, des mots démodés, inutiles sous leurs fards multiples, lâchés au-dessus des cimetières d’exilés. Je me laisse guider par eux afin de cerner les choses à l’intérieur des choses, L’Être au-delà des êtres. (9)

In fact, at least in his father’s case, words are far more effective at concealing than revealing meaning (“il ne dit une chose que pour en dissimuler une autre” [21]). At least some of Reuven’s distrust of language is rooted in the Nazis’ deliberate distortion of conventional meanings (“s’il leur souhaitait un voyage fructueux, c’est qu’il les destinait à l’anéantissement; s’il leur prédisait un voyage agréable, c’est qu’il les envoyait aux travaux forcés dans un camp de travail” [204–5]). The deformed signifiers used by the Nazis to disguise reality lead inevitably to a general mistrust of language (“Ils tenaient à nous voir ainsi: manipulant les apparences, nous enfonçant dans la duperie et le mensonge . . .” [107]). Richard Lander, a deranged sadist, refers to himself as a protecting angel of mercy for the Jews of Davarowsk (“Votre intercesseur. Votre fidèle ami. Votre Ange protecteur” [79]). He later puts himself on a par with God himself (“je suis la Mort et je suis votre Dieu” [159]). The residents have to lie in order to survive. If they say they feel crowded, one of them might be killed; if they admit to being sick, they risk certain death (82). In the ghetto, life itself is an impossible contradiction: to live ensures the success of the enemy: Nous sommes pris au piège. Pour respirer, pour vivre, nous sommes contraints à composer avec l’ennemi, lequel, nous en sommes conscients, se servira de nos efforts pour nous empêcher de vivre; plus précisément: pour vivre nous allons aider l’ennemi à mieux nous tuer. (105)

Here, even conventional clichés have to be reformulated to accommodate Holocaust reality (“. . . pas de nouvelles, mauvaises nouvelles” [111]). In light of these linguistic distortions, it is not surprising that Reuven and the narrator lose faith in the ability of words to depict reality.18 As if to emphasize the impotency of language, Le Cinquieme Fils is steeped in opposites, paradoxes and antitheses.19 By presenting two incompatible states or ideas, the antithesis destroys the possibility of precise interpretation. Meaning dissolves into a symmetrical conundrum, the resolution of which is linguistically defied. It is, therefore, a most appropriate trope for Holocaust narratives. In the final analysis, language, too, conspires against the victims because in the narrated account of their experiences, as in all verbal retellings, there is distortion and manipulation: C’est un sage oriental qui me l’a fait comprendre un jour: “En prononçant une parole, tu en supprimes une autre; pour évoquer une image, tu dois en refouler une autre; cela vaut également pour les souvenirs: pour te rappeler certains événements, tu dois en oublier certains autres.” (229)

The only people who might be capable of articulating with precision the depth of the horror are its victims, and they are no longer capable of doing so (“De

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nous deux, c’est toi qui as le droit de tout dire. Tu as mesuré la fragilité des lois dites immuables, tu as vu le sommet dans l’abîme. Tu as vu et subi la vérité des hommes” [11]). It is, then, with a sense of frustration and defeat that the narrator closes his narrative (“Cependant, à quoi bon me leurrer, je considère mon existence non comme un échec mais comme une défaite” [229]). Not only does he not believe that he has effectively articulated his intended message, but in lending his voice to others he loses the opportunity to speak for himself. His duty to others obliges him to lead a life of pretense (“Je fais semblant de sourire, de comprendre, de consentir, je fais semblant d’évoluer en dehors du présent, au-dessus du temps; je fais semblant de vivre” [205]). His sense of identity remains clouded because he is and is not Ariel who is and is not dead (“Ariel était et n’était pas mort; moi j’étais et je ne n’étais pas vivant” [227]). Moreover, because of his parents’ emotional detachment, he acquires the habit of re-routing his affection through circuitous paths. He loves Paritus because it brings him closer to his father (“Moi aussi, du coup, je me suis mis à aimer Paritus: il me rendait mon père” [20]); he loves Lisa because his father loves her (“Je crois que j’aime Lisa parce que mon père l’aime aussi” [199]). He and Bontchek use each other to gain Reuven’s favor: Et pourtant, il existe un rapport entre ces deux agglomérations, croyez-moi: celui même qui existe entre un rescapé et un fils de rescapé. Nos buts se ressemblent et se recoupent: chacun tend, à travers l’autre, à se rapprocher de mon père. (129)

At the end of the novel, the narrator remains alone, though the memory of Ariel is alive and well. In his imagination, Ariel has grown up, found a job, married and had a son. In some ways, Ariel is doing better than the narrator. In fact, the narrator’s final words are singed with stifled bitterness: Triste bilan: j’ai remué ciel et terre, j’ai risqué la chute et la démence en interrogeant les souvenirs des vivants et les rêves des morts afin de vivre la vie des êtres qui, proches et lointains, continuent à me hanter: mais quand, oui, quand commencerai-je enfin à vivre ma vie à moi? (230)

This bleak conclusion reminds readers that for many, the trauma of the Holocaust continues well into the twenty-first century. For the children of survivors in particular, the wounds are far from healed. Moreover, the path to recovery is by no means certain. To move beyond the Event is to desecrate the memory of all those who fell victim to Hitler’s depraved fantasies;20 to cling stubbornly to the memory of the dead, however, is to remain mired in the quicksand of civilization’s darkest hour. To choose one option necessitates the obliteration of the other. Those who elect to embrace the future do so at the expense of the victims; those who commit their voices to keeping their memory alive lead surrogate and scattered lives. The narrator of Le Cinquième Fils, by transcribing his obsessions to the printed page, chooses the pain of memory over the sacrilege of forgetting.21 In his narrative account, at least one murdered child has the opportunity to speak with the force of art—that is to say, to forever defy death. As the central character in the narrator’s novel, Ariel will live on and on. The narrator’s sense of alienation, however, makes this a pyrrhic victory, a final reminder

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that although it was his parents who made history by surviving the Holocaust, the son, too, is obliged to suffer the consequences of an event too catastrophic to either remember or forget.

126

Afterword

The novels spanning the nearly fifty-year period covered in this study offer less an overriding build-up leading to a climactic conclusion than a series of distinctive crescendos, all compelling, yet all unique. If there is a thread of consistency to be found running through these works, it might be the inordinate difficulties encountered in the attempt to articulate the void. In different ways, these outsider writers all grapple with their inability to communicate with any degree of precision their sense of alienation in the modern world, a world where cruelty and intolerance have no ideology, a world where to do evil or to retreat appear to be the only available options. Armed with this bleak lucidity, writers struggle to locate a mythic frame on which to reconstruct their fictional worlds. But not even the force of art can crush the demons unleashed by the Holocaust and Hiroshima—the moments in time when the indiscriminate slaughter of inconvenient minorities became sanctioned state policy. In this context, the very notion of “human community” becomes something of an oxymoron. It is, then, perhaps inevitable that Elie Wiesel’s long journey to identity in Le Cinquième Fils would lead him backwards after he succeeded in placing so much distance between himself and the abyss. By the very power of its failed commemorative spirit, by the haunting discomfiture the millions of cindered cadavers invoked, Wiesel’s work metaphorizes the ultimate triumphlessness of representing the irrevocable sense of rupture and breach that are without the embrace of language. In the works discussed within these pages, the apartness of the writers struggling to intone, albeit futilely, gives way to a narratological universe wherein disconnection is all and which would, in its purest form, slake into silence. For some, the plight of entrapment, seething and diminishing, erupts in violence, yet it is a violence so inconsequential that it is indistinguishable from apathy. It bears noting that this brooding sense of impotence affects the mainstream as well as the marginalized writer. For Sartre, the telling of the tale allows no exit. For Steinbeck, sweaty solitude and endless deprivation homologize the being of mice and men. And for Beckett, words are proffered but to no avail, snagged on a spindle of the unnamable. The problematic of the modern novel, then, is all too seemingly that of banishment, estrangement, disjunction. As prevalent and compelling as these themes are, they are yet so far away from the over-arching collapse of the word, from the untranslatability of the wound. Paradoxical, even auto-annulling, literati contend: for where there is text there is quest. What defeats the man, it is believed, inspires the artist. In such an optic, readers cling to the contrivances of a Camusian Sisyphus—alone and cursed but whose eternal wound ostensibly finds solace in the vacant word. Thus a proliferating refrain: the boulder is hauled again atop the mount, from which it can tumble anew,

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endlessly, unavailingly. Few among the many—Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein, to name but two—see beyond into the bleak night, into the aporia of such vacant engagements. Some write, others draw, but all hold us captive, Wittgenstein avers, to the patent nonsense of signification. Sketched or verbalized, the image of life, like its portrait in the work, holds both the reader and the disarticulating artist hostage. From language there is no escape, save consciousness of its inexorable nothingness. Enunciation, ongoing and unstoppable, ensures the perfidious disguise of barrenness, and culminates ultimately in shifting narratives of the void wherein frayed icons of marginalization labor to express the inexpressible.

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Appendix: Translations to quotations from the primary sources

The first page indication (p. 18 for example) lists the page of the book on which the citation can be found. The page numbers in parentheses refer to the page number of the primary source. These page numbers are attached to the quotations (in parentheses) in the body of the text.

Albert Camus, L’Étranger p. 1 p. 1 p. 1

(1208) (1204) (1170)

p. 1

(1169)

p. 2

(1170)

p. 2

(1174)

p. 2 p. 2

(1169) (1173)

p. 2

(1182)

p. 3

(1126)

p. 3

(1127

p. 3

(1129)

p. 3 p. 3

(1127) (1130)

I made the right decision, I was right, I was always right. But everyone knows life is not worth living. In spite of the heat (I was in shirt sleeves), he had on a dark suit; his collar was stiff, and he wore a bizarre tie with big black and white stripes. I thought it was quite accommodating for the justice system to take care of all these details and I told him so. He asked me if he could say that, on that day, I had controlled my natural feelings. I told him, “No, because it’s not true.” I thought about it and said that I felt more annoyed than remorseful. In the beginning, I did not take it seriously. I was going to tell him that he was wrong to pursue the matter: the last point was not very important. And, in some sense, I was interested in seeing a trial. I had never before had the occasion to do so. I wanted to see mother right away. But the concierge told me I first had to meet with the director. They stopped talking when we passed by. And then the conversations resumed behind our backs. I couldn’t see what she was doing. But by the way her arms moved, I assumed she was knitting. It was like a deafening chatter of parakeets. From time to time, I would hear an odd sound and I could not figure out what it was. After a while, I speculated that some of the elderly men were sucking in their cheeks and making these odd, smacking claps.

Appendix p. 3 p. 4

p. 4

p. 4 p. 4 p. 4 p. 5 p. 5 p. 5 p. 5 p. 5 p. 5 p. 5 p. 6 p. 6 p. 6

p. 6

(1129)

129

However, I could not hear them, and could not really believe they were real. (1129–30) Almost all the women wore an apron tied around their waist that accentuated their fat stomachs. I had never noticed what big stomachs old women could have. The men were for the most part quite skinny and they carried canes. What struck me most about their faces was that I could not see their eyes, only a dull glow in the middle of a nest of wrinkles. When they sat down, most of them looked at me and nodded their heads with difficulty, but because their lips were swallowed up by their toothless mouths, I could not tell if the nods were intended as a greeting or the result of a tic. (1133) His lips trembled beneath a nose studded with black spots. His thin white hair revealed an odd pair of wobbly and poorly formed blood-red ears that contrasted sharply with his pale face. (1126) And when I woke up, I was leaning against a soldier who smiled at me and asked if I had come from far away. (1130) I was tired and my back hurt. (1134) The glare from the sky was unbearable. (1174) The judge accompanied me to the door of his office, patting me on the shoulder and saying in a cordial tone: “That’s all for today, Mr. Antichrist.” (1142) Celeste always says how unfortunate it is, but really, no one knows. (1143) I find what he says interesting. Besides, I have no reason to not talk to him. (1154) It’s dirty. There are pigeons and dark courtyards. People are very light-skinned. (1154) She simply wanted to know if I would have accepted the same proposal from another woman with whom I was similarly involved. To which I replied: “Of course.” (1130) I even had the impression that this dead woman laid out in their midst meant nothing to them. But now I think that impression was false. (1163) I had the feeling Raymond knew where he was going, but I was probably wrong. (1143) In the neighborhood, it was rumored he was a pimp. (1157) He told me, quickly and with a troubled air, that the neighborhood had a poor opinion of me because I had put my mother in a home. (1128) In the little morgue, he told me that he was penniless when he entered the home. But because he was still active, he offered to be the home’s concierge. I reminded him that he was nevertheless just another resident. He disagreed. (1150) He asked me then if I expected him to react to the policeman’s slap. I said I expected nothing at all and that,

130

p. 6 p. 6 p. 6 p. 6 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 7–8

p. 8 p. 8

Appendix besides, I never cared much for policemen. Raymond’s mood brightened. (1142) It was late and I ran to catch the tram. (1125) I asked my boss for two days off and he couldn’t really refuse to give them to me, given my excuse. But he did not seem happy. (1153) I wanted to hang up right away because the boss does not like us to accept personal calls. (1154) I would have preferred not to make him angry, but I did not see any reason for changing my lifestyle. (1126) I thought that he was reproaching me for something, and I started to explain. (1127) He stopped what he was doing and I was annoyed because I felt I should not have said that. (1128) I do not know what sort of gesture I made, but he remained standing behind me. This presence behind my back bothered me. (1130) For an instant, I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me. (1138) A little later, the young men from the neighborhood passed by, their hair slicked back and wearing red ties, tight jackets with embroidered pockets and square-toed shoes. (1139) The young women from the neighborhood, their hair loose, walked arm in arm. (1139) I recognized the returning athletes by their small satchels. (1171) I wanted to affirm that I was like everyone, absolutely like everyone else. (1172) Without any transition he asked me if I loved my mother. I said, “Yes, like everyone.” (1138) I turned my chair around and placed it like the tobacco merchant’s. (1136) I hoisted myself up beside her on the rubber raft. (1136–7) When the sun got too hot, she dove in and I followed her. (1148) Marie taught me a game. While swimming, we had to take all the foamy spray from the peaks of the waves into our mouths and then spit it toward the sky while floating on our backs. (1144) I didn’t say anything and he asked me again if I wanted to be his buddy. I said it was all the same to me. He was pleased. (1145) He asked me if I thought there was cheating going on, and to me, it seemed likely that there was cheating going on, and if I thought she should be punished and what I would do in his place, and I said that one could never know, but I understood that he would want to punish her. (1150) I accepted to serve as his character witness. (1154) After another moment of silence, she murmured that I was odd, that she probably loved me because of that, but that maybe one day I would disgust her for the same reason.

Appendix p. 8

(1160)

p. 8

(1161)

p. 9

(1163)

p. 9

(1163)

p. 9 p. 9

(1163) (1162)

p. 9 p. 9

(1164) (1164)

p. 9

(1164)

p. 10 p. 10 p. 10

(1165) (1158) (1165)

p. 10

(1165)

p. 10

(1165)

p. 10

(1166)

p. 10

(1166)

p. 11

(1183)

p. 12

(1187)

p. 12

(1187)

p. 13

(1209)

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For the first time perhaps, I thought that I really was going to get married. Masson, Raymond and I considered spending the whole month of August at the beach, sharing expenses. He left with Masson and I stayed to tell the women what had happened. Mrs. Masson was crying and Marie was very pale. It annoyed me to have to explain to them. I finally stopped talking and smoked a cigarette while staring at the sea. Masson and I said we were going to go with him. Then he got angry and insulted us. There we found our two Arabs. If there is a fight, Masson you take on the second one. I will take care of my guy. Meursault, if another comes along, you take him. Should I take him out? I thought at the time that it mattered little whether he shot or didn’t. Stay or go, it was all the same. I accompanied him to the cabin. While he was going up the wooden steps I stayed in front of the first step, my head pounding from the sun and discouraged by the effort it would take to climb the wooden staircase and deal with the women again. But the heat was such that it was painful to remain motionless under the blinding rain falling from the sky. Stay put or leave, it made no difference. It was the same red glare. Like a slap. At every blade of sun reflecting off the sand, a white shell, or a shard of glass, my jaws would tighten. I wanted to find again the murmur of the water, to escape from the sun, from the effort and the tears of women, to again find shade and rest. It was the same sun, the same light on the same sand that was lingering here. Maybe because of the shadows across his face, he seemed to be laughing. The light glistened against the steel and it was like a long, blazing blade that struck my forehead. At the same moment, the sweat that had gathered in my eyebrows flowed suddenly on to my eyelids and covered them with a warm, thick veil. I told myself that that also explained the odd feeling I had of being in the way, of being a bit like an intruder. I had a stupid desire to cry because I felt how loathed I was by all these people. I then felt something stir within those in the courtroom, and for the first time, I understood that I was guilty. It was as if this huge anger had purged me of evil, emptied me of hope, and standing before this night sky vibrant with

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Ernesto Sábato, El Túnel p. 14

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Everything was so elegant that I felt embarrassed by my old clothes and baggy pants. However, the sickening feeling I was experiencing was not exactly because of that but because of something else I could not quite define. At a time when I had friends, they often laughed at my mania for always choosing the road less traveled. How often this cursed split in my consciousness had caused me to commit atrocities! I have always looked upon people, especially large groups of people, with antipathy, with loathing. However, in general, humanity has always seemed detestable to me. I don’t mind telling you that at times, just having observed some gesture keeps me from eating all day long or even from painting for a whole week; it is incredible to what degree greed, envy, petulance, vulgarity, avarice, and in general, all those things that make up the human condition can be seen in a face, in a manner of walking, in a look. It seems natural to me that after an encounter of this sort, one loses the desire to eat, paint or live. And I felt within me, a hidden pride in having acted so quickly. I confess this secret so that you see to what degree I do not believe I am any better than the rest. However, in this instance, as in similar situations, I found I was alone as a consequence of my worst attributes, my worst actions. In these instances, I feel that the world is despicable, though I understand that I, too, am a part of it. Some might think it quite ridiculous to ponder the remote possibility that an acquaintance of mine would also be one of hers. Perhaps to a superficial mind it might seem ridiculous, but not to one that is accustomed to reflecting on human predicaments. In general, this feeling of being alone in the world is mixed with a proud sense of superiority. I look down on mankind; I see men as dirty, ugly, incompetent, greedy, vulgar, petty; my solitude does not frighten me, it seems almost Olympian. My mind is a swarm of ideas, but when I get nervous, ideas come forth like a dizzying ballet; despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, I have trained myself to control my ideas and put them in rigorous order. For example, in this particular situation, hadn’t I spent months reasoning and considering hypotheses? And, in

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a certain way, didn’t I finally meet María thanks to my capacity for logical reasoning? That the world is horrible is a truth that does not need to be proved. It was in the style of many of my earlier works. As the critics say in their insufferable dialect, it was solid, architectural. However, in fact, there is plenty I could say about these expositions: the gossiping of colleagues, the blindness of the public, the idiocy of those charged with readying the gallery and positioning the paintings. However, of all the various groups, I hate artists the most. In part, naturally, because that is what I know best and it is well known that one has the best reason to hate what one knows best. Don’t you get it? It is one of the things that has made me so bitter and has made me think I am on the wrong path. Observe what happened in the gallery: not one of those charlatans had anything to say about the importance of that scene. It’s a plague I could never understand. What if I were a great surgeon and a man who had never handled a scalpel, or who was not a doctor, or who had never so much as put a cat’s paw into a splint came to me and pointed out the flaws of my surgical technique? What would one think? It is the same with painting. What’s odd is that people do not understand that it is the same, and though they would laugh at the pretentions of the surgery critic, they listen with incredible respect to these charlatans. Dear God, how heartbreaking for human nature to think that Brahms and sewers are connected by dark subterranean passageways! In the past, I thought extensively about my paintings, and I constructed them much like one would a house. But not this scene. I felt I had to paint it like that, without really knowing why. And I still do not know why. In truth, the scene has nothing to do with the rest of the painting, as one of those idiots pointed out. That beach scene frightens me—I realized later—though I know it is something more profound than that. No, it would be better to say that the scene says something more profound about me . . . That’s it. It is not yet a clear message, but it represents something profound about me. Never before that moment had I put a thought into the problem; now I realize to what degree I painted the window scene as if I were a sleepwalker. As if a man could ever really change! How many of those imbeciles who had taken note of my architectural style and “intellectual appeal” saw a volcano about to erupt? Not one.

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I confess there was a time when I envied them [men who were at ease around women], and although I was never a womanizer myself, or to be more precise, perhaps because of that very fact, I once or twice regretted not being able to communicate with a woman, especially in those rare cases when it appears impossible to accept the reality that she will never be a part of our life. Unfortunately, I was condemned to be always an outsider in the life of any woman. No, actually, there is someone who thought the scene was important, but in a negative way. He reproached me for it; said it made him apprehensive, almost sick. I felt that all those vague yearnings I had been nourishing all those years in solitude were now condensed in María. Confused, I felt surge within my consciousness elaborate sentences that I had learned in school: “Are you interested in art?” “Why did you only look at the window scene?,” etcetera. More insistently than any other sentence, this one surged forth, one that I found vulgar and that at this particular moment filled me with shame and made me feel even more ridiculous: “Do you like Castel?” There was only one person who thought the scene was important: you, and you are not a critic. It would be better to say that you feel like I do. You looked at that scene as I would have in your place. I don’t know what you think, nor do I know what I think, but I know you think like me. When I saw that lonely woman at the window, I felt that you were like me and that we were both searching blindly for someone, some sort of mute interlocutor. From that day on, I thought constantly about you, I dreamed about you often, in this very place where I have spent so many hours of my life. “I didn’t realize you were asking about the scene in the painting,” she said, trembling. “Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about you, your work, your concerns. I thought constantly about your painting, about what you told me in the San Martin plaza. I would like to know what you are doing now, what you’re thinking, if you are painting or not.” I squeezed her arm angrily. “No,” I answered. “I do not want to talk about me. I want to talk about us. I need to know if you love me. Nothing more than that: to know if you love me.” She did not answer. “How often,” María said, “I dreamed of sharing this sea and sky with you.” It seemed to me also that she revealed a hidden sensuality, a sensuality of colors and odors. She would be oddly

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enthusiastic (odd for me because I have an introspective kind of sensuality, one that is purely imaginative) about the color of a trunk, a dry leaf, an insect, or the scent of eucalyptus mixed with the sea. The sea was there, eternal and furious. My crying from those days, useless; useless also my waiting on the empty beach, staring stubbornly out to sea. Did you guess and paint my memory or the memory of all those like us? But then your form intervenes: you come between the sea and myself. My eyes meet yours. You are immobile and a little sad, and you look at me as if you are asking for help. I desperately loved María and yet the word love had never been uttered between us. I looked anxiously at the hardness of her face, her harsh stare. “Why so harsh?” I asked myself. “Why?” I was obsessed with the idea that her love for me was, in the best of cases, like that of a mother or a sister. Maybe these things happen because I am an artist, because I’ve noticed that most people pay no attention to these familial oddities. A sign several metres high covered the whole front of the building proclaiming that, in fact, this was the T. Company building. And me, so stupid, so blind, so selfish, so cruel! All we achieved was to confirm the impossibility of using a physical act to prolong or strengthen spiritual communion. I told you that I sleep with him, not that I desire him. And this dirty beast that laughed at my paintings and the fragile creature that encouraged me to paint them both bore the same expression on their face at some moment in their life. I kicked her out of my studio and told her that I would murder her like a dog if she did not leave immediately. “If I ever suspect that you have deceived me,” I said angrily, “I will kill you like a dog.” But there was one thing that I wanted to destroy without leaving behind a single trace. I looked at it for the last time and felt my throat tightening in pain, but I did not hesitate: through my tears I could make out, as if torn in pieces, that beach, that remote anxious woman, that hope. I trampled the canvas into tattered rags and stomped on it until it was nothing but a bunch of filthy rags. Never again would my foolish hopes be answered! Now I knew more than ever that this hope had been totally useless! I was certain that, at certain times, we did communicate, but in a way so subtle, so fleeting, so tentative that I ended up feeling more desperately alone than before and with

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that vague dissatisfaction we experience when we want to reconstruct the love found in a dream. But strangely, she appeared not to hear me: she also seemed to have fallen into a kind of stupor, and she seemed to be alone. And in one of those transparent sections of the stone wall I saw this woman, and I childishly believed that her tunnel ran parallel to mine when, in reality, she belonged to the broader world outside, the unbounded world of those who do not live in tunnels. And perhaps she approached one of my odd windows out of curiosity and glimpsed the spectacle of my unredeemable solitude, or had been intrigued by my muted language, the key to my art. And while I was moving forward in my passageway, she lived a normal life outside, the frantic, curious and absurd life with dances and parties and happiness and frivolity led by those living on the outside. I thought that it could be read by many people, now that I am a celebrity; and though I do not have many illusions about humanity in general, and readers of these pages in particular, I am motivated by the slim hope that somebody will finally understand me. EVEN IF IT IS ONLY ONE PERSON. Enough effusiveness. I said I would tell this story in a succinct manner and so I will. They can think what they want. It doesn’t matter a damn to me; it has been a long time since I gave a damn about men’s opinions and their justice. Believe, then, if you want, that I am publishing this story out of vanity. “Why,” someone might ask, “such a weak hope if the manuscript is supposed to be read by so many people?” That is the sort of question I find useless. However, I have to be prepared for it because people always ask useless questions, questions that even the most superficial analysis reveals to be unnecessary. I can repeat it over and over again, shriek before a gathering of a hundred thousand Russians. No one would understand me. Do you understand what I am trying to say?

Jean Genet, Querelle de Brest p. 27 p. 27–8

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We want to add that it is addressed to homosexuals. The idea of murder often evokes thoughts about the sea and sailors. If the sea is a natural symbol for liberty, then every image associated with the sea takes on this same symbolic power, takes on all the symbolic power of the sea itself.

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The sea and sailors do not conjure up any precise image, but rather the idea of murder creates within us the same emotion as that unleashed by the movement of waves. If the harbor is often a theater where crimes are played out, the explanation is easy enough and we will not undertake it here, but there are numerous accounts where one learns that an assassin was a man of the sea, whether he really was or was only pretending to be a sailor, and if the assassin was only masquerading as a sailor, the crime is even more closely connected to the sea. The character is getting away from his author. He is developing an identity of his own. It is not that we don’t believe in them [forebodings], but they derive from another source which cannot be the work of art—because the work of art is free. We would like these reflections, these observations that the characters in the work can neither make or formulate, to enable you to position yourselves not so much as consumers but as creators of these characters who will, little by little, disengage themselves from your efforts. After having discovered Querelle, we want even those who loathe him to consider him the hero. Following within ourselves his fate, his development, we will see how he lends himself to the realization of a conclusion that seems to be of his own free will and his own destiny. Little by little we recognized that Querelle—who resided deep within our own body—was taking shape in our soul, feeding on what is best in us, especially our despair at not being part of him, though he is part of us. Querelle must be presented as apart from ourselves. We wanted to present this event in slow motion, our goal not being to instill fear in the reader, but rather to have this murder create the effect of a cartoon. In the long sentence beginning with “it envelops in clouds . . .” we resorted to an easy poetic cliché, with each of the propositions being only an argument favoring the author’s personal complacencies. In saying that he was naturally serious, we mean that he never affected a grave demeanor. We say “feel” in the same way that a famous assassin, shortly after his apparently unanticipated arrest, will say to the judge: “I had the feeling I was about to get caught.” The pace of this book needs to increase. Nevertheless, in order not to annoy the reader too much, and convinced that he will, as a result of his own uneasiness, resolve the contradictory and meandering ideas we have

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conceived regarding murder, we have left out a lot. It is easy to have the murderer see a vision of his brother at the moment of the murder, or to have him killed by his brother. To have him kill or condemn his brother. The themes on which we will be able to embroider a sickening tapestry are numerous. It must be that we had a presentiment of Querelle’s existence because one day, and we could even give the exact date and time, we decided to write his story (that word is inappropriate if it refers to an adventure or sequence of adventures that someone actually lived through). The scene that we will describe is the transposition of the event that revealed Querelle to us. (We are still talking about the ideal, heroic character, the fruit of our secret loves.) About this event, we can say that it was comparable to the Visitation. No doubt it was much later when we recognized that it was “pregnant” with significance, but already, in living it, we were overcome with a revelatory shiver. Finally, in order for him to be visible to you, in order for him to be a character in a novel, Querelle must be shown to be separate from ourselves. After having picked out here and there, but not entirely at random, a few notations found in his personal notebook, the character suggested himself to us . . . Whether they fall from the sky or come from a place where they encountered Sirens and monsters even more astounding, when they return to dry land, sailors live in houses made of stone, or in arsenals, or in palaces whose solidity contrasts with the nervousness, with the feminine irritability of waves. Later, he walked with shorter steps, his legs closely held together, his thighs brushing against one another, but with his arms held away from his body as if they were kept at a distance by his overly muscular biceps and back. It was Mario’s hesitation that spoke to him, giving him the fear he needed to stage his performance, and this he undertook with a seemingly perilous and fragile step, but with invincible strength as well. This fear could cause him to slip from the swinging trapeze to which he was clinging with crystal claws and fall into the panther’s cage. He appeared suddenly to be drawn in broken lines and, in the mind of the officer, drawn by the hand of a master. We will try to keep this detail in mind in order to better understand Querelle, whose mentality and emotions depend on and take the form of a certain syntax, of a peculiar spelling. These expressions not having been well articulated, they did nothing to explain Querelle, who, if we dare say so, was not defined by what he said.

Appendix p. 31 p. 31

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Querelle was conspicuous by his absence. We wanted to present this event in slow motion. Our goal not being to instill fear in the reader, but rather to have this murder create the effect of a cartoon. He couldn’t know that every murder, in its execution and motivation, obeys laws that make it a work of art. The contents of his intimate diary would suffice to ruin him. After this sign, which alerts the public that a death-defying feat is about to be performed by the acrobat, Querelle couldn’t turn back. The assassin, like a boxer, sniffled twice in rapid succession and moved his lips whereupon Querelle tenderly established himself within, flowed into his mouth, climbed up to his eyes, went down to his fingers, filled up the empty shell. Lieutenant Seblon insulted the police commissioner. He dared to slap him. He felt that such contemptible over-acting was a necessary first step in creating the serious beauty that constitutes a work of art. Querelle’s sense of solitude derived from another source: that of his creative singularity. Staring at Robert, he wondered if he were a criminal. He both feared and hoped so. He hoped so because it would be beautiful if such a miracle could happen, could exist in the world. He feared it because he would have had to lose his sense of being superior to Robert. A part of his body is naked, He (Querelle, whose name the officer will never write down . . .) All sailors appear alive and present before my eyes, but none of them could individually create the composite sailor that exists only in my imagination, the sailor that exists only in me and by me. Loved by Querelle, I will be loved by all French sailors. My lover is a composite of all their virile and naïve virtues. He again gave him some banal instructions in an overly curt voice. Lieutenant Seblon never did anything, whether or not he believed he did, to establish any sort of familiarity between himself and his steward. Regarding those hooligans I hold in my arms and whose heads I tenderly kiss and caress as I cover them gently with my sheets, these gestures are nothing but a kind of gratitude mixed with fascination. After being in such despair over the imprisoning solitude imposed on me by my homosexuality, can it be possible, can it be true that I hold these naked men tightly in my arms, that I keep them there, these men whose audacity and toughness make them so prized and that so overwhelm me and knock me to my knees? I dare not believe

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it and tears come to my eyes as I thank God for awarding me this happiness. Querelle felt the presence of murder welling up in his being. It came slowly at first, not unlike an amorous stirring, and, so it seems, via the same route, but in reverse. He was an object in a world where there is no danger because he is an object. A beautiful, immobile and glowering object ensconced in the depths, wherefrom, the void being audible, Querelle heard it unfurl with a rustling sound, escape, surround and protect him. Nothing of Querelle remained in his body. It was empty. He was free to leave his body, the audacious frame that housed his balls. He never smiled. The other officers, his friends, thought he was very serious, slightly puritanical. But underneath his tough exterior, they thought they noticed a surprising distinctiveness because of the affected way he would pronounce certain words. This femininity, the lieutenant realized with immense sadness, could manifest itself corporally at any moment, in his eyes, on the tips of his fingers, thereby branding each gesture with a tell-tale weakness. With a curt order to the ship’s barber, Lieutenant Seblon had his hair cut very short in order to gain a more virile appearance—less an attempt to save face than to be more like one of the handsome boys (or so he believed) on board. I fondle these two airy breasts. They are beautiful. They are heavy: my hands feel their weightiness. But because he was an officer, he felt obliged to move along quickly, casting only a furtive glance around him. He betrayed himself in front of everyone when he articulated the phrase “to seize the weapon” because he pronounced “weapon” like “haven” and with such grace that his entire body seemed to be kneeling at the grave of a handsome lover. The policemen were not fooled and realized he was gay. He astonished his comrades. He worried them. First of all because he was so strong, but also because of the oddness of his extremely vulgar behavior. Maliciously, Querelle sought to exacerbate it; with natural ease, he would discover the most suggestive poses: he supported himself against the door frame, one arm raised to show his armpit; he sat on the table taking care to flatten his thighs in order to allow his pant leg to reveal his muscular, hairy calves; whether he pitched himself forward or adopted an even more audacious pose, he went towards him when called, his hands in his pockets stretching the fly of his pants tight across his prick and his balls, and baring his stomach.

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Querelle was lying. Spontaneously, in order to intensify the lieutenant’s passion, he just made up a manly ailment, a disease contracted by randy nymphomaniacs. His crimes had multiplied Querelle’s personality, each crime giving him a new personality that never forgot the previous ones. Querelle noticed one detail which, in his eyes only, became an error capable of doing him in. Querelle offered this error in homage to the star that protected him. If nobody knew the name of the brothel’s Madame, the names of Nono and La Féria will have circled the globe, whispered quietly by sailors, or hurled mockingly as an insult. Querelle was frozen by Mario’s stare. Mario’s look and attitude expressed not just indifference but icy contempt. There was no doubt that this guy’s realm was terrestrial. Querelle walked like a true sailor ought to walk, a sailor who wants to be every inch a sailor. He swayed his shoulders slightly from right to left. The certainty of being every inch a sailor reassured him a little, calmed him. Now he appeared before the Court that he imagined after every murder. The Court sentences you to the death penalty. Don’t try to persuade me. That never works with me. What do you take me for? I saw you. You cheated. To let oneself be screwed in the ass by a bordello owner. Dirty little sonofabitch! And he still has an attitude. He thinks he hangs the moon, is a big shot. What must I look like with a brother who likes to take it in the ass! The policemen’s cock was fatally entering his mouth when the train entered the tunnel before arriving at the station. Into what would I be transformed? Into a faggot? If a logical chain of events had not led Querelle to La Féria, there is no doubt that the assassin would have arranged some other secret sacrificial rite. Querelle wondered if he ought to try to please the executioner by caressing him. But what gestures of affection should he make? What caresses? This sailor sprawled on the rug, who was presenting his hairy, muscular hindquarters on a carpet of velvet mushrooms, was consummating an act that might have been appropriate at a nun’s orgy where they have sex with goats. He had not guessed that, because it was false and practically useless, the weapon, being symbolic, was even more dangerous.

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The symbolic knife offers no practical threat, but by virtue of it being used so often in imaginary situations, it becomes the sign of one’s complicity in crime. I feel I am a demon just for having imagined scandalous things. Querelle sighed, defeated. The real weapon got the better of his noble bearing, his warrior’s heroism. Querelle knocked the beret off his head and onto the bridge. But before the sailor could bend down to pick it up, an avenging Querelle quickly pummelled his face with his fists. This affected attitude that defines him and ensures that he will not be mistaken for any of the other shipmates derives from an alarming dandyism. Suddenly, rather wistfully, Querelle remembered that on the damp dispatch boat in the roads, in the forward compartment, he had what it took to be this guy’s equal. This thought calmed him a little. He was only a kid. He had gall. Querelle was getting on his nerves. His face could not erase the image of the audacious gangster disappearing into the morning mist. Finally, overcome by a wave of generosity, encouraged by the glowing presence of the real criminal, he took the blame for stealing the money. The anguish she experienced when thinking about the similarity between the two brothers—increasingly perfect in her eyes—exasperated her to such a degree that she collapsed. Slowly, Madame Lysiane began to consider her busy life as perfectly stupid, completely unimportant compared to the vastness of the phenomenon of which she was both the stage and witness. Querelle is too naturally handsome to need to embellish himself with the additional beauty of crime. What would he do with this accessory? This hidden sensitivity to, not so much formal beauty as to a flash of something that is nothing other than poetry, perplexed him momentarily at times. One can say that he arrested a thief only because of his aesthetic sensitivity. But his betrayal of Tony was cutting him off from the criminal world, was keeping him from referencing himself within a world to which he must remain opposed and judge, and no longer penetrate, as if it were sympathetic matter capable of being sculpted. This love that every artist owes to his material was in his case not reciprocated.

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In his mother’s eyes, Roger had acquired a unique kind of distinctive maturity by being so intimately, so simply, involved in a crime linked so closely to immorality. At night, La Féria fueled the imagination with the gaiety of sparkling crimes. I was crying at not being able to grab someone’s dick. Let him spread his thighs so that I can sit between them, supporting my hands on them as if on an armchair. . . . lost or saved. A vague friendship, of which they were unaware, bonded them, as did a mild hatred. . . . the cruelty and tenderness of the seducer’s mouth. The lieutenant believed he had never revealed his love, but at the same time hoped he had clearly avowed it. . . . so heavy they appeared soft. One admired the shenanigans of Querelle whom they hated. . . . at once abominable and marvelous. Because don’t be mistaken, I am straight. If somebody says I am not, don’t believe them. With a little imagination, Gil would have been able to erase what had happened, but his spite being rather arid, he lacked imagination. As for the kid, trapped by walls, murder and adolescence, suffocated by his anguish and the smell of tar, he found that his imagination was blossoming with extraordinary vigor. Without knowing it, Gil was serving a painful apprenticeship as a poet. He appeared in their midst with the prompt abruptness and the elegance of a joker. He scrambled the cards, but also gave them meaning. He knew the horror of being alone, of being overcome by an immortal enchantment in the middle of the living world. Only he had been accorded the fearful privilege of seeing his monstrous participation in the realms of great muddy rivers and jungles.

André Langevin, Poussière sur la Ville p. 56 p. 56

(195) (24)

p. 56

(31)

She had been alienated from birth, as had I. I am not a monster. Average height. Brown hair and eyes. A city kid, sure. Compared to miners, I must look puny. But Madeleine instinctively ignored class differences. She was a worker’s daughter, and prior to our marriage, she had known only the crowded neighborhoods of the big city with their Syrian or Greek restaurants and dense and gray humanity wherein she moved with ease.

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p. 57

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(11)

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(48) (47)

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(35)

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(89)

All the small towns in the area have a separate area where the elite live in nice houses surrounded by lawns and flower gardens. Not here. True, my clients don’t pay well. But that is none of his business. A violent wind spins the light snow around in the deserted street. And, bareheaded and coatless, I stare at my house. One doesn’t leave a car that old outside in this kind of weather. I saw your car outside. It is not wise in our profession. A surgical procedure always makes me feel oppressed, even anguished. I do not believe in a justice that carries out its own punishment, even if the decision is later reconsidered. A justice that crushes an innocent man before it identifies him. Then, when they take the patient away, my eyes rediscover his identity, his past, his future as a living being, a future destined at times to last only a few more hours which unfurl with prodigious speed under our eyes in the operating room. At twenty-four, Madeleine thought nothing, she felt everything, more apt to desire than consider the worth of what she was receiving. That the city was hideous, she already knew, but I was apprehensive about letting her get a closer look at it. The indifference, repulsion even, that Madeleine feels for my profession I imagine extends to everything, myself included. Macklin’s elite, and though penniless I was still one of them, never ate dinner in a restaurant, and certainly never accompanied by their wives. The last time my wife noticed him passing by our table, his manner increasingly aggressive, she stuck her tongue out at him. By not doing anything to defend my wife, I yielded ground in the one area that really interested them, that of virility. They frighten me with their dull faces hardened by the day’s struggle, with their merciless stares. He has no pity and does not understand pity because he is one of them, hard, brave and merciless towards the weak. All the houses had that pitiful look of a mine-pit, the paint faded away by the asbestos dust that spares nothing, not even the sparse vegetation. A bracelet encrusted with onyx agates. The workmanship is wholly lacking in finesse, intended only to bedazzle, but then nothing in the display cases commits the sin of being excessively refined. It’s strange how we celebrate the birthday of a child born on straw with an outpouring of spending. Prévost told me that

Appendix

p. 59–60 (91) p. 60 (97) p. 60

(123)

p. 60

(26)

p. 60

(32)

p. 60 p. 60

(132) (132)

p. 61 p. 61

(18) (13)

p. 61

(138)

p. 61

(137)

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(69–70)

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(138)

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(16)

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he made a third of all his sales in December alone. It is as if Christmas filled them with disgust for their poverty. It is as if the sight of the straw-filled manger sends them galloping off on a shopping spree. In Macklin, one took a bath on Saturday evenings. Every Sunday, Macklin residents dine as well as their priest or their physician. Then, they digest. A city digesting in unison has an odd air about it. Ten or twelve times during the winter, Macklin is isolated from the rest of the world. The city is built at the bottom of a basin. On three sides, hills overpower it and the rocky soil allows for grazing and foraging. On the north side, the town runs up against a small lake, it too embanked by hills. Their clenched, cruel faces considered my wife calmly; she bore their stares with tranquil self-confidence as she ate her food. In a city like Macklin, you can’t have a private life. Everything you do, both you and your wife, is done in front of the whole town. It is impossible to have a successful career in Macklin if your behavior is not irreproachable. . . . by nature shunned conventional attitudes. Probably a question of decorum. Macklin can’t be impressed by the sight of Madeleine sitting alone every day at Kouri’s. Everywhere I went today, people looked at me as if I were a lost brother. The face of the service station attendant, who, leaning against the gas pump, stares at me while rubbing his chin. [. . .] When he’s done, he plants himself in front of me and stares me down without indicating the price, and I have to ask him. [. . .] He does not thank me and in the rear-view mirror I can see his grease-stained eyes still watching me as I enter Green Street. The jeweler, a fat man with a chubby face, his eyes hidden by thick glasses that catch your reflection, lets me browse while watching me attentively, as if through a microscope. At the hospital, beneath their black veils, the white faces of nuns. Their pointed stares. All those unforgiving eyes calculate my capacity for resistance, imagine a time limit. He wipes his hand slowly over his face as he watches me in the rear-view mirror. Kouri follows discreetly behind me, careful not to bother me, but watching over me. I am an intruder. All I would have to do was wipe my eyes or shake my head to realize I have no business here. This office is not mine and the woman sleeping or reading upstairs does not

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p. 62 p. 62

(18) (147)

p. 62

(34)

p. 62

(19)

p. 62–3 p. 63

(24) (100)

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(104)

p. 63 p. 63 p. 63

(97) (18) (131)

p. 63

(19)

p. 63

(36)

p. 63

(62)

belong to me. I dreamed it all, and like a sleepwalker, I wake up in another person’s house. I almost succeed in considering my new life—my marriage and my doctor’s office—as if I were a stranger who, upon returning after a twenty-year absence, would not be able to recognize either his wife or his house. In truth, we hardly knew how to act or speak as lovers. For an instant, I became aware that we had not managed to connect with one another, that the bond had broken, that this moment would end without having given a new reality to our love. Madeleine had slipped through my fingers, her soul was breaking free from me. I wanted to clutch eternity in her, know the voluptuousness of immortality. My arms held only a tired woman whose thoughts were elsewhere. Madeleine, that very first day, you were already escaping. There remained a profound ignorance between us. Two casual acquaintances who had put on a performance one night and then woke up sallow and awkward, neither of whom any longer felt like asking anything from the other. There is buried within her a being that does not belong to me, that I will never reach. I do not know if that person loves me, but I know that this person is her essential self. It was like I only made love with her at arm’s length, separated by an unbridgeable opacity. She is mine! For life! Get it! I am not protecting a toy or a possession; I am protecting a part of me that is in her, the part that I cannot allow to be severed because it is the best and the most vibrant part of me, the part that makes me Alain Dubois. In leaving me, Madeleine would take my identity with her. We roll around on the bed. I have no shame in subduing her and pinning her underneath me as she writhes with anger and humiliation. . . . outside the game. I think I loved an image more than I loved her. Maybe she never loved me. She was perhaps just playing and did not know when the game was supposed to stop. I knew that day that Madeleine loved me, at least for that moment, and that her most intimate self was moved and that I possessed her. This need she had to become someone else, to escape from herself by such vulgar means as watching movies or listening to music on the jukebox, worried me without my knowing why. Deep down, she was not really living in our world, and when she would come back to us, she was annoyed to find us there. That belongs to that part of her being that I can never reach. Her taste is not coarse, but it needs an environment other than mine in order to blossom.

Appendix p. 64

(36)

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(21)

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(26)

p. 64

(32)

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(68)

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(75)

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(175)

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(80)

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(132)

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(17)

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(17)

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(17)

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(17–18)

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(63)

p. 65 p. 65–6

(70) (25)

147

She gives in with a smile, the smile of a child who could still stick her tongue out or pout until she got what she wanted, a child who was told to act like an adult and who consented begrudgingly because it didn’t seem natural to her, a child who didn’t know how to love because she was perhaps not yet a woman. Her childish spite that instinctively avoids caution because the lesson learned from movies is that risk has no dangerous consequences after all. Her impatience was that of a child who stomps on a toy that no longer satisfies. And the childishness with which she badgered me made her more human. She will go out soon and will offer him her arm with the naturalness of a child. She went to sleep in my lap, but violently, like a child who continues to pout even when she no longer wants to. What was it that seduced my wife about this boy born to cut trees in a forest or have a family of fifteen children? I don’t know. His physical strength probably. And maybe also his primitive nature, his “noble savage” personality that is almost childlike. Smoking a cigarette and wearing a serious expression, Jim watches the kid push the wire netting under the wheels and deigns to offer some advice. I know that she will not hesitate to risk everything on a single throw of the dice. Deep down, Madeleine is always annoyed with things after she has become intimately familiar with them. Necessarily, her life is composed of moments of intense passion followed by expansive stretches of nothingness during which she is disconcertingly passive. She has no taste for moderation. She extracts everything from the outset and then falls into a depressed state of complete indifference. I think Madeleine always seduces men who see her for the first time. I don’t mean that there is always a long-lasting emotional thunderclap. No, rather she awakens in men their instinctive desire to dominate. She is as alluring as a wild horse. It is important that Madeleine be satisfied at that moment, not in some problematic future. I loved her especially because of that, dangerously perhaps. She was for me exoticism personified. With her, I was in a foreign country and neither of us had abandoned our individual customs. Buy a child a horse to keep it from crying. I do not want you to go alone to Kouri’s. He’s spoken to me.

148 p. 66 p. 66

p. 66

p. 66 p. 66 p. 66 p. 66 p. 66 p. 66 p. 66

p. 67

p. 67 p. 67 p. 67 p. 67 p. 67 p. 67 p. 67

Appendix (149) (68)

I will tell Madeleine I stole a drop of her happiness. And I discover something that stuns and disturbs me. Madeleine is drifting aimlessly; she is suffering. Alone on the street corner, enveloped within bursts of snow, she releases her suffering, her face haggard, her eyes fixed on a desperate image, the wall of a prison. (69) I am overcome by an emotion that I cannot define as I watch her struggle with childlike courage made up of blind, stubborn pride against her desperate solitude. I have to resist the urge to run towards her, to tell her I know everything, that I am there to comfort her, to be with her in life, that, good God, she has a friend in this town! (173) I also am in charge of a soul. I hold myself responsible for Madeleine, not for her salvation, but for her happiness. (152) That quivering woman is no longer mine, I no longer claim any rights to her. I only want to console her, get her out of the path of divine injustice, as Docteur Lafleur would say. (153) I cannot make Madeleine happy, but I will not add to her unhappiness. I am no longer her husband; I am her ally against absurd cruelty. (152) I will never connect with her, never. We cannot force our parallel lines together. (152) I love him, Alain! I love him! (154) I think he doesn’t love me, that he took me because I offered myself! (155–6) She drags me into the bedroom and gives herself to me because that is still the best way she knows to explain the inexplicable. We played the scene to the end, and I think she betrayed the other. It brings me no joy. (174) In no way can I free myself from corporeal desire for Madeleine, and when I am in the throes of this desire, pride naturally wells up in me. Richard’s presence inflames me and I hate Madeleine. (179–80) The town did its work well. It tightens its vice around us so firmly that we are like two wild animals caged within the apartment that we never leave. (164) I am giving you fair warning that I will use every honest means available, even if I have to force you to leave town. (172) I have the means to break you! (180) My disposable income is only about three hundred dollars, which will barely last a fortnight. (168) And those guys don’t pay. Since I have been making house calls, I have not received a single check. (206) It’s all very sad doctor. But she got the punishment she deserved! (191) She is stretched out on the snow, positioned as she must have fallen. Nobody thought to cover the body.

Appendix p. 67

(191)

p. 67 p. 67–8

(201) (213)

p. 68

(162)

p. 68

(213)

p. 68

(193–4)

p. 68

(213)

149

Suddenly I see that I am surrounded by faces emerging from the shadows. The merciless stares of Macklin residents. I can’t fall any lower. I dress the wounds of men. Obviously, we do not have the same point of view. In loving them, it is Madeleine that I continue to love. The happiness of one man is more precious than your indignation. I will stay, despite the town’s opposition. I will force them to love me. The same pity that failed so badly with Madeleine, I will inundate them with it. Jim sniffled noisily. From sympathy or necessity. I will never know which. I did not know he could be so decent. But as for me, I work in the ranks of human beings. I don’t deal with worlds and species. I dress the wounds of men.

Gisèle Pineau, L’Exil selon Julia p. 69

(24)

p. 70

(23)

p. 70

(194)

p. 71

(77)

p. 71

(24)

Mama would say that Africa kept us at a distance, as if skin color didn’t make one a part of the family. Tarzan could appear and vanish any moment along an unclear pathway leading to lost villages. There, women in boubous were pounding millet. Ivory hunters and British explorers far from home were on the heels of Pygmies in the middle of a thick jungle where warring tribes brandishing poisoned arrows ruled. All Africa with its colorful representations existed, clashed against itself, passed and trespassed in our minds, and emanated from every rampart of the French army quarter. I do want to return to my country. But which country? Which Africa? My only memories of Papa’s tour of duty in Africa are random and untrustworthy. From this moment on, I want to take ownership of clear and palpable visions. In the beginning, when you walk about, everything seems enchanted. And then, all of a sudden, you end up in an unknown and oppressive forest that even the sun can’t penetrate. In an instant, you understand that you never knew who you were, what you were even looking for on this earth. You hang your life on the big creepers the trees throw down to you. You run, you go. Dead leaves cry out from under your feet. You pick up pebbles in an attempt to find your way back to your house, to your lost family. Did they abandon you? You don’t know. For a long time I have had the feeling I’ve lost something: a formula that used to unlock prisons, a royal drink capable of unleashing knowledge, memory, words, images.

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p. 72

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(32–3)

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(35)

One day, trust me, these Antilles that now sustain us will no longer be anything but a canoe lost at sea, buffeted without a mast, a vanished country that will exist only in the dreams of white people and in the memory of the Creoles who escaped to France or America. Who will remember the rest of us? Me, I will remember, Mama Bouboule. Children, there is nothing, nothing good for you in your home country, grown-ups would say. Before, it was a country of slavery and it no longer has anything good to offer. Don’t ask anything from that past. Take advantage of France. Take advantage of your opportunity to grow up over there. Over here, the kids speak patois. Take advantage of the opportunity to learn the French the French speak . . . How many blacks envy you, you have no idea. There is so much jealousy. Get the hell out with De Gaulle. Nothing will happen to you. You will come back basking in the glory of the Lord. But she knows, she always knew, that she will not stay here to tread only on this soil. At sunset, the mountains of the colony are like the broken wings of a bird that will never fly away. She wants to travel the world. She needs horizons of winter, swallows to usher in the spring, russet dawns of autumn, summers in Paris. Sometimes she sees herself on a steamer that is taking her far away. Elsewhere. To France. Daisy and Maréchal still believe that a new life can start with each trip. In this photo, aren’t they something! They have on their faces an expression that says: Ladies and gentlemen, we were right to follow the road towards the métropole. We are handsome, well-dressed, and we are wearing new shoes. We worked hard and we have a beautiful family. Three boys, two daughters . . . Who would have thought . . . Perhaps because of his light skin, he believed he had power over black or Indian workers. Over women too. He used to say he came from a family in Charentes. In France, during one of his military campaigns, white people had shown him on a map the city where his name came from. His name came directly from France. It was not some name made up on the day of abolition or some African leftover. He was proud of it. That is why he hadn’t run off to war like some mad dog. Just to be like the others. He had gone to war to help the mother country, to defend the country of his ancestors. “You’re a black man, sir. Keep going! My skin is too light for you.” She had the right to fling these words at a man who was in the market for a mother for his orphaned son and who presumed he could bed down with a mulatto woman.

Appendix p. 73

(34)

p. 73

(167)

p. 73–4

(219)

p. 74

(13)

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(83–4)

p. 74–5

(208–9)

p. 75 p. 75

(205) (208)

p. 75

(73)

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(50)

p. 75 (73) p. 75

(48–9)

151

Already conquered, she makes a blended sauce composed of his words, her own feelings and a dash of intuition, infatuation and haste, those temporary companions. And besides, he speaks French so well, so well. They were taken in by his French and his rigid manner of walking, and the way he tipped his hat when greeting ordinary women. My classmates suddenly find me interesting. They can’t get over the fact that the only black African bamboula in the class speaks the beautiful language of France better than they do. They come over to talk to me. I let them approach, I offer a few grammar explanations and then we talk about other things. They have all forgotten that Madame Baron made me go under her desk. I pretend to have forgotten it as well. On Sundays, between the lamb with rice and peas, they recount their adventures, enumerating the times they helped each other cheat death. Once saved they would laugh heartily about it. Telling great heroic epics. Their tales and anecdotes about army pranks go on and on. At times, events from the past clash with words from the present. Then they stutter, stumbling emotionally over a discourse that suddenly stalls. I become the invisible black girl. Too bad, I learn nevertheless to read and to write from left to right and to make overly dramatic strokes when practicing my penmanship. Too bad if she looks at me without seeing me, if the other students don’t include me. She told me that I sneered when she spoke. Then she punished me by making me go under her desk. Now I go there during almost all her lessons. It’s natural for her, they climb trees in their country! When I raised my hand, she never called on me. She graded me more harshly than the others. All those whites over there do not understand my language. And their way of looking at me as if I were a creature who came out of Lucifer’s side. You have to see it to believe it. “You come from far away,” he says. “Delivered from hell and damnation” and he makes her understand that she must consider it a miracle. She does not understand why they brought her to France. She does not know how long she will have to stay there. For what job? For what purpose? The task is unclear, imprecise. And France, for Julia, is above all Tribulations and Nuisances Associated. No, she does not raise her skirt to dance like she should. Doesn’t laugh, doesn’t sing. She has not been liberated. She

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just lands in a place of exile that has added five cables’ worth of chains to her life. p. 75–6 (183) She thinks about the desolation and disorientation that those taken from their homeland, herself included, experienced and continue to experience. She sees the ways of the world, its wars, its devastation, its famine, its violent death. She relives her crossing and prepares for other crossings, the last ones. So much ocean lies between the lost country and the new world. An ocean of pain . . . p. 76 (87) She who never wasted her time being idle must now remain seated, locked up until evening. p. 76 (112) A momentary mental lapse and the whole complex could catch fire, explode and all the white people living on the upper floors could be burned to a crisp. What if such a terrible thing were to happen . . . My God, one would say that black people killed white people. Such a sacrilege would end with imprisonment. p. 76 (17) She is there, sort of innocuous, like an old, outdated piece of furniture made of rough-hewn hardwood. A kind of heavy chest of drawers relegated for generations to a kitchen corner. p. 76 (86) We hardly know her. To us she is like a creature from another time, so old, and with such curt mannerisms. p. 76 (117) Daisy explains that it is just a big church. “One day soon, I will drive you there. I promise . . .” she tells Man Ya. The days go by. Man Ya waits. Yet another spring is already spreading its numerous flowers and buds on the trees. Man Ya remains patient. p. 76–7 (114–15) And all those educated people who come to the house, putting on airs, their wisdom certified by diplomas, who see themselves as Frenchmen from France, they look at Man Ya without seeing her, with a grain of compassion. In their eyes, she represents the old guard, an earlier time when one didn’t know the city [Paris], the turns of its sentences, its polished, high-heeled shoes, its beautiful clothes, all the lights, its disguises. She is an old peasant woman from the country, illiterate, with calloused heels, scaly legs and a big stomach. They can’t admit that they come from the same place as she, and, as they look at each other, they take the measure of how far black people have come. p. 77 (133) That’s for children. It is too late, I am too old. p. 77 (157) The law came from France, it was written, signed, and sealed. p. 77 (135–6) Fool that I was, I thought you had learned how to live because of the French uniform. I waited for you, Monsieur

Appendix

p. 77

(136–7)

p. 77

(137)

p. 77

(165)

p. 78

(102)

p. 79 p. 79

(97) (101

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153

Asdrubal. I even tried to learn the alphabet in order to be able to read for myself your love letters and to enjoy in solitude the scent of the paper. Alas, when you came back, you were the same butcher God had given me before to be my life partner. I did not run away from your blows. But I made no further effort to understand the handwriting. I no longer cherished the letters from France. From his military campaigns he brought back congratulations for this or that, promotions, honors, citations and gratitude on behalf of France to her son from Guadeloupe. Lies! And all that prestige, that war pension came from the France that had ordered him to kill other men for its tri-colored flag, for four or five conquered territories around the globe, for the Fatherland and the Nation and for the radiating influence of the secular nation. One after another, she holds the pages under cold running water and calmly watches the flowing ink disappear down the drain in the sink. She does not even need to rub or brush. She only has to let the water take away the purple ink to make the words disappear and make the notebook like new again. Man Ya looks like an old wooden scarecrow decked out in the uniform of some defeated soldier. But Man Ya would not sink to their level. Man Ya moves forward like a zombie, staring straight ahead. She does not walk like someone who knows where she is headed. Mechanically, she places one foot slowly in front of the other while her mind travels elsewhere, like the unclaimed baggage of a shipwreck. Isn’t she going to disappear like a character in one of Routhier’s epic tales she is always recounting to us? The spirit of Man Ya is in the habit of coming and going thus between Guadeloupe and France. It’s not difficult for her. Even if her body is condemned to stay here, nothing changes. It’s enough for her to retreat to the depths she harbors deep in her soul. There are those who never found consolation and who went back in their dreams, their nose to the wind, wings deployed. They would travel at night and return on the fresh trade winds of the morning, their heads covered with baobab flowers. They were easy to recognize because they were loaded down with fetishes and smelled like wild animals. From their trips they brought back tales of heroic adventures. Supposedly, they had confronted and defeated lions, tigers and whole armies of grasshoppers. They had negotiated with African chieftains, signed pacts and alliances which promised

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p. 80

(85–6)

p. 80

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p. 81

(302–3)

to send to the sugar islands gods stronger than Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit combined. I am a closed book bursting with adventuresome women, with magicians, and where gold, love and beauty are always conjugated in every tense. A book that would reveal phantasmagoric worlds that were as cosmic and cruel as life. I am a big bird, I fly towards countries where all sorts of people live together. Gauchos, Arabs, Blacks, Chinese, Whites, Africans, Marquises and Princesses, Right-handed People, Cowboys and Indians. I want to leave this country that rejects me. So, I become an afternoon writer, a night scribbler, a morning scribe. Writing to invent existences for myself. Traveler of the pen, magic ink, enchanted letters that transport to a land of dreams. “Here, you are home!” you hear someone whisper. Balm for the heart. Write about the charred sauce in the bottom of the chocolate cream casserole, about memories of kite-flying, of children who dance in the rain while looking at a blue savanna. She left us on the ground, her head thrown back, dazed, scrutinizing the mystery of the leaves. She had not the slightest worry about breaking her bones. In France she had told us over and over that she often climbed trees. We never believed her. Now, there she was high up in the light and we were down below in the shade, wholly incapable of joining her. And the insolence of her age, her wisdom about nature and the bounty of her garden humbled us.

Norbert Zongo, Le Parachutage p. 95 p. 95

(37) (15)

p. 96

(33)

p. 96

(48)

p. 96 p. 96

(124) (124)

p. 96

(150)

p. 96

(10)

Seated under the sparse and furtive shade of cailcredrat trees. Any man able to distinguish between gold and copper, as they say in my language, is capable of understanding that communism is the worst thing to which a man can be drawn. The ancestors said: “Even if the cat doesn’t prey on chickens, he shouldn’t choose to live in the hen house.” Though the wasp makes a nest that looks like honey, he only knows how to sting. Don’t storm through an open door. One of my people’s proverbs affirms: “It is not the old woman who needs to be taught how to sleep with a man.” I was saying that the greatest treasure, the true and only one worth seeking, especially by a man in authority, is to have a place in the history of his people, to not be excluded from it. The age of a man worthy of this should not be calculated in years but in the services he provided to his people. It called attention to itself by its architecture and by the row

Appendix

p. 97

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p. 97 p. 97 p. 97

(94) (114) (19)

p. 97

(96)

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of men armed to the teeth who surrounded the courtyard, blocking access. I am bleeding my own country dry, my own people, in order to pay off people who don’t do anything but stage coups. Emotion is African; reason is Hellenic. We are dealing with very ungrateful people. Above all no Sahelian types; dried up old women are not to my liking. Ah, those white women know what they are doing. With the exception of prostitutes, our black women know nothing. They resented the colonizers out of pride and for strictly personal reasons. They resented the colonizers because they thought they themselves were the enlightened ones who ought to govern their own people in the future, people they knew to be totally enslaved by morbid ignorance. Monsieur the Ambassador phoned. He said this: “There are three eggs in the nest,” and he repeated it three times. I now give you the list of the members of my government. You will see three civilian names; these men were chosen by the Ambassador. They are trustworthy and competent men. They have all studied in European and American universities. They have all refused to protest in procommunist student rallies. They are all eminent economists. Monsieur Marcel helped up us create the new government. Marguerite agreed. He opened a bank account for her and promised to make deposits on a monthly basis. And what about you, don’t you spend a fortune on arms? Marcel had been in the country since the day when the president of the new republic of Watinbow debarked a DC 6 brandishing a shiny leather bag from the top of the ramp in front of a huge and hysterical crowd who had come to cheer his arrival with tom-tom drums, horns and rifle shots. “I bring you independence,” he cried out. But the bag was too small to contain an object of much value, some in the crowd thought aloud. Maybe independence is in gold, answered others. There is no economic freedom without political freedom. His entire fortune consisted of a rusty old canteen, two pairs of khaki pants, three goats and a few chickens. I rescued him and today he drives a Peugeot 505. He will be well received. And who knows. He will be a serious partner for the new strong men in Watinbow. Cutting deals and making quick and easy profits are the childhood illnesses of the governments of poor countries, he ended up assuring himself. This army, your army, isn’t it one [a mercenary army]? The mercenary is a soldier who serves one man or a group of

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men. Well your soldiers serve you, or at the most, serve your government, as do many other soldiers across the continent who are paid to protect the power of a few in positions of authority. You have mercenaries who are not aware of it. We will restore the civil servants’ salaries that were to be cut. Measures have already been taken for that. No one will be forgotten. Each of you will have his reward. Your lucidity and the significant respect your peers express for you will be the cement that seals the cracks in this edifice. No one will take this presidency from you. No one! We have been following your efforts to obtain grain assistance. Stability is the greatest treasure a president can offer to his people. That is what you had done. We were nothing, Your Excellency. It is you who had accomplished it all. We did nothing. We were nothing. “Your Excellency, you know that I am and will remain loyal to you. I swear it once again.” Lieutenant-colonel Kodio got on his knees, joined his hands together as if to pray, then lowered his head. “I swear to God that I will serve you conscientiously and faithfully. I swear it on my father’s grave.” What generosity. What goodness, what, which, words fail me as I describe the love our beloved father expresses for all his people via the citizens of Zamb’Wôga. The Western press must not report to the world the shocking reality of misery found there. This could make Gouama and his ministers uncomfortable during their many official or private state visits. What cynical modesty. President of the Watinbow that I created with my own hands. Tiga, I am duty bound to safeguard my country and my people. Even if it requires the sacrifice of twenty thousand women, don’t hesitate for a second. Don’t ever hesitate. From the exterior, one would have thought it a temple, a church or a mosque. The worst of all herds is called the army. I hate it. As always, to maintain the health of our economy, we are going to reform our army so that it is more productive. From now on, our forces will lack neither pastures nor flock. Nobody else will come to build this country for us. Holding the bottle tightly under his arm, our “founding father” began to feel very much like the president again. And it was in a grave voice that he began to give orders. Like an excellent stage actor, Gouama, his eyes haggard and his mouth open, would gesture animatedly and beat his chest.

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He began to recite the “Odes to Cassandre” by Ronsard with the gestures and expressions of a professional actor. Commander Keiiitaa? Keiiita? Ke ii ita. The one I loved and admired most? The officer whom I used to consider the most faithful, the most trustworthy? An ample bosom, a well rounded ass. Price is no object. Passers-by were offended until Sanou explained the reasons behind the hatred expressed by the one they called the “man-woman.” A man must fight to his last breath. No situation is definitive or irredeemably lost. One always has to fight. Always. They especially wanted to avoid ruining the fisherman-chief and his subjects who, according to custom, had to empty their grain silos to feed their guests. The rules of hospitality were clear on that point. He will get even with that bastard Kodio later. I will eat his brains for lunch, he promised himself aloud. We recognized you long before we began taking care of you. I can even say that we risked our lives even more enthusiastically precisely because it was you and not somebody else. We wanted to savor our victory. You condemned us to death and we’re the ones who saved you. In Africa, the bourgeois are those who have elected to exchange donkeys for a Mercedes, those who once could only have millet beer or palm wine on feast days and who now break out the champagne to celebrate their dreams, those who used to get by on only a small millet cake or a greasy sauce or some wild grilled tubers and who now have camembert or caviar, those who used to run around naked until the age of ten and who today import suitcases and suitcases full of exorbitantly priced clothes . . . Those who have forgotten their former misery like one would an old pair of pants—a misery that is the misery of the people today, those are the bourgeois. Advising poor and starving men that they should eat more meat, fish, eggs and fruit is the worst kind of insult. Our parents assumed he was mentally deficient because he kept his snot and spit in his pockets. Worse yet, he would relieve himself in a small hole inside a small hut. The crackling noise made by typewriters, sounding like a burst of automatic weapons, along with a hail of ringing telephones and human voices, made it seem like an African marketplace. But his happiness was short-lived: the radio announced it was about to air a speech by Colonol Kodio, the head of state. Gouama’s blood boiled.

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When I had my radio, I used to hear the same nonsense. In Africa, everything comes from the outside. Does one need foreigners to figure out that the future of a whole people is blocked? Do you have to read Lenin to know that you don’t have a job? Do you have to read Marx to know that you are hungry and thirsty? Do you have to study the Bolshevik or Chinese revolutions to learn that societies wherein corruption, nepotism, tribalism and bribery rage are rotten and that sooner or later they will engender violence, hatred and crime before exploding in total chaos? I know nothing more destructive in a society than a corrupt man. I know nothing more tyrannical and criminal than an embezzler of public funds. I know no greater mortal enemy of the people than a local villager who is also a racketeer. He relaxed and began to admire the reflection of the moon on the water. It was very beautiful, very beautiful he thought. Gouama admired this scene which broke up the monotony of daybreak. The magnificent spectacle of the river displaying its muddy bluishness, dotted with boatmen rowing and singing as if to greet the arrival of a new day, gave him a zest for life. Never had he thought he would find such a charming scene outside the masterpieces that decorated his walls. Never did he think he could be happy with his pockets as empty as his stomach, his body worn out, his future uncertain. Their jovial manner breathed new life into Gouama. Everything in them suggested life. Their arms like muscled creeper vines, their broad chests bulging with muscles, the widely spaced toes on their feet colored by the river . . . everything in them evoked life and vitality. Once healed, Gouama helped sow Sanou’s fields. He liked to recount anecdotes about parties, meetings and trips. It was a thinner but a more resolute Gouama that began the trek across the thick bush that morning: heavily bearded, dirty from head to toe, a shepherd’s gourd on his shoulder and a homemade walking stick in his hand. Hands behind his back, he walked around the market, casting a condescending glance at the merchants who haggled for hours on end over a measly five franc discount. He conversed and conversed, raised his glass—his hand empty—smiled amicably and resumed his walk. Only a few children paid any attention to this new madman of the market. You only have to see these beautiful people dressed in the latest American and European fashions to know that Africa has made progress since independence. Look at these beautiful

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women whose dresses bear the trademark of the greatest couturiers in the world. Reflected by the light in this huge airport terminal, their make-up sparkles with a thousand lights. Their perfume, their jewelry, everything about them is proof of the development and progress of Africa. How could Mamadou think for an instant that his country and continent had not progressed, Gouama wondered aloud. I am rich with nothing at all. And I can find wealth in nothing at all. My dear minister, do you know the name of the imbecile who said that money can’t buy happiness? This beautiful world of airports, the noise of the jet engines, the voice coming from the loudspeakers . . . He had just reconnected with state speeches, gargantuan meals and rare wines. He had just reconnected with life as he used to envisage it. I will keep two women around, no, three, maybe even five, why not? From time to time one needs variety. She can stay on as a cook, but I would like to have someone a little softer, more exquisite, someone more worthy of a president. You need a good liquor-based political agenda. Encourage the building of taverns. He will shadow finance two large new taverns. During the evening’s festivities that he will organize, he will tell the guests the epic story of his escape: how he mowed down over fifty soldiers before being constrained by their numbers to retreat. His heroic flight through the bush where he braved wild animals and snakes. The dangerous swim across a crocodile-infested river. After that third phase we go back to the beginning, and the infernal cycle begins all over again. Dear listeners, we are going to let you hear a part of the press conference that our liberator, our enlightened guide, the national helmsman, President Kodio held this morning for the national and international press. The crowd—those “people” who staged perpetual demonstrations in support of Gouama and his avant-garde party, like the rope supports the hanged man—had just destroyed part of the palace wall. The crowd—those “people” who referred to their enslavement as self-discipline and as a sign of support for the irreplaceable enlightened Guide Gouama, those “people” who formerly paraded in uniform under a forest of signs, each outdoing the other in their praise for the “savior” Gouama—had just set fire to local party offices. The mob, the “people.” It was the first time they gathered

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without wearing their party uniforms, these people. They were demanding a savior. For some, there can be no real happiness unless all the people are happy. The real problem in Africa must not be the battle between pseudo moderates and pseudo progressives but the battle between the exploiters and the exploited, the looters and the looted.

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Who said: “You have to be organized in such a way that when the people no longer believe, you can make them believe by force?”? You know better than I do that there is no morality in politics. Killing those who get in your way is a law of nature, I mean of politics. We will make reference to some liberation movements around the world. Union leaders will be named to important positions of authority.

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My father’s voice came to me from a world from which I felt excluded, driven away. I again saw myself as a child, lost in haunted labyrinths. The Torah speaks about four sons: one who is wise and one who is contrary; one who is simple and one who does not even know how to ask a question (quoted from Our Passover Haggadah [New Revised edition by Rabbi Nathan Goldberg. NewYork, Ktav Publishing House, 1949, 1956, 1963, 1966], p. 10). Certainly, there is also a fifth son, but he does not figure in the story because he is dead. Well, a Jewish father’s duty is to the living. One never knows: an intruder might look where he ought not. Your father does not like strangers; he only likes his own. Nevertheless, doubts persist within me: why did I not draw the line and turn the page? It would have been so easy, so comfortable to let myself be carried off by the current of death, to slide into nothingness. He feels at ease only among dead or fictional characters who, imprisoned or free within the pages of thousands of works, people his imagination.

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Humanity was racing to destruction, the nuclear cloud was spreading over the horizon, but he kept on analyzing sentences that only seven times seven people (including himself) will ever have read. He doubtless prefers his ghosts to the living. Perhaps he considers himself a phantom. Have you seen him walk down the street? He floats, he glides, he edges past passers-by without even brushing against them. Does he love death? I don’t think so. But he loves dead people. He will love me when I am dead. I would so love to listen to you, but you remain silent. Is it that you are afraid of breaking the silence, or rather the illusion that silence protects? Is it that you are afraid to talk to me? Afraid to frighten me? But my son, nothing frightens me any longer. Not even death. It oppresses me without frightening me. I look at it, and I am happy it is mute. As I said, he rarely engaged in conversation; he spoke little, almost not at all, that is to say, only as an afterthought, abruptly and disconcertingly, and then only about current, trivial matters. “That’s right,” said my father. “Nothing is as worthy as silence.” Are you familiar with what the great Rabbi Mendel de Kotzk says? The greatest speech is the one not given. He had not heard me. He was in some faraway universe. And where was I in that universe? I wanted to be a part of it. You speak to him, he seems to hear you, but then suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, you notice that he has disappeared. On the metro, during rush hour, people brush against him without seeing him. Dead among the living, believing herself dead among the dead. She will never know either the fragility or the violence that seeing her inspired in me. Certainly, I was just a child, but I knew how to love. And I had a good memory. In order for her to show her love for me, and for me to show her mine, we both needed a pretext, an excuse. She would kiss me only when I was sick. Since she left us, I am sick much less often. Sometimes she smiled and my heart froze. Who was she smiling at? My mother looks at me and does not see me; she doesn’t see me, but she speaks to me. That seems strange, but that’s how it is; and the image is clear in my mind. Then I take a step forward, then another, and I take a seat to her right, I put my arm on hers, I want her to look at me. She looks at me. She speaks to me. She says things that should make me happy because her words are sweet and tender,

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but they provoke within me a mysterious sadness because I know, I sense that she does not see me. So she is gone, my mother. Without my being able to tell her this one simple truth: that her acute beauty overwhelmed me, that her anguish tore me apart, that her elegant hands, her long lashes called to me as if from a shore at twilight. Did she know, does she know that I need to see her drawn and delicate features to defeat ever-vigilant demons? All those words, did I articulate them? My mother did not hear them. Since the age of six I have been speaking to her and she has not been hearing me. I would so like for him to agree to unlock his memory and mine. I would give everything I own to be able to follow him on his obscure paths. Let him speak and I will listen with all my being; too bad if it hurts me, or him, or us . . . But he does not speak. He does not want to speak. Maybe he can’t. Nothing to be done. He looks at me with an increasingly somber look, increasingly tormented. He purses his lips, swallows and says nothing. He does not want to let go, he can’t. He pretended to finish the sentence he was reading, then raised his eyes to look at me; it was the look of a living man, a man seriously aware, an awareness that was worthy, meticulous, dissected. It was the look of a man who was looking at himself, a consciousness that had consciousness of itself. Then his face went blank and the world went dark and I say to myself, this is where the mystery begins. Come with me and you will vanquish the unknown, you will leave your body to become yourself, come along. Suddenly, I had an idea. During my “trip” I could maybe get closer to my father, I would see his invisible universe, I would live his anguish of death, I would live his death. What he refuses to tell me, I will pick up in images, through spiritual visions. You said things, things that are not like you. You were not yourself. Even in my hallucinated visions, I had not succeeded in getting him to talk. I had spoken for him, but he hadn’t said a thing. The things my father would tell me, no man will ever reveal to a son. He never flinched again. He became distant. Crushed by an overwhelming former sadness that was mixed with indescribable anguish. I will not tell you what went on in the camps: that is not easily recounted. The daily misfortunes, the individual and collective challenges, the dangers, the threats, but also the defiance, the

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prayers, the acts of solidarity and resistance. You will never imagine what went on in a day. When you entered, you left the twentieth century far behind. For the first time in our history, knowledge was as useless as wealth; they weren’t even useful reference points. Suddenly, struck by this unexpected event, you lived a life both more and less real than before. Every hour could be your last, the sum total of your existence. We are going to live through singular times. We are going to wrestle with situations not mentioned in our books. “You will not understand,” whispered my father. “No one will understand it.” And my mother, in the beginning, would agree: “As for me, it’s God I don’t understand.” And my father answered: “And who can say whether God Himself understands?” There were so many events, so many mutilated and buried destinies that I could spend my life and the lives of my people recounting them. Even if all the Jews in the world did nothing but testify, we would not succeed in filling more than one page. And the Book has six million pages. I regret it. One does not decide to come into the world after. If the ancient writings are true, it is God who decides the fate of each soul, and it is He who carefully and with foresight inserts each individual into the human timeline. He did not do a very good job with me. Though born after the war, I suffer from its consequences. The children of survivors are almost as traumatized as the survivors. I suffer from an Event I did not even live through. It’s a feeling of having missed out: from the past that made history tremble, all I got were a few words. My parents are not home. My mother is traveling and my father is looking after his investments. They are an ideal couple: he acquires wealth while she acquires lovers. Am I shocking you? My goodness, what century are you living in? I feel like I am being snatched up and delivered at the same time by some faraway force. Every one of his words, every one of his looks constitutes a space, a moment of fusion. Every contact with him becomes a reflection and an encounter. Two exiled souls who meet at the same call. Am I old-fashioned? I love my father. I love even his lapses. Away from him, I only have to think of him and things around me and in me become transparent. I know that he felt guilty. And I know also that he was wrong. How do I know this? From myself, for goodness sake. From me, his son. Because we are alike. I carry his past and his secret within me. The Ancients were right. Everything

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is contained in the self. I ask myself questions to understand my father. That means that our history, our prodigious history is a permanent defiance of reason and fanaticism, of butchers and their power! And you would want to desert this history? Your only hope of survival is within the Jewish community; it needs you and you need it. Assimilate in order to forget, forget in order to assimilate. Myself, as I told you, I was momentarily tempted, seduced by the lure of assimilation. But all I had to do was call to mind my father’s face—to imagine his pain—in order to keep myself from committing an unredeemable action. I ask only that you stay within our Law. Remember that, Reuven. Remember us, remember us especially when you are far from us. They were Jews nonetheless, and they, too, fell prey to antiJewish ordinances. Their place: in the stench and misery of the ghetto. He stopped at the threshold. A sort of boundary, a no-man’sland, separated the two camps. You were barely installed within and you were already a veteran. Strange, my boy: our community that dated back several centuries underwent a radical change in its structure and constitution and yet, after the first few shocks, life became normal again. I said to myself, my friends need me in Davarowsk. The Counsel is counting on me; your father will not be able to manage without me. Of course, I read countless books on the subject: novels where everything is fictionalized, essays where everything is pretentious, films where everything is embellished and disguised and commercialized. Those have nothing to do with the experiences borne by survivors. I want to enter the ghetto and meet its mute and delirious residents. I want to participate in their agony, attach myself to their struggle. I want to know what you experienced in the midst of savage humans who claimed history and God for themselves, I want to understand, I want to understand you. He would show up suddenly, would take me to the Yiddish theater or to hear liturgical chant concerts in which he had invested huge sums of money, he showered me with candy and sweets, he spoke, spoke to me about pre-war Davarowsk, the obliteration of the Jewish neighborhood, the gardens in summer, the mountains in winter. Because of his descriptions, a whole society with its heroes and villains, its giants and dwarfs appeared before me. He is the one who

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described in detail my parents’ marriage. And what followed. In the first place, we were no longer young. In one generation, the defeated managed to erase the visible traces of their defeat. Grand, awesome adventure. The cherished and beloved child of Davarowsk . . . Ariel was the glory and the future of the condemned Jewish community of Davarowsk. What am I supposed to do with a life that does not belong to me, with a death that was stolen from me by my own brother? Since I am not your real son, are you still my real father? You spent years writing letters to someone you call Ariel. Who is he? You call him son. Is it me? Who am I, father? For a moment he stiffens, then he lets go. He bursts into tears, he who never cried. My rapport with my father has changed. I can no longer speak openly with him. I am wary of him. It’s as if I were trying to put myself in their place, when, with all my soul, I would like to be in yours. I am tracking him [Richard Lander] down, and yet I am his prisoner. That is the way it goes in the lives of survivors. And that saddens me and annoys me and I resent the overly insensitive world and my father who understands without understanding that there is nothing to understand, because hearing about it is torturous and the memory of it makes one crazy, and the future pushes us to the edge of a precipice and death envelops us, cradles us, smothers us, and we are powerless to either cry out or run. The Angel is not dead like our dead are dead, he is not even dead like we are. He is alive and he is mocking you and all of us, and that is normal. He’s the one who is winning, just like he always won. Father, come here, look, you are not the only one haunting this cursed city with its cursed destiny. I am behind you, we are victorious. Even if you could execute the Angel a thousand times, six million times, justice would not be done. The dead are still dead, my son, and it is not their killer’s death that will bring them back to life. Correct a page of History if not History itself. I resemble you in spite of everything. I am as clumsy as you. A good-for-nothing. My head in the clouds. Incapable of completing an action. Incapable of making an action redemptive. Don’t tell me that I should not have come. I know that. Haven’t you ever done things you should not

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Appendix have done? Haven’t you ever taken absurd trips that led nowhere? Haven’t you taken this very same path, Father? Admit it, admit it without fear or shame: we failed together. Together we will savor the taste of defeat. (159–60) The Rabbi defends tradition and Jewish law which both forbid murder. Reuven pleads for the victims. (194–5) To punish the guilty, to punish them with death, is to be linked to them forever; is that what you want? (223) I mentally called on images of my father and his friend Simha, my sick mother and my buddy Bontchek: help me, advise me. (213) My ancestors are with me as I execute my plan. Because I decide to include them, through me, they become accomplices. At this point, individual liberty, though unlimited, seems inconceivable. (223) An ancient saying comes to mind: “That God might want to punish, that is His right, but I have the right to refuse to be His whip.” (224) It is in life that just words are transformed into acts of justice, never in death. (224) Wherever you go, you will feel like an intruder being pursued by the dead, I say. Men will think of you with disgust, they will curse you like the plague and like war; they will curse you like death. (223) I will testify; I will speak. I will talk about the solitude of the survivors, the anguish of their children. I will talk about the death of my little brother. I will speak, I will call attention to the wounds, the mourning, the tears, I will speak about the voices of twilight, the mute violence of the night, I will say the Kaddish at sunrise. The rest is no longer my jurisdiction. (228) Ever since my father has been treating him as Simha’s equal, he is satisfied, sometimes happy, even without the schlivowitz. (228) He hasn’t yet hastened the coming of the Messiah, but he will succeed, I have confidence in him. (230) I tried to live their lives by assuming them. I said “I” in their stead. I would take the place of one, then the other. (15) I see my father who looks at me disapprovingly. Yet it is his story that led me to this train that seems to be going backwards rather than forwards. The story of a man who survived by chance and who, by chance, reconnected with his wife and her disfigured destiny. The story of a leader who, by chance again, was called upon to play a role he had never really wanted. (229–30) I have been waiting for years, centuries. I waited to find my father again. I waited to meet my brother. (205) You are running from a present that pushes you towards the

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future and back to the past, and consequently leaves you nowhere. Forgive me father, for having brought you here again, but I had no choice. What I want to say, I will never say. What I want to understand, no one will explain to me. Do you know that it takes as much effort to put two words together as it does to unite two people? Did I say indifferent? Let’s say inaccessible instead . . . maybe absent . . . no, let me correct that again: elsewhere. All I have left are words, outdated words, useless in their multiple disguises and thrown over the graves of outcasts. I allow myself to be led by them in order to close in on the things concealed within things. The Being beyond beings. He only says one thing in order to hide something else. If they wish you a prosperous journey, it meant that you were about to be killed; if they predicted it would be a pleasant trip, you were being sent to a work camp. They insisted on seeing us this way: manipulating appearances, submerging us in deception and lies . . . Your intercessor, your faithful friend, your protecting Angel. I am Death and I am your God. We are caught in a trap. In order to breathe, to live, we are obliged to play along with the enemy, who, as we all know, will use our efforts to prevent us from living. Or to be more precise, in order to live, we are going to help the enemy kill us better. No news is bad news. An oriental sage made it clear to me one day: “When you pronounce one word, you suppress another; to evoke one image, you must repress another; that is true for memories as well: in order to remember some events, you must forget others.” Of the two of us, you are the one who has the right to tell all. You took the true measure of those so-called immutable laws, you saw the summit in the abyss. You saw and experienced the truth about mankind. On the other hand, why fool myself? I see my life not so much as a failure but a defeat. I pretend to smile, to understand, to consent, I pretend to move beyond the present, beyond time. I pretend to live. Ariel was and was not dead; I was and was not alive. Me, too, all of a sudden, I began to love Paritus because he was giving me back my father. I think I love Lisa because my father loves her too. And yet, there is a rapport between these two entities, believe me. The same one that exists between a survivor and his son.

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Our goals are alike and conjoined: each of us tries, through the other, to get closer to my father. A sad summation. I moved heaven and earth, I risked damnation and dementia in order to probe the memories of survivors and the dreams of the dead, in order to live the life of those who, near and far, continue to haunt me. But when, yes, when will I begin to live my own life?

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Introduction 1 Harry James Cargas (ed.), “The Dominion of Death,” Responses to Elie Wiesel (New York, Persea, 1978), p. 31. 2 Christopher C. Robinson, “Theorizing politics after Camus,” Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 32.1 (2009), 2. See also Conor Cruise O’Brien, Albert Camus of Europe and Africa (New York, Viking, 1970). 3 Edward Said sees him as deeply entrenched in the culture of Empire. Consult his Culture and Imperialism (London, Vintage, 1994), p. 225. 4 Harold Bloom (ed.), “Exile, revolt, and redemption: the writings of Albert Camus,” Albert Camus (Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2003), p. 55. 5 Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Paris, Gallimard, 1942), p. 34. 6 Richard Wright, Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth (Cleveland, World Publishing Company, 1945), p. 223. 7 Chandra B. Joshi, V. S. Naipaul: The Voice of Exile (New Delhi, Sterling Publishers, 1994), p. 8. 8 Patrick French, The World Is What It Is (New York, Knopf, 2008), pp. 113–14. 9 Dagmar Barnouw, Naipaul’s Strangers (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 9.

Chapter 1 1 An earlier, much abridged, version of this article entitled “Distanced by default or the mandates of marginalization in Camus’ L’Étranger” was published in Revista Letras, 60 (2003), 111–32. 2 For a full discussion of some of the consequences of this decision, consult Vincent Grégoire, “Camus l’écrivain naissant face à la censure allemande,” Symposium, 63.1 (2009), 36–50. 3 All references are to Albert Camus, Théâtre, Récits, Nouvelles (Paris, Pléiade, 1962). I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. 4 R.-L. Etienne Barnett’s analysis of Camus’ text, “Le Simulacre inaugural: micro-lecture camusienne,” Symposium, 53.2 (1999), 59–69, underscores the very essence of nonevolution—metaphysically and structurally. The narrative, he persuasively demonstrates, is borne of and sustained by unremitting sameness: “Car la suite découlera justement du paradigme initial . . .”; “Le texte constitue, en fin de compte, une inépuisable reprise—implicite, ludique, parfois insidieuse—du même et seul commencement” (66). A problematic otherly

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formulated can be found in Barnett’s decoding of La Peste in “The trope disfigured: effacement and epidemicity in Camus’ La Peste,” Rivista di Letterature Moderne e Comparate, 54.3 (2001), 309, wherein he argues that the textual weave “leads the reader from the semiotic casting of nothingness through a horror story of putrescence and pain, only to return him once again, and all the more tragically, to the state of implacable absence whence the drama was born. The narration’s birth and death are undifferentiated, undifferent, in fact, equivalencies at opposite ends of a time lapse . . .” Gilbert D. Chaitin, “Narrative desire in L’Étranger,” in Camus’s L’Étranger: Fifty Years On, Adele King (ed.) (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 127–33, also notes the deficiencies of an evolutionary reading due to Meursault’s reluctance to seriously consider his crime. 5 The convulsive and destructive effects of blind, pervasive “conformism,” which ultimately find their fullest expression in Ionesco’s Rhinocéros, are in a sense pre-emptively encoded here, in compelling though nascent form. A related analysis linking Meursault to the conventional scapegoat figure is explored in Nina Sjursen’s “Girardien” reading of L’Étranger where the hero functions as the designated scapegoat intended to reorder a fragmenting society. See her article “Meursault, un Job de notre temps? Une lecture Girardienne,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, 16 (1995), 123–35. See also Robert Champigny’s references to Meursault’s demonization in Sur un Héros Païen (Paris, Gallimard, 1959), pp. 127–30. Edouard Morot-Sir, “Actualité de L’Étranger,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, 17 (1996), 12, also suggests that L’Étranger offers a condemnation of the pressure of collective opinion. 6 Christopher C. Robinson, “Theorizing politics after Camus,” Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 32.1 (2009), 1. Robinson also identifies a link between outsiderness and Holocaust victims: “As we read The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall, images of racial codes, camps, mass death and crematoria, emerge powerfully” (2). 7 “Throughout L’Étranger Meursault’s response to those around him is governed by a shifting, unstable sense of belonging or exclusion” writes Colin Davis in “Altericide: Camus, encounters, reading,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 33.2 (1997), 132. 8 See also Champigny, pp. 15–24. 9 “Meursault is a stranger, no doubt, but, as he himself would argue, he is not necessarily strange” writes Gerald Prince in “Meursault and narrative,” Resonant Themes: Literature, History and the Arts in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1999), p. 178. 10 It is his detachment which condemns him, writes Fernande Bartfeld in “Aspects du destin dans L’Étranger,” Hebrew University Studies in Literature & the Arts, 9.2 (1981), 311: “Et qui dit détachement dit souvent antipathie. En sorte que le lecteur ressent déjà comme condamnables beaucoup de signes étonnants du comportement de Meursault. Le lecteur est ‘en avance’ sur le héros.” 11 Vincent Grégoire makes an interesting observation when he notes that Meursault feels guilty about committing minor behavioral transgressions but expresses no remorse for actually killing a man. See his remarks in “Monde ‘sourd’—monde ‘absurde’ ou Pour une impossibilité de s’entendre dans L’Étranger,” Romanic Review, 85.3 (1994), 413: “Le héros se sent ainsi paradoxalement coupable pour des actions bénignes, dans la première partie de l’histoire; cependant que, dans la deuxième partie, il va déclarer qu’il n’a ni regrets ni remords en ce qui concerne la mort de l’Arabe mais seulement de l’ennui.” 12 Larry Riggs sees this as the moment when Meursault allies himself with the position of the French colons in relation to Arab Algeria in his article “Clerking for the Fathers: infra-narrative, individuation, and terminal exile in Kafka and Camus,” Symposium, 50.3 (1996), 185. 13 Arthur Scherr comments extensively on this dinner in his article “Mersault’s dinner with Raymond: a Christian theme in Albert Camus’s L’Étranger,” Christianity and Literature, 58.2 (2009), 187–210. In the article he argues that Camus betrays his allegiance to the

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French colons in this particular episode, but he believes that one of Camus’ goals was to instill a sense of social awareness in the Pieds-Noirs in the hope of averting catastrophe. 14 Vicki Mistacco observes in “Mama’s boy: reading woman in L’Étranger,” Camus’s L’Étranger: Fifty Years On, p. 163, that Meursault clearly becomes more normal during the beach episode in the sense that his behavior conforms more to expected gender roles. 15 Colin Davis sees the Arabs as a metonymic substitute for Algeria itself. Consult his article “The cost of being ethical: fiction, violence, and altericide,” Common Knowledge, 9.2 (2003), 245. 16 Davis (“Altericide: Camus, encounters, reading,” 131) believes that Meursault’s rather meaningless assignment during the scuffle contributes to a growing sense of marginality that was already in evidence. As Raymond and Masson discuss former events and acquaintances, Meursault feels clearly left out. Both viewpoints corroborate, however, Meursault’s desire to belong. 17 See also Mistacco, p. 163. Robert Brock, “Meursault the straw man,” Studies in the Novel, 25.1 (1993), 94, also takes note of the passage’s more poetic nature. 18 Davis, “The cost of being ethical,” 245, sees this as the moment when Raymond becomes the mediator whose desires Meursault ultimately assumes. 19 Davis, 245, proposes that Meursault is in fact quite envious of the close-knit camaraderie that seems to define the Arab adversaries. 20 See Scherr, 197, who argues also that Meursault kills the Arab on Raymond’s behalf. Margot Norris, on the other hand, sees the murder as the “animalistic” release of acute tension and discomfort in “The human animal in fiction,” Parallax, 12.1 (2006), 15. 21 Larry Riggs and Paula Willoquet-Maricondi in “Colonialism, enlightenment, castration: writing, narration, and legibility in L’Étranger,” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, 16.2 (1992), 267, concur that Meursault becomes the conduit for another’s desire and hatred. 22 George J. Makari in his article “The last four shots: problems of intention and Camus’ The Stranger,” American Imago: Studies in Psychoanalysis & Culture, 45.4 (1988), 367, argues that the last shots reflect not only a desire for self-mastery but for self-punishment. For more on these additional shots, see the article by Raymond Gay-Crosier, “Une étrangeté peu commune: Camus et Robbe-Grillet,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, 16 (1995), 149–65. 23 Eventually, Meursault tires of playing society’s games, according to Vincent Grégoire in “Meursault ‘est condamné parce qu’il ne joue pas le jeu’: Réflexion sur la pertinence d’un propos de Camus,” Lettres Romanes, 52.3–4 (1998), 299–306. 24 It will be remembered that Meursault’s mother did not want to be moved into the home. It would be logical to assume that the other residents were likewise placed there against their will. 25 See for example, the observations of Peter Schofer, “The rhetoric of the text: causality, metaphor, and irony,” Camus’s L’Étranger: Fifty Years On, pp. 147–9. 26 See Sjursen, p. 131, and Lennard J. Davis, Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction (London, Methuen, 1987), p. 39. 27 Sjursen, p. 125, also links culpability with ostracism. 28 Davis, “Altericide: Camus, encounters, reading,” 40, views the role of the reader in quite the opposite fashion. He sees the reader as the “other” in this work, annihilated by the text’s “strategies of domination and bafflement.” 29 John Fletcher, “L’Étranger and the new novel,” Camus’s L’Étranger: Fifty Years On, p. 213, offers a more forgiving portrait of the reader. In his assessment, Meursault is actually acquitted by his readers, leading to the hero’s final triumph over injustice. Andrew Hunwich, “Albert Camus, Meursault, et le lecteur ‘dupe,’” La Revue des Lettres Modernes, 1123–32 (1993), 167 also believes the reader is more interested in defending than condemning Meursault.

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30 “The injustice visited upon Meursault by the court is an image of that which is inflicted on all human beings by virtue of their moral condition: the death sentence which is imposed on each and every one of us seems as arbitrary and unjust as that to which Meursault falls victim” observes Alec G. Hargreaves, “History and ethnicity in the reception of L’Étranger,” Camus’s L’Étranger: Fifty Years On, pp. 108–9.

Chapter 2 1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Neohelicon, 35.1 (2008), 205–19. 2 Harriet de Onís, The Outsider (New York, Knopf, 1950). The abruptness and shock value of the opening sentences also link the two works according to Beverly J. Gibbs, “El Túnel: portrayal of isolation,” Hispania, 48.3 (1965), 429. For additional comparisons, consult Arthur Scherr, “Albert Camus’s L’Étranger and Ernesto Sábato’s El Túnel,” Romance Notes, 47.2 (2007), 199–205. 3 Scherr, “Albert Camus’s L’Étranger and Ernesto Sábato’s El Túnel,” 199. 4 “El narrador alienado en dos obras claves de la narrativa latinoamericana moderna,” Hispanic Journal, 16.1 (1995), 91. 5 It bears noting perhaps that although Meursault’s murder of the Arab can be read as an attempt to recapture a sense of inclusiveness, the murder committed by Castel is an affirmation of his individuality. See the comments of Tamara Holzapfel, “Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Sábato’s El Túnel,” Hispania, 51.3 (1968), 444–5; and Héctor Anabitarte Rivas, “Un solo túnel oscuro y solitario,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 391–3 (1983), 322: “Juan Pablo no se transforma en otro. Se niega a delirar para vivir su propio deseo. Juan Pablo destruye a otro que ignora.” 6 All references are to Ernesto Sábato, El Túnel (Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 1969). I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. 7 See also Robert H. Scott, “El Túnel: the novel as psychic drama,” American Hispanist, 2.14 (1977), 13–15. 8 Armand F. Baker in “Psychic integration and the search for meaning in Sábato’s El Túnel,” Hispanic Journal, 5.2 (1984), 118 highlights Castel’s obsession with rational absolutes. See also Nathan T. Francis and William F. Adams, “The limits of rationalism in Sábato’s El Túnel,” Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, 13 (1979), 21–7. 9 “Desde los primeros capítulos de El Túnel se hace patente el cinismo de Castel y el desprecio que éste siente por sus congéneres” observes Hugo Méndez-Ramírez (86). 10 Albert Fuss in “El Túnel, universo de incomunicación,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 391–3 (1983), 335 points out that although Castel is a rational animal, he is nevertheless controlled by his unconscious. 11 Baker, 121, sees María as a balanced person, the “positive element in this otherwise totally pessimistic novel.” For additional insights into the character of María, see Fred Petersen, “La figura de María Iribarne de El Túnel de Sábato,” Duquesne Hispanic Review, 7.1 (1968), 1–8. 12 For more on the importance of sight in the novel, see Scott M. Frame’s article, “Vanishing point: the world view of Juan Pablo Castel in El Túnel,” Hispanófila, 121 (1997), 13: “What is apparent is that his interpretation of reality involves the protagonist’s subordination to the senses, especially the sense of sight.” 13 See also Baker’s assertion (113) that Allende is Castel’s inverse counterpart. 14 For more on the Lacanian implications of María’s maternal attitude towards Castel, see Ana Paula Ferreira, “El Túnel de Ernesto Sábato en busca del origen,” Revista Iberoamericana, 58.158 (1992), 91–103. See also Maarten Steenmeijer, “Neurosis epistemológica: El Túnel

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como novela modernista,” Revista Iberoamericana, 58.158 (1992), 81–90, and Leon F. Lyday, “‘Maternidad’ in Sábato’s El Túnel,” Romance Notes, 10 (1968), 20–6. 15 As Méndez-Ramírez, 99, observes, sexual experience provides Castel with a means to escape from his feelings of alienation, but it is an attempt that fails. See also Thomas C. Meehan, “Ernesto Sábato’s sexual metaphysics: theme and form in El Túnel,” Modern Language Notes, 83.2 (1968), 226–52, and Donald L. Shaw, “Notes on the presentation of sexuality in the modern Spanish American novel,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 59 (1982), 276. 16 Alberto M. Letelier observes in “Sábato: La búsqueda de la esperanza,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 391–3 (1983), 234: “La condición más auténtica del hombre sería su radical soledad, la cual es superada sólo en frágiles momentos en que tendemos puentes transitorios para comunicarnos.” 17 Narrator unreliability is discussed in William Nelson’s article “Sábato’s El Túnel and the existential novel,” Modern Fiction Studies, 32.3 (1986), 463. See also Luis T. González del Valle and Catherine Nickel’s article “Contemporary poets to the rescue: the enigmatic narrator in Sábato’s El Túnel,” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 40.1–2 (1986), 5–20. 18 This view is countered by Henry J. Richards in his article “Digressions in the structure of El Túnel: an aspect of Sábato’s art,” Romance Quarterly, 29.4 (1982), 414. He sees the digressions as an example of Castel’s honesty and argues that they reveal a desire to create intimacy with the reader. 19 For more on the dream sequences in El Túnel, see Agustín Segui, “Los cuatro sueños de Castel en El Túnel de Ernesto Sábato,” Revista Iberoamericana, 57.158 (1992), 69–80. Hannelore Hahn comments on the links between the metamorphoses found in Kalfka and El Túnel in “La metamorfosis (Die Verwandlung) de Franz Kafka y El Túnel de Ernesto Sábato,” Circulo: Revista de Cultura, 24 (1995), 80–5. 20 “In this fashion, the reading process of El Túnel becomes an attempt to fill a hermeneutic gap confronting the reader—a gap ‘prospective’ in nature—which forces the reader to be very active ‘in making the text signify’” (Gonzales del Valle and Nickel, 11).

Chapter 3 1 Bettina Knapp writes that “Genet’s heroes are ‘extensions’ of himself” in Jean Genet (Boston, G. K. Hall/Twayne, 1989), p. 1. 2 All references are to Jean Genet, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, Gallimard, 1953). There are numerous versions of this text, and this one is problematic in that many of the original passages have been eliminated. It is the most accessible, however, and is therefore the one on which I have based my analysis. I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. 3 Although authorial intrusion is a trademark of Genet’s writing, it has been widely observed that this is the first novel where Genet, the writer, does not intervene “personally” in the work. The intrusions are made by the narrator, not the author. 4 Amélie Lecoq observes in “Symbole et métamorphose du récit dans Le Monde Désert de Pierre Jean Jouve et Querelle de Brest de Jean Genet,” Jouve et le Symbole, Christiane Blot-Labarrère (ed.) (Paris, Minard, 2003), p. 65, “Querelle est donc issu, extrait, de l’imagination du narrateur, voire de ses fantasmes.” 5 As Sven Ake Heed points out, Seblon’s writings provide him with a “fonction métadiégétique” in the novel. Consult his article “Querelle de Brest: Un scénario de fantasmes,” Studia Neophilologica, 60 (1988), 239. 6 Lecoq, p. 74, highlights the “fictionalized” nature of many of the characters in this novel, their one-dimensional, almost caricature-like representation.

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7 Lecoq, pp. 89–91, sees him as a composite of metaphors. 8 Elizabeth Stephens in Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet’s Fiction (New York, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009), pp. 118–20, sees the emphasis on physicality as a means of underlining the ornamental status of both “femininity” and “virility.” 9 For more on the symbolic function of the characters, see Lecoq, pp. 76–81. 10 It is true that Querelle is not fooled by Seblon’s affected indifference. He is always patently aware of the lieutenant’s feelings for him. 11 “Lt Seblon is forced—and indeed forces himself—to an appearance of arrogant masculinity, yet realizes that every barked order, every swagger of the épaulettes, is a profound and heart-breaking contradiction within himself” observes Richard N. Coe in The Vision of Jean Genet (London, Peter Owen, 1968), p. 173. 12 Mairéad Hanrahan, Lire Genet: Une Poétique de la Différence (Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1997), undertakes a thorough analysis of Genet’s use of rhetoric in the novel. 13 Jean Genet: Born to Lose (London, Creation Books, 2005), p. 157. 14 Lecoq, pp. 94–5, provides several interesting insights into Seblon’s diary entries. 15 Lecoq, pp. 82, 84, sees only Seblon as a symbol for the narrative artist, and for this reason he stands apart from all the other characters. She also points out that many of the other characters—Gil included—reveal an aesthetic dimension at some point in the novel. However, I believe that Seblon and Querelle are both specifically linked to the realm of the aesthetic, even though, as the narrator confirms, Querelle has no rhetorical elegance, reveals an astonishing coarseness of manners and is not an educated man. None of this prevents him from being an artist “à sa façon,” however. In this he has something in common with Genet himself. 16 Stephens reveals that an important manifestation of antithetical pairings can be seen also in Genet’s ambiguous representation of homophobia in Querelle de Brest: “Thus homophobia in Genet’s novels ends by problematizing the very distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality it is assumed to reinforce, undermining the stability of identities such as heterosexual and homosexual” (p. 92). In another passage, she points out how the novel emphasizes the irreconcilable demands placed on masculinity itself: “In Genet’s fiction, as Querelle’s problematic relationship to his own penis suggests, the directives of phallic masculinity are always double and irreconcilable, requiring men to be both virile and rational, sexually indefatigable and self tempered, concupiscent and self-controlled” (p. 127). 17 For more on these doublings, see Coe, p. 174; Reginald Shepherd, “What remained of a Genet: on the topic of Querelle,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 4.3 (1998), 453–70; and Mary Wiles, “Querelle ou la problématique du double,” Iris: Graduate Journal of French Critical Studies, 5.2 (1991), 75–86. 18 “La puissance de leur imaginaire plonge les personnages de Genet dans un rapport au monde faussé a priori, ce qui les inscrit dans la fiction et les métamorphose en êtres fantasmagoriques. Ils sont alors en proie au pouvoir de l’image, qui va les contaminer et les définir” observes Lecoq, p. 70.

Chapter 4 1 “When we as readers look at the text as the cultural insiders while standing outside the text in relationship to an outsider who is at the center (in) the text, we are re-positioned as the outsiders to the outsider who is positioned as the insider of the margin” argues Lâle Demirtürk, “The politics of racelessness in Richard Wright’s The Outsider,” CLA Journal, 50.3 (2007), 292.

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2 Richard Wright, The Outsider (New York, Harper and Row, 1953). All references are to this edition. 3 Abdul R. JanMohamed sees Cross’ troubled relationship with his mother as a function of the Oedipal demands she imposes upon him. See his chapter on The Outsider in The Death Bound Subject: Richard Wright’s Archeology of Death (Durham, Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 177–85. 4 Michael Lackey outlines the link between religion and ideology in African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Sociocultural Dynamics of Faith (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 2007), pp. 62–3. He sees both as attempts to legitimize what is essentially a sadistic will to power and dominance. 5 Racial stereotypes are another of these entrenched myths that men are reluctant to relinquish. In this context, Sarah Relyea, in Outsider Citizens: The Remaking of Postwar Identity in Wright, Beauvoir, and Baldwin (New York, Routledge, 2006), p. 68, sees Cross Damon as a challenge to a modern consciousness that fails to address racial concepts. 6 Frank McMahon observes in “Rereading The Outsider: double-consciousness and the divided self,” Mississippi Quarterly, 50.2 (1997), 299 that “The subway crash is thus a crucial moment of apparent liberation for Cross—one which the rest of the novel shows to be delusory by exposing the limiting terms on which his identity must be reconstituted.” On the delimiting power of race, see also Sarah Relyea, “The vanguard of modernity: Richard Wright’s The Outsider,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 4.3 (2006), 187–219. 7 Demirtürk, 283, raises an interesting point about the work’s “competing narratives” by pointing out the incongruous relationship between the “raceless” dominant plot and the race-conscious subplots which yields a narrative that “discomforts the reader as much as Damon himself does.” 8 Chidi Maduka, “Irony and vision in Richard Wright’s The Outsider,” Western Humanities Review, 38.2 (1984), 167. 9 Maduka, 168. 10 “Since race in the United States represents a social and political reality, racial identification predetermines how people experience reality in a society where the conceptual terrain is itself racialized” observes Demirtürk, 281. 11 Relyea observes in Outsider Citizens, p. 62, “Through the portrayal of a young black man who has moved beyond the skepticism of the modern West, Wright examines the Western project of freedom, which remains incomplete because it is enmeshed in the lust for power and ideology and symbols of race.” 12 There are of course, a number of other traits that identify Cross as the outsider in the text. See, for example, the assessment of Robert A. Coles in “Richard Wright’s The Outsider: a novel in transition,” Modern Language Studies, 13.3 (1983), 58–9: “In a word, it is inconceivable to imagine a figure who is more alienated than Damon. Damon is racially outside (a black man living outside of a dominant white racist society), spiritually outside (an atheist living outside of Christianized-Western society), materially outside (a postal worker who is deeply in debt), and emotionally outside (involved in a marriage-family situation which he abhors). If this weren’t enough, Damon is also outside of himself as well as the entire human community.” 13 Relyea, “The vanguard of modernity,” 188, affirms that the central problem in the novel is “a black man’s attempted escape from stable, essentialist forms of identity, including race.” 14 See Relyea, Outsider Citizens, p. 66: “Cross’s body, bereft of identity, becomes a proxy in the ritual of the narrative, a textual figure for the indicted instincts that are ‘publicly sacrificed and—retained!’” 15 Demirtürk, 285, is a little less critical of Damon’s behavior. He sees Cross’ masquerade as emblematic of the traditional “trickster” figure who ultimately outwits the white man. 16 Relative to Eva’s racialized mindset, see Demirtürk, 287: “Her color-coded thinking informs the racialized image of people to which Damon stays totally blind.”

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17 Demirtürk, 286–87, also takes note of Eva’s prejudiced view of blacks. 18 For a thorough analysis of Cross’ divided self, see McMahon, 289–305. 19 JanMohamed discusses Cross’ relationship with death extensively in his chapter on The Outsider, pp. 175–209. 20 Kingsley Widmer in “The existential darkness: Richard Wright’s The Outsider,” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 1.3 (1960), 14, sees Joe as Cross’ Jim Crow antithesis. 21 Referring to Cross’ fleeting desire to kill Sarah and Bob Hunter, McMahon, 302, observes that his impulse to murder derives from their refusal to see him as a black intellectual—a character they had heretofore never encountered. 22 Regarding Cross’ innocence, see Lackey, pp. 70–1, who argues that because the hero was not allowed to become human as a result of the systems in place, he is therefore not culpable. See also Widmer, 19. 23 McMahon observes, 304–5: “The disturbing power of The Outsider derives in large part from a narrative technique which makes Cross’s consciousness central, so that the reader is held in an uneasily ambivalent relation to Cross, unable to establish a secure position between identification and rejection.” 24 See Relyea, Outsider Citizens, p. 87: “Wright regarded psychological detachment from the world as a form of progress, a movement away from primitive superstitions. In White Man, Listen! he argued that psychological detachment from the world is necessary for human freedom.” 25 Although there are exceptions, American readers’ reactions to this novel have been less than enthusiastic. Some of these negative assessments are documented in Michel Fabre’s The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, trans. Isabel Barzun (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 369–71. 26 See Wright’s comments in Ellen Wright and Michel Fabre’s Richard Wright Reader (New York, De Capo Press, 1977), p. 577. 27 See, for example, the remarks of Fabre in The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, p. 372. 28 Shelly Eversley sees the “anti-race” race writing of both Ellison and Wright as a function of their need for aesthetic freedom in “The lunatic’s fancy and the work of art,” American Literary History, 13.3 (2001), 455. 29 The commentary of Yoshinobu Hakutani in “Richard Wright’s The Outsider and Albert Camus’s The Stranger,” Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Culture, 42.4 (1989), 377 proves quite telling: “As compared to Bigger Thomas, Wright’s celebrated hero, Damon stands taller and poles apart simply because Damon is endowed with an intellectual capacity seldom seen in African-American fiction. Small wonder that when the novel came out, critics in general, both white and black, who were unfamiliar with such a character, failed to appreciate Wright’s intention and execution in the book.” 30 In the words of Claudia Tate in Psychoanalysis and Black Novels: Desire and the Protocols of Race (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 7, Wright “violates the conventions of racial protest writing by expressing fantasies that do not involve the focus on racial oppression typically found in canonical black novels”. See also Mae Henderson, “Drama and denial in The Outsider,” in Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah (eds) (New York, Amistad, 1993), p. 405: “The assumption is that Wright himself is bound by the linguistic and temporal conventions in a novel which questions the validity of such categories.” 31 The novel’s oddities have been well documented, but perhaps nowhere more succinctly than in this observation by Fabre in The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, p. 366: “As in Native Son, Wright used melodrama, but this time, though the hero is black, the story is not primarily racial, and though he is a Communist, it is not primarily political.” 32 For more on Wright’s naturalism, see Michel Fabre’s chapter “Beyond naturalism” in Richard Wright, Harold Bloom (ed.) (New York, Chelsea House, 1987), pp. 37–56.

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33 Cross encounters a second form of non-mimetic art with Eva’s paintings. Once again, he is convinced that her abstract paintings have the uncanny ability to convey hidden truths of which even the artist herself is only minimally aware: “Out of a darkly brooding background surged broken forms swimming lyrically in mysterious light stemming from an unseen source. The magical fragility of this light, touching off surprising harmonies of tones, falling in space and bringing to light half-sensed patterns of form, was like Eva herself, like her sense of herself. In her work she seemed to be straining to say something that possessed and gripped her life” (The Outsider, pp. 261–2). The importance of art as a leitmotif is also noted by Henderson, pp. 395–6. 34 Henderson, pp. 397–8, also reflects on the problematical relationship between mimesis and art in this text. 35 McMahon, 300–1, interprets Cross’ flight from the young widow’s apartment as evidence that the hero’s impulses towards lawlessness and criminality will never find release in the ethereal realm of music. 36 Cross’ decision to depart from the African-American realist tradition was widely criticized. For some of these reactions, see Relyea, Outsider Citizens, p. 63. 37 Henderson, p. 405, writes that: “Thus Wright, in effect, employs the rhetoric of naturalism, complemented by the manipulation of voice, to express the narrator’s inability to transcend his environment.”

Chapter 5 1 Gabrielle Pascal, La Quête de l’Identité chez André Langevin (Montréal, Aquila, 1976), p. 76, notes that this penchant for alcohol is characteristic of a number of Langevin’s heroes. 2 André Langevin, Poussière sur la Ville (Montréal, Le Cercle du Livre de France, 1953), p. 173. All references are to this edition. I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. 3 Pascal, pp. 6–7, argues that Dubois actually relishes his outsider status and rejects all overtures of camaraderie from would-be friends. Taking note of Langevin’s penchant for depicting male outsiders in his works, she argues further that the hero’s alienation derives fundamentally from the absence of a father (pp. 9–22)—a literary reflection perhaps of Langevin’s real-life situation. Langevin’s women, too, suffer from a strained relationship with their fathers—a situation that leads them to “confondre leurs maris avec leurs pères qu’elles détestent depuis toujours” (p. 46). 4 André Brochu compares Madeleine to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in L’Évasion Tragique: Essai sur les Romans D’André Langevin (Québec, Hurtubise HMH, 1985), pp. 123–6. 5 Regarding Macklin solidarity, Jean-Claude Tardif in “Les relations humaines dans Poussière sur la Ville,” Etudes Littéraires, 6 (1973), 246, writes: “Elle [Macklin] les oblige à se serer les coudes, à faire cercle ensemble et à contrôler les ambitions de chacun.” 6 Paul Socken, “Alain Dubois’s commitment: a reading of Poussière sur la Ville,” International Fiction Review, 4 (1977), 175, points out numerous “theatrical” references in the novel. 7 Betty Bednarski, “Espace et fatalité dans Poussière sur la Ville,” Etudes Littéraires, 6 (1973), 215–39, links the isolated city of Macklin with the closed theatrical space of classical tragedy. 8 David J. Bond, The Temptation of Despair: A Study of the Quebec Novelist André Langevin (Fredericton, York Press, 1982), p. 21, also notes the town’s emphasis on visual surveillance. 9 Tardif, 244–55, elaborates on the lack of communication and understanding between Madeleine and Alain.

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10 It is interesting to note that Dubois, too, is accused of being “childish” at several points in the narrative. 11 Christine Tellier in her article “Les conflits idéologiques dans Poussière sur la Ville,” Voix et Images: Littérature Québécoise, 22.3 (1997), 577, also takes note of Madeleine’s childlike personality. 12 “That is exactly what Madeleine really stands for: the part of man that is lost when he gives in, the part of man that goes on living illogically when we have become aware of our limitations, the part of man that cannot rest within these limitations. Madeleine is like the natural man within us, and when he defends her, Alain defends humanity” observes Jack Warwick, The Long Journey: Literary Themes of French Canada (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1968), p. 126. 13 Pascal, pp. 48–9, sees Dubois’ so-called compassion in a quite different light: “Mais il faut se garder de voir dans l’attitude d’Alain une ‘généreuse pitié.’ Car cette compassion, dont Madeleine au demeurant ne voudra pas, n’est en fait qu’une complaisance masochiste qui permet à Alain de rester passivement, spectateur de son rejet.” 14 Pascal, p. 52, notes that adultery never brings much happiness to Langevin’s women: “Mal mariées, les héroïnes de Langevin ne trouvent cependant aucune consolation dans l’adultère.” 15 Pascal, p. 79, also observes the related effects produced on the mind by liquor and music. 16 Pascal, p. 49, along with a number of other critics, believes Dubois’ project is destined to fail: “Cette sorte d’idéalisation, qui clôt le roman, est d’ailleurs suspecte, car Alain Dubois entreprend une lutte perdue d’avance, un exploit impossible.” 17 For Pascal, p. 49, Dubois’ ostensible altruism is just another way for him to project a superior vision of self: “En somme, dans son besoin de se valoriser, dans sa manie de servir, dans sa fureur de bien faire, Alain Dubois, d’une manière assez puérile il est vrai, s’estime supérieur à Dieu lui-même.” 18 Socken, 175, points out that critics do not all agree on the authenticity of Dubois’ commitment to the preservation of human values at the end of the novel. He in fact argues that the work has a fundamentally circular structure and that there is no evidence that Dubois’ character evolves at all as a result of his wife’s attempted murder and suicide. In particular, he argues that the confrontational language in which Dubois casts his redemptive mission (“Je les forcerai à m’aimer”) nullifies the humanistic principles he claims to be espousing. 19 Tellier, 569, sees Dubois as one who “défend des valeurs nouvelles dans un milieu contraignant et conformiste.”

Chapter 6 1 Previously published versions of this chapter include “Rhetoric and redemption in Gisèle Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia,” Journal of Caribbean Studies, 21 (2007), 33–49 and “Emancipating narratives: the diasporic struggle reframed in Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia,” Francofonia (2006), 3–14. 2 “Les nègres des anciennes colonies françaises se posent et se reposent sans cesse le pathétique et merveilleux problème de l’identité,” notes Gisèle Pineau, in her chapter “Ecrire en tant que Noire,” Penser la Créolité, Maryse Condé and Madeleine Cottenet-Hage (eds) (Paris, Karthala, 1995) p. 293. 3 James Arnold, “The gendering of créolité,” Penser la Créolité, p. 29, observes that the mythic foundations of reality are part of Guadeloupe’s historical genesis, its response to the brutality of colonization.

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4 “According to a basic trope in the composite presuppositions of first-world modernist aesthetics, exile predicts or implies a nostalgic longing and return, but this exile-return trope is precisely what is unavailable to the colonized subject. Exile in francophone literary culture is grounded in the inability, even the lack of desire, to return to the native land as it was in its abject colonial or postindependence state. Under the conditions that are the consequences of colonialism, or postindependence kleptocracies, there is no nostalgic reverie of a utopian pastoralism in the native land” observes Keith Walker, Countermodernism and the Francophone Literary Game of Slipknot (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 45–6. 5 All references are to Gisèle Pineau, L’Exil selon Julia (Paris, Stock, 1996). I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. 6 For more on the limitations of France’s assimilation policy, see the afterword of Marie-Agnès Souriau in Exile According to Julia, trans. Betty Wilson (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2003), pp. 171–85. 7 For interesting perspectives on the topic of exile, consult the collection of essays entitled Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century, Martin Tucker (ed.) (New York, Greenwood Press, 1991). 8 Frantz Fanon, in Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Paris, Seuil, 1952), p. 14, confirms that the better the French, the more white one appears, according to the Caribbean value system. 9 “Beyond ethnicity, then, imperial European nations—and France in particular—were founded on the principle of inalterable cultural superiority over their colonial subjects, and the mastery of the national language became the primordial sign of the sense of division that produced colonial hierarchy and difference” observes H. Adlai Murdoch in “Negotiating the métropole: patterns of exile and cultural survival in Gisèle Pineau and Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie,” Immigrant Narratives in Contemporary France, Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx (eds) (Westport, Greenwood Press, 2001), p. 130. 10 Walker, pp. 47–8. 11 For more on the symbolism of the French military uniform, see Lucía Suárez, “Gisèle Pineau: writing the dimensions of migration,” Word Literature Today (2001), 18–19. 12 See also Mary Gallagher, “Re-membering Caribbean childhoods: Saint-John Perse’s ‘Eloges’ and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Antan d’enfance” in The Francophone Caribbean Today, Gertrud Aub-Buscher and Beverley Ormerod Noakes (eds) (Barbados, University of the West Indies Press, 2003), p. 45: “The literature of traumatized cultures typically abounds in first-person récits de vie, that is, in narratives which implicitly claim a certain status of authenticity. French Caribbean writing is no exception to this apparent rule; indeed, it is particularly rich in first-person fictional or autobiographical narratives, belonging to what one could loosely term the Bildungsroman tradition.” “As such, they might be expected to function as a literature of recovery in two senses of the term: in organizing an individual life into a narrative (recovery as recording), they could perhaps facilitate a recovery (recovery as rehabilitation) of the collective psyche.” 13 Suárez, 10, also observes that for Pineau, “fiction creates links to memory based on contrapuntal relationships between the mainland and the island of origin. Writing functions as the ideal weapon against the loss of a history that is not official.” 14 According to Marie-José N’Zengou-Tayo in “The Martinican writers of the Créolité movement and history: giving back a voice to the disenfranchised,” The Francophone Caribbean Today, 128, this same attempt to rewrite history through fiction is a trait of Chamoiseau and Confiant. 15 According to Fanon, pp. 19–20, all francophone literary culture is counter-storytelling. 16 “While literacy has traditionally been used to silence oral culture, Pineau forges literacy to present oral culture. Scripted storytelling creates a safe space from which to critique the contrapuntal nature of the experiences of the Caribbean diaspora, in which literary and orality are juxtaposed to writing and education, history and memory,” notes Suárez, 11.

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17 See also Micheline Rice-Maximum, Karukéra: Présence Littéraire de la Guadeloupe (New York, Peter Lang, 1998), pp. 14–16 and Pineau’s own comments as recorded in Gisèle Pineau and Christiane Makward, “Entretien avec Gisèle Pineau,” French Review, 76.6 (2003), 1212: “Mais en 1970, quand nous sommes arrivés aux Antilles (elle était déjà rentrée) . . . l’ordre s’est inversé! On ne connaissait pas les noms des arbres, des fleurs, des plantes, des fruits! On ne connaissait rien, et c’était un autre alphabet. Mais elle nous a donné avec bonté, elle ne nous a pas tenus à l’écart . . .”

Chapter 7 1 This novel is based on a historical incident—the murder of Gale Benson on the orders of Abdul Malik in Trinidad in 1972. Both Helen Hayward and Valeria Tinkler-Villani offer a thorough analysis of the interrelationships between the historical event, Naipaul’s nonfictional recording of the murder (Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad: Peace and Power) and his subsequent fictionalization of these same events in Guerrillas. Consult Hayward’s chapter “Fact and fiction in Guerrillas” in The Enigma of V. S. Naipaul: Sources and Contexts (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 143–71 and Tinkler-Villani’s chapter “Fact and fiction in V. S. Naipaul’s The Killings in Trinidad and Guerrillas” in Shades of Empire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Literatures, C. C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen (eds) (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1993), pp. 235–48. 2 Anne R. Zahlan observes in “Literary Murder: V. S. Naipaul’s Guerrillas,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 59.4 (1994), 104: “In Guerrillas, V. S. Naipaul has created an antiapocalyptic novel that attacks language and literary form in protest against the plight of a postcolonial world in thrall to treachery, entropy and decay.” 3 Peter C. Sederberg, “Faulkner, Naipaul and Zola: violence and the novel” in Benjamin R. Barber and Michael J. Gargas McGrath (eds), The Artist and Political Vision (New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1982), p. 300, describes the island inhabitants as awakening on the “morning after” political independence to find they are not yet free after all. 4 It is noteworthy that the American bauxite managers are exempt from undergoing the same scrutiny as other visitors to the island. Jane, too, avoids the customary scrutiny of airport security because she is in the company (and protection) of privileged American businessmen. 5 All references are to V. S. Naipaul, Guerrillas (New York, Knopf, 1975). 6 David Punter concurs that in the wake of independence, the native population remains powerless to effect meaningful change, in Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 147. In his observations on postcolonial alienation, he writes: “What is registered in the postcolonial is not so frequently the possibility of a hybrid rapprochement but instead the recognition that the construction of boundaries, borders, ‘false maps,’ has rendered such a rapprochement impossible; there is literally no language in which ‘negotiation’ would be possible.” 7 Hana Wirth-Nesher, “The curse of marginality: colonialism in Naipaul’s Guerrillas,” Modern Fiction Studies, 39.3 (1984), 532, points out that the hostility towards foreign intruders found in Jimmy’s ideological writings (a departure from the historical model) allows Jimmy to appear more victimized in the fictional account than in actuality. Marjorie Woods Lavin and Fredric Agatstein, “Personal identity and the imagery of place: psychological issues and literary themes,” Journal of Mental Imagery, 8.3 (1984), 58 suggest that the geographic displacement of the protagonists contributes to a re-evaluation of reality, an awareness that serves to move the plot forward. 8 Interestingly enough, Wirth-Nesher, 545, does include Jane and Roche within the broad category of guerrillas as defined within the novel: “Jimmy, Bryant, Jane, and Roche—are

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decentered human beings, each suffering from his or her own version of the curse of marginality.” Michael G. Cooke, “Rational despair and the fatality of revolution in West Indian literature,” The Yale Review, 71.1 (1981), 28–38, suggests that the Caribbean offers perhaps a new paradigm for revolutionary activity, one wherein the opponents to the status quo are more passive, more impotent. He argues also that Naipaul depicts both the necessity and the inevitable failure of revolution. 9 For a full discussion of the complex relationship between gangs and guerrillas in the postcolonial environment, consult Michael Neill, “Guerrillas and gangs: Frantz Fanon and V. S. Naipaul,” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 13.4 (1982), 21–62. Chandra B. Joshi, V. S. Naipaul: The Voice of Exile (New Delhi, Sterling, 1994), p. 203, also discusses the term’s ambiguity in this novel, as does Hana Wirth-Nesher, 545: “The mark of a genuine guerilla movement is the clear distinction it makes between the rightful, native culture and the illegitimate power of an occupying ‘other.’” 10 Jimmy’s decision to change his name from Leung to Ahmed also reflects his desire to avail himself of the power implicit in the act of naming. See the remarks by Neil ten Kortenaar in “Writers and readers, the written and the read: V. S. Naipaul and Guerrillas,” Contemporary Literature, 31 (1990), 325. 11 In the words of Sederberg, p. 312, “By reducing guerrilla war to the relations among three people, Naipaul reminds the reader of the personal, often petty, hopes, fears, and frailties that necessarily must inform all human enterprises.” 12 Joshi, p. 201, also points out the lack of affection between Jimmy and Jane during their sexual encounter. 13 Kortenaar, 324, also focuses on the work as a metaphor for failed authorship: “Guerrillas is a novel about a failed novelist, and it can be read as a struggle between two writers, Jimmy Ahmed the would-be-novelist and Naipaul his creator, over the right to tell Jimmy’s story.” 14 This viewpoint is countered by John Thieme in The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction (Hertford, Hansib/Dangaroo Press, 1987), p. 167. He does not believe the outsider protagonists contribute significantly to the island’s political misfortunes because the damage predates their arrival. 15 Sederberg, p. 308, cites the island’s blighted appearance as one of the novel’s many narrative discontinuities. 16 Zahlan, 93, refers to Roche, Jane and Jimmy as being “triply exiled” and points out that their names reflect their multiple displacements. 17 Rosemary Weatherston in her article on the representation of the landscape in Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival, “Embattled grounds: resistance, representation, and the literary landscaping of postcolonial space,” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association, 96 (2001), 141 offers a cogent observation that applies to this novel as well: “The result is that, ironically, the narrator’s depictions of that landscape begin to resemble imperial writers’ depictions of colonized territories, which has the effect of denaturalizing both the colonial tropes and the narrator’s identity as a ‘post’ colonial subject.” 18 Many scholars have commented on the significance of the references to British classics in this work, particularly Thieme, pp. 163–78. Additional information on the references to British literature in Guerrillas can be found in Ankhi Mukherjee, “The death of the novel and two postcolonial writers,” Modern Language Quarterly, 69.4 (2008), 542; Jacqueline Brice-Finch, “V. S. Naipaul’s dystopic vision in Guerrillas,” Studies in the Literary Imagination, 26.2 (1993), 36–7; Kortenaar, 330; Zahlan, 90–1, 98, and 100–2; Wirth-Nesher, 532–9; and Joshi, pp. 204–9. Hayward, p. 40, suggests that Naipaul’s allusions to British classics may express his lingering affection for the idea of England as manifested in its literary culture. Finally, Wirth-Nesher offers an interesting reading and literary analysis of Jimmy’s “novel” (536–9). 19 Judie Newman focuses on the mimetic aspects of Jimmy’s behavior in The Ballistic Bard: Postcolonial Fictions (London, Arnold, 1955), p. 125.

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20 Zahlan, 97, points out that although Roche is an author and Jane a publisher, the only character whose writings appear in the text are Jimmy’s. 21 “Unlike Mr. Biswas, Jimmy misuses words and thus lacks ‘authority.’ Naipaul shows us that when words are not properly respected, communication is impossible, and no respect for self or other is possible either” observes Kortenaar, 326. Hayward, p. 156, on the other hand, is a bit more indulgent towards Jimmy’s writing skills. Taking note of the fact that Jimmy is cast as a much better writer than Malik, the man on whom he is modeled, she argues that Jimmy’s ability to predict the impending fragmentation gives his writing the “benediction of authorial sanction.” 22 This viewpoint is somewhat countered by Harold Barratt, “In defence of Naipaul’s Guerrillas,” World Literature Written in English, 28.1 (1988), 99. Barratt argues that flawed political leaders are a major obstacle to post-colonial progress. 23 See also Hayward, pp. 162–4. 24 Worthy of mention also is the similarity between Roche’s radio interview with Meredith—a government official—which takes place in a non-air-conditioned sweltering radio station cubicle, and his earlier imprisonment in South Africa. 25 Zahlan, 93, states that by refusing to acknowledge Jane’s death, Peter essentially kills her a second time. His destruction of her passport eradicates the official record of her existence. 26 In the words of Kortenaar, 329, “In effect Roche is writing over what Jimmy had originally written: Jane’s murder.” Significant also is Zahlan’s comment, 93, that Roche’s “textual murder demonstrates that in Guerrillas, pen as well as sword metes out death.” 27 Mukherjee, 542, reads the ending of the novel as a symbol of the death of the novel in general and, in turn, Naipaul’s commitment to renewing it. 28 This conclusion is shared by Wirth-Nesher, 543: “If Jimmy’s addressing Roche as ‘massa’ has been ironic at other moments in the book, it is a perfectly straightforward whimper at the end.” 29 Naipaul’s pessimism about the fate of the Caribbean is often criticized by scholars and compatriots. See the remarks of Gillian Dooley in V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2006), p. 41, and those of Hayward, p. 101.

Chapter 8 1 Norbert Zongo, Le Parachutage (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006). All references are to this edition. I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. 2 There are indications that Kodio’s presidency may be even more punishing for Africans than was Gouama’s. Gouama, more incompetent than inherently evil, had the sense to fear the consequences of a strong military. Kodio, on the other hand, believes the effectiveness of a president depends solely on his ability to crush oppositional voices by military force (“Qui a dit encore: ‘Il faut être organisé de façon que, lorsque les peuples ne croiront plus, on puisse les faire croire de force?’” [p. 57]). Whereas Gouama cited the pacifist Einstein, Kodio quotes Machiavelli. Evidence of Kodio’s indifference to the plight of human suffering is visibly on display as Gouama begs for his life. Gouama’s sobbing pleas for mercy are dismissed with a cynical cliché (“Tu sais mieux que moi qu’en politique, il n’y a pas de morale. Tuer qui vous gêne est une loi de la nature, je veux dire de la politique” [p. 158]). 3 Chrisopher Wise and Joseph Paré note that harsh climactic conditions are a defining characteristic of “sahel” literature. See their introductory chapter “The land of the blood-boiling sun” in The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel, Christopher Wise (ed.) (Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), p. 3. 4 Michel Tinguiri, “Norbert Zongo: The committed writer,” The Desert Shore: Literatures

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of the Sahel, p. 152, notes that the president’s name means “speech”—a reflection of his demagoguery. In his introduction to the English translation entitled The Parachute Drop (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2004), pp. vii–viii, Christopher Wise argues that Africa’s political discourse—both the deceptive rhetoric of the media and politicians as well as the false praise heaped on its leaders by the people—is a fundamental obstacle to Africa’s progress. 5 Kodio has a flair for the dramatic as well. After the coup, he indulges in some theatrics of his own by parading about the city a drugged Gouama in full military dress. Kodio’s strategy is to convince the people that Gouama is intent on retaking the country by force—a fear he can then exploit by suspending the very civil liberties he promised to provide. Kodio is also quite adept at using rhetorical deception. Once in power, Kodio, like Gouama, uses rhetoric to mask reality. Though as fervently anti-Marxist as Gouama, he intends to incorporate Marxist principles in his speeches in order to mask his tyrannical intentions (“Nous reconnaîtrons quelques mouvements de libération de par le monde. Des responsables syndicaux seront nommés à d’importants postes de responsabilité” [p. 56]). 6 In “The killing of Norbert Zongo,” African Literatures at the Millennium, Arthur D. Drayton, Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka and I. Peter Ukpokodu (eds) (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2007), p. 274, Christopher Wise notes that the “high ethical standards of Sahelian peoples are in part the result of harsh climatic conditions. In a land where survival itself is never certain from season to season, one’s very life often becomes dependent upon the good will and fair dealings of one’s neighbor. Centuries of unbroken cultural traditions have produced a wealth of customs, rituals, and aphorisms all upholding the highest standards of moral integrity.” 7 Christopher Wise, “The killing of Norbert Zongo,” p. 273, reminds us how much suffering colonial subjects were forced to endure in the name of progress. 8 My unfavorable view of Kodio is not shared by Alain Sissao, “Figures charismatiques et démocratie chez quelques romanciers de l’Afrique de l’Ouest,” Enseigner le Monde Noir: Mélanges Offerts à Jacques Chevrier, Chikhi Beïda (ed.) (Paris, Maisonneuve & Larose, 2007), pp. 181–203. Sissao sees Kodio’s coup as a victory for the people (p. 185, p. 187), and he credits Kodio with recuperating the stolen funds (p. 186). There is no indication, however, that Kodio will use the money for the people. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that he will use the money to reward the coup makers. 9 “Second, Zongo clings to the belief that the spheres of the public and private, at least in the case of Africa’s political leaders, may not be sundered: it is incumbent upon those who run Africa’s governments to sacrifice their personal desires in the interests of the people they serve. For Zongo, this means that the political leader must be morally superior to the common man; he must even be a kind of ‘super-ethical’ individual, impervious to the overwhelming temptations for personal gain that will inevitably confront him,” observes Christopher Wise, The Parachute Drop, p. viii.

Chapter 9 1 The “second generation” of post-Holocaust writers has become an increasingly important subject of inquiry, especially in light of the declining population of survivors. Ellen Fine refers to those who “have come to endure the psychic imprint of the trauma” as “the postHolocaust generation” in a chapter entitled “Transmission of memory: the post-Holocaust generation in the diaspora,” Breaking Crystal: Writing and Memory after Auschwitz, Efraim Sicher (ed.) (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 186. A work focused exclusively on the plight of children of survivors is Helen Epstein’s Children of the Holocaust:

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6

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9

Notes

Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors (NewYork, Putnam, 1979). See also Marita Grimwood’s Holocaust Literature of the Second Generation (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Wiesel explores the topic in three additional novels: The Oath (1973), The Testament (1981) and The Forgotten (1992). The American writer Art Spiegelman brings this issue to the forefront in his Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (New York, Pantheon, 1986, 1991), as does the Israeli novelist David Grossman in See Under Love, trans. Betsy Rosenberg (New York, Farrar, 1989). A chapter on pedagogical approaches to teaching the second generation of writers by Efraim Sicher, “Postmemory, backshadowing, separation: teaching second-generation Holocaust fiction,” is included in Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust, Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes (eds) (New York, MLA, 2004), pp. 262–73. Finally, some of the issues confronted by “post-Holocaust novelists” are discussed in Thane Rosenbaum’s article “The audacity of aesthetics: the post-Holocaust novel and the respect for the dead,” Poetics Today, 27.2 (2006), 489–95. (New York, Summit, 1990), p. 108. “The Holocaust is a sacred realm. One cannot enter this realm without realizing that only those who were there can know. But the outsider can come close to the gates’ writes Elie Wiesel in an interview with Ellen S. Fine in “Dialogue with Elie Wiesel,” Centerpoint: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 4.1 (1980), 25. See also, Wiesel’s commentary in “Why I write,” Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel, Alvin H. Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg (eds) (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 203–4: “You, who have never lived under a sky of blood, will never know what it was like. Even if you read all the books ever written, even if you listen to all the testimonies ever given, you will remain on this side of the wall, you will view the agony and death of a people from afar, through the screen of a memory that is not your own.” All references are to Elie Wiesel, Le Cinquième Fils (Paris, Grasset, 1983). I have provided my own translations for all passages in the appendix. His attitude is reminiscent of Wiesel who believes that the survivor “owes nothing to the living, but everything to the dead.” See his remarks in From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences (New York, Summit, 1990), p. 16. Many scholars have written on the use of silence in Wiesel’s narrative. Consult in particular Simon P. Sibelman, Silence in the Novels of Elie Wiesel (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1995) and “The theme of silence” in Readings on Night, Wendy Mass (ed.) (San Diego, Greenhaven, 2000), pp. 47–55; George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman (New York, Atheneum, 1967), p. 123; Joyce Lazarus, “Elie Wiesel’s La Nuit and L’Oublié: in pursuit of silence,” Essays in French Literature, 28 (1991), 87–94; Marie Meisel Cedars, Speaking through Silence: The Art of Elie Wiesel (Dissertation Abstracts International 47.10 (1987) and “Silence and against silence: the two voices of Elie Wiesel,” Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture, 36.3 (1986), 257–66; and Terrence Des Pres, “The authority of silence in Elie Wiesel’s art,” Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel, Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg (eds) (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 49–57. See Wiesel’s comments on the pain of testifying in From the Kingdom of Memory, pp. 34–5: “Yet each time the witnesses had to suffer anew in order to reveal themselves even partially, in order to speak even haltingly of the most intimate things—is there anything more intimate than pain or death?—and each time, it was a lost cause. The listener either failed to understand or missed the point.” For some insights into the debate on whether the Holocaust can or should be articulated, see the Zsuzsanna Ozsvath and Martha Satz article, “The audacity of expressing the inexpressible: the relation between moral and aesthetic considerations in Holocaust literature,” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 34.2 (1985), 197–210. “What we suffered has no place within language: it is somewhere beyond life and history” writes Wiesel in From the Kingdom of Memory, p. 33.

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10 Bontchek does in fact escape after the original Jewish Counsel was dissolved when those in the ghetto protested the cold-blooded murder of fifty Jewish men. Half of the counsel members were randomly killed by the Angel in retaliation. Bontchek leaves the camp before Reuven and the others take the oath to kill the Angel, and before the residents are sent to their deaths in the camps. 11 See also Elie Wiesel, “Jewish values in the post-Holocaust future,” Judaism, 16 (1967), 283–5, and Lawrence Langer, “The dominion of death,” Responses to Elie Wiesel, Harry James Cargas (ed.) (New York, Persea, 1978), p. 34. 12 For a discussion of the conflict between the moral and the aesthetic see Ozsvath and Satz, 197–210. Alvin H. Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg also discuss some of the problems involved in writing about the Holocaust in “The problematics of Holocaust literature,” Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel, pp. 1–30. 13 “The advantages of delay: a psychological perspective on memoirs of trauma,” Obliged by Memory: Literature, Religion Ethics, Steven T. Katz and Alan Rosen (eds) (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2006), p. 49. 14 See Langer, p. 36. 15 Langer, p. 30, also speculates on the Holocaust’s fundamental dearth of instructional potential: “Most of the autobiographies concerned with l’univers concentrationnaire numb the consciousness without enlarging it and providing it with a fresh or unique perception of the nature of reality, chiefly because the enormity of the atrocities they recount finally forces the reader to lose his orientation altogether and to feel as though he were wandering in a wilderness of evil totally divorced from any time and place he has ever known—a reality not latent in, but external to, his own experience.” 16 Elie Wiesel’s account of his father’s death in Legends of Our Time (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), pp. 1–7 is particularly illuminating in this regard. 17 Maurice Friedman observes in “Elie Wiesel: the Job of Auschwitz,” Responses to Elie Wiesel,” Harry James Cargas (ed.) (New York, Persea, 1978), p. 216: “The whole of Wiesel’s writing is just such a work of mourning, of witnessing to the living dead.” 18 George Steiner, p. 123, argues that silence alone is the appropriate response to the Holocaust because language can never be made to represent truthfully what transpired. 19 In many of his works, Wiesel wrestles with the fundamental contradiction between his faith in God and his encounter with triumphant evil. In Gates of the Forest, the contradiction is resolved through the use of laughter, according to Jacqueline A. Bussie, The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo (New York, T & T Clark International, 2007), pp. 29–76. 20 Michon Matthiesen in “Narrative of suffering: complementary reflections of theological anthropology in Johann Metz and Elie Wiesel,” Religion and Literature, 18.2 (1986), 54 observes that only through memory can atonement begin: “Without the tale, the dead are left in oblivion; without the testimony, the survivor has no sense of identity or historical mission; and without the narrative, the wounds of all humanity remain unhealed.” 21 “What makes us Jews? A pair of choosings. We have chosen the One God of Shema; and we have chosen historical memory. We inscribe, we do not erase. We do not forget, we strive to remember” writes Cynthia Ozick, “Afterword,” Celebrating Elie Wiesel: Stories, Essays, Reflections, Alan Rosen (ed.) (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), p. 337.

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193

Index aesthetic representation 14–15, 16, 17, 18, 19–21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27–9, 31, 32, 33, 40–1, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 67, 71, 79–80, 81, 84–5, 90, 91, 123 alcohol use 44, 47, 56, 67, 68, 95, 105, 106–7, 117 altruism 66, 67, 68 ambivalence 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 42, 47, 48 antithesis 15, 18, 39–40, 71, 85, 123, 126 assimilation 55, 56, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 115–16

dandyism 38 dissimulation 30–1, 32, 33, 34, 38, 46, 49, 50, 52, 71, 78, 100, 103, 104, 107, 115, 123

Beckett, Samuel 126 behavioral mimicry 2, 3, 7, 8, 35, 44, 70, 72, 74, 89–90, 98 behavioral non-conformity 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 34, 37–8, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49–50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 67, 73, 75, 76, 87, 98 bildungsroman 1, 10, 106 Bovary, Emma 64 Breznitz, Shlomo 119 Butor, Michel 43

Genet, Jean 27 Querelle de Brest 27–41 German occupation 1

Camus, Albert 1, 2, 14, 42, 126 L’Etranger 1–13, 14, 42 colonialism 69, 70, 71, 72, 75–6, 78, 82, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 100, 107, 108 communicative failure 20, 25, 26, 31, 40, 51, 62, 101, 111–12, 113, 122 Compaoré, Blaise 108 Créolité 69, 82

Ionesco, Eugène 56 Rhinocéros 56 invisibility 43, 47, 50, 52, 53, 74

freedom 9, 13, 28, 46, 47, 48, 77, 99, 100, 108 aesthetic freedom 28 egocentrism 1, 9, 15, 20–1, 24–5, 31, 64–5, 95, 100, 106 existentialism 1, 10, 14, 26, 71

Haley, Alex 69 Roots 69 Hiroshima 126 Hitler, Adolph 109, 111, 121, 124 Holocaust 109, 110, 111, 113, 118, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126 hybridity 55, 78, 82, 84, 89, 91

Kierkegaard, 42 Langer, Lawrence 119 Langevin, André 56 Poussière sur la Ville 56–68

194

Index

language, focus on 3, 5, 6, 33, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 80, 83–4, 91, 92, 94, 95, 101, 111–12, 113, 114, 122–3, 124 linguistic mimicry 90–1 linguistic self correction 5, 29, 114, 119, 122, 123, 126 materialism 38, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65, 95, 96, 98, 99, 106, 108 metatextuality 19–20, 27, 29, 30, 31, 52, 54, 84–5 miscegenation 84 music 18, 54, 58, 63, 67, 88 Naipaul, V.S. 82 Guerrillas 82–94 narrator animosity 27, 47–8, 53 narrator visibility 3, 12, 25, 27, 28, 29 Pineau, Gisèle 69 L’Exil selon Julia 69–81 prejudice 6, 12, 13, 49, 50, 51, 56, 72, 75, 81, 82, 89–90, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106 cultural 72, 75, 81, 82, 86–8, 89–90, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106 racial 49, 50, 51 social 6, 13, 56, 93 race 8, 45, 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 74, 80, 81, 84, 87, 89, 90, 92, 97 racial prejudice 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 79, 84, 86, 93, 97 Ramírez, Hugo Méndez 14 reader reaction 3, 12, 25, 27, 28, 29, 36, 43, 52, 53, 54, 55, 92, 94, 96, 103, 109, 110 reality versus fiction 29, 30, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39–41, 49, 50, 71, 79, 80, 94, 100, 101 religion 3, 45, 46, 47, 49, 57, 58, 59, 68, 89, 101, 115, 116, 117, 120, 121

Robbe-Grillet, Alain 42 Robinson, Christopher 1 Sábato, Ernesto 4 El Túnel 14–26 Sarraute, Nathalie 43 Tropismes 43 Sartre, Jean-Paul 126 Scherr, Arthur 14 self-image 6, 15–16, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37–8, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 69, 71, 72, 78–9, 100, 101, 108 Schopenhaur, Arthur 127 Simon, Claude 43 slavery 69, 72, 75, 76, 77, 79, 87, 93 solidarity 8–9, 11, 13, 19, 48, 59, 116 stasis 1, 42, 58 Steinbeck, John 126 superiority aesthetic 31, 35, 38 cultural 72, 75, 81, 82, 89–90, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106 intellectual 15–16 violence 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 23–4, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 51, 52, 54, 63, 67, 83, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 107, 110, 111, 117–18, 120, 124 virility 39, 58, 59, 64, 67 Wright, Richard 42, 53–5 Native Son 53, 54 The Outsider 42–55 Wiesel, Elie 109, 122 From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences 109 La Nuit 122 Le Cinquième Fils 109–22 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 127 World War II 70, 116, 117, 118, 123 Zongo, Norbert 95, 107, 108 Le Parachutage 95–108