I say: I’m Mathias’s brain.
I add: the use of dialogues in a novel indicates a noteworthy inability on the part of a writer to handle indirect discourse.
I say: I’m the left hemisphere of Mathias’s brain.
I add: writers of best sellers overuse dialogue for three obvious reasons. (1) Dialogues quite simply allow you to stretch things out, and thanks to basic formatting you can transform an unacceptable 75-page work into an object that attains the required 128. This trick, combined with the use of a 14-point font and double spacing, can plump up and make palatable the piece of entertainment offered to the reader who as we all know wants to get his money’s worth. (2) Dialogues are the preferred location for jokes. Writers of best sellers have to have a pretty face, gel in their hair, and a sense of humor. This is called the rule of threes. (3) There are many many writers of best sellers who confide, preferably in public, that they are writers because they couldn’t be filmmakers. Instead of lying low for a while and writing a screenplay and leaving literature alone—since it never did anything to them, they naively develop their pretty little script, punctuating it with dialogues that are as subversive as TV sitcoms. When they offhandedly hit you with publishing a book costs a lot less than producing a movie, you can be tickled by such a perfectly absurd analogy but after all analogies are the realm of the left hemisphere.
I say: I’m the left hemisphere of Mathias’s brain.
I quote Valerie Solanas: man needs scapegoats he can project his shortcomings and imperfections onto and so he can unleash his frustration at not being a woman on them.
I decide to say instead: a writer of best sellers needs scapegoats he can project his shortcomings and imperfections onto and so he can unleash his frustration at not being a screenwriter on them.
I conclude: today’s readers are the scapegoats of best sellers.
I say: I’m the left hemisphere of Mathias’s brain.
I add: Queneau and Boris Vian both wrote novels that are almost completely made up of dialogue. Maybe you should take it easy, but that’s just a suggestion.
I say: I’m Mathias’s brain.
I add: I hear you and therefore I I am the omniscient narratrix, and I’d like to ask you to give it a rest and let me do my job if you don’t mind really. Mathias is intrigued and steps closer to the buffet. Mathias is hesitant but has now mastered the cerebral lock and plans to take advantage of it. He hits it off right away with a little brunette who, up until the sixties, it seems, would’ve been described as spicy. She has big blue eyes cut like saucers but above all her smile is so far from carnivorous that it suggests a lot, accidental chance, rupture of flesh and dentin, amid the bleached Gucci horde. For the past half-hour or maybe a little more Mathias has had all he can take, burning to say who’s that, who’s that, and to the brunette and the others while he’s at it, to the nine others who for the last hour have been communicating with him while they stuffed bottles of Lanson into their bags, who’s that too, especially him, Mathias, Mathias who’s smoldering to add some details to his padded cv, burning to show off his nearly presentable forms, Mathias who can’t take anymore that all this broadcasting is punctuated with closed-door exchanged greetings, a community that is while he isn’t but soon will be, Eugène knows how to work toward a goal. A cap pulled down tight on a curtain of hair draws his slow burn to a close.
Le Parisien. Friday, September 18, 2000.
Incident in a Paris Gallery
Last night, in the very chic Le Guigleur Gallery, a brawl broke out in the middle of a society cocktail party and required police intervention. According to witnesses, a dispute between a young writer and members of the Hype Syndicate seems to have been at the origin of what turned into a general altercation. Four individuals were taken in for questioning, and seven people received minor injuries.
http://casseurs2hype.free.fr
P.A.R.I.(s). was really in our hands yesterday. Sector 7 Aurore, Klute, Jérôme Laperruque, Le Stupp, Igor, and his tourguenists were emptying the bottles of doctored Malbec on the rue Weiss, Sector 13 bis LR, and his groupies were cleaning up the buffet at the launch party for some group whose name I’ve forgotten’s latest LP. Sector 4 Yvette, the baron, the troll of the month, and Franck Knight were preparing the terrain for us to all turn up together at Kiano. TH2, Dabug, Koozil, Jean-Yves, TV, kiri_vinokur, Car(r)oline, Emma, and yours truly were in charge of sector 9.
Le Guigleur Gallery crappy expo both sexes a$$holes but Dalloyau powah and champagne rulz. At exactly 11:00 p.m., when Dabug still hadn’t called anyone a socialist, Koozil still hadn’t grabbed his chainsaw, and TH2 had forgotten to shake his booty for the dumbstruck eyes of the guests, Emma got hit on by a Loréal staffer almost immediately questioned by TH2, and the bedsheets aren’t the only ones who remember.
RealAudio clip:
*(voices)
A$$hole #1: He really is everywhere, but still nobody ever remembers who he is.
A$$hole #2: To tell the truth this guy is kind of like the Frédéric Lerner of literature. (voices)
Emma: She went to get some Diet Coke.
Loréal Guy: Maybe we could …
(Dabug laughing)
Emma: Would you give it a rest for two seconds you’re a real pain in the ass.
(Dabug stops laughing)
TH2: I tried to drown the hype by emptying my glass on Marc Le Guigleur’s bald spot but it was full of champagne and the bastard’s immune.
Loréal Guy: You did what?
TH2: What do you do?
Loréal Guy: Writer.
(kiri_vinokur and Koozil laughing)
TH2: You hype?
Loréal Guy: Wish I was, but no.
(punching sounds followed by sounds of things breaking)*
The syndicate members on the scene immediately dropped the plastic grocery store bags they had been filling with edible treasures to come to the aid of TH2 who was screaming like a pig you’re going to be on center stage you bastard, as he slammed his interlocutor with a stainless steel tray. Meanwhile Koozil and Jean-yes got into it with a Gucci girl who was demanding they calm their friend down since he seems to be going too far. A trendy reporter got TV’s fist right in the eye just as he was grabbing a bottle behind Dabug’s back, innocently concentrating on taking photos (soon to be online), while kiri_vinokur, who’d climbed up on one of the tables, started singing Le Chant des partisans, with Car(r)oline and Emma joining in on the choruses. After it all went to hell, virus spread high speed, Le Guigleur and his baby boomers started beating who knows why on a blonde girl who was bawling as she broke her heel over the head of an even blonder girl who was bawling even more, we ended up in the middle of a scene of mass hysteria, hasn’t been seen since the Gülcher concert at 9 Billiards. The cops showed up it turned into the Wild West, they took awayTH2, Jean-yes, Dabug, and an old guywho was taking advantage of the impromptu chaos to grope a muteen on one of the couches. I can’t tell you how it ended because I ended up with three stitches, but I can confirm that for now our activists have been released. As for the old guy I have no idea.
::K-ssé by Nobody after Cravan 09/18/2000 09:43:00 AM.
There’s an abnormal amount of rain for November. Gallons of it are sporadically washing down from the grainy skies. Mathias turns up the collar on his velvet jacket and barricades his eyes from attacking gravel. A perfectly cunning wind with an eye out for underdressed passersby is sweeping through the Luxembourg Gardens. Mathias’s brain shouts at the wind: make him see the truth. The wind offers no response and flings handfuls of pebbly dust into the tear-soaked ocular globes. Mathias’s brain says to the wind: burst his eyes, thrust in a tetanus-laden splinter it’s already so late nothing can save him. The wind offers no response and suddenly turns its attention to harassing a package-laden woman. Mathias’s eyelids are heavy with sand, rubbing his fingers against sharp pellets Mathias lets go some liberating sobs. So much frustration has built up in him, the alchemy that transforms it into h2o is well-known. He t
hanks the wind, polite pretext. He’s crying an abnormal amount on this November day. It’s the season of literary prizes and his name doesn’t appear anywhere, on the lists not the least little Mathias Rouault maggot. Once beyond the fence surrounding the Luxembourg Gardens, Mathias’s brain is nothing but rubble.
Rhythmically, the printer spits out the sheets. Eugène suggested: a title a summary and twenty pages and above all be on time. Mathias has a migraine and can’t remember the name of the girl who’s pretending to be asleep in the next room. His fingers lack confidence, must smear the screen, a few words but which ones, the keys create a series of characters that are immediately erased. Garamond bold 26-point, for weeks he’s been trying to get down to business, Eugène’s been rolling his eyes, his friends have been in a competition of mocking insinuations wrapped in encouragement, a title’s a complicated thing, complicated and difficult, the whole thing hangs off the title you know, the title’s the call for bids, the helping hand onto the end of the display rack, you have to create the desire, how many failed books missed possibilities because of a bad title, a title’s a complicated thing, complicated and difficult, but you can do it. Mathias is aware of the problem, he ran up against an initial refusal, clear and unambiguous, last month. The title of a short story in a magazine that Eugène got him into. A different magazine from the ones that welcomed his first texts in the old days, already the old days because book fair time goes by much faster than the time that strikes in the outside world. A magazine a display window for the community that is or that soon will be thanks to this bestowal of a knighthood, a compilation of established or upcoming market values, not a laboratory, no, just a paddock for the ketamine-whinnying literary colts, just a racetrack annex to keep them in shape between two media obstacle courses, just a big stall where they’re all grouped together notice it’s more practical you know where to put the bomb Clotilde Mélisse had pointed out before throwing her aspartame soda at his head at the last dinner where they saw each other. La Haine est un alcaloïde had written Mathias at the top of the sheet. Come on, the reader doesn’t know what an alkaloid is, and neither do I for that matter, so there you go, someone had giggled to him upstairs at the Café de Flore. And besides it’s too long and not really very sexy. Wouldn’t you rather have something with English in it, something shorter, something that pops a little, something that sizzles, it’s not that difficult. Complicated and difficult, Eugène agreed. Rage against Methadone is what they decided on.
I say: I’m Mathias’s brain.
I add: What happens inside me isn’t what Mathias writes about anymore, Mathias doesn’t write about it. Mathias can’t hear me anymore and I don’t see how he could with all the racket going on.
The Place de l’Odéon is covered with puddles, winter is really annoying, the Seine has thrown up so much water they closed embankments. September will be Phase 3, maybe even Phase 4, Mathias smiles radiantly, without a thought for his rain-mopped jacket. Trente ans moins des poussières will be decorated with a black-and-white portrait on the back cover and a dark red band that will say La Crise du quart de vie.
It’s time to forget about Mathias’s brain. It was so oxidized it disappeared. It is forever dissolved, there’s not a trace left of it, Mathias’s skull is a closed space filled with forms, the shelves sag under the weight of the general information files, the marketing studies, the so-called address books that are not so blue anymore. Since March 2006, in the Carrières cemetery, it appears Esther Duval’s ever so slightly decomposed remains get brief visits by a teeny shadow, with irregular and vaguely rounded curves. Some say it’s the ghost of Mathias’s brain, remorse eaten and solitude paralyzed, coming to share its pain upon her bony bosom. Others explain that it’s a dwarf, a crippled angel that always comes to warm up bodies that have committed suicide to alleviate their shame of offending God. Since the dead are not to be trusted, none of these rumors can be confirmed.
Mathias will never find out about all this. Mathias will never know what has and will become of his brain from back then, the one that always whispered the turbulent waltz of the words flitting around in there, Mathias will never know and couldn’t care less.
Mathias is twenty-eight years old and protecting his publishing contract from the storm by hugging it tight to his white shirt and his agnès b. jacket. As he passes the store windows framing the path leading him away from the Métro, Mathias examines his reflection, a sparkling reflection that’s so luminous it sets the shops on fire. Just like young girls after they’ve abandoned their virginity or Emma after her first adulterous encounter, Matthias scrutinizes the mirror for any noticeable change. He’ll celebrate tonight, he won’t party, no, he’ll celebrate. Accompanied by Eugène and a few friends he’ll offer thanks and bacchanals to this ascension day, to this day when wide open are the Castle gates. The Bordeaux he’ll drink will be paid for by someone else, the substances that’ll be galloping around his nasal cavities will be much less cut than usual, the girl that’ll end up on his mattress with her hair a mess will do everything she can to be his official girlfriend by sunup.
The weeks that followed this night of arrival were particularly busy with completing advance copies of Form XK004-88 in accordance with the simulated impromptu interviews, the telephone calls, and the private parties. Trente ans moins des poussières was barely thirty pages long, Mathias had been ordered to finish it within two months but never had a deadline ever seemed less distressing. Because all of Paris, obviously without ever having read a single iota of a single paragraph, was repeatedly astonished by the work (a vitriolic portrait of our society; a whole generation cruelly crushed; or even our modern world placed in an uncomfortable position with unrivaled panache), once it was designated the literary event of the season. Phase 3 was under way. Mathias had just entered the Banana Republic of Letters.
Professor Plum in the Ballroom
Round 1
(Loaded Dice)
There will be no scarification. I always knew it, tonight it was confirmed, you can’t get over everything, some wounds remain raw because they can’t close up again. Because they can’t. That’s really what it is. There are a number of reasons that keep pain from transforming into memory: awareness of the amputation and the post-op plan. I’m not clinging to him, I’m really not, people are wrong, they’re really wrong to think that. It’s because life is longer, true love should be plural. I loved Mathias from the very start and more and more every day. No stagnation, no orgasm plateau, just an infinite increasing curve. He might’ve pushed me, people might’ve pushed me, but I can’t manage to fall. I’m not clinging to him, I’m really not, I let it all go four years ago, my hands were calloused, stiff six months at the guardrail, the wind the tears fissure your joints, I couldn’t take it anymore, physically drained. I let it all go four years ago, boxes of photos, of letters, little bits of everything and nothing, a pom-pom some shells a lock of brown hair some exhibit zoo movie tickets brochures postcards with lacey thumbtacked corners, poems scribbled on old scraps of paper a stuffed pig books with notes written in them. I let it all go empty completely empty for days then for weeks no I’m lying for months. I let everything go, emptiness, emptiness is what remained. I let it all go I said look mom no hands no hands but mom and everyone else were forced to notice how I stuck to my path, no hands and no nothing the curve just kept on going. No I’m not romantic. I’m not even waiting for him. Well, I’m not waiting for him anymore. I don’t think I’m waiting for anything at all anymore. I know it’s too late, I think I already knew that four years ago.
There’s not a week that goes by without my having this dream, this awful dream that’s always too fuzzy when I wake up for me to register it, to recall it, enjoy it, suck the marrow right out of it. Mathias and I are in Touraine, or maybe even in Montpellier, but at the same time the apartment reminds me of the one in Carrières, except there’s nothing specific that lets me be sure. It’s a two- or three-room apartment that doesn’t look like anything, that cannot
be described, that could never really exist in the past, present, or future. I don’t know what’s happening, I think we’re moving out. Maybe Mathias is leaving, I’m not sure. I don’t know what’s happening, if it’s a problem, or pleasant, I don’t know what’s going on, what’s being said. I think I dream in sepia. Not every day, but on those nights I think I dream in sepia. Sometimes I’d like to know, remember, a lot of times it annoys me, I frown and try to remember, when I wake up after that happens I try systematically. But despite my efforts, there’s nothing left. I have nothing left anymore anyway. I don’t know how long that dream lasts. A few minutes in my brain, and a series of a few days in its own temporality, maybe a few scenes are completely dissociated from the calendar, I don’t know, I have no idea. What I do know is that for a few days afterward I’m actually happy. Disturbed as ever, mourning denies itself subconscious, no control a paradox, but happy. Somewhere else and far away I went through something with him. Something secret, even to me. It must be very beautiful, oh so precious, when I say I imagine I hear: I tell myself, that Mathias gets kidnapped to that place too, in that vaguely familiar apartment, that when he wakes up he feels a strange calming sensation similar to mine. But I’m not waiting for him. No. I’m not waiting for anything anymore. I tell myself these things but I know perfectly well that he’s not going to call me, won’t look for an excuse to call me, won’t look for me. At all.
Not a Clue Page 12
