English translation

“Gros-Câlin (Big Hug) by Romain Gary as Émile Ajar: Crushing defeat

Not content to have been France’s most popular author in the past, Romain Gary resolved to restore his flagging reputation, regain critical acclaim and win for a second time the Prix Goncourt which is only supposed to be awarded once to the same person, by resorting to the ruse of writing under a pseudonym, as Émile Ajar. The publisher Gallimard was prepared to go along with this, and no one else seemed to notice that “Gary” sounds like “burn” and “Ajar” like “embers” in Russian.

Ajar’s first novel, published in 1974” was “Gros Câlin”, or “Big Hug”, the quirky tale of “M. Cousin”, a lonely, Parisian statistician, who purchases a pet python, which will give him the physical contact he craves, and bring him into contact with people drawn by curiosity. Feeding Gros Câlin soon becomes a problem, since his diet of living mice distresses Cousin, particularly as regards a pretty white mouse which he names “Blondine” and resorts to keeping in a box on a shelf out of the python’s reach. When he confides in a priest, he receives the cynical advice to buy a lot of mice to make them seem anonymous and easier to kill, rather like fighter pilots in the war, who found it less disturbing to bomb from a great height people they didn’t know.

This satirical humour may not prove enough of a distraction from the essential poignancy of Cousin’s chronic inability to relate to others, and to read social situations correctly. In the Metro, he chooses to sit right next to the only other occupant of the carriage, with no concept of behaving oddly and invading a stranger’s personal space. At work, he is convinced that Mlle Dreyfus, a work colleague, is in love with him simply because she greets him regularly in the lift, and imagines that they will soon get married.

This novel proved so successful that Gary had to persuade his cousin Paul Pavlowitch to impersonate him in interviews. However, perhaps because I read this in French, I could not fully appreciate all the literary allusions, puns and misuse of words which French readers apparently find so clever and entertaining.

Lacking much of a plot, the narrative soon began to feel repetitive and tedious, particularly as regards Cousin’s visits to prostitutes, which are described in sordid detail, suggesting Gary’s bias toward defending this way of life. The descriptions of Mlle Dreyfus, who comes from Guyana, struck me as being, if unintentionally, somewhat racist.

Towards the end, the novel becomes somewhat surreal, with Cousin appearing to have been driven mad, which like “But it was all a dream” may seem like a cop-out. There are a few interesting observations, like the fact that it might be useful if, like a python, a human being could simply shed his skin periodically to achieve a kind of “rebirth” – also a metaphor for Gary achieving renewed success by writing under an assumed name.

Describing Cousin’s sense of isolation may have been an outlet for Gary’s own state of mind, for only a few years later in 1980, the author shot himself – having left a note for his lawyer to reveal the true identity of Ajar.

“Ça Raconte Sarah” or “All about Sarah” by Pauline Delaboy-Allard: Crazed Love

Ca raconte Sarah (Double t. 121) (French Edition) by [Pauline Delabroy-Allard]

The narrator  whose name we never learn, so I shall call her “N”,  is a Parisian teacher with a young daughter, abandoned recently by her husband,  who gets embroiled in an intense love affair with Sarah, a talented violinist who plays in a string quartet at international concerts. Extrovert, capricious, out to shock, Sarah cuts a striking figure with her distinctive, mysterious beauty,  nose hooked like a bird’s beak,  green eyes the colour of malachite, or absinthe, hooded like a serpent’s – this gives a flavour of the book’s extravagant flow of words to describe her in minute detail. Quite what Sarah sees in the comparatively ordinary N, whether she genuinely reciprocates the passion, is never made clear, but it seems neither woman has been involved in a lesbian relationship before.

All About Sarah by [Pauline Delabroy-Allard, Adriana Hunter]

The novel succeeds in depicting an obsessive love, at times mixed with hate in the first part, followed in the second half by the intense grief of an irretrievably lost love, evoking a bizarre sense of relief  mingled with guilt. This is achieved by continual repetition of incidents and phrases with a hypnotic effect, often like the variations on a musical theme.

The prose switches between a poetic flow and dry definitions incongruously inserted in the text to create some contrived, heavy-handed,  metaphors as when Sarah, having stated, “I think I’m in love with you”, strikes a match, which gives off the odour of sulphur, followed by a definition of sulphur, “symbol S”, followed by a description of Sarah, “symbol S”. Another occurs in Trieste where N, who has taken  refuge alone, is troubled by an intense moaning which turns out to be the local wind, the bora, “which drives people mad”, but in her increasingly demented state, N observes, “I know it isn’t the wind, but its you, Sarah who is howling…you’ve found me and your will not leave me in peace”.  At this point the novel takes on hints of a gothic horror tale.

The relationship takes its course in a kind of vacuum in which N’s daughter, the ex-husband who wants partial custody, the interim Bulgarian boyfriend, colleagues at work  who might be wondering what is afoot remain ciphers, blank slates. Rather than become irritated by the implausibility of all this,  one has to assume that the focus on the love affair to the virtual exclusion of everyone else is intentional to heighten its  claustrophobic intensity. However, it becomes so extreme and long drawn out that I never really felt myself engaged in it. Perhaps a more tightly written novella would have made more impact.

It seems that, herself obsessed by Margaret Duras, author of “Hiroshima mon Amour”, the author tried to portray a passionate affair in imitation, perhaps appearing a little pretentious and “pseudo-literary” in the process.

We know from the prologue that the love is doomed, since the N  is lying in bed with her love as she  dies – but at the end of the novel we are left wondering whether Sarah really did die, and if so how, while N’s fate is also ambiguous. Sarah  certainly seems to be mentally unstable,  and the love affair seems to drive N into a state of madness, so that at the end she in a sense becomes Sarah, in  what seems a circular narrative. It seems that the author wishes to leave the interpretation of the novel open to each individual reader.