Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes

Abstract

The novel begins like a rather gripping crime novel but soon modulates into the exact opposite. It’s hard to imagine two more antithetical modes juxtaposed: crime fiction and poetic-philosophical pausing on the spot. As with Pierre Raufast’s recent La variante chilienne, the risk with this kind of about-face genre bending is that the reader can feel cheated out of a suspenseful thriller or at least an engagingly intense account of life on the lookout. André Carrier discards such formulaic notions as soon as he can in this novel. In fairness, the reader is forewarned of this to some extent by the philosophical turn the opening chapters begin to take. By the end of the second chapter, we are told in Latin that “to be is to be perceived or to perceive.” Interesting though some of his reflections are, one can’t help wishing Carrier had taken after the Québécois writer Hubert Aquin, whose metaphysical thriller Prochain épisode strikes me as the ideal blueprint for offbeat, postmodernist detective fiction. But ultimately that is not really the kind of hybrid genre Carrier aspires to. The ending to his novel puts in a perfunctory nod to the detectives on the narrator’s case, but by that time the reader doesn’t really care about detection. Carrier’s novel is worth savoring for its surreal poetry, its sometimes mindtwisting irrationality. It’s a novel for those who enjoy experimental fiction that dares to break most of the rules of mainstream novelistic writing. Erik Martiny Paris Sciences et Lettres Virginie Despentes. Vernon Subutex. 2 vols. Paris. Grasset. 2015. 396 & 382 pages. As if she were a manic, female counterpart to Michel Houellebecq, Virginie Despentes’s novels overflow with violence, second-wave feminism, and restlessness to the point of mania. As she declared in her memoir-cum-manifesto, King Kong Theory, “being Virginie Despentes is a more interesting business than anything else going on out there.” Her first novel, Leila S. Chudori Home Trans. John H. McGlynn Deep Vellum The tragic yet often obscured history of Indonesia under the dictatorial regime of Suharto serves as the backdrop of this novel, which spans generations through one family while also confronting the experiences of many families who were estranged from their homes due to the cruelties of this regime. Stretching from Indonesia to Paris, familial strife, the search for identity, and the quest for home unite the sprawling cast of characters, locations, and narratives. René Char The Inventors and Other Poems Trans. Mark Hutchinson Seagull Books An important member of the French Resistance, René Char wrote a variety of poetry ranging from verse to prose and the philosophical to the politically engaged, all of which employs experimental, engaging imagery. This collection provides an entrée into the poet’s work over his career with thoughtful English translations that remain faithful to the originals while maintaining their resonant lyricism. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 85 Baise-moi, was turned into a film full of murderous women and rape; her last novel, Apocalypse bébé (see WLT, Mar. 2011, 60), was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and won the Prix Renaudot; and now she is in the middle of a trilogy. This magnum opus, Vernon Subutex, is visibly inspired by contemporary television dramas, and the wide cast of characters and sweeping arcs of each volume call to mind the epic scope of The Wire. Much like a television studio, Despentes has found herself working in three time frames. She originally submitted a large manuscript to Grasset, her publisher, with plans to trim it, but her editor advised her, instead, to split it into two volumes, whereupon she realized that a third volume would be needed. And so, as the first volume came out in January 2015, she was simultaneously working on edits to the second volume (which would come out five months later) and fresh material for the third volume (which is slated for the fall of 2016). The title character, Vernon Subutex, is a fifty-year-old former record shop owner. The first volume begins as the famous musician Alex Bleach, who has been paying his rent and helping him out, is found to have...