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France’s Foremost Absurdist

Essay by François MontiTags: experimental fiction, translation

Désiré Nisard must be destroyed: someone must put an end to his nefarious influence on

literature and free the orld from his corrupting say on its affairs! This is exactly hat

the narrator is setting out to do! "e hunts him don as an undesired infant, shames him asthe riter of an appalling erotic romance, laughs him off as a footman to his country#s

$arying political masters, boos him along ith his unfortunate students, and denounces

him as a reactionary critic! %ut anger and righteous indignation is not enough: physicalannihilation is on the cards! %ut ho on earth do you &ill a man ho died ''( years ago)

The riter of this strange tale, *+yearold Eric -he$illard, is, along ith .ean/hilippe

Toussaint and .ean Echeno0, one of the riters ho in the mid '(12s re3u$enated the

 prestigious French publisher Editions de Minuit4home to the Ne No$elists %utor,5arraute, and 6obbe7rillet, as ell as 5amuel %ec&ett! 8ith them, this famous

 publishing house pro$ed that there as life after the Ne No$el, that it as still possible

to 9uestion traditional narrati$es hile brea&ing the mold created by the li&es of 6obbe

7rillet and -laude 5imon! The importance of -he$illard et al! remains largely ignoredoutside of the Frenchspea&ing orld, maybe because it#s impossible to consider them as

 being part of a group or a mo$ement, most certainly because none of them ill e$er rite

a manifesto!

5ince Mourir m’enrhume  Dying Gives Me a Cold ; in '(1<, -he$illard has published

eighteen boo&s, only to of hich4  Palafox and The Crab Nebula 4ha$e been translated

into English! =ne doesn#t need more than a sentence to sum up the argument of a no$el by Eric -he$illard: in$enting a simple idea and then exhausting it o$er the course of '>2to ?>2 pages! "is latest no$el, Sans l’Orang-Outan ithout the Orangutan; as an

affair as straightforard as its title implies: imagine a orld here the last orangutan died

and figure out the impact! @lmost each paragraph de$elops a ne idea, a ne possibleoutcome or conse9uence in an extremely ide spectrum of situations! This is neither an

ecological fable nor a scientifically oriented fiction: -he$illard is France#s foremost

absurdist, a modern day surrealist ho re$els in using popular catchphrases or clichés4 here the Abutterfly effectB that some suppose ill follo the disappearance of a species4 

and sub$erts them by means of his imagination and sense of humor!

-he$illard is not only an extremely funny and itty riter, healso happens to be one of the most fascinating stylists at or&in French today! To read him is to expose oneself to

serpentine phrases and paragraphs, to cral on the page, to

ta&e the long ride and then the short ride, to en3oy onesentence hai&us, to disco$er an art of the counterpoint that

alays catches the reader off guard: hoe$er ell you happen

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to &no the language, -he$illard ill alays strip it don and re$eal ne ays of

loo&ing at an old mechanism you thought couldn#t teach you anything any more!

%ut the man has his enemies! "is stories are neither realistic nor plausible: in fact,-he$illard doesn#t e$en care about plotlines! "e is seen by some as the epitome of the

riter ho li&es to atch himself riting, a man ho has nothing to say and only orriesabout tric&ing the language into submission!

There is ob$iously some truth in this: most of his boo&s ha$e no closure, one gets thefeeling he could ha$e ritten >2 pages more or >2 pages less ithout much change!

Ci&eise there is no need to read all of a -he$illard no$el! They are best absorbed sip by

sip, a couple of sentences at a time! /ic&ing his boo& from your shel$es hene$er youfeel li&e treating yourself to something special!

@lthough don#t find this to be a negati$e, it seems to infuriate some others ho ould

li&e -he$illard to be a psychological realist, a proper storyteller and a straight tal&er! .ust

imagine someone spouting off to 8!7! 5ebald about !usterlit"  4B3ust tell me hy youent to Ci$erpool 5treet 5tation, don#t need to &no ho you got there or ho

goddamn built the placeB4and you ill get an idea of the profound misunderstanding

that exists!

t might precisely be this misunderstanding that D#molir Nisard   Destroying Nisard ;, his penultimate no$el, deals ith:

it can be read as a ferocious indictment of contemporary

French literature and re$ieing! ronically, it happens to behis best recei$ed boo&, as if critics didn#t notice hat

-he$illard as up to!

t is true that this or& can easily be considered on the surface

only, hich ould lead to the conclusion that -he$illard is upto his usual business of rambling about an absurd idea until

the cos come home! Désiré Nisard '12'111; is a long

forgotten French academic, riter, critic, and politician! "e

spent his entire life changing political allegiances, an attitudethat helped him climb social ladders: hen he died, he had recei$ed the Cégion

d#honneur, France#s most important ci$ilian distinction, had been M/ and senator, and

had spent some time as director of the prestigious Ecole normale supérieure here hede$eloped his theory of to morals: one, $ery strict, for the common person and another,

much looser, for the person of ealth and poer! "is $ies on literature ere no less

archaic and reactionary: he hated the romantics and thought that riters should dedicatetheir time to imitating %oileau or translating Girgil, teaching through their or& the only

important $alues: family, or&, religion, and fatherland! Citerature#s greatest aim is the

moral education of the people and Nisard anted to be its first apostle4no onder Eric-he$illard#s narrator is out to get him, by any means possible!

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-he$illard#s message is ob$iously that there is something

rotten in French literature and re$ieing today, a plague of

 Nisardism that pre$ents critics from 3udging a boo& on its onmerits! The preferred mode is to babble about the nonliterary,

to stay ell aay from the ad$enturous riter or to upbraid

her for not being, say, "enry .ames, or not shoing throughher or& hat are held to be the $alues of the day! Most

re$ieers remained blind to this aspect of D#molir Nisard ,

 preferring to discuss hat they thought as paradoxical: bringing bac& to life an odious man, hom nobody

remembered anyay! The re$ieers often found themsel$es

at the ob$ious conclusion that this as yet another proof that -he$illard is the ne &ing

of the absurd! @nd he might ell be, but critical blindness to -he$illard#s subtext is, tome at least, definite proof that Nisardism is an extremely per$erse illness that is still

going $ery, $ery strong!

t#s true that the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence, but the case of D#molir Nisard  alays ma&es me stop to onder hen read @mericans complaining

about literary co$erage in their media! -ertainly it could be better, but the difference in

some respects remains stri&ing! $ar%er’s regularly dedicates se$en or eightpage articles

to the latest boo&s by the li&es of DeCillo or Denis .ohnson, hile French literarymonthlies, let alone general information maga0ines, rarely ha$e pieces longer than one

 page! More space ill be a$ailable only if there is an inter$ie ith the author4analysis

doesn#t sell, only the anecdotic does!

5ome say the only serious critic in the @merican press is .ames 8ood and not e$eryonehappens to be in thrall ith his $ies;, but the sad truth is that there is no French critic at

or& today ith half the reputation, talent, and s&ills as 8ood! The situation in Francetoday is really dire: one of the most successful literary boo&s of the ?22< rentrée littéraireas =li$ier @dam#s tedious ! l’abri de rien Safe from Nothing ;4a boo& about a young

$olunteer ho helps illegal migrants headed for 7reat %ritain get around the French

 police! t is a poorly ritten, regressi$e or&, yet it as sold by the press as one of themost daring and profound no$el of the year! This praise only seemed to be 3ustified by

the moral and political agenda of the author, hich happened to agree ith that of most

of the mainstream press!

Hnfortunately, it seems to be a gi$en in France today that re$ieers fail to engage ith ano$el to the point of lea$ing aside the literary altogether! 8illiam "! 7ass#s The Tunnel ,

translated last spring, recei$ed elldeser$ed positi$e re$ies, but can count on half the

fingers of one hand the number of them in largely distributed publications that reallyconnected ith the prose and the exact magnitude of the author#s pro3ect and intentions!

Most ere contented to say that 7ass as a ma3or but un&non author and argue that the

dubious politics of the main character really ere excusable! The truth of the matter is

that Frenchlanguage literary landscape is dominated by .ohn 7ardnerItype figures hilethere doesn#t seem to be a 8illiam 7ass around to gi$e them the anser they deser$e!

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Though #$e strayed a bit from D#molir Nisard , the digression as essential: re$ieers#

 beliefs notithstanding, -he$illard didn#t rite his boo& in a $acuum! t ould be foolish

to claim that e$ery single one of them is under the influence of Nisardism, but it oulde$en be orse to bury one#s head in the sand and go on pretending e$erything really is

fine! =n France#s political left and right, boo&s are 3udged according to $alues, and it

sometimes seems that subtle or&s, those not easily caught into the $agrancy of the time,are discarded as art for art#s sa&e, en3oyable if one really has nothing else to do!

-he$illard is not a man of imperati$es and he doesn#t tell us hat literature is! "e only

states hat cannot be considered as literature or serious literary criticism! This is

fundamental, as he is essentially as&ing us to get aay from dogma and literary narromindedness! n D#molir Nisard  he states that literature freed from Nisard#s influence

ould be pure poetry! /ureness is unattainableJ he &nos it as much as e &no it! Ket,

e find oursel$es ishing for a triumph of the mad, the fantasist, the satirist, theshreish, the defiant, the melancholy, and, in -he$illard#s ords Atous les autres soleils

noirs de la poésieB4all the other blac& suns of poetry4o$er those ho are either

ensla$ing literature to their selfser$ing $ision or gladly proclaiming its death43ust li&e Nisard did o$er a century ago, at the $ery same moment Gerlaine and Caforgue ere hard

at or& on their respecti$e masteror&s!