The Sunday of Fiction: The Modern French Eccentric (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures, V. 25)

THE SUNDAY OF FICTION

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures Editorial Board Floyd Merrell, Series Editor Jeanette Beer Paul B. Dixon

Howard Mancing Allen G. Wood

Associate Editors French

Spanish and Spanish American

Paul Benhamou Willard Bohn Gerard J. Brault Mary Ann Caws Gérard Defaux Milorad R. Margitic; Glyn P. Norton Allan H. Pasco Gerald Prince David Lee Rubin Roseann Runte English Showalter Ursula Tidd

Maryellen Bieder Catherine Connor Ivy A. Corfis Frederick A. de Armas Edward Friedman Charles Ganelin David T. Gies Roberto González Echevarría Patricia Hart David K. Herzberger Emily Hicks Djelal Kadir Amy Kaminsky Lucille Kerr Alberto Moreiras Randolph D. Pope Francisco Ruiz Ramón Elzæbieta Sk¬odowska Mario Valdés Howard Young

Italian Fiora A. Bassanese Peter Carravetta Benjamin Lawton Franco Masciandaro Anthony Julian Tamburri

Luso-Brazilian Fred M. Clark Marta Peixoto Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg

volume 25

THE SUNDAY OF FICTION The Modern French Eccentric

Peter Schulman

Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright ©2002 by Purdue Research Foundation. All rights reserved. 06

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∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Design by Anita Noble Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schulman, Peter, 1964– The Sunday of fiction : the modern French eccentric / Peter Schulman. p. cm. — (Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 25) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55753-251-6 (alk. paper) 1. French fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. French fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Eccentrics and eccentricities in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PQ653 .S34 2002 843'.70927—dc21 2002004758

Contents vii List of Eccentrics xi Acknowledgments 1 Introduction A la recherche de l’excentrique perdu 11 Chapter One Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes 12 The Anglomane 14 The Grand dictionnaire universel 17 Le fou littéraire 22 The Romantic Adventure Hero 24 The Dandy and the Eccentric 27 The Decadent Eccentric 32 Jules Verne’s Eccentric Stationary Travelers 36 Fin de Siècle Eccentricity 43 Chapter Two The Clinamen: The Discreet Eccentric 45 The Swerve 47 The Clinamen as a Metaphor for the Eccentric 49 Salavin, Duhamel’s White-Collar Eccentric 53 Monsieur, Toussaint’s Modern-Day Salavin 69 Echenoz’s Eccentric Adventure Hero 79 Etaix’s Eccentric Suitor 86 Des Forêts’s Eccentric Chatterbox 98 Perec’s Clinamen: Eccentricity, A User’s Manual 115 Chapter Three The Eccentric’s Universe 115 The Sunday of Life 117 The Amusement Park 123 The Banlieue: An Ex-centered Paradise of Movie Palaces and Cafés 135 The Vanishing Pleasures of Everyday Life 138 The Eccentric’s Reactions to the New World around Us 146 Eccentric Space, Eccentric Time: The Eccentric’s Hour Glass v

Contents 162 Conclusion L’excentrique retrouvé 169 Notes 173 Bibliography 185 Index

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List of Eccentrics Seventeenth-Century Real-Life Eccentrics

Eighteenth-Century Eccentrics

Bagueville (Marquis de) Brunoy (Marquis de) Coislin (Duc de) Fontenay (Chevalier de) Santeuil, Jean

L’Anglomane (B.-J. Saurin’s) De Maistre, Xavier les incroyables Kant, Immanuel les merveilleux

Nineteenth-Century Real-Life Eccentrics

Nineteenth-Century Types and Groups

Allix, Jules Beauvoir, Roger de Berbiguier, Alexis-Vincent-Charles Brisset, Jean-Pierre Brummell, Beau Duclos, Chodruc Enfantin, Prosper Hennequin, Victor Journet, Jean Montesquiou, Robert de Orsay, Alfred d’ Saint-Cricq (Baron de) Seymour (Lord)

cabarets Chat Noir College de ’Pataphysique (Alfred Jarry) dandy, le décadents (J.-K. Huysmans / Anatole Baju) fin de siècle philosophies fou littéraire (Charles Nodier) Fourieristes (Charles Fourier) Fumistes (Alphonse Allais) Harengs Saurs Epileptiques névrosés Zutistes

Nineteenth-Century Literary Eccentrics Character Axël Campbell (Miss) Des Esseintes Fogg, Phileas

Title Axël

Le rayon vert A rebours Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours Folantin A vau-l’eau Frenhofer Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu Hypperbone, William J. Le testament d’un excentrique Jeunes-France (les) Les Jeunes-France Monte-Cristo Le comte de Monte-Cristo Nemo, Captain Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

Author Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Auguste Verne, Jules Huysmans, J.-K. Verne, Jules Huysmans, J.-K. Balzac Verne, Jules Gautier, Théophile Dumas, Alexandre Verne, Jules

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List of Eccentrics Twentieth-Century Literary Eccentrics Character accidental tourist

Title The Accidental Tourist

Author Tyler, Anne

apartment building

La vie mode d’emploi

Perec, Georges

Arpels (the)

Mon oncle (film)

Tati, Jacques

Auge (le Duc d’)

Les fleurs bleues

Queneau, Raymond

Bardamu

Voyage au bout de la nuit

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand

Barnabooth, A. O. B.

A.O.B. Barnabooth: Ses œuvres complètes

Larbaud, Valéry

Bartlebooth, Perceval La vie mode d’emploi

Perec, Georges

basketball (Jeff Koons’s)

One Ball Total Equilibrium (1985)

Koons, Jeff

bathtub man

La salle de bain

Toussaint, Jean-Philippe

bavard (the chatterbox) Le bavard

Des Forêts, Louis-René

bowler-hatted man

L’homme au chapeau melon (painting)

Magritte, René

Brû, Valentin

Le dimanche de la vie

Queneau, Raymond

célibataires, les Les célibataires (Léon de Coantré and Elie de Coëtquidan)

Montherlant, Henry de

Chambernac

Les enfants du Limon

Queneau, Raymond

Charles

L’équipée malaise

Echenoz, Jean

Chave, Georges

Cherokee

Echenoz, Jean

Chopin, Franck

Lac

Echenoz, Jean

Cidrolin

Les fleurs bleues

Queneau, Raymond

Colin

L’écume des jours

Vian, Boris

Cosimo

The Baron in the Trees

Calvino, Italo

DeMilo; Meyer; Lucie Nous trois

Echenoz, Jean

Des Cigales

Loin de Rueil

Queneau, Raymond

Folle de Chaillot

La Folle de Chaillot (play)

Giraudoux, Jean

Frederick

Pornographia

Gombrowicz, Witold

Gabriel

Zazie dans le métro

Queneau, Raymond

Galais, Frantz de

Le grand Meaulnes

Alain-Fournier, Henri

homme au journal

L’homme au journal

Magritte, René

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List of Eccentrics Character

Title (painting)

Author

homme pressé

L’homme pressé

Morand, Paul

homme qui dort

Un homme qui dort

Perec, Georges

homme standard

L’homme standard

Rageot, Gaston

Hulot (Monsieur)

Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (film) Mon oncle (film) Playtime (film)

Tati, Jacques

Hutting, Franz

La vie mode d’emploi

Perec, Georges

Kaltz

Monsieur

Toussaint, Jean-Philippe

L’Aumône, Jacques

Loin de Rueil

Queneau, Raymond

Marcel, Etienne

Le chiendent

Queneau, Raymond

Molloy

Molloy

Beckett, Samuel

Monsieur

Monsieur

Toussaint, Jean-Philippe

Mounnezergues

Pierrot mon ami

Queneau, Raymond

outsider

The Outsider

Wilson, Colin

Paul

L’équipée malaise

Echenoz, Jean

Pierrot

Pierrot mon ami

Queneau, Raymond

Pons

L’équipée malaise

Echenoz, Jean

Rohel

Les derniers jours

Queneau, Raymond

Salavin, Louis

Vie et aventures de Salavin

Duhamel, Georges

soupirant (the suitor)

Le soupirant (film)

Etaix, Pierre

street sweeper (Tati’s) Mon oncle (film)

Tati, Jacques

Tuquedenne

Les derniers jours

Queneau, Raymond

unnamed protagonist

Tant qu’on a la santé (film)

Etaix, Pierre

Valène

La vie mode d’emploi

Perec, Georges

Winckler

La vie mode d’emploi

Perec, Georges

Zazie

Zazie dans le métro

Queneau, Raymond

Zelig

Zelig (film)

Allen, Woody

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Acknowledgments The editors at Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures have been very helpful in shaping this manuscript into its final form. I would like to thank Susan Y. Clawson, production editor at PSRL, for her caring and perspicacious editing of this book. In the tradition of Maxwell Perkins, she took a rather disheveled manuscript and made sure it wasn’t too eccentric. I would also like to thank PSRL editors Allen G. Wood and Jeanette Beer for their confidence, sharpness, and patience in regards to my work, as well as the anonymous reviewers of PSRL, whose insightful readings of earlier drafts of The Sunday of Fiction steered me in the right direction. I am very grateful to my mentors from Columbia. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson is certainly one of the best readers I know and she has been a constant source of encouragement and growth throughout my career. Henri Mitterand, Gita May, and Antoine Compagnon have inspired me and never let me down from my very first “baby steps” at Columbia. I am also indebted to Alice Yeager Kaplan, who was not only my mentor when I was an undergraduate at Columbia, but who also gave me the idea to write about eccentrics—a topic that will always be particularly meaningful to me. Similarly, I wish to thank Stephen Winspur for his advice and thoughtfulness. Many people have helped this project along the way. I am grateful to the French government for granting me a Chateaubriand Fellowship and to Pierre Etaix for his generosity and warmth when I was living in Paris as a doctoral student. I wish to thank Warren Motte and Jordan Stump for their support and guidance, as well as, at Old Dominion, Stephen and Michelle Foster, who have been particularly supportive and generous with their time and encouragement. I would like to express my gratitude to Dolly Weber for reading through my early manuscript with such care and friendship. I have been lucky enough to have many friends who have been particularly supportive during the different stages of this book and who should know how appreciative I am: Emmanuelle Berkovitz, Robert and Elaine Cohen, Betty-Rose Facer, Kerry Gluckmann, Terri J. Gordon, Lynn Kwit, Nicole Loireleux, Frederick A. Lubich, Lydia Mcneill, Bruno Queniart, Sarah Sasson, Heidi Schlipphacke,

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Acknowledgments Emma Skoble, Richard D. White, Diana Widom, Mischa and Nicole Zabotin. Finally, this project was made possible by years of support from Jean Alexander and Arnold Schulman. I could not have wished for a more supportive and wonderful family, nor can I imagine any future project without them.

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Introduction A la recherche de l’excentrique perdu

La lettre était un non-sens continuel, et il fallait en avoir la clef pour la lire. Balzac Ferragus In a world of increasing conformity, the modern eccentric can be seen as a contemporary hero and guardian of individualism. With this rudimentary notion of the eccentric in mind, this book defines the modern eccentric in twentieth-century French literature, and compares the notions of the eccentric in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature by tracing the eccentric’s relationship to time, space, and society. While previous studies have focused on the notion of eccentricity in purely formal terms, The Sunday of Fiction delineates the eccentric as a fully fictional character. Also, whereas, to date, the study of eccentricity has focused primarily on literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this work completes prior criticism by exploring twentieth-century fictional eccentrics. When one first thinks of the figure of the eccentric in French literature, an image of a foppish, humorous, frivolous character comes to mind. One thinks of the caricatures of eccentrics depicted by Théophile Gautier in Les Jeunes-France as individuals who are amusingly obsessed with either their garb or their moods. The other predominant image of the eccentric is that of the writer or the artist who can “get away” with being daringly different from the rest of society because it is expected that creatives will manifest their singularity on and off the page,

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Introduction canvas, or score. As Vte Charles de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul puts it, describing Gautier himself, an eccentric persona is a natural extension of the individualism that makes an artist great to begin with: Aucun écrivain n’a emprunté plus que Théophile Gautier à son individualité propre. On peut dire qu’il respire et se produit tout entier dans ses ouvrages […] On admira fort cet hiver son burnous noir à glands soyeux, et ses cheveux gigantesques sont un sujet inépuisable pour les passants. Mais s’il porte ce burnous étrange et cultive cette longue chevelure, ce n’est pas qu’il veuille paraître excentrique… (179)

Indeed, several elements from this quote help reinforce the nineteenth-century cliché about French eccentrics: they must visually stand out and they must do so publicly and naturally. Would twentieth-century eccentrics be a simple outgrowth of this nineteenth-century type, or would they break the mold in a specifically modern manner? The elements in the portrait of Gautier reminded me of one of the chapters of Raymond Queneau’s Exercices de style where the long-necked fop, at the heart of the trivial incident on the bus that triggers so many different accounts, is described as “un excentrique avec un long cou” (Exercices de style 75). In Queneau’s text, an eccentric in a crowded and routine urban setting unwillingly becomes the center of attention and inspires a myriad of descriptions and points of view. Yet, was the fact that the incident occurred in modern Paris sufficient grounds to consider Queneau’s fop as an example of a modern eccentric? If so, it would appear that there had been no dramatic change from specifically nineteenth-century examples. I knew when I began this project that I would have to proceed in a heuristic fashion because eccentricity, as a concept, is, initially at least, a very subjective and elusive term. I thought immediately of the works of Queneau, Echenoz, Des Forêts, and Toussaint. What did I find particularly attractive about those authors? The characters they had created? Why? I thought of various terms to describe them: insolite, bizarre, joyeux, amusant, but it was not until I came to excentrique that

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Introduction I knew, instinctively, that I had found the term that could unite all of the different points I liked about my favorite twentiethcentury fictional characters. A brief search through the computer database ARTFL1 yielded strange results. While there was a vast abundance of citations from nineteenth-century texts, references to the word excentrique practically stop at Queneau with a quote from Pierrot mon ami, and there are no references from texts after 1946. Indeed, this gaping hole in data implied to me that, since the concept of eccentricity is certainly as alive and well today as it has always been, the fictional French eccentric had somehow metamorphosed into a more subtle, almost clandestine figure that had to be sought out. The most radical shift would have to be from staunchly visible eccentrics to practically invisible ones whom one had to detect based on a set of completely modern indices. In my first chapter, I track the evolution of the term excentrique from its “first degree” dictionary level to its most metaphoric literary usage. What were notions of eccentricity in France prior to the twentieth century, besides the most popular images mentioned above? Dictionary definitions of the word excentrique and closely related words such as insolite or original do little in the way of providing a “definitive” definition of the eccentric. Rather, they are frustratingly circular, and one must search for a definition in other historical areas, such as in Charles Nodier’s definition of excentrique in terms of fou littéraire and how his particular interest in this subject inspired a tradition of quasi-clinical collections of portraits of nonfictional eccentrics. While these definitions are somewhat superficial, they are nonetheless helpful in sketching a preliminary outline of the nineteenth-century eccentric as an aristocratic, half-mad individual of considerable anecdotal value. Indeed, I discuss a number of real-life eccentrics in this chapter (particularly those covered at length by the Grand dictionnaire universel) because they became, in fact, a dictionary of figures that later writers would draw on or deviate from for their fictional creations. My basing further examples of eccentrics on initial dictionary references to “un homme que les Anglais appellent un excentrique” allowed me to focus on a primarily male-authored (and

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Introduction male-oriented) typology that followed the semiotic trail proposed by the early definitions.2 Are there no female eccentrics in twentieth-century French literature? Of course there are. I simply chose to follow a particular semiotic path that began with these early dictionary entries and which I followed as though it were a “fil conducteur” for later twentieth-century hexagonal examples. Following Voltaire’s famous line “choisir c’est renoncer,” I knew when I began work on as broad (and subjective) a topic as eccentricity that I would be forced to narrow my field of inquiry to as taut a selection as possible. Certainly, eccentrics from the beginning of time have reacted to societal factors in ways both different and similar. I have concentrated not only on modern eccentrics, but on fictional ones because I have been able to identify, through this medium and from a relatively constricted time-frame (circa 1830–1987), a certain number of changes in how eccentrics have been perceived and represented in French literature. I first study the shift from the nonfictional, somewhat unidimensional representations of eccentrics to fictional models of several types of French eccentrics from the eighteenth-century Anglomane to the fin de siècle cabaret and literary groups such as the Chat Noir and the Fumistes. The development of this term allows us to follow the evolution of eccentrics in literature as they “grow” from being considered little more than comical stock figures into individuals with unique perspectives of space and time. Indeed, the fanciful incarnations of many of these early eccentric figures were often engines of revolt against the stifling societal conditions they found themselves in. The Anglomanes, for example, embraced all things English as a way of asserting their independence from French customs and attitudes; Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg (Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) reacted to the stuffy habits of the Reform Club he belonged to by bursting out of it in a magnificently quixotic trip around the word; and yet, as much as he broke away from his club, he resisted the very technology he used for travel (trains, ships, balloons) by adhering to the extremely rigid routine he enjoyed in London. In Chapter 2, I approach the eccentric in a similarly heuristic manner by laying out a selected number of examples of dif-

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Introduction ferent eccentrics in twentieth-century French literature in order to establish a new eccentric typology. As if they were figures in a set of Tarot cards, I examine the various types by what they represent: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Monsieur, for instance, is an illustration of a modern young executive who becomes progressively eccentric, while filmmaker Pierre Etaix’s soupirant is an eccentric lover who strives to find his own definitions of love. This sampling of different eccentrics reveals a common thread. Twentieth-century eccentrics’ vision of the world has an effect on and is a reaction to the space and time that surround them. In the early-nineteenth-century representations, eccentricity was closely associated with a benign form of madness, not dangerous enough to be “fou à lier” but entertaining enough to be talked about. In the mid-nineteenth century, reallife eccentrics (such as Jean Journet) were often linked to extreme forms of religious or political convictions, or even completely imaginary ones (Jules Allix and his “trompe aromale”). Modern literary eccentrics, however, are almost apolitical or areligious and become deeply attached to the cityscapes they frequent. Although le soupirant and Jean Echenoz’s Georges Chave seem initially out of touch with modern Paris, they propose more enjoyable ways of navigating the modern metropolis. Although, at first, Louis-René Des Forêts’s bavard seems to mirror some of the nineteenth-century real-life maniacs of Chapter 1, he, in fact, offers a revolutionary manner of confronting conventional discourse. Furthermore, there is a class shift from the aristocratic and wealthy nineteenth-century eccentric to one who is bourgeois or even poor. As a result of this shift, twentieth-century eccentrics manifest their eccentricities in ways that are socially different from those of their nineteenth-century counterparts. Whereas the early eccentrics were protected by their aristocratic or wealthy status, some modern eccentrics, such as Georges Duhamel’s Salavin, become victims of their eccentricity rather than simple curiosities. Similarly, the eccentrics who populate the books of Echenoz and the films of Etaix use their inventive conceptions of adventure and love to escape the sometimes dreary or monotonous daily lives dictated by the economic limitations imposed upon them by their class. It was less of a feat for the nineteenth-century eccentrics portrayed in

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Introduction dictionary entries and in fiction to indulge in any of the fanciful escapades of their choice because they had all the means to do so. Chapter 2 is also a probe into the modern eccentric’s newfound discretion. Eccentrics are no longer topical, because they are depicted differently in French literature. No longer outlandish, their eccentricities are practically invisible to the point where the eccentric may appear quite ordinary. Because the search for modern eccentrics almost requires a microscope, I have chosen the Lucretian clinamen as a metaphor for the eccentric character’s free will, which I see as a creative “swerve” away from conventional, accepted behavior. While all eccentrics move in opposite directions from the conventions of the respective societies to which they belong, the modern eccentric no longer needs to be noticed. There is already an oversaturation of pseudoeccentrics such as the ones depicted by the philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky in L’ère du vide. The true eccentric—that is to say, the natural one—must now be detected by subtle tics and details like the ones that make certain characters in René Magritte’s paintings stand out. In my third chapter, I focus on the various chronotopes3 of the modern eccentric that the previous sampling introduced. What are the ways in which modern eccentrics redefine their own chronotopes and what societal conditions are they reacting to in our century? The popular/bourgeois eccentric brings attention to the beauty and importance of spaces that are vanishing (as opposed to earlier nineteenth-century counterparts, who brought attention mostly to themselves). Modern eccentrics maintain their own individuality by making the quotidian a poetic and jubilant space. An amusement park, a movie theater, or a café in Queneau’s world or the old quarters of Paris in filmmaker Jacques Tati’s represent the eccentric’s attempts to reconfigure small pieces of everyday life that may go unnoticed by the general population even as they are being destroyed. Similarly, just as eccentrics redefine the space around them in order to underline important transformations in society, they also attempt to define themselves in terms of temporal reconfiguration. The technological advancements at which the nineteenth century marveled have already gone too far in the twentieth when eccentrics find themselves defending

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Introduction the “endangered species” that certain collective daily spaces or habits have become. If a dominant typology emerges from the twentieth-century depictions of eccentrics (as opposed to prior ones), it is one centered around a figure who is no longer out of control, but very much in control of space and time. While those around them are increasingly trapped by a Marcusian universe of rigid or overaccelerated schedules, modern eccentrics repeatedly take time either to gain greater awareness of their chronotopes (such as Toussaint’s “bathtub man”) or to appreciate spaces that modern urbanization will soon snatch away from them (such as Pierrot’s amusement park and Hulot’s “old” Paris). Some fictional nineteenth-century eccentrics were also concerned with their respective chronotopes, but they translated them into neurotic excesses: J.-K. Huysmans’s Des Esseintes endured hysterical reactions to the stresses of progress; Fogg had an obsessive need to control time. The modern eccentrics I have chosen to examine in Chapter 3 are neither obsessive nor hysterical, but comparatively wise (in fact, Alexander Kojève considers Queneau’s Valentin Brû a “sage”). Although eccentrics are all “different” from most people, it is not this fact alone that defines their eccentricity. Similarly, while they are often solitary figures, not everyone who is solitary is eccentric. What eccentrics bring to the table are creative and singular perspectives on their chronotopes that are not only entertaining and nonthreatening but a little bit playful and gentle. It is this gentle eccentricity that I associate with the clinamen-like discretion that characterizes late-twentiethcentury eccentrics. Of course, earlier eccentrics swerve, but they do so in grand, sweeping motions that were considered absurd. The modern swerve is more subtle, and as such, can be taken more seriously. The examples I use from Magritte are particularly representative of this. His figures have all the external appearances of bourgeois normalcy (such as the bowler hat and banker’s suit); it is only on a closer examination that one notices a completely distinctive characteristic (such as a bird emerging from a head). I have not hesitated to use cinematic examples to describe the modern eccentric. In fact, one of the most distinguishing features of modern fiction is that it is often intertextually linked

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Introduction both to the plastic arts and to film. Beginning with the surrealists who merged many art forms into one movement, twentiethcentury French literature, film, and art are complementary and often interreferential. To overlook examples of eccentrics in film would have seriously limited the potency and accuracy of my eccentric inquiry. Moreover, I have not used cinematic and pictorial references gratuitously or because they are merely complementary to the novels I discuss, but because they are crucial to the understanding of the modern fictional eccentric. In Chapter 2, I discuss the works of Etaix because his characters display a gestural eccentricity and an acrobatic poetry that cannot be described as gracefully in contemporary fiction. The visual eccentricities of Tati’s Monsieur Hulot not only graphically highlight Chapter 3’s discussion of the eccentric’s chronotope, they are considered a major part of French culture in the 1950s. Hulot can be seen as emblematic of the struggle between strong traditionalist elements, and the intense consumer society that grew out of the economic boom of “les trente glorieuses.”4 I have not sought to provide an encyclopedic overview, however, of every type of eccentric in every genre but to zero in on specific aspects of the modern eccentric that have not been explored in depth to date, notably the notion of the eccentric’s affection for and synergistic link to an endangered slice of the quotidian, as well as the notion of a discreet eccentric who seems normal and conventional, at first, but is replete with inner manifestations of individualism. An exhaustive attempt to provide an all-encompassing catalogue of every kind of literary eccentric still might not have exhausted the topic but would have probably exhausted the reader, and in doing so, taken away from the soufflé-like lightness that defines so many later eccentrics. My selection criteria rested not only upon a personal affinity for the characters I chose to examine, but also on a very focused typology (attached to the specific problematic of how eccentrics can challenge vanishing aspects of quotidian spaces and the gradual evaporation of “free time”) instead of a panoptic one. Undoubtedly, by restricting myself to fictional eccentrics in the twentieth century, I have overlooked certain groups of nonfictional ones (such as the Lettristes or OuLiPo) because I

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Introduction wanted to concentrate on the metaphoric aspects of the fictional examples I have chosen. The order of my chapters is mostly chronological. In Chapter 1, I track the evolution of the figure of the French eccentric from its eighteenth-century Anglophilic origins through its fin de siècle Parisian manifestations. In Chapter 2, I begin with an early example of a more displaced and impulsive eccentric (Salavin), move to one who seems out of control but is very much in control (the bavard) in the middle of the century, and progress to the lightness of the later eccentrics (Echenoz and Etaix). Along these same lines, I start with an intertextual description of the modern eccentric as a concept (Lucretius’s clinamen) that I use as a framework for another chronological progression from the early white-collar worker (Salavin) to the modern one (Monsieur), and end with a contemporary fin de siècle example, Georges Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi. In Chapter 3, I trace eccentrics’ reactions to their gradually disappearing chronotopes from the innocence of Queneau’s jubilant eccentrics in novels set in the 1930s–40s (Pierrot, Brû, L’Aumône) to eccentrics who are at war with the increasing sterility of modernity (Tati’s Hulot), to ones who delight in a passive, immobile resistance to their times (Queneau’s Cidrolin, Toussaint’s bathtub man). Lastly, I have entitled my book The Sunday of Fiction not only as a reference to (or a wink at) Queneau’s Le dimanche de la vie but because “the Sunday of life” succinctly encapsulates the modern fictional eccentric’s modus operandi. If nineteenthcentury aristocratic eccentrics were able to take every day off in as exaggerated a manner as possible, they did so because they could afford to. Their social and financial positions enabled them to do as they pleased when they pleased. It is much more of a challenge for the twentieth-century eccentric to act out an uncrushable free will, especially in our very regulated modern society where the twenty-four-hour clock rages on and where a myriad of “post-its” remind us not to forget the most insignificant of tasks. As a metaphor, the eccentric chronotope resembles a Sunday for many reasons: semantically, because the eccentric outlook on life is categorically sunny and cheerful even during sometimes sad circumstances; chronologically, because Sunday represents the downtime that eccentrics appropriate for themselves (if they are not idle or

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Introduction unemployed, they are on vacation or take time off at an inopportune time); spiritually, because they view every day as a sort of holiday or “holy-day.” Modern eccentrics can see each day as a sort of Sabbath because what is sacred to them is in fact the most engaging part of the quotidian, which can be overlooked by the rest of society or even replaced by impersonal pseudoequivalents. This book details the various means modern eccentrics employ to successfully transform the humdrum into the marvelous, the ordinary into the extraordinary, work time into free time, or, rather, Mondays into Sundays.

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Chapter One

Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes

At the fin de siècle, in 1885, Jules Andrieu, a self-proclaimed “amateur d’excentriques,” announced: “Une histoire documentée de la littérature excentrique est encore à faire. Elle mériterait de tenter une bonne plume de chercheur et d’humoriste et serait accueillie sans doute par une foule de curieux” (6). Has twentieth-century criticism responded to Andrieu’s suggestion? Surprisingly there is a dearth of serious criticism on the subject of eccentricity and no major work at all on representations of the eccentric as a fictional character in twentiethcentury French literature. Most books on eccentricity have been collections of nonfictional portraits of eccentric individuals. It is in fact a tradition that became very popular in the nineteenth century with such books as Gérard de Nerval’s Les illuminés (1850); Charles Monselet’s Les oubliés et les dédaignés (1857); Jules Champfleury’s Les excentriques (1850); and Lorédan Larchey’s Gens singuliers (1853), which grew into the monthly review La Revue Anecdotique des Excentricités Contemporaines (1856–63).1 Why has there been so little critical inquiry on the subject of the eccentric? On a purely semantic level, the term eccentric is a slippery and especially subjective one. What is eccentric for one person may not be for another. Moreover, notions of eccentricity vary, certainly, from culture to culture. It is not surprising, then, that dictionary definitions cannot immediately clear up the murkiness inherent in any study of eccentrics. We know only that in France, the terms excentrique and excentricité were first adapted from English in their figurative meaning of “odd” or “original” around 1830, according to most dictionaries of this time. Before that, the words were purely geometrical or scientific terms.2 11

Chapter One

The Anglomane Although the term excentrique was not used figuratively before the nineteenth century, its English sense was very prominent in the eighteenth century in the form of the Anglomane, who exemplified many of the characteristics the word excentrique was to be endowed with in relation to modern fictional characters. The most unifying characteristic of the Anglomane that would define the nineteenth- and twentieth-century French eccentric is his sense of freedom: freedom with dress, freedom with time, freedom with space. In the late eighteenth century, for example, Fougeret de Montbron published a pamphlet to counter what he considered a threat to French order in his Préservatif contre l’anglomanie because he thought that too much of this kind of freedom would harm French society. The Anglomane, as a true precursor to the modern eccentric, was either ridiculed for standing out from the French mold or criticized for being un-French or bizarre. Sabatier de Castres, for example, warns: “L’anglomanie a passé dans nos livres, dans nos mœurs et y a causé les mêmes ravages […]. En effet, [elle] n’a guère servi qu’à introduire parmi nous des bizarreries et des maximes qui n’étaient analogues ni au caractère, ni au gouvernement de la nation.”3 The Comte de Ségur, in his memoirs, denounces the fact that the Anglomane sees “les germes d’une grande révolution dans les esprits” instead of criticizing the English mores as “frivole, folle et peu française” (qtd. in Gury 149). This English import troubled and threatened the critics of anglomania, who feared that it menaced the French cultural status quo. As Jacques Gury has written, anglomania provoked laughter because it was excessive and ostentatious, and fear because France saw itself as a conformist and united society: L’excentricité scandalise souvent, inquiète parfois, et fait rire toujours. L’Anglomane, refusant tout ce qui est reçu dans la société française se retranche de la communauté, se veut différent; adoptant d’autres critères et un autre système de références, il se singularise dans une France uniforme et conformiste, il est donc excentrique par définition. (71)

It is this very mixture of comedy and isolation that makes this eccentric a model for a “free spirit,” bold for its originality 12

Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes in breaking with the norms. Taking Oscar Wilde’s famous phrase “ce n’est pas un geste, c’est une vie,” the Anglomane’s ability to break away from France, while still living within the confines of French society, is the main reason the eccentric is tolerated and not locked up. The English model, while appalling to French purists, inspired the Anglomane to creatively assert his independence and individuality. As Bernard-Joseph Saurin’s Anglomane declares: “A Londres, chacun prend la forme qui lui plaît / On n’y surprend personne en étant ce qu’on est” (from the play; qtd. in Gury 195). Yet, the French Anglomane is striking because he is not “ce qu’il est” but a comic merger with this other. This is why, as Gury explains, when young French aristocrats embraced England’s freedom, they merely mimicked English ways, while they envied the power that they themselves lacked. The liberty that they showed by their difference was not seen as a legitimate social threat or treason, but as a gentle deviation from societal norms. Another powerful symbol essential to early notions of eccentricity that emerge from this particular strand of anglophilia is the English garden in comparison to the French one. Traditionally, the French garden (typified by Versailles), is orderly, well sculpted, and symmetrical, while the English one is wild, eclectic, filled with paths and ruins, as described by Saurin’s Anglomane: “J’y peux voir ce tout, des vallons, des collines / Des prés, une plaine, des bois / Une mosquée, un point chinois / Une rivière, des ruines” (qtd. in Gury 195). The contrast in nationally stereotyped gardens is equally reflected in FrancoEnglish clichés such as the English custom of sending children to Paris to learn sophistication while the French practice is to go to England in order to be original and free. Similarly, the French garden can be seen as a symbol of classicism and order, while the English one represents the spirit of Romanticism and the romantic break from that order even though within the confines of the garden structure. In this same vein, in the works of Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne, for example, the eccentric hero is always “Byronic” in appearance, while remaining somewhat French in certain codes of behavior. Similarly, the dandy imported Beau Brummell’s English sartorial originality and character but reinvented his own set of rules to distinguish himself with every action he took. In keeping with the trends

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Chapter One initiated by the Anglomane, however, the dandy was also able to distinguish himself within French culture and not in complete separation from it. It is this moderate divergence that will define the boundaries of eccentricity in contrast to the dramatic extremes manifested by madmen or other threats to society.

The Grand dictionnaire universel In the nineteenth century, the notion of the eccentric continued to be associated with its English semantical root but was best described not by looking under entries for excentrique in dictionaries such as Bescherelle or Littré (which do little more than define it in terms of écart) but rather under the word original. It is in fact in the Grand dictionnaire universel (GDU henceforth) that the nuances of the concept are best clarified and illustrated. Ironically, looking under excentrique in the same dictionary yields a disappointing “synonym run-around.” The entry under original, which is quite extensive (six pages), reads like, and can be considered to be, a continuation of the anecdotal books on eccentrics that were so popular in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the GDU definition reinforces the English weight of the term and functions as a corroboration of the idea that original was the word used in France for eccentric in England before the French started to use the neologism excentrique, but that once the two words were established in France, their boundaries were difficult to perceive: Nous appelons un original, l’homme que les Anglais appellent avec plus de raison un excentrique; en empruntant cette expression à la géométrie, ils l’appliquent fort justement à l’homme dont les actions, les paroles, les gestes, la personnalité enfin s’écartent du centre commun. C’est à dire, des habitudes et des conventions sociales de son époque. (849)

At first glance, this definition does not seem to shed light on the subject except to specify the anachronistic characteristic of an eccentric who deviates from the conventions of his time and to reinforce the essentially masculine lineage of this term (“l’homme que les Anglais appellent […]”). It then goes on to suggest that excès is the key to differentiating the two terms, without, however, specifying which term is more excessive:

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes la ligne de démarcation reste difficile à tracer entre l’originalité et l’excentricité, l’une n’étant que l’autre poussée à l’excès, et l’on trouvera autant de profils d’excentriques que d’originaux dans la série d’anecdotes qui suivent, le bon sens du lecteur fera aisément la différence des uns et des autres.

Repeatedly, the lexical consensus is reinforced that excentrique cannot be sufficiently explained by definitions of a few lines; these terms must be illustrated by examples, and even then, the dictionary does not conclusively impose a concrete decision with respect to the different nuances of the two terms, leaving it up to “le bon sens du lecteur” to instinctively sort them out. The GDU notes that examples of originaux (“c’est à dire des hommes qui s’appliquaient à vivre, à agir et à penser autrement ou même au rebours de leurs contemporains”) can be found from antiquity onward (it cites Diogenes with his tub and lantern, Heraclitus, and Democritus). It asserts that, nevertheless, modern times are particularly propitious to manifestations of eccentrics because individuals with such characteristics are products of advanced, evolved civilizations. Although there may be universal eccentric types, the GDU stresses that the immediacy and specifics of eccentricities can be fully judged only in relation to one’s own time and mores. Among the examples of originaux, the GDU cites the Duc de Coislin “[qui] acquit le renom d’un original grâce à sa politesse excessive,” the Chevalier de Fontenay “dont on rapporte une foule d’aventures galantes et de duels,” and the Marquis de Bagueville, “connu à Paris par la folle idée qu’il eut de se construire des ailes à ressort avec lesquelles il prétendait traverser la Seine, et qui ne servirent qu’à lui faire casser la cuisse.” Certain examples begin as originaux and then qualify, after the descriptions, as excentriques: Un franc original aussi fut ce marquis de Brunoy, ce grand seigneur archi-millionnaire qui parvint à dévorer sa fortune immense jusqu’au dernier liard […] C’est que aussi M. de Brunoy fut excentrique à lier [formant] deux hommes distincts: le châtelain avec une maison somptueuse […] et Baptiste, un gros paysan à face réjouie, trinquant avec tous. (850)

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Chapter One Another, Jean Santeuil, “fut un des originaux du XVII-ème Siècle qui mériterait le mieux aujourd’hui le titre d’excentrique. La discipline ecclésiastique n’y faisait rien et les talents du poète joints à sa moralité inattaquable en désarmait la sévérité.” He is excentrique in the nineteenth-century tradition because he is strongly egalitarian, a trait that he pushed “aux dernières limites, faisant, par exemple, descendre de son siège le cocher qui l’avait amené et obligeant le brave homme confus à trinquer avec lui au cabaret.” The shift in terminologies is really a chronological one. When the GDU describes the nineteenth century, it speaks more of excentriques than of originaux, starting with “ce grand excentrique du XIX-ème siècle, le Diogène moderne […] Chodruc Duclos, ce partisan des Bourbons […] avec son parti pris de guenilles et d’effronterie traînant tout le jour sa vie sans but ni espoir […] est l’excentrique par excellence.” Here, in what the GDU considers to be the most emblematic eccentric of the nineteenth century, indirection (“sans but, ni espoir”) replaces the very focused obsessive direction of prophets and visionaries (like Santeuil). It goes on to catalogue eccentrics that Monselet, Champfleury, and the others also write about in their books on eccentrics. The rest of the eccentrics it refers to are all aristocrats “des plus gais.” The English eccentric manifestations are mostly English lords whose eccentricity is established essentially by practical jokes (Lord Seymour, for example, is depicted as enjoying and offering friends exploding cigars) but it makes a point of clarifying that these English versions are vulgar compared to their French counterparts: Ces farces grossières ne constituent nullement l’excentricité telle que nous la comprenons, celle qui est le produit, l’expansion naturelle d’un esprit original, mais généreux et élevé; ici nous n’avons qu’une caricature, le résultat de la bassesse des inclinations et de la perversité des instincts. (851)

What kind of synthesis can one attain from the profusion of examples provided by the GDU? Although the term still remains difficult to pinpoint with exactitude, certain recurring characteristics and trends stand out: an excentrique is distin-

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes guishable by behavior, lifestyle, or speech that is not harmful or destructive enough to be considered completely insane, but is amusing enough to be worthy of anecdotes and extraordinary enough to be singled out—not for heroics, as is the case of great statesmen or military leaders—but for noteworthy excesses.

Le fou littéraire When the figurative meaning of the word excentrique became more prevalent in France, Nodier published an article in the November 1835 Bulletin du Bibliophile entitled “Bibliographie des fous: De quelques livres excentriques,” which proved to be a catalyst for the long line of books and articles that catalogued eccentrics as well as numerous bibliographies that listed works on the subject. In his article, Nodier coined the term fou littéraire to denote a type of eccentric who also writes. For Nodier, the main criterion for a fou littéraire was that of having published; otherwise, the person would just be a generic madman unworthy of study or attention: Les livres excentriques, dont je parlerai fort superficiellement dans ces pages dont le cadre est extrêmement circonscrit, ce sont les livres qui ont été composés par des fous du droit commun qu’ont tous les hommes d’écrire et d’imprimer; et il n’y a pas de génération littéraire qui n’en offre quelques exemples. Leur collection formerait une bibliothèque spéciale […] qui me paraît susceptible de fournir un chapitre amusant et curieux à l’histoire critique des productions de l’esprit. (Nodier 20)

Nodier stresses that his preliminary attention to “fous littéraires” fills a gap in literary studies and that his initiative in this area will lead to further research by serious academics: Je me contenterai d’effleurer cette manière, pour le signaler à des études plus libres, plus laborieuses, et plus attendues que les miennes. Mes savants amis Brunet et Peignot4 pourraient y trouver le texte d’un ouvrage très piquant qui prendra une place essentielle et vide encore dans les annales de l’intelligence humaine. (20)

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Chapter One The immediate effect Nodier’s article had on the study of eccentrics was to inspire not only Gustave Brunet’s Les fous littéraires: Essai bibliographique sur la littérature excentrique, les illuminés, visionnaires etc, but also a whole genre of anecdotal catalogues of portraits of fous littéraires who corresponded to Nodier’s definition. Indeed, there were many works that were similar to the ones mentioned earlier by Monselet, Champfleury, and Larchey, such as the numerous articles Octave Delepierre devoted to eccentrics in the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (1857), A. Ladrague’s Les fous littéraires in 1883, Simon Brugal’s Excentriques disparus in 1890, as well as Andrieu’s Excentriques et grotesques de l’Agenais in 1895. In addition to the books of portraits devoted exclusively to eccentric fous littéraires, there were other popular chronicles about contemporary personalities such as Jules Lemaître’s Les contemporains, which includes the Goncourt brothers because they use eccentric language, and Gautier’s Les grotesques, devoted to writers who had not received enough recognition or who, while remarkable for their literary originality, were not sufficiently extraordinary to be universally recognized: La lecture de ces petits poètes est incontestablement plus récréative que celle des célébrités les plus reconnues; car c’est dans les poètes du second ordre, je crois pouvoir l’avancer sans paradoxe, que se trouve le plus d’originalité et d’excentricité. (Les grotesques 149)

Just as Brunet had catalogued the authors suggested to him by Nodier, the “eccentricologists” who succeeded Nodier delineated a series of paradigmatic and popular portraits that would make up the foundation of the nineteenth-century eccentric composite. These eccentrics were nineteenth-century figures who would become the “stars” of eccentricity: Victor Hennequin, a Fourierist and avid follower of the tables tournantes who is singled out for believing in a special “trompe aromale” from which great souls, such as Napoleon, would contact him; Jules Allix, who invented the “télégraphe par escargots sympathiques de la boussole pusilalique sympathique d’un moteur perpétuel et gratuit”; and Jean-Pierre Brisset, who thought he had found the key to the history of human origins, which he based on syllabic compositions demonstrated in La 18

Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes grammaire logique. For Brisset, French was the original source for all language, as Guy Bechtel and Jean-Claude Carrière explain: Analysant, par exemple, le mot théologie, il constate que cette science se pratique principalement aux environs de dix-sept heures, l’heure du thé au logis. Elle traite des choses élevées puisqu’on dit: “T’es haut, logis, hein?” (54)

Jean Journet, an illuminé, was another popular figure among this anecdotal literature. After Charles Fourier’s death, Journet proclaimed himself an apostle and perturbed public spaces, spreading the “truth” in cafés, theaters, and opera houses. He became such a nuisance as he preached in vain at the doors of famous writers like Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and George Sand that he was rejected by all and chased by the police. According to Champfleury, he screamed epithets that mixed Fourierist terms with unrelated ones: “omniarque omnivore; souteneur de Proserpine; magnétiseur subversif; subversif sybarite gorgé” (Champfleury 63). The most famous and ubiquitous of these fous littéraires was Berbiguier,5 whose obsession with farfadets (little elves who come in the night) is chronicled in all of the anthologies mentioned above as well as in François Leuret’s Du traitment moral de la folie and other medical theses of the late-nineteenth century. Berbiguier wrote about his experiences in Les farfadets, ou Tous les démons ne sont pas dans l’autre monde, where he describes his hallucinatory encounters with these elfin figures. His whole world became “farfadérisé”: if his umbrella broke, it was the farfadet’s fault; planets were aligned according to a “secte farfadéenne.” His obsession was one that started internally and then progressed into the state where everything from a tree to the cosmos became related to these imaginary creatures. Champfleury describes him in these terms: Vous voyez un homme d’une vie rangée, civilisée; cet homme, si tranquille le jour est sujet à de certaines heures solitaires à des sensations extravagantes. Tel est le début de l’hallucination qui commence par l’internat, c’est à dire que l’halluciné garde précieusement en lui ses sensations; mais un jour arrive où elles l’enveloppent tout entier […]. D’interne, l’hallucination devient externe. (103)

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Chapter One This last quote summarizes a type of semiclinical approach to eccentrics from Nodier onward. With few embellishments, these authors established a nomenclature of eccentrics through the ages in a journalistic, encyclopedic fashion. Their observations monitored the most visible and talked about fous littéraires’ shifts from the internal to the very visible. Hennequin, Brisset, Berbiguier, and Allix are paradigmatic examples of the real-life figures found in the many books devoted to this type of eccentric. Each one, within a context of a private ideology pushed to extremes, disrupted the status-quo of their immediate circles and then disappeared into oblivion. Champfleury’s Les excentriques begins, appropriately, with an image of an encounter in the streets of Paris: N’avez-vous pas rencontré plus d’une fois sur le pavé de Paris des êtres qui s’emparent de votre regard, que vous ne pouvez oublier quand vous les avez vus? Quelquefois, ces personnages n’ont rien de surprenant, ni d’étrange dans leur costume, tout est dans leur physionomie, que les utopies, les rêves, les idées ont rendue bizarre. (3)

Champfleury’s urban imagery is significant: As in Baudelaire’s famous poem “A une passante,” a singular moment, a chance encounter sparks a powerful reaction. The city can be a catalyst for love, as it is for Baudelaire, or for reflection, as it is for Champfleury and Nodier. Eccentrics function as human rebuses that can be deciphered only by those who are sensitive to them. Diderot understood this, referring to Rameau’s nephew as an original: […] Leur caractère tranche avec celui des autres, et ils rompent cette fastidieuse uniformité que notre éducation, nos conventions de société, nos bienséances d’usage ont introduite. S’il en paraît un dans une compagnie, c’est un grain de levain qui fermente qui restitue à chacun une portion de son individualité naturelle. Il secoue, il agite, il fait approuver ou blâmer; il fait sortir la vérité […]. (7)

Indeed, Diderot’s use of the terms “faire sortir la vérité” and “grain de levain” are similar to the GDU’s definition of fou as “un ballon à vent” (3941). Yet, Champfleury also presents the problem of defining phenomena differently. For him, since the 20

Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes city brings together so many professions and types, eccentrics must stand out dramatically in order to be noticed, or in order to try to define themselves, but when they are noticed, they are remarkable, paradoxically, for being indefinable: Pour vous et pour quelques-uns qui trouvent que chaque jour est une mise de curiosités, la rencontre d’un être semblable est une représentation à votre bénéfice qui dure toute la journée. Sans avoir jamais étudié les travaux de Le Brun, de Porta, de Lavater sur la physionomie, vous en savez plus que ces auteurs; vous vous dites que l’inconnu n’est ni un tailleur, ni un droguiste, ni un avoué, ni un marchand, ni un danseur, ni un employé, ni un charcutier, ni un peintre, ni un maçon, ni un avocat, ni un cordonnier, ni un filou, ni un notaire. Qu’est-ce? Ce qu’est-ce devient alors une question bien plus ardue à résoudre qu’un problème. (5)

In fact, Champfleury posits a definition (or antidefinition) that is supra-medical. Although the nineteenth century saw numerous articles and books analyzing odd behavior, even madness, only the writer (whether academic or literary) can see the intrinsic value of the phenomenology of eccentrics. If for Rimbaud, one becomes a voyant by “un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens,” an “eccentricologist” can transfer the incoherence and seemingly maniacal aspects of the eccentric character into a form worthy of being read or studied. Champfleury compares them to subjects in an anatomy lesson, whom we study when they are right in front of us but whom we do not recognize when they are out of sight or out of the “urban laboratory” context: Quand on a bien vu ces drôles qui semblent des pièces artificielles d’anatomie artistement construites, ils remettent leurs veines, leur sang, leur chair, leur épiderme, leurs habits. Ils sont charmants. On les quitte, la tête pleine de notes précieuses, on les rencontre dans la rue, et on ne les salue pas. (9)

Laboratory subjects or artists’ models can be returned to over and over again where they can always remain immobile for the time it takes to analyze or draw them; the writer, however, faced 21

Chapter One with the eccentric, has to seize the moment of the encounter quickly before it vanishes into a “bohème véritable”: “Combien de neveux de Rameau marchent aujourd’hui sur les trottoirs? Et que manque-t-il à ces génies ignorés? Un homme de génie qui sache sténographier” (9). In light of Champfleury’s comments, I have called the approach used by this anecdotal literature semiclinical. It is semiclinical because it does not attempt to study eccentrics medically or psychologically, with the understanding that their study could lead to a “cure.” Yet these compilations are scientific because they rigorously document a vast nomenclature of personalities that the rest of the world has overlooked. Moreover, they undertake these studies out of affection for their subjects who are “drôles” and “charmants” (Monselet 34). The fictional representations of l’excentrique, however, go beyond just objective reporting. They increase in volume and become symbolic or metaphoric of certain symptoms or trends within the times and spaces they inhabit.

The Romantic Adventure Hero Browsing through the computerized references of the Trésor de la langue française’s database of recurring terms in French literature, ARTFL,6 one notices that the authors that come up most under the word excentrique are Dumas, J.-K. Huysmans, and Jules Verne. As opposed to the authors of dictionary entries or anthologies devoted to eccentricity, these authors expanded the notion of the eccentric for narrative purposes by using eccentrics as vehicles for larger themes, movements, and ideas. If common antonyms for excentrique are “banal, classique, commun, normal” according to the Trésor de la langue française (1806), one can see how an eccentric character could be a potent literary instrument, as Monselet remarks in his introduction to Les oubliés: “La banalité m’irrite, tandis que l’excentricité, touchée elle-même au vertige m’ouvre des horizons de rêverie et suscite en moi de très justes idées à côté” (11). This is why so many adventure heroes are cloaked with an aura of eccentricity, as Dumas’s Comte de Monte-Cristo declares:

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes Sans doute vous vous empressez de me faire une réputation d’excentricité; je suis selon vous, un Lara, un Manfred, un Lord Ruthven, puis le moment de me voir excentrique passe, vous gâterez votre type, vous essayerez de faire de moi un homme banal. Vous me voulez commun, vulgaire: vous me demandez des explications enfin. (412)

Eccentricity should be unexplainable, unbridled, surprising, and, consequently, mysterious. In this classic adventure-tale setting, the English reference is no longer associated with frivolous nobility or stylized dress, but with romantic heroism. Monte-Cristo, for example, is considered eccentric for being daring, as he asserts, when it is time to choose his arms in a duel: Cela m’est parfaitement indifférent […] En France, on se bat à l’épée ou au pistolet; aux colonies, on prend la carabine, en Arabie, on a le poignard. Dites à votre client que quoique insulté, pour être excentrique jusqu’au bout, je lui laisse le choix des armes. (422)

This romantic aura, and the indefinability of the unknown, attract and stimulate the curiosity of those caught in the routine of their respective settings, as a dinner party at the Comte’s house illustrates: Un même sentiment animait tous les convives. Ils se demandaient quelle bizarre influence les avait tous amenés dans cette maison, et cependant tout étonnés et même tout inquiets que quelques-uns étaient de s’y trouver, ils n’eussent point voulu ne pas y être et cependant des relations d’une date récente, la position excentrique et isolée, la fortune inconnue et presque fabuleuse du comte faisaient un devoir aux hommes d’être circonspects et aux femmes une loi de ne point entrer dans cette maison […] et cependant hommes et femmes avaient passé les uns sur la circonspection, les autres sur la convenance; et la curiosité, les pressant de son irrésistible aiguillon, l’avait emporté sur le tout. (55)

By being able to stimulate others, an eccentric has a sometimes irresistible power of attraction behind which often lies some extraordinary vision or dream, just as Frantz de Galais was considered “excentrique” for creating his fête étrange in

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Chapter One Alain-Fournier’s Le grand Meaulnes. Like Monte-Cristo, de Galais re-creates the nobility of another age, which his isolation protects from contemporary banality. The eccentric can sidestep the limits of “normal behavior” because he is expected to do the extraordinary, as when Monte-Cristo spends outrageous sums of money seemingly “par fantaisie” (518): —C’est donc un original? —Ce fait est, dit Albert, qu’il m’a paru assez excentrique. S’il habitait Paris, s’il fréquentait nos spectacles, je vous dirais, mon cher, ou que c’est un pauvre diable que la littérature a perdu. (519)

Monte-Cristo appears almost supernatural in his powers because his eccentricity is also a testament to his self-assurance. Because he is continually convinced that he can overcome any obstacle, he does not “live or die” by public opinion as the Parisian high society does. For the eccentric, as for MonteCristo, life is an open door “où tout est possible.”7

The Dandy and the Eccentric The limits of everyday life can be usurped either by a grandiose vision, such as Monte-Cristo’s plan to control the key elements of Parisian high society, or simply by a systematic manner of dress that inspires either confidence or fascination, but that deviates from the conventional, as Claude Bernard demonstrates, describing how a doctor must cultivate an image to give off an impression of having special powers: Il a un système. Il faut que le médecin ait l’air excentrique: S’il se fait remarquer par son costume toujours identique— c’est un cachet, c’est un prestige. Par des cheveux toujours à coup de vent.8

The dandy’s habit noir, in fact, utilizes Bernard’s cachet to his advantage. Yet, as Baudelaire remarks, dandies, who may seem extravagant, are actually followers of a system of rules that nonetheless distinguishes them from those in ordinary, bourgeois dress: “C’est avant tout le besoin ardent de se faire une originalité, contenu dans les limites extérieures des convenances” (“Peintre de la vie moderne” 713). Eccentric 24

Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes dress can startle, as if following no rules in particular, by dramatic and incongruous details. This sartorial flamboyance is particularly striking in the following description from Pierre Alexis Ponson de Terrail’s Rocambole: Derrière lui se trouvait un homme dont la Physionomie originale et la mise excentrique n’avaient point encore attiré les regards […] Qu’on se figure un homme au visage couleur de brique; aux cheveux roux ardents tombant sur ses épaules, dont les oreilles étaient ornées de boucles d’or, qui portait des diamants à ses doigts et à sa chemise, un habit bleu barbeau, un pantalon nankin et un de ses faux cols britanniques. (92)

Indeed, it is with the emergence of dandyism that eccentricity—once associated with light foppishness such as Gautier’s Jeunes-France, or quasi-lunacy such as Nodier’s fous littéraires in the early 1800s—becomes aestheticized in the middle of the century into a fashion and literary movement. Like the word excentrique, dandy is an English import attributed to Beau Brummell, yet the two terms diverge in theoretical applications even though Brummell himself is included in many anthologies of eccentrics. For Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, the notion of rules constitutes the main difference between dandyism and eccentricity. If dandyism and eccentricity can be associated with the notion of fantaisie, caprice, extravagance according to the Trésor (2195), or even “le carnaval du moi,”9 the dandy still follows a set of rules or a certain order rejected by the eccentric: Une des conséquences du dandysme, un de ses principaux caractères, […] son caractère le plus général est-il de produire toujours l’imprévu, ce à qui l’esprit accoutumé au joug des règles ne peut s’attendre en bonne logique. L’excentricité, cet autre fruit du terroir anglais, le produit aussi, mais d’une autre manière, d’une façon effrénée, sauvage, aveugle. C’est une révolution individuelle contre l’ordre établi, quelquefois contre la nature: ici on touche à la folie. Le dandysme, au contraire, se joue de la règle et pourtant la respecte encore. (Barbey d’Aurevilly 246)

For Roland Barthes, even though dandies subscribe to certain rules of dress, the details of what they wear represent their 25

Chapter One meticulous efforts to find a certain style that cannot be duplicated, whereas what is considered eccentric is imitable in their eyes: Comme cette pensée consiste dans une vision absolument singulière de soi-même, le dandy est condamné à inviter sans cesse des traits distinctifs infiniment nouveaux: tantôt il s’appuie sur la richesse pour distancer le pauvre, tantôt il recherche l’usure pour distancer les riches. C’est précisément la fonction du “détail” que de permettre au dandy de fuir la masse et de n’être jamais rejoint par elle; sa singularité est absolue en essence, mais retenue en substance car il ne doit jamais tomber dans l’excentrique, qui est forme éminemment imitable. (“Le dandysme et la mode” 315)

Another difference between the dandy and the eccentric is that the dandy, while standing out, does so with more discretion than the eccentric, whose manners or dress can often be perceived as socially unacceptable. Walking a lobster along the Palais Royal, as Nerval is supposed to have done, would be considered eccentric because it is such a visible incongruity; similarly, when Saint-Cricq makes a scene in the Café des Anglais because he insists on mixing salad and chocolate in Nerval’s Les nuits d’octobre, he gets thrown out “pour ses excentricités” (29). For the dandy, such ostentatious attention gathering would be considered vulgar, as Emilien Carassus explains: Mettre du sel dans son thé, se promener en fiacre en tenant en laisse son cheval par la portière […] c’est jouer au grotesque et non au dandy […] Le signe doit être discret, dans les deux sens du mot, dont l’un implique la différence et l’autre la réserve. (120)

Nonetheless, if the notion of dandyism diverges from the notion of excentrique, the dandy is often considered eccentric as Robert de Montesquiou and Brummell were, as well as Alfred d’Orsay and Roger de Beauvoir, who deviated from the English dandy’s impassiveness and coldness by their “gaieté franche et animée” (Prévost 36). Like the eccentric, the dandy can appear frivolous in his difference, but he makes fashion and lifestyle statements that run in the opposite directions from mainstream activity. As Albert Camus reminds us in L’homme

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes révolté, the main thread that links dandy and excentrique is rebellion, whether intentional or not: “En passant par les frénétiques de 1830, Baudelaire et les décadents de 1880, plus d’un siècle de révolte s’assouvit à bon compte dans les audaces de l’‘excentricité’” (291). This is an idea that Baudelaire, in fact, confirms: Que ces hommes se fassent nommer raffinés, incroyables, beaux, lions ou dandies, tous sont issus d’une même origine; tous participent du même caractère d’opposition et de révolte. Tous sont des représentants de ce qu’il y a de meilleur dans l’orgueil humain, de ce besoin, trop tard de combattre et de détruire la trivialité. (“Peintre de la vie moderne” 560)

When Lautréamont declares in Les chants de Maldoror, “Nous vivons dans un temps trop excentrique pour s’étonner de ce qui pourrait arriver” (75), he is referring to certain “ripe” conditions where eccentricity can erupt, when the national order is unstable enough for originality to seriously make its mark of protest: during the chaos of revolutionary France, such groups as the merveilleux and incroyables rebelled against the chaos of the Thermidorian times by dressing in a distinctive and startling manner; a hundred years later, the Dadaists raged against the hypocrisy of post–World War I Europe. “Le dandysme apparaît surtout aux époques transitoires où la démocratie n’est pas encore toute puissante,” Baudelaire continues, “où l’aristocratie n’est que partiellement chancelante et avilie” (“Peintre de la vie moderne” 560).

The Decadent Eccentric This thread of revolt, evoked by Baudelaire and Camus, fits within an eccentric evolution from the dandy’s rebellious attitudes on garb and society toward the fin de siècle lifestyles of the décadents that Huysmans’s 1884 A rebours helped to launch. If the fashionables manifested their outlook on society through the poetization of their dress and speech affectations, Huysmans’s Des Esseintes defined his own eccentricity through the poetization of his private space, in addition to his garb. Indeed, his eccentricity is only capped by his dress, which

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Chapter One complements his unusual behavior: “Il s’acquit la réputation d’un excentrique qu’il paracheva en se vêtant de costumes de velours […]” (A rebours 8; emphasis mine). What starts out as a series of eccentric events progressively develops into Des Esseintes’s restructuring of his space and, finally. his full retreat from Paris into a suburban townhouse, Fontenay-aux-Roses. At first, he tries to transform his space within a convivial construct, “en donnant aux hommes de lettres des dîners retentissants, un entre autres, renouvelé du XVIIIème siècle où pour célébrer la plus futile des mésaventures, il avait organisé un repas de deuil” (9). Des Esseintes goes beyond the habit noir in transforming every sensual detail (sight, sound, taste) of his dinner party into an extravaganza of the color black. Later, when he decides to leave Paris, his eccentricity takes on a geographical, as well as spiritual, quality. He is described as: Un excentrique [qui] songeait simplement à se composer pour son plaisir personnel et non plus pour l’étonnement des autres, un intérieur comfortable et paré néanmoins d’une façon rare, à se façonner une installation curieuse et calme, appropriée aux besoins de sa future solitude. (91)

Huysmans, in his preface, adds that he envisioned Des Esseintes as living “loin de son siècle” (59). In fact, Des Esseintes reconstructs a space and a state of being that spiritually, temporally, and geographically become ex-centered in relation to Paris and its society, as well as to its century. “For readers of the approaching fin de siècle,” observes Matei Calinescu, “A Rebours was more than just another book treating the theme of decadence, it was actually the summa of decadence, an encyclopedia of decadent tastes and idiosyncracies in matters covering the whole range from cuisine to literature” (172). As Huysmans’s title indicates, Des Esseintes’s life is entirely against the grain, yet not so much so that he could be considered completely insane. While his eccentricities are often cruel, as when he kills a tortoise by over-decorating it with jewels, they still fit within the notions of “caprice” and “fantaisie” that were so important to dictionaries such as the GDU, while also surpassing these notions in creativity and nuance. His “orgue à bouche” is an instrument for actual synesthesia; he completes a stationary voyage, managing to travel while going nowhere.

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes He sees himself in decadent Latin authors, long forgotten and obscure, and travels back in time, out of his century. Whereas the famous nineteenth-century eccentrics chronicled by the anecdotal literature about eccentrics were often obsessed with amusing subjects such as Berbiguier’s farfadets, Huysmans’s Des Esseintes goes beyond mere whimsy: he is constantly surprising with his new attempts to escape the tedium of his era. He often teeters on the fringes of psychosis and hysteria, which were to typify the fin de siècle névrosés exemplified by Octave Mirbeau, Maurice Rollinat, and Pierre Loti. “Nous sommes malades, cela est bien certain, malades de progrès,” Emile Zola announced in Mes haines, “Cette victoire des nerfs sur le sang a décidé de nos mœurs, de notre littérature, de notre époque toute entière.” Paradoxically, Des Esseintes’s lifestyle is both a symptom of the times and a rebellion against them, as Zola intimates: Etudiez notre littérature contemporaine, vous verrez en elle tous les effets de la névrose qui agite notre siècle; elle est le produit direct de nos inquiétudes, de nos recherches âpres de nos paniques, de ce malaise général qu’éprouvent nos sociétés aveugles en face d’un avenir inconnu. (Mes haines 57–58)

Des Esseintes is able to counter this Zeitgeist not only by reaching toward the past, and not only by inventing sensual alternatives to everyday life, but also by changing speeds in relation to his era. By his retreat at Fontenay, he slows himself down in contrast to the speed of technology and production that swept Europe in the 1880s. Extraordinary railroad expansion throughout France and the rest of Europe, and increased travel in general, even the Hausmannization of Parisian streets, made travel not only more accessible but extremely fast. Des Esseintes counters these innovations and expansions with the stationary voyage as a rejection of technological progress. His orgue-à-bouche is for sensual-artistic purposes and not for purely utilitarian ones. For Baudelaire, le spleen was one of the poet’s reactions to this surge of modernity; for the Goncourt brothers, it was “la mélancolie moderne”:

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Chapter One Depuis que l’humanité va, son progrès, ses acquisitions sont toutes de sensibilité. Elle se nervosifie, s’hystérise chaque jour. Et quant à cette activité…savez-vous que si ce n’est pas d’elle que découle la mélancolie moderne? (Goncourt and Goncourt 207)

Ironically, Des Esseintes goes against the grain of the movement that he spawned. According to Calinescu, the sudden popularity of “décadence” caused an eruption of parodies, then flattering echoes of Des Esseintes’s statement on the state of the modern world: “A year after the publication of A Rebours, decadence had become such a fashionable topic in Paris that it could be parodied and, moreover, such parodies/forgeries as Les Deliquessences: poèmes décadents d’Adoré Floupette could be taken seriously” (177). The imitators of Des Esseintes went further than did the character himself: they wanted to scandalize, while Des Esseintes kept his indulgences to himself. Le Décadent, Anatole Baju’s magazine inspired by A rebours, takes Des Esseintes’s eccentricities and transforms them into an avant-garde movement, just as André Breton used his Anthologie de l’humour noir as a springboard for his own avant-garde polemics. Baju takes the spirit of Des Esseintes’s eccentricities, themselves a reflection of a mal-de-siècle, expands them into a political-literary form of rebellion, and, in the process, follows the mold of the political fous littéraires, who were also associated with what were considered “eccentric political movements” such as those led by Fourier, Prosper Enfantin, and Journet. For Des Esseintes, it is a question of leaving the structure of his century in order to slow down, or even to try to control his chronotope according to his sensual/psychological desires. His is a desire to escape a society that threatens his privacy and autonomy: Tel qu’un ermite, il était mûr pour l’isolement, harassé de la vie, n’attendant plus rien d’elle; tel qu’un moine aussi, il était accablé d’une lassitude immense, d’un besoin de recueillement, d’un désir de ne plus avoir rien de commun avec les profanes qui étaient, pour lui, les utilitaires et les imbéciles. (159)

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes Baju, on the other hand, embraces what he sees as humanity’s upward march toward progress. If he drops away from established culture, it is only to use this separation as a vehicle to better achieve lofty goals that everyday society may deem unreachable, and therefore eccentric or ridiculous: Les Anciens étaient de leur temps. Nous voulons être du nôtre. Vapeur et électricité sont deux agents indispensables de la vie moderne. Nous devons avoir une langue et une littérature en harmonie avec le progrès et la science. N’estce pas notre droit? Et c’est ce qu’on appelle la décadence? Décadence soit. Nous sommes des Décadents, puisque cette décadence n’est que la marche ascensionnelle de l’humanité vers des idéaux réputés inaccessibles. (Qtd. in Calinescu 340n47)

As suggested by Zola’s comment “nous sommes malades, cela est certain, malades de progrès” (Mes haines 57–58), the neurosis that propels Des Esseintes into a private and closed universe of his own creation is a sickness caused, in part, by progress, while Baju is almost drunk with progress. The philosophical bifurcation around the term décadent, as exemplified by Des Esseintes’s and Baju’s different manifestations of it, is similar to the figurative usage of excentrique. Indeed, the term décadent, for which neither Hatzfeld nor Littré nor Robert gives any example prior to the 1850s, enjoys an immense popularity, even a metamorphosis during the latter part of the century.10 Des Esseintes’s eccentricity expands in semantic value when it merges with his overall embodiment of decadence. Before him, if eccentrics were anachronistic, they showed their anachronisms by old fashioned or foreign clothing or attachments to philosophies out of favor or considered too exotic. With Des Esseintes, hysteria and dramatically original behavior are a result of the overall tension he feels between the speed with which society embraces new technologies and his own desires to slow down, as Calinescu writes: For the French writers and artists of the 1850’s, the idea of decadence is quite often related either directly to the notion of progress or indirectly to the effects of the “hysteria” of modern development on human consciousness. (167)

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Chapter One

Jules Verne’s Eccentric Stationary Travelers If the eccentric’s relationship to modernity and technology leads to an abyss of creative, nervous self-indulgence, in the case of Huysmans’s Des Esseintes, or a euphoria spurred on by individuality and political action, in the real-life experience of Baju, Jules Verne’s heroes represent a synergy of the innocent, whimsical notions of English eccentricity with the inventions and technological appropriations of space that the later nineteenth-century France was marching toward. Phileas Fogg in Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours is a particularly good example of Verne’s eccentric hybrid: at first glance, Fogg is the embodiment of the French conception of the early English eccentric. Instead of belonging to the “club des excentriques,” however, he belongs to the Reform Club,11 an ironic title since its members never “reform” but rigorously cling to conservative stability. At first, Fogg is described, like Monte-Cristo, as an eccentric known for his wealth, Byronic impassivity, and mystery. He is considered “l’un des membres les plus singuliers et les plus remarqués du Reform Club de Londres, bien qu’il semblât prendre tâche de ne rien faire qui pût attirer l’attention” (Tour 1). He would seem like a dandy in this impassivity were his particular quirk not so exaggerated. Like Kant, whom the GDU uses as an example of the artistic/genius eccentric, he is fanatically punctual and governed by routine and minute precision from which he never deviates and which he follows “avec un mouvement d’automate” (11) every day: “vu dans les divers actes de son existence, ce gentleman donnait l’idée d’un être bien équilibré, aussi parfait qu’un chronomètre […] Fogg était l’exactitude personnifiée” (10). The idea of his controlling time, even being synonymous with time, is overdetermined again by the image of his clock, which Fogg watches “comme un soldat” before leaving his house in the morning: “Il regardait marcher l’aiguille de la pendule, appareil compliqué qui indiquait les heures et les minutes, les secondes, les jours, les quantièmes, et l’année” (6). Unlike Des Esseintes, who tries to stop time or go back in time, or Baju who wants to keep ahead of time and progress, Fogg is almost synonymous with time. Since Fogg is initially so mechanical and predictable in his personality and actions, his voyage almost replaces the man in

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes its eccentric qualities. It even inspired the literary term “voyage excentrique” that Paul d’Ivoi, Pierre Loti, and others took up as a genre of adventure/travel novel. The voyage and the events that pop up during its course often account for a fair amount of unpredictability, one of the eccentric’s fundamental qualities. Yet, the very mathematical nature of his trip, combined with its scope, also makes his eccentric voyage definable even within the scientific definitions of eccentric circles “dont les centres ne se rapportent pas.” In that meaning, Fogg undertakes two voyages: the purely mathematical one (80 days), the urge to beat and control time (“c’était le plus honnête gentleman, qui accomplissait mathématiquement son excentrique voyage autour du monde” [321]), and the actual one, a voyage with exotic discoveries and lands far from London, the act of expanding one’s outer space. Unlike Des Esseintes, who expanded his space without moving either via a “stationary voyage” or via one of altered senses and decorations (exotic tapestries and odors transforming the rooms of his house), Fogg acts so rigidly and impassively (he continues to play whist and to follow his mechanical routine of shaving on time, etc.…) that it seems he is on a stationary voyage, even though he does so while actively moving and breaking all geographical limitations of the globe. This is why the words excentrique and excentricité are so overdetermined in Verne’s descriptions of Fogg (12 times). A man seemingly without any imagination manages to capture the imagination of all around him, bringing him the attention all eccentrics attract at one time or another: La nouvelle du pari se répandit d’abord dans le Reform Club et produisit une véritable émotion parmi les membres de l’honorable cercle. Puis du Club, cette émotion passa aux journaux par la voie des reporters, et des journaux au public de Londres et de tout le Royaume-Uni […] Phileas Fogg fut généralement traité de maniaque, de fou […] Des articles extrêmement passionnés, mais logiques, parurent sur la question. (30–31)

In fact, his voyage is unique in its multi-technological conquest of space and time. He uses every form of transportation available to him:

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Chapter One Il avait employé pour ce faire tous les moyens de transport, paquebots, railways, voitures, yachts, bâtiments de commerce, traîneaux, éléphant. L’excentrique gentleman avait déployé dans cette affaire ses merveilleuses qualités de sang-froid et d’exactitude. (331)

Once again, what differentiates him from the traditional adventure hero (such as Perceval or Ulysses) is the frivolity of his mission. In this regard, he is even different from the picaresque hero, because his goal is based on an absurd bet, as one of the characters he meets remarks: Le Brigadier général ne vit dans ce pari qu’une excentricité sans but utile et à laquelle manquerait nécessairement le transire benefaciendo qui doit guider tout homme raisonnable. (72)

Yet, the configuration of his travel, a circular voyage in a specific amount of time, is actually a continuation of the travel paradigm established by Xavier de Maistre’s 1794 Voyage autour de ma chambre, a “trip” that lasts half the time (42 days) of Fogg’s voyage. De Maistre, by writing about his seclusion in his room and the flights of fancy that this retreat evokes, admits that he invents a new form of traveling: “La nouvelle manière de voyager que j’introduis dans le monde” (De Maistre 157). What makes his “interior” voyage eccentric is the fact that he does not take it as extremely seriously or severely as a hermit or a monk might: Etait-ce donc pour me punir qu’on m’avait relégué dans ma chambre? Dans cette contrée délicieuse, qui renferme tous les biens et toutes les richesses du monde? Autant vaudrait exiler une souris dans un grenier. (119)

Laurence Sterne’s paradigmatic Sentimental Voyage becomes a mental voyage but loses none of its whimsy in De Maistre’s frame of mind: “Aucun obstacle ne pourra nous arrêter, et nous nous livrerons gaiement à notre imagination. Nous la suivons partout où il lui plaira de nous conduire” (18). As Daniel Sangsue points out, De Maistre’s voyage is that of the circum voyageur who does not travel “dans sa chambre mais autour” (165). Like Fogg’s, his is a joyful mutation of the narrations of

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes such real explorers as Magellan, Cook, and Bougainville. Indeed, De Maistre’s book not only inspired his sequel, Expédition nocturne autour de ma chambre, but also a profusion of similarly eccentric works that Nodier explains as a “manie”: Il y a longtemps qu’on n’imprime plus que des voyages […] Vous avez lu le Voyage autour de ma chambre, Le Voyage autour de vingt-quatre heures, Le Voyage au Palais Royal, Le Voyage dans le boudoir de Pauline, Le Voyage dans mes poches […] C’est une manie. (27)12

Of course, Des Esseintes’s journey also resembles De Maistre’s both in its retreat to Fontenay and by his stationary voyage, although De Maistre’s circularity is particularly interesting in its relationship to ex-centricity: De Maistre and Fogg, for example, before their trips, lead uniform, routine lives only to come back full circle to continue the rhythm where they left off. Similarly, Verne’s Captain Nemo in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers is another variant of the “non-stationary stationary voyager.” Fitting the GDU’s definition of original as an inventive genius, Nemo is ahead of his time because he invents the submarine, which he uses to go around the world underwater, yet he maintains his extraordinary invention for the purposes of a self-exile comparable to Des Esseintes’s retreat into his library or De Maistre’s escape to his bedroom. Although his motto is mobilis in mobile, Nemo himself is rather immobile; like Fogg’s travels, the voyage itself does the moving. As Barthes explains: Verne ne cherchait nullement à élargir le monde selon des voies romantiques d’évasion ou des plans mystiques d’infini: il cherchait sans cesse à le rétracter, à le peupler, à le réduire à un espace connu et clos, que l’homme pourrait ensuite habiter confortablement. (Mythologies 80–81)

As his name implies (No-one), Nemo’s eccentricity is pronounced not only by his appearances (through his machine, the Nautilus) but especially by his Ulysses-like disappearances (“Nemo” is in fact one of Ulysses’s aliases). As Paul Virilio describes Ulysses:

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Chapter One N’occupant pas un seul lieu, il souhaite ne pas être identifiable, mais surtout ne s’identifier à rien. Il est personne parce qu’il ne veut être personne et que pour être personne, il faut être à la fois partout et nulle part. (47)

The whimsy of De Maistre’s stationary voyage around his room does not change, in essence, when it is enhanced by speed and technology. The traveler’s eccentricity can be defined by not changing with the advances of modernity and by remaining entrenched in habit as Gaston Rageot affirms, speaking about the ironies of technologically accelerated voyages: “Le besoin de pérégrination a fini par instituer dans le déplacementmême la fixité de la vie” (L’homme standard 70). Nonetheless, the eccentric voyage (or the eccentric’s voyage) is still productive. Even though the space around them changes, Fogg and Nemo do not as they appropriate their immediate space (Nemo with his library, Fogg with his routine and whist matches). Yet Fogg’s multitransportational travel across time zones actually creates an extra day for himself in order that he may win his bet—in addition to which he falls in love and marries an exotic woman, which he never would have done in his previously hermetic life. Nemo collects valuable and seemingly inexhaustible data that can cure the world of its “sicknesses.” While the act of traveling for the sake of exoticism may have been lost by the speed of their voyages, the power of their eccentric visions was not.

Fin de Siècle Eccentricity If Verne’s characters are both caught up in the modern notion of speed by their means of travel and removed from that notion by their sang-froid and stationary personalities, and if Des Esseintes retreats from this same modernity into a sealed-off apartment where he can follow his every indulgence, another fin de siècle expression of eccentricity was found in the cabarets, café concerts, or literary revues such as L’Hydropathe, Le Chat Noir, and groups such as the Fumistes, Zutistes, and Harengs Saurs Epileptiques or Alfred Jarry’s College de ’Pataphysique. Like the early 1830 eccentrics, these movements aimed to be noticed and to shock. A ritournelle written by Maurice Mac-Nab illustrates this in terms of: 36

Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes Hydropathe comme nous Elle épate Pate Pate Avec des tintements fous. (Mac-Nab 126)

The medium of the caf’conc’ enabled the névrosité of the decadent eccentric to explode in a multimedia array of “zigzags” such as the very popular Pierrot pantomimes interpreted by Debureau, Paul Margueritte, and Paulus onstage, or Jules Laforgue, Huysmans, or Jean Richepin in literature. As Richepin himself recounts: Ce changement des attitudes dans le public s’était opéré au brusque appel d’une note unique, inattendue […] et prolongée en vibrations stridentes […] un flot de lumière projetait en lettres blêmes: HAPPY ZIGZAGS. (444)

For Richepin, the hysteria of the performers is transmitted to the public, which mirrors the nervosity of the fin de siècle: “Toute l’humanité moderne [incarnée], névrosée, […] diabolisée, emparadisée par cet alcool qui est son Dieu” (58). Other fin de siècle motifs of these pantomimes and theatrical performances (which are also used to describe eccentrics) are lunaire and loufoque. Lunaire suggests both lunatique or erratic behavior, and other-worldliness and dreaminess; loufoque is defined by déséquilibre, “un peu fou” according to the Trésor, which uses the following quote from Paul Bourget to illustrate the new popular equation between loufoque and excentrique: Des originaux d’un type aussi accusé que mon protecteur finissait par échapper aux remarques à force de les avoir provoquées. Loufoque, maboule, ces basses expressions que leur applique l’argot populaire les justifient d’avance de leurs pires excentricités.13

Along similar lines, Mirbeau also associates loufoque with contemporary attitudes: “La collection d’humanité loufoque et déréglée qui illustrait cette maison bien moderne.”14 Yet, for Rae Beth Gordon, this type of “hysterical theater” that spills out onto street theater and street singers can be seen

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Chapter One as a form of marginality linked to eccentricity. In fact, she sees the fin de siècle eccentric as a male hysteric: Chez l’homme hystérique de Charcot, la marginalité sociale tient lieu de ce qui est excentricité chez la femme. Une des formes que revêt cette marginalité, c’est celle du chanteur de rue […] La chanson populaire serait liée à l’hystérie à l’époque, non seulement par la gesticulation, mais aussi par sa nature anti-sociale. (63)

Gordon describes how the songs of the street performers usually had truants and tramps as their main focus and how the signs of female hysteria described by J.-M. Charcot (“la femme hystérique communique avec son corps et souffre souvent d’aphasie”) mirrored the epileptic gestures and the incoherent glorification of nonsense “qui fait presser le corps et le geste sur le texte” (Gordon 62). As the brothers Goncourt describe, referring to the delirious nature of these performances, the descent from innocent slapstick into laughter based on madness, absurdity, and incoherence reflected certain political manifestations and uneasiness that were also brewing: Il me semble que nous nous approchons d’une révolution. Il y a une pourriture de bêtise dans le public, un rire malsain qu’il faudra un grand bouleversement, du sang pour changer l’air.15

It is in the works of Alphonse Allais, however, that a special fin de siècle version of eccentricity characterized by a merger of the pirouettes of the cabaret, wordplay, and the metaphorization of eccentric neuroses emerges. Breton, in fact, refers to Allais’s work as “entreprises excentriques [où] se découvre d’un chapeau haut de forme, la pensée encore mystérieuse de cette fin du dix-neuvième siècle” (Anthologie de l’humour noir 292). Allais was, in fact, considered “chef de l’Ecole Fumiste” (Grojnowski 6). As Daniel Grojnowski remarks regarding le fumisme, such groups did not define their eccentricities by adhering to an ideology or a leader as the followers of Fourier and Saint Simon had done earlier; these fin de siècle groups erupted collectively.

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes On est en droit de le considérer comme représentatif d’un esprit nouveau où des formules sont essayées dans des pratiques de groupes. Car la loi républicaine, en supprimant l’autorisation préalable, favorise des réunions, notamment dans les cafés du Quartier Latin […] Cet esprit de cabaret se conjugue avec la recherche de modèles culturels qui transgressent les normes et violentent le bon goût. (6–7)

Allais, however, depicts individuals who gradually reveal their eccentricity. In “La barbe,” for example, the protagonist is a model of normalcy until a slight deviation from his routine caused by a friend casually asking him if his beard disturbs his sleep turns him into a hysterical insomniac obsessed with his beard. Unlike the narrator of Maupassant’s Le horla whose obsession with unseen or imagined forces leads to tragedy, the hero of “La barbe” is laughable; his plight is magnified and leads simply to his shaving off his beard. Similarly, in “La maison vraiment moderne,” everything seems normal until the reader realizes that what makes the house modern is that it can keep on turning so that it is always facing the sun in keeping with its motto “toutes les chambres sont exposées au Midi”: Ma maison est une maison tournante […] Pendant l’hiver, saison où le moindre rayon de soleil est ardemment béni, ma maison, dès le matin exposée au ponant, tourne, tourne jusqu’au soir, où elle se trouve virée vers le plein couchant, pour recommencer le lendemain. (Allais, Amours, délices et orgues 210)

Allais takes Nemo’s and Fogg’s “immobile mobility” one step further: this time, the house goes around in circles without moving. In fact, Allais often makes fun of technological “sophistication,” as when he visits the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, where he ridicules such inventions as the “Rez-de-chaussée à tous les étages” or “the automatic pedagogy.” His humor goes beyond that of Larchey’s collection of practical jokes, for example, because he steps away from what is normal and renders it eccentric, as his titles suggest: “Jugement sévère de mon jeune ami Pierre sur La Fontaine en particulier et sur le Grand Siècle en général,” “Confort,” “Un saint clou pour l’exposition de 1900,”

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Chapter One “Batrachromatisme,” “Une innovation,” “Révolution dans la navigation à voile.” With Allais, the eccentric “take” on the fin de siècle is no less carefree in spirit than the ones postulated by authors such as Gautier or Nodier; it is just more acerbic and delirious in its parody of the delirium and the speed of the technological achievements of the time.

*** While nonfictional accounts of eccentrics are useful for discovering how eccentrics were perceived in the nineteenth century, they are relatively superficial in comparison to fictional representations, which have volume and metaphoric weight. The enigmatic, romantic qualities of Dumas’s Monte-Cristo highlight the banality of Parisian high-society life. Des Esseintes breaks with what he perceives as the tedium and over-acceleration of modernity by creating his own pace and retreating from his era. Des Esseintes’s form of decadence differs from Baju’s, which embraces modernity as a catalyst for political action and individualism. Jules Verne’s heroes represent a synergy of the innocent, whimsical notions of English eccentricity with the inventions and technological appropriations of space that the later nineteenth-century France was marching toward. The delirious manifestations of the cabaret performers and Chat Noir-type groups parodied the modernity Baju adored and made fun of the technological achievements and uncertainties of the fin de siècle. In each literary example, eccentrics asserted their own notions of freedom as a reaction to the times they were living in. Indeed, several images of nonconformity emerge from these literary examples in relation to the literary and social norms of their day. What began as a farcical marginalization that was mostly laughed off as ridiculous—such as the Anglomane’s infatuation with all things English, or the self-absorbed cliché of the dandy as a foppish snob—ends in the individualistic revolt of the frenzied cabaret performers. In these examples, eccentricity was translated into comical codes of behavior that captured the spirit of the “ballon à vent” put forth by the GDU. In the early instances, the fops were humorous because they took themselves too seriously while exhibiting a very visible extravagance (sartorial or attitudinal) that people could easily

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Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes identify. The cabaret performers observed and parodied what, in their opinion, the collective norm accepted too enthusiastically, such as rapid technological innovations and progress. Through what was perceived as eccentricity by the normal society, the fin de siècle eccentrics ridiculed a national sense of self-importance that was most prominent during the world expositions at the turn of the century by subverting it within a farcical framework rather than a revolutionary one. This farcical kind of eccentricity fed on a type of group eccentricity (in dress for the dandy or in song for the cabaret performers) that differed from the more narcissistic individualism exhibited by the decadent eccentric. The fictional eccentric also exhibited an active relationship to order. The Anglomanes sought freedom from the stifling conventions of their home country in the model of a foreign “other” represented by the English. Within the English model, they appropriated what they viewed as a refreshing “disorderly order” in symbols of England such as the savage English garden strewn with ruins or fashion innovations and flourishes. They could behave in ways that pointed indirectly toward a preferred political order without threatening the ruling French system. The dandy was also inspired by an English model (Brummell) only to impose a new set of strict conventions on himself. While the word excentrique was imported but given a French spelling (as opposed to eccentric in English), the word dandy maintained the English spelling and remained intensely associated with specific mannerisms and attitudes. With the decadent eccentric, rules were abandoned altogether in favor of a creative and individual restructuring of a private and separate space governed by immediate whims and desires. Des Esseintes’s wealth enabled him to reappropriate and personalize a collective sensation of speed and pressure he found exhausting. He rejected the public reordering of time and conventions in favor of a solitary evaporation of structure. He diverged in this way from the eccentric adventure hero, MonteCristo, who could reject a society he might hate with flamboyance and drama but also with enough mystery to draw that very society within his web. Verne’s Fogg also merged an English type of eccentricity with notions of courage and daring. His was a startling juxtaposition of extreme precision and order

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Chapter One revolving around a fundamentally disruptive and frivolous bet. Lastly, if the Anglomane longed for alternative order through a more liberated English one, the loufoque eccentric thoroughly followed the earliest English definition of eccentric in 1611 as “one that can be held within no compass”16 by constantly undermining and targeting visible examples of order. Undoubtedly, if the word excentrique was first used around 1830 in France as an anglicism barely distinguishable from such terms as bizarre or original, it became an important banner for the unsettling aspects of “modernity” that were to transform French society in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

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Chapter Two

The Clinamen The Discreet Eccentric

Describing his proposed definitive anthology of fous littéraires, Chambernac, the protagonist of Queneau’s Les enfants du Limon, specifies that he will restrict his study to the nineteenth century because it is an era that is close enough for him to understand the mores from which his subjects are deviating: “Je me suis limité au XIXème siècle parce qu’au-delà, il devient extrêmement délicat de juger de la singularité réelle d’un récit. On doit tenir compte de ces modes et de ces mœurs” (Les enfants du Limon 121). Now that the twentieth century has come to a close, who are the modern eccentrics of French fiction? What types do they represent? How do they differ from their nineteenth-century predecessors? Just as Chambernac’s proximity to the end of the nineteenth century enabled him to truly discern the nuances of the types of situations his fous littéraires were reacting to, a contemporary look at eccentrics offers insights into modern manifestations of individualism. In fact, each type of modern eccentric represents a novel approach to nonconformity that, in turn, reveals separate societal symptoms the eccentric is responding to. A variety of archetypal representations of fictional eccentrics resurface in twentieth-century French fiction. They can be approached as though one were setting up a deck of Tarot cards. In place of such familiar figures as Death, the Fool, the Prophetess, the eccentric “gallery” includes: the bureaucrat (Duhamel’s Salavin); the white-collar executive (Toussaint’s Monsieur); the trickster (Des Forêts’s chatterbox); the lover (Etaix’s soupirant); the adventure hero (Echenoz’s Chave); even the modern Parisian apartment building (in Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi). In turn, the ex-centered position of each of 43

Chapter Two these types is creative in relation to the rest of society. The excentered position, in fact, is a privileged vantage point from which one can see and feel the world more clearly. Salavin, for example, embarks on a long soul-searching journey after a gratuitous act of rebellion against the bureaucratic structure he feels trapped in gets him fired. The eccentric lover, the soupirant, may not always get the girl in the end, but his ethereal and old-fashioned messages of love stand tall against the cruder representations of love that surround him. Echenoz’s adventure heroes seem at first to lead passive and hermetic lives until they find themselves in Verne-like situations that transcend the placidity of their routine environments. Just as myths are stories meant to disguise the truths within our collective unconscious, 1 the eccentric’s inventive and creative outlook also points to certain truths that are repressed or overlooked by the rest of society. Thus the eccentric lover counterbalances the overwhelming lust exhibited by more familiar examples of modern love, and Echenoz’s unlikely adventure heroes provide amusing alternatives to the “ère du vide” proclaimed by Lipovetsky. If there is a thread that links each of these types of eccentrics, it is the keen inventiveness with which they approach life. Whether it is with gradual increments of self-awareness (the bureaucrat), narratives (the trickster), or sentiment (the lover), eccentrics irrepressibly create when others merely follow, repeat, or go through life as if by rote. A sampling of a variety of different representations of modern eccentricity makes it possible to delineate a set of new prototypes of eccentricity that differ considerably from the ones depicted in nineteenthcentury fiction and nonfiction. Yet these new eccentric archetypes need to be deciphered as though they communicated in a symbolic language reminiscent of what Joseph Campbell describes as the process by which ancient myths and religions can be unraveled: “The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no more than the talent of an anthropologist to let their teaching be heard. But first we must learn the grammar of the symbols” (viii). An equivalent attempt to learn the “grammar” that constitutes a modern eccentric’s repertoire of discourse, action, and thought allows the decoding of the dis-

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The Clinamen tinctly modern morphology of eccentricity. Just as MonteCristo, Des Esseintes, and Fogg resisted certain drives that characterized the vast majority of their eras, modern eccentrics are no less imaginative in the ways they challenge the accepted trends of modern times. Their modus operandi, however, relies on a sudden discretion that manifests itself in gentle swerves away from accepted conventions of society instead of the grandiose and very visible thrusts of eccentricity for which nineteenth-century eccentrics were so notorious.

The Swerve While all eccentrics move away from the conventions of a given culture or society in some way or another, the modern eccentric does so with more discretion than his nineteenthcentury counterparts. Whereas nineteenth-century eccentrics labored to be noticed, modern eccentrics appear normal, even, in some cases, to the point of being clichés of normalcy. Nonetheless, when reading the signs of modern eccentricity, one tic or a particular quirk keeps them apart from the crowd. As Michel Leiris explains in L’âge d’homme, there is a fraternal bond that links eccentrics with those who are sensitive to their particular cosmology: “L’excentricité semblait le signe par lequel un petit nombre d’élus se reconnaissaient entre eux; cela pouvait se passer aussi bien sur le plan héroïque que sur le plan quotidien […] C’était avant tout comme la marque d’une confrérie” (42). Peter Petro—writing about Frederick, the protagonist in Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornographia—expands on Leiris’s notion that modern eccentrics must be sought out because their eccentricity is so internal that it becomes barely noticeable to those who do not understand them: Gombrowicz’s eccentric Frederick can be discovered only by a kindred soul. He has to be discovered because to the world such an eccentric appears as an ordinary person; the eccentricity is an inner one, betrayed by behavior that is striking only by its ordinariness. (48)

At first glance, Jacques L’Aumône in Queneau’s Loin de Rueil is an average little boy; Queneau’s Pierrot, in Pierrot mon ami, 45

Chapter Two is an ordinary worker in an amusement park; Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, with his pipe, raincoat, and umbrella, a typical petit bourgeois. It is only when one probes beyond their appearances that their unique take on the world is revealed. As Petro continues: [Frederick’s] behavior is quintessentially ordinary. But his ordinariness is hiding an inner, transcendent content, an eccentricity which, precisely because of its ordinary “form” or the envelope in which it is hidden or covered, intrigues the narrator and fires his imagination. (48)

This shift from outer to inner eccentricity, from eccentricity of action to the eccentricity of perception, is perhaps one of the reasons the word excentrique appears radically less frequently in the twentieth-century French novel than in the nineteenthcentury one. Whereas nineteenth-century eccentrics were theatrical as they strove to be identified with the extraordinary, modern eccentrics are firmly based in the quotidian. As Petro remarks: “We are dealing with a transformation of fictional reality; to be precise: the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘eccentric’” (49). In contemporary times, according to the philosopher Lipovetsky, the need to be visibly different or unique becomes so prevalent and competitive that being ordinary, ironically, becomes eccentric. There is such an oversaturation of the unusual and of external stimuli that eccentrics retreat into an inner world rather than join the collective. To want to become an individualist becomes a conformist act for Lipovetsky: L’Hyper-individualisme de notre temps a tendance à susciter une appréhension d’autrui à tonalité comique. A force de personnalisation, chacun devient une bête curieuse pour l’autre, vaguement bizarre et cependant dépourvue de mystère inquiétant […] les pratiques et modes les plus inimaginables trouvent aussitôt des adeptes en masse. (186)

Whereas in the nineteenth century, eccentrics were considered comical figures because their behavior clashed with a regimented and hierarchical society, standardized codes of behavior seem to have been replaced sometimes by behavioral anarchy that turns individuals who want to keep up with current trends into comical figures: 46

The Clinamen Dès lors, le mode d’appréhension d’autrui n’est ni l’égalité ni l’inégalité: c’est la curiosité amusée, chacun d’entre nous étant condamné à apparaître à plus ou moins long terme étonnant, excentrique aux yeux des autres. Ultime désacralisation, le rapport interhumain est ici expurgé de sa gravité immémoriale dans la même foulée que la chute des idoles et grands de ce monde. (Lipovetsky 187)

How then do modern fictional eccentrics detach themselves from the crowd without joining its collective frenzy of being different? They affirm their individuality through a series of slight tics that allow them to softly swerve away from the given mores of their time.

The Clinamen as a Metaphor for the Eccentric The ancient debate between free will and determinism can be used to help construct an epistemology of modern eccentricity. In antiquity, Democritus and Epicurus postulated two different views of human individuality. According to Democritus, atoms, the foundations of our cosmos, fall in unwavering, linear patterns. As Warren F. Motte, Jr., explains: “This motion sets up causal patterns that determine everything from physical phenomena to human thought and action” (Clinamen Redux 263). For Epicurus, atoms do not always fall straight down in such a pattern. He believed that certain atoms randomly “swerved” away from the rest. “It is precisely this swerve that becomes the locus guarantor of free will,” Motte continues, “to denote this phenomenon, Lucretius coined a term, clinamen atomorum, or ‘swerve of the atoms’” (264). Lucretius describes this atomic swerve as an essentially random, unpredictable phenomenon: “Though atoms fall straight downward through the void / By their own weight, yet at uncertain times / And at uncertain points, they swerve a bit” (Lucretius 220–23). Indeed, although there is a general sense of order in the universe, it is this subtle chaos that permits a certain independence from the way things are supposed to be set up. This brief window of opportunity provided by the aleatory within the structured allows for a certain freedom of human action that could not exist in strict Democritan terms. As Motte concludes: “The clinamen guarantees change in the 47

Chapter Two universe and assures man that he is not merely the slave of immutable chains of causality, but rather lord of himself” (Clinamen Redux 265). Along similar lines, eccentrics also swerve from the rest of society in such a way as to underline their own notion of free will in relation to societal conformist impulses. The eccentric’s subtle behavioral mannerisms tend to subvert a given era’s system. Eccentrics’ charm comes from the fact that they are as nonprogrammatic as the clinamen, which, according to Motte, “is an element distinct from the system, intervening in aleatory fashion; its function is on the contrary to subvert the control mechanism” (Clinamen Redux 265). Lipovetsky modernizes the dialectic between a controlling system and free will by conceiving the modern world as a double-edged consumer society that liberates individuals by offering them a multitude of choices and lifestyles that subsequently enslave them by seducing them with suggested ways of going through life. The self is increasingly lost in a maelstrom of media-produced images: Avec l’univers des objets, de la publicité, des médias, la vie quotidienne et l’individu n’ont plus de pesanteur propre, annexés qu’ils sont par le procès de la mode et de l’obsolescence accélérée: la réalisation définitive de l’individu coïncide avec sa désubstantialisation, avec l’émergence d’atomes flottants évidés par la circulation de modèles et de ce fait recyclables continûment. (120)

As Tati shows in his films, technological progress has been handed over to mass marketeers who have succeeded in imposing a modus operandi for thought and action onto a gullible public. This is the “final straw” for Lipovetsky, who asserts: Tombe ainsi le dernier pan qui échappait encore à la pénétration bureaucratique, à la gestion scientifique et technique des comportements, au contrôle des pouvoirs modernes qui partout abolissent les formes traditionnelles de sociabilité et s’emploient à produire-organiser ce que doit être la vie des groupes et individus, jusque dans leurs désirs et intimités. (120)

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The Clinamen True individualism and nonconformity become increasingly ambiguous in Lipovetsky’s typology because a modern sense of conventions and traditions has become muddled in a morass of mass homogenization that, in turn, further atomizes the individual. Mores are so diversified and yet so visible that subtlety and understatement become the eccentric’s most potent form of self-expression. Eccentrics, like the clinamen, generate independent thought and action by softly curving away from what the rest of the “atoms” think and do. This is the ultimate manifestation of the eccentric’s originality and creativity: behind the disguise of normalcy lies an unseen poetry. If the creative spark of the clinamen is indeed as powerful as the Kabbalist Isaac Luria believed it to be, that is to say, a spark that initiated the whole universe itself (which Motte paraphrases in terms of “God’s first move in creating the universe was a swerve” [Clinamen Redux 272]), then the eccentric’s clinamen-like qualities can be the creative spark for a novel because eccentrics can also be successful in creating universes and outlooks of their own.

Salavin, Duhamel’s White-Collar Eccentric Georges Duhamel’s series of books devoted to the life of Salavin (Vie et aventures de Salavin) is an early if darker representation of the modern eccentric as a clinamen. In the first of the books, Confession de minuit, Salavin is first seen as a very orderly bureaucrat who religiously follows the métroboulot-dodo urban routine. “Je dois avouer,” he admits, “que j’ai vécu fort retiré à la maison Socque et Sureau. Je détestais les circonstances qui me faisaient sortir de mes fonctions et de mes habitudes” (Confession de minuit 12). He works in a labyrinthine, depersonalized, white-collar factory: On aperçoit toutes sortes de compartiments superposés, où les hommes travaillent […] Il y a de ces hommes qui sont enfoncés jusqu’au torse dans des bureaux américains compliqués comme des machines. D’autres se tiennent ratatinés au frates de hauts tabourets fluets comme des perchoirs. On voit des murs immenses, recouverts de cartonniers et qui ressemblent un peu au columbarium de Père-Lachaise. Là

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Chapter Two devant, circulent, sur des galeries aériennes, deux ou trois garçons qui ont un air affairé de mouches à miel. (11)

In this behemoth-like structure, Salavin is a mechanized soldier who must follow the orders of impersonal and autocratic superiors. When he is summoned to his division head’s office, he is directed by a series of anonymous workers who hurl staccato commands at him. He acts like an automaton (“je fais quatre pas d’automate”) and he is treated like a piece of machinery: “Il y a un domestique en livrée et en bas blanc. Il me demande le numéro de mon service et me pousse dans une grande pièce en murmurant: ‘on vous attend’” (11). In this cold, orderly office structure, the clinamen within Salavin emerges and wreaks havoc. When he is called upon to closely examine something he has written to his supervisor, he suddenly becomes aware of the latter’s ear: “Je ne sais pourquoi je me mis à regarder ce coin de peau avec une attention extrême” (13). The incongruity of a real, living human body within the hegemonic mechanics of the office suddenly leads to an epiphany for Salavin: Cela se trouvait tout près de moi mais rien ne m’avait jamais semblé plus lointain et plus étranger. Je pensais: “c’est de la chair humaine. Il y a des gens pour qui toucher cette chairlà est chose toute naturelle; il y a des gens pour qui c’est chose familière.” (13)

Increasingly, he becomes overwhelmed with a desire to connect with this ear either by kissing it or simply by touching it. Whereas he had been satisfied with being a mere cog in a huge, impersonal machine, Salavin’s human side begins to surface. His indifferent, unfeeling boss is transformed in his mind’s eye into a feeling, sentient being. He even imagines his boss as a child, then as a family man: “Je vis tout à coup, comme un rêve, un petit garçon. M. Sureau est père de famille—un petit garçon qui passait un bras autour de M. Sureau” (8). Although these images are the first human touches to light up his dour, bureaucratic world, Salavin feels he must repress them intellectually, but when his boss rudely ignores him, he is affected in a visceral, rebellious manner. His desire for literal human contact begins to take over: 50

The Clinamen J’avais d’abord été scandalisé par ce besoin de ma main de toucher l’oreille de M. Sureau, de me trouver à moi-même que cette oreille n’était pas une chose interdite, inexistante, imaginaire, que ce n’était que de la chair humaine, comme ma propre oreille. (14)

Touching the ear is no longer an eccentric impulse or a whim for Salavin. It resembles an existential decision. It becomes a way of asserting his own existence and his basic, human freedom within an alienating hegemony. By reaching out and doing something completely unexpected and illogical, Salavin breaks from the slavery of his work life and plunges into an unpredictable world. He no longer allows himself to be confined to the rules of the workplace that he had considered his only life source and that Herbert Marcuse describes in terms of a “society still […] organized in such a way that procuring the necessities of life constitutes the full-time and life-long occupation of specific social classes, which are therefore unfree and prevented from a human existence” (Marcuse 128). By touching his boss’s ear, Salavin regains control over his life, no matter how briefly: “Et, tout à coup, j’allongeais délibérément le bras et posais, avec soin, l’index où je voulais, un peu au-dessus du lobule, sur un coin de peau brique” (14). Salavin’s social and professional transgression leads to his employer’s total panic and wrath. It is not Salavin’s actual deed, which in the abstract is inconsequential and trivial, but his rupture with his assigned function within his work station, as a bureaucratic slave, that ignites the full retaliation of the institution he works for. Salavin refuses to fall blindly in with the other atoms in the machine. Yet, his swerve leads to his expulsion from the bureaucratic collective that, in order to survive, cannot tolerate even the slightest eccentricity. His employer’s reaction is first to recoil then to take out a revolver, then to scream uncontrollably before Salavin is finally ejected as mechanically as he had arrived: Je ne sais plus au juste ce qui s’est passé. J’ai été saisi par dix garçons de bureau, traîné dans une pièce voisine, déshabillé, fouillé. J’ai repris mes vêtements; quelqu’un est venu m’apporter mon chapeau et me dire qu’on désirait étouffer l’affaire, mais que je devais quitter immédiatement la maison. On m’a conduit jusqu’à la porte. (15)

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Chapter Two Salavin’s reaction to and eventual liberation from the chains of an automated society are similar to Bardamu’s expulsion from the Automat in Times Square in Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit. In both cases, what is human in each individual cannot be contained and erupts in a spontaneous but alarming manner. Each reaches out for human contact and each is swiftly punished. As Bardamu describes: J’en avais assez d’être seul! Plus de rêve! De la sympathie! Du contact! Mademoiselle, vous me connaissez fort peu, mais moi déjà je vous aime, voulez-vous que nous nous mariions? Sa réponse ne me parvint jamais, car un géant survint à ce moment précis et me poussa dehors, justement, simplement, sans injure ni brutalité, dans la nuit comme un chien qui vint s’oublier. (Voyage au bout de la nuit 201)

Just as Bardamu’s banishment from the Automat leads to an odyssey of further wanderings and adventures during his long voyage, Salavin’s expulsion from work catapults him into a life-altering chain of events. For Salavin, the ear episode marks the beginning of the frightening freedom of “finding one’s self.” No longer required to live out his life in tasks and commands, his eccentric moment within himself forces him not only to re-evaluate his situation in life, but to redefine himself as a free-thinking, independent human being: “J’ai, ce jour-là mesuré, visité des profondeurs dont mon esprit ne peut plus s’évader. Il s’est fait une déchirure dans les nuages, et pendant une minute, j’ai très nettement regardé le fond du fond” (16). The swerve of one second of eccentric action recharters the course of his entire life, which will never conform again to a given norm, as he explains about himself after the incident: “Je m’arrêtais donc tout à fait pour m’accouder au parapet qui domine la Seine […] Une minute de pause suffit à me bien montrer que je n’étais pas du tout dans mon état normal. Ce fameux état dans lequel je ne suis jamais” (19). Because of one uncontrollable moment, Salavin becomes a unique and original individual who will spend the rest of his life drifting through the streets of Paris and trying in vain to be a saint, alternatively seeking company and retreating into misanthropy. Paris will become the chronotope in which he will explore his inner self numerous times. His journey will be a

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The Clinamen variant of the stationary voyage that would not have been possible had he lived out the rest of his life as a meaningless and unidimensional part of a bureaucratic wheel. His swerve becomes his opened door to free will even though such a state of freedom is hardly a guarantee of happiness for someone who will become such a melancholic figure.

Monsieur, Toussaint’s Modern-Day Salavin The title character in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Monsieur is similar to Salavin because he too is surrounded by a bureaucratic hegemony. Unlike Salavin, however, Monsieur is a jeune cadre dynamique. Instead of being ordered around, Monsieur is supposed to make executive decisions and order others around. At first glance, Monsieur not only lacks Salavin’s alienation within an anonymous business environment, but he seems quite at ease within his milieu: Très vite, Monsieur se fit assez bien accepter au sein de la société. Bien que demeurant réservé avec ses collègues, il ne négligeait pas, à l’occasion de se mêler à quelque conversation de couloir où, les yeux baissés, il les écoutait débattre de telle ou telle question. (Monsieur 8)

Nonetheless, his life initially seems regulated as he goes about his business with routine nonchalance. At work, every morning, he takes the same amount of coffee: “Il en buvait tous les matins une ou deux tasses” (8). When he finishes conversations with co-workers, he goes “about face” back to work like a toy soldier: “Puis s’excusant de devoir prendre congé, il tournait les talons et regagnait nonchalamment son bureau” (9). The early paragraphs of the book chronicle Monsieur’s structured environment with opening sentences such as “deux fois par semaine” (10); “au milieu de l’après-midi […] Monsieur redescendait à la cafétéria” (10); “chaque jeudi, Monsieur devait assister à une réunion de travail” (11); “Monsieur, un soir par semaine, pratiquait le football en salle” (14). Monsieur goes through the motions of his job with robotlike precision and detachment. He tries to remain anonymous and as invisible as possible: “Monsieur s’asseyait à la dix-septième place en partant de la gauche, celle où, par expérience, il avait remarqué 53

Chapter Two que la présence passait le plus inaperçue” (12). In fact, many of his mechanical series of actions are followed by the refrain “hip, hop” as if to underline the fact that Monsieur knows exactly what moves to make in order to avoid making mistakes or standing out: Lorsque le directeur général prononçait son nom à voix haute, Monsieur avançait la tête, comme surpris, et, s’inclinant pour le saluer, répondait aussitôt d’une manière sèche, précise; technique professionnelle. Hip, hop. Après quoi, les doigts tremblant légèrement, il se replaçait dans l’ombre de sa voisine. (12)

Instead of initiating any thought during the meetings he must attend, he goes through painstaking efforts to blend in, following motion for motion the gestures of the person he happens to be sitting next to: “Monsieur, veillant scrupuleusement à rester dans l’axe de son corps, reculant lorsqu’elle reculait, avançant lorsqu’elle se penchait en avant de manière à n’être jamais trop directement exposé” (12). The lack of attention he brings to himself succeeds to the point where his boss does not even recognize him after the usual departmental meetings. Yet, interoffice interaction is so codified that words are not needed and Monsieur can continue to exist anonymously. In Monsieur’s office environment, the executives, fearing any real contact, take refuge in what the sociologist Erving Goffmann has labeled “orientation gloss,” pretending to be engaged in an important activity in order to avoid appearing out of place or having to engage in social interaction. After a meeting, for example, when Monsieur is left alone with his boss in an elevator, both individuals are frozen socially and pretend to interact with each other for lack of any true communicative desire. Each flees the other in different ways: Monsieur se trouvait dans l’ascenseur avec le directeur général, il lui demandait à quel étage il devait se rendre, de manière à pouvoir lui appuyer sur le bouton correspondant. Pendant le trajet, ils regardaient l’un et l’autre les parois de la cabine, à des endroits différents. Monsieur gardait les yeux baissés. Le directeur général, lui, manipulait son porteclefs. Parfois ils échangeaient quelques considérations choisies. Le directeur général écoutait Monsieur attentivement,

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The Clinamen les bras croisés, tout en ayant toujours l’air de se demander qui il pouvait bien être. (11)

Monsieur sleepwalks through his day with such insouciance that he appears a little apart from the rest of his colleagues. In the workplace, this is seen as self-confidence, as his secretary views it: “Vous avez toujours l’air de ne rien foutre, vous, lui disait-elle amicalement à l’occasion, ajoutant, non sans finesse, que c’était là le signe auquel on reconnaissait les vrais grands travailleurs” (13). When he is seen routinely dawdling at his desk, the secretaries admire the ease with which his days go by: Lorsque au travail, par exemple (le poste était bonnard), il épluchait une orange sur son bureau, son mouchoir froissé bien à plat sur la table, il faisait l’admiration des secrétaires. De Monsieur, au seizième étage, personne n’avait à se plaindre. Mme Dubois-Lacour trouvait que c’était un jeune remarquable, ce Monsieur, centralien, calme, sérieux, ponctuel. (89)

Outside the predictable confines of his office environment, Monsieur’s slight distance from the rest of society is more noticeable. For example, during his weekly indoor soccer matches, he is always a little apart from the rest of the players, with whom he does not speak. In the locker room, “il se tenait à l’écart du groupe”; on the field, “il arrivait le dernier sur le terrain” (14). On the street, outside of his usual structured environments, he is even more out of sorts in relation to others. For example, waiting for the bus one night, he puts up an artificial barrier, a newspaper, in order to avoid contact with other commuters with whom he identifies and yet whom he abhors: “Monsieur n’aimait pas tout ce qui de près, ou de loin, lui ressemblait.” When another man asks him a question, he ignores him. When he ignores him a second time, the other man jostles him: Comme Monsieur ne répondait pas, terminant la lecture de son article, le monsieur, souriant prudemment, crut bon de lui répéter sa question. Monsieur baissa le journal et le considéra rêveusement de haut en bas. Le monsieur s’approcha de lui et brutalement, le bouscula. (15)

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Chapter Two Whereas Monsieur can blindly establish a relative comfortzone in an artificial order imposed by his workplace or gymnasium, where behavior is so codified as to appear automatic, the unpredictability of the outdoor city is very alarming to him, and the disorder throws him off balance, literally and figuratively: “Déséquilibré, Monsieur se heurta de plein fouet, l’arrêt métallique de l’abri-bus” (15). Similar to the way Salavin’s unexpected spontaneous act of touching his boss’s ear brings an end to the bureaucratic tyranny that had governed his life, the violent human contact Monsieur experiences on the street leads to his own gradual drift away from the life he had been accustomed to. Little by little, Monsieur’s world outside of the office begins to swerve in odd directions. If at work, he is afraid of erring in the sense of making a mistake, his life outside of the office is characterized by constant, circular, and passive errancy away from any fixed position. His first ex-centered spatial shift occurs when, on a whim, he decides to take off for Cannes in order to “recuperate” from the slight injury to his hand received when he was pushed at the bus stop. Although he is staying at his fiancée’s family’s apartment at the time, he goes off on the trip on his own. Monsieur decides to leave spontaneously, alone, and for no real reason. After explaining that public relations are not his strong point, Monsieur initiates his travel plans out of the blue: Monsieur, se massant délicatement le poignet, dit à sa fiancée, qu’il envisageait de mettre à profit ces quelques jours d’arrêt de travail pour se rendre à Cannes. Comme sa fiancée, s’en étonnant, voulut savoir ce qu’il allait faire à Cannes, Monsieur dit qu’il ne savait pas, qu’il verrait bien. D’autres questions? Non. Parfait. Le voyage se passa bien. (25)

Yet, his trip to Cannes becomes as monotonous as his office life. Checking in to the first hotel he comes across, he contacts an old friend and spends most of his days in a vegetative state in a hammock: “Insensiblement, Monsieur se laissa couler dans le hamac, porté par des brises légères, les jambes croisées, les yeux ouverts, suivant la pensée, le rythme des balancements, ne les précédant pas, ne les provoquant pas” (28). When he returns to Paris, he does not go back to his own apartment but nonchalantly installs himself in his fiancée’s family home, 56

The Clinamen where he plays Scrabble and proves himself useful even after his fiancée starts dating somebody else. Monsieur remains passively immobile and accepts what comes his way with juvenile naïveté. In fact, Monsieur becomes a second child to his ex-fiancée’s family, who ironically, are called “les Parrain”: Monsieur, lui, continuait d’entretenir avec tout le monde les meilleures relations. Les Parrain, par exemple, qui, sans chercher à comprendre ses raisons, avaient très bien admis que Monsieur ne tenait pas à retourner habiter chez son frère, ne ménageaient aucun effort pour l’encourager à trouver un nouvel appartement. (31)

When he finally does move out, it is because Mme Parrain, as a favor, finds him an apartment close to them. Otherwise, Monsieur would have made no decision whatsoever and would have continued to lead the life of an adopted child. Once again, similar to the vacation in Cannes, which was characterized by his own inertia, Monsieur enjoys an embryolike existence at “home” in which he does not even bother to unpack his belongings, let alone decorate his new apartment: Monsieur n’avait touché à rien, n’avait rien déballé. Il était assis dans la chambre à coucher, la lumière éteinte, dans un transatlantique. Vêtu d’un costume gris, d’une chemise blanche et d’une cravate sombre que tout le monde lui enviait, il écoutait la radio en se touchant les joues, ou le sexe; c’était le bon plan, au hasard de son corps, mais aucun réconfort, à vrai dire, ne lui venait de s’avoir en permanence sous la main. (32)

Like a Magritte figure who is always dressed in a suit, whether he is falling from the sky or at home in his bedroom, Monsieur retains the external signs of his corporate life, but is disconnected from his internal self and even his own body, which seems as barren to him as his new apartment. While he may be “incorporated” within his company, he is ex-corporated in relation to his own corps. He is content with the scattered lawn furniture in his apartment, including a deck chair that he gradually transforms into a bed and that replaces the Cannes hammock as an ersatz womb:

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Chapter Two Son transatlantique, en toile bleu marine, permettait trois positions que Monsieur adopta tour à tour suivant les heures de la soirée, de la plus droite à la plus inclinée. Quand la nuit fut déjà bien avancée, il abaissa les lattes de soutènement du siège jusqu’aux derniers taquets et se laissa glisser en arrière, les yeux fermés jusqu’à deux doigts du sol. (33)

In Tati’s Mon oncle, when Monsieur Hulot rearranges an uncomfortable but stylish chair in his sister’s modern apartment and transforms it into a pleasant bed, the filmmaker brings attention to Hulot’s creativity by showing how unnatural modern furniture can be. Toussaint’s Monsieur, however, is so divorced from traditional bourgeois comforts that he settles for what is immediately in front of him. He lacks even the minimal amount of imagination necessary to adjust his private space. He enjoys a type of “zero degree” emotional existence: “Monsieur resta en l’état pendant des heures, à la bonne franquette, où l’absence de douleur était un plaisir et celle de plaisir une douleur, supportable en sa présence” (33). The transatlantique, which so enchants Monsieur, brings an ironic touch to the story because it suggests a voyage, perhaps a luxurious ocean crossing, yet, in a limited variant of De Maistre’s stationary travels, Monsieur delights in a “voyage autour de ma chambre,” which, like his trip to Cannes, is devoid of any kind of exoticism, adventure, or even fun. When an annoying, odd neighbor, Kaltz, comes knocking at the door, then increasingly comes to visit, and finally convinces Monsieur to transcribe his scientific ramblings (Kaltz is a geologist/mineralogist researcher supposedly attached to the CNRS), Monsieur tries to move for the sole purpose of avoiding his neighbor. Communicating his feelings to Kaltz, or simply locking him out, are possibilities that are not even considered by Monsieur: “Monsieur ne savait rien refuser” (36); “le plus sage apparut à Monsieur de déménager” (40). Again, as he did with Mme Parrain, Monsieur waits for a mother figure to find him a new apartment. His dutiful secretary accomplishes this mission, but Monsieur at first refuses because her proposal involves living in a family’s dingy guest room and helping the family’s adolescent son with his homework. He eventually accepts the arrangement as the lesser of two evils when he can no longer stand his demanding neighbor. He actually abandons 58

The Clinamen his new living arrangements, however, in favor of the annoying neighbor when the teenage son he is supposed to tutor becomes too flippant with him. Monsieur seesaws incessantly from “yes” to “no” to “yes” about his apartment. He goes from one position to another without much reflection on each decision. Of course, as a result of his shuttling back and forth from one domicile to another, he is never anchored in any real home. Even when he wanders off into the streets as a way of relaxing, he is at a loss as to what he should do. As a Beckett character might wonder, before Monsieur sees his first apartment, he stands in front of his future building and asks: “Que faire?” (41). When Monsieur, disgusted with the teenage boy he must tutor, simply abandons the apartment “sur la pointe des pieds” (77), he again wanders around the streets for lack of anything more creative to do: Monsieur, ensuite, traîna dans le quartier, marcha lentement dans les rues. Il regardait les devantures des magasins de disques, des magasins de pulls—acheta des chaussures. Ma foi. En ressortant du magasin, de plus en plus songeur, il prit le journal sur la place et entra dans un café, son carton de chaussures à la main. (79)

Once back in his spartan apartment, he is trapped anew by his persistent neighbor, who insists on dictating his scientific opus to an inwardly frustrated but outwardly passive Monsieur. When his lateral shifts from one apartment to another fail to satisfy him, Monsieur moves his wanderlust onto a vertical axis by going from his apartment to the roof of his building, which seems to provide him with the peace of mind he needs. Like all of Monsieur’s “travels,” however, his rooftop excursions are minimalist: Le matin, après le petit déjeuner, lorsqu’il faisait beau et qu’il ne travaillait pas, il sortait de l’appartement et montait jusqu’au dernier étage pour aller se promener. Les toits étaient irréprochables, de l’avis de Monsieur, presque plats, reliés les uns aux autres par des passerelles métalliques. Lorsque, sa promenade terminée, Monsieur redescendait dans l’appartement, il refermait la porte derrière lui sans faire de bruit pour ne pas attirer l’attention de Kaltz. (87)

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Chapter Two Similar to the metaphoric vision of the businessmen in suits falling from the sky like raindrops in Magritte’s Golconde (1953), Monsieur’s vertical ascension to the roof of his building is the only way he can escape the confines of an existence that is obviously unsatisfying to him. Although undramatic in relation to more radical forms of rebellion, Monsieur makes an almost microscopic step toward changing his environment or adding something, however simple or uneventful, to his empty lifestyle. Whereas the characters in Queneau’s novels poeticize their spaces with magical realist flourishes, such as peculiar drinks (“un vin blanc gommé,” “l’essence de fenouille”), Monsieur’s life resembles a Mondrian painting in its order and lack of emotion. His domestic space is so vacant that it can be embellished by an ordinary chair that would, at first, seem an unlikely poetic object: Monsieur, parfois, pour améliorer son ordinaire, emportait une chaise avec lui pour se rendre sur le toit. Arrivé au cinquième étage, il s’engageait dehors, puis, s’accroupissant à côté de la trappe, récupérait sa chaise et allait se placer un peu à l’écart, sur une plate-forme qui jouxtait la façade. Il s’installait à l’abri de l’auvent, et restait assis là, tranquille sous la batière. (88)

The image of Monsieur sitting on his barren roof looking out at the sky is not unlike certain Magritte paintings, such as A la recherche du plaisir (1962), where the faceless bowlerhatted man looks out onto a forest, and L’ami intime (1958), where the bowler-hatted man looks at mountains while a baguette and a glass of wine are juxtaposed on his back. Like the faceless Magritte figure, Monsieur has his back to the world he knows and tries to perceive something from an alternative landscape. In Magritte’s Le pain quotidien (1942), the daily bread in question is a giant image of a naked woman floating around a cloud formation. Indeed, that painting is similar to Monsieur’s quest for something beyond his routine existence: he can earn enough “bread” to live comfortably, but he lacks the imagination to conceive of dreams outside of his sterile surroundings. Although his spatial movements can be understood as his valiant attempts to break loose from his personal entrapments, even these manifestations of revolt are minimal and

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The Clinamen minimalist. This is why the ordinary chair takes on so much significance for Monsieur. It is a symbol of an eventual freedom within his limited capacity to feel and to create: Monsieur, plus que jamais, était maintenant toujours en train d’être assis sur une chaise. Il ne demandait pas davantage à la vie, Monsieur, une chaise. Là, entre deux réticences, il tâchait de se réfugier dans la pratique apaisante de gestes simples. (89)

Monsieur’s gestures are revelatory of how his life is devoid of any imaginary richness. His emptiness is once again similar to a Magritte painting, Les vacances de Hegel (1958), which, against an empty background, depicts the improbable equilibrium of a glass of water balancing in the middle of an open umbrella. Monsieur (who is not given a family name in the novel) conceives of vacations in terms of true mental vacancy in a hammock, a lawn chair, or just an ordinary chair. This is how he seeks an “improbable balance” in a life that is perpetually ex-centered or spatially off-kilter despite its cool exterior. Perhaps it is out of a need for balance and inner calm that Monsieur is drawn to the aquarium in his office building’s cafeteria. He identifies with the simplicity of the fish who swim mindlessly from one side of the tank to another. His watching the fish in the tank can even be seen as a mise en abyme of his own existence at the office. Even the cafeteria is described as a type of aquarium in terms of “le grand hall de verre, ça et là,” with “des jardinières de plantes vertes.” It is the blank tranquility of the fish who do not think about their actions and are accountable to no one that delights Monsieur as he tries to escape from his desk work: Souvent, avant de remonter dans son bureau, Monsieur […] passait quelques instants debout devant l’aquarium et regardait les poissons, les mains dans les poches, ne se lassant pas de contempler l’inaccessible pureté des trajectoires qu’ils traçaient avec indifférence. (89–90)

Unlike Monsieur’s life outside the office, which is characterized by either ataxic or destabilizing moves away from the people he flees, life in the aquarium is peaceful, safe, and

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Chapter Two similar in its mindlessness to Monsieur’s stupors in the hammock or his lawn furniture. He admires the literal vacation the fish perpetually enjoy and which Monsieur wants to emulate as he seeks to withdraw from the rest of society (his refrain throughout the novel is “les gens tout de même”), from complicated thoughts (such as those proposed by his neighbor, Kaltz), and even from movement itself (his immobility in his apartment, on vacation, or on the roof of his building). Although Monsieur’s attachment to the fish reveals an inner need for stability, his restless moves point to more than just a search for a happy domicile. His own boss “se demandait qui il pouvait bien être,” and so does Monsieur. In addition to asking himself “que faire?” he must also, unconsciously, be asking himself “qui suis-je?” Although his office identity is given to him automatically from external markers such as his position in the company, his office, his desk, his uniform-like business suit, he is forced to create an identity for himself in the real world. Gautier, who made his external identity a work of art, was an extremely visible and recognizable presence; Monsieur, however, searches for an identity of his own in incremental and seemingly minute steps such as shifting apartments or finding a place to sit alone on a rooftop. In this way, Monsieur can be seen as a postmodern Captain Nemo. Similar to Nemo, or “no-one” in Latin, Monsieur is nameless and faceless. His eccentric moments of spontaneity enable him to define himself or break loose from an already prefabricated image of himself. Just as Nemo circled the globe within the confines of his locked-up submarine, like an aquarium fish, Monsieur “swims” indifferently throughout Paris without really experiencing its loveliness. Monsieur cannot even say, like Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Axël, “Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous” (Axël 249). For him, there are no domestiques to live out his life for him. That is why he must quest for a life of his own, no matter how passive his attempts might be. In fact, Monsieur achieves a sort of disappearance in his outward life. After the incident during which he was shoved at the bus stop, his life outside the office spirals toward an eventual state of nothingness. If before the incident, he was happily involved in a relationship with his fiancée, her family, and pre-

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The Clinamen sumably his own family (he once lived with his brother and baby-sat for his niece), toward the end of the novel, he is alone in a chair, surrounded by an anonymous, impersonal city. One is reminded of Gabriel’s musings at the Eiffel Tower in Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro: “Etre ou le néant. Voilà la question. Monter, descendre […] Tant fait l’homme qu’il disparaît” (77). In Queneau’s typology, it is the perpetuating grind of the quotidian nine-to-five shift that erases one’s free time. That is why the jour de grève in Zazie dans le métro becomes jour de fête for Zazie, who enjoys the anarchy of Paris when the city is forced to deviate from its collective weekly routine. Monsieur achieves this strike on a personal level. His chaos is inward and caused by the clinamen-like unexpected event at the bus stop that puts into question the somnambulist existence he was performing without question. Indeed, while Zazie’s holiday is fed by the frenetic energy of the city in chaos, Monsieur disappears gradually and without fanfare. He resembles the man in Magritte’s L’homme au journal (1928), a four-paneled work: In the first frame, we see a distinguished bourgeois gentleman reading a newspaper in a comfortable sitting room; in the last three frames, we see the same room without the man. Similar to l’homme au journal’s disappearance, Monsieur vanishes from the rest of society outside the workplace without being noticed because he is motionless at home and seemingly emotionless. He is incapable of attaching himself to anyone and prefers oblivion to any real human contact. Nonetheless, he does seem to find some spirituality from watching constellations in the nighttime sky from his rooftop perch. The simplicity of the nighttime sky fills him with a newfound sense of stimulation that he may have been seeking during all of his wanderings: Autour de Monsieur, maintenant, c’était comme la nuit même. Immobile sur sa chaise, la tête renversée en arrière, il mêla de nouveau son regard à l’étendue des cieux, l’esprit tendu vers la courbure des horizons. Respirant paisiblement, il parcourait toute la nuit de la pensée, toute, loin dans la mémoire de l’univers, jusqu’au rayonnement du fond du ciel. Atteignant là l’ataraxie, nulle pensée ne se mut plus alors dans l’esprit de Monsieur; mais son esprit était le monde— qu’il avait convoqué. Oui. Il allait se gêner, Monsieur. (96–97)

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Chapter Two In fact, it is during these moments of complete Zen-like emptiness that he feels recharged enough to ask a woman he met at a party out for a dinner date. With his date, however, he is clumsy. For example, he does not know whether or not he should pay the check at dinner, and he remains paralyzed after he takes her hand while they are sitting on a bench together. They sit in silence until he abruptly decides that they should get up and leave: “Bon, on y va, dit-il. Ils se levaient et se remirent en route” (110). Indeed, with the exception of his refrains, such as “les gens tout de même,” Monsieur is practically silent throughout the novel. He cannot communicate with others because he is out of touch with who he is himself. Sometimes, he seeks refuge from seeking out his identity by thinking of life in scientific terms. For example, one day, when he is taking his nieces to the Palais de la Découverte, he has enough confidence to give them learned advice on the world because they are even more inexperienced than he is: “Monsieur, ne perdant jamais une occasion de les instruire, essayait de leur donner à comprendre les grands principes de la vie, qui, pour elles demeuraient encore plus mystérieux que pour lui” (72). As he tries to expound on abstract scientific laws to his easily distracted nieces, he is actually giving away hints that he has an urge to flee from society himself: Monsieur leur expliquait encore que quand ils marchaient vers l’est, leur vitesse s’additionnait à la vitesse de rotation de la terre, tandis que lorsqu’ils se déplaçaient vers l’ouest, elle s’en soustrayait […] A votre avis, si l’on cherche à se fuir soi-même, ce que je ne vous conseille pas d’ailleurs, reprit-il arrêté sur le trottoir les mains dans les poches pendant que les jumelles en petits anoraks roses, sous lui, guardaient la tête levée pour l’écouter, est-ce qu’il vaut mieux marcher vers l’est ou vers l’ouest? […] Vers l’est, parce que le temps, pendant le déplacement, s’écoule plus vite. (73)

While the little girls interrupt his pontificating to ask for pizza, and the adolescent boy he tutors in physics interrupts him to make wisecracks, Monsieur appears to be seeking meaningful answers to life for himself. If “le temps, pendant le déplacement, s’écoule plus vite,” Monsieur’s “déplacements”

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The Clinamen represent his attempts to accelerate a stagnating life. In fact, he is looking for the right direction because he lacks both insight into himself and a sense of purpose. He drifts east-west, updown, without an emotional compass to guide him. His scientific ramblings fail him: he is not sure what, if anything, he is trying to find. Moreover, the fact that the children he lectures about abstractions are more interested in the tangible desires of childhood such as eating pizza or playing games underlines the gulf Monsieur experiences between the sterile order imposed by his time at work and the sad lack of real play during his supposed “time off” when, mentally, his brain seems to be “turned off.” Occasionally, he has flashes of creativity but they are always inchoate and vanish as quickly as they arrive: Le soir quand il n’avait pas de feuillets à recopier, Monsieur, couché sur son lit, épluchait décorativement des oranges, les travaillait avec un canif suisse pour en faire des plantes aquatiques, nénuphar ou lis d’eau. Abstraction faite de rares pensées fugitives qui, informulées, s’anéantissaient continûment dans son esprit. Monsieur, à mesure qu’il consentait à poursuivre, n’avait plus aucune conscience du temps, ni vers l’est, ni vers l’ouest. (73–74)

As opposed to Fogg, who tries to control and overcome time, Monsieur’s moments of deviation from his machinelike business persona are his opportunities to escape time and disappear from a world that annoys him. During those moments, he attempts to reconfigure his outer and inner spaces, which, when they are in conflict, lead to creativity, and when they are merged, lead to inertia. At one point, in the middle of an impromptu session with Ludovic, the boy he must tutor, Monsieur abruptly vanishes and goes out onto the street, standing motionless beneath the boy’s window while fantasizing what it would be like to be a roving electron. He wonders even if Ludovic would be able to conceive of him as such or whether it would be too complicated a concept for the boy: Peut-être que voyant Monsieur là, du reste, devant lui, sur le trottoir, alors qu’il aurait dû être derrière lui, dans la chambre, Ludovic pris de vertige, se représenterait-il que

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Chapter Two Monsieur, qui ne pouvait évidemment s’accomplir qu’à l’état stationnaire, se déplaçait apparemment sans transition et que son énergie, comme celle de l’électron, du reste, dans ses passes de bonneteau, hip hop, effectuait un saut discontinu à un certain moment, mais qu’il était impossible de déterminer à quel moment ce saut se produirait. (78)

In long-winded scientific language, Monsieur attempts to communicate his yearnings for a personal sense of unpredictability that his office-world lacks. In this way, he legitimizes a craving for chaos that, in terms of the clinamen, would mean a sense of originality and individualism. It is this reassuring, scientific theme that he flees when it is imposed upon him (when his lecturing neighbor, Kaltz, dictates his book to him, for example) or which he, in turn, imposes on others at inappropriate moments such as with his nieces in the middle of the street or during an awkward moment of silence with his date on a bench. Once again, looking up at the sky, as if he were in his rooftop chair, he seeks inspiration from the stars: Arrivés à la Saint-Sulpice, ils prirent place sur un banc, et restèrent longtemps assis l’un à côté de l’autre, dans un silence exemplaire. Une vue de l’esprit, dit Monsieur, au bout d’un moment, une vue de l’esprit. Pardon? dit Anna Bruckhardt [his date], un peu surprise par sa soudaine loquacité. Non, rien, dit Monsieur. Mais si, mais si, dit Anna Bruckhardt. Le regard, dit Monsieur. Une vue de l’esprit, oui. De l’avis de la science. (109)

Just as his unusual apartments are indicative of Monsieur’s dissatisfaction with his immediate space and his need to fill an emotional void, his spontaneous scientific rambling is a sign of Monsieur’s need to communicate on a more challenging level than the platitudes he is conditioned to use at work. That his listeners would prefer something else—the children, to speak simply, and his date, to hold hands (“Bien, bien. A côté de lui, sur le banc, en évidence, était posée la main d’Anna Bruckhardt” [109])—underlines Monsieur’s awkwardness and his inability to decompress. The fact that Monsieur often quotes from Ilya Prigogine, a pioneer in chaos theory, suggests that he is desperately trying to put some sort of order in his private life, and perhaps some chaos in his all-too-orderly business life. 66

The Clinamen As he explains on the bench to his date Anna Bruckhardt: “La théorie des quanta détruit la conviction que la description physique est réaliste et que son langage peut représenter les propriétés d’un système indépendamment des conditions d’observation” (110). Monsieur seeks out Prigogine’s theories because they suggest a path toward eventual meaning in his life. Indeed, N. Katherine Hayles’s description of Prigogine’s theories mirrors Monsieur’s budding outlook: The essential change is to see chaos as that which makes order possible. Life arises not in spite but because of dissipative processes that are rich in entropy production. Chaos is the womb of life, not its tomb. (100)

Monsieur instinctively seeks out chaos because he understands that, like the clinamen’s wayward swerve, it is the only way he can be in touch with his own creativity. His verbal silence but physical eccentricities (spatial shifts) point to the fact that his movements must be interpreted and sought out in a way that supersedes what he calls “des conditions d’observation” (65). Monsieur is reaching out to the universe but he does not know how to do it in a coherent way. That is why he finds peace in the silent world of rooftops where the stars offer unexplained but potent stimulation. Stars are enviable to Monsieur because they are silent and nocturnal. If Monsieur flees his chatterbox neighbor and the small talk at work, it is because he seeks peace of mind above all. Thus, he most admires silent things: stars, the aquarium fish, the rooftop. If he is surrounded by those who speak without anything to say, his alternative spaces provide him with things that do not speak but are very meaningful to him. Although the word immobile is used to describe him more frequently than any other adjective (randomly: three times on page 96, for example), there is a brief sensation of inner mobility or spiritual growth as he watches the starlit night. He begins to connect with the surrounding city by associating the stars with metro stops. The city becomes a magical space and the quotidian, which had been boring and sterile to him, becomes a universe of motion and spirit: Monsieur resta longtemps ainsi à regarder le ciel, et, à mesure qu’il s’en pénétrait, ne distinguant plus maintenant

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Chapter Two qu’un réseau de points et les lignes des constellations, le ciel devint dans son esprit un gigantesque plan de métro illuminant la nuit. Alors il s’assit et, partant de Sirius qu’il repérait sans peine, il évolua du regard vers MontparnasseBienvenüe, descendit jusqu’à Sèvres-Babylone et, s’attardant un instant sur Bételgeuse, arriva à l’Odéon, où il voulait en venir. (93)

Monsieur takes Zazie’s metrophilia one step further: if the metro connects all Parisians physically, Monsieur can see, momentarily and without understanding it, a way to see Paris connected spiritually. In this way, Monsieur becomes a type of urban voyant who sees the beauty in everyday life. As such, the last paragraph of the novel traces his epiphany. Monsieur has evolved from the indifferent and desensitized executive of the opening pages to someone who feels genuinely connected to his city, instructing his date on the hidden wonders of Paris: Monsieur, la tête levée, tendit le bras en direction du ciel et suivit lentement du doigt la ligne Sirius-Aldébaran en expliquant à Anna Bruckhardt que l’Odéon dans son esprit était cet astre-là. (111)

Monsieur ends with a sign that Monsieur, having veered completely away from “the vulgar crowd” with all his adventures, is reunited with his human, sensual, emotional self: “Anna Bruckhardt lui toucha la joue, alors, doucement l’embrassa dans la nuit. Hip, hop et voilà, ce ne fut pas plus difficile que ça” (111). Monsieur, who was once so out of touch with everyday life that he envied anything that appeared pure to him, such as the fish, children, and even the ease with which Anna could hail a taxi (“Anna Bruckhardt, se dressant sur la pointe des pieds, finit par héler un taxi avec un naturel qu’il lui envia” [98]), returns, at the end of the novel, to a childlike simplicity he had craved all along. Although his odd behavior had been devoid of any type of playfulness, the last line of the novel suggests that he has developed a positive outlook on life: “La vie, pour Monsieur, un jeu d’enfant.” He does not return to the vegetal state that he exhibited in the hammock, for example, but to the wideeyed innocence of childhood. He is able to produce an inner

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The Clinamen clinamen for himself and psychologically deviate from the confines of his office life in a good-natured fashion rather than in the despairing outlook of a Salavin. He has discovered that he, too, can be an original individual rather than a lost cog in the bureaucratic machine.

Echenoz’s Eccentric Adventure Hero In his introduction to L’invention du quotidien, Michel de Certeau quotes Gombrowicz in order to illustrate a principle by which ordinary people can escape the highly technocratic structures that surround them: “J’ai dû, vous le comprenez, recourir toujours davantage à de tout petits plaisirs, presque invisibles, des à côtés […] avec ces petits détails, on devient immense” (Certeau, Quotidien liv). For De Certeau, the “ordinary man” to whom he dedicates the first volume of the work, Arts de faire, is a direct allusion to Freud’s der gemeine Mann because De Certeau’s ordinary individual finds very simple ways to bypass the general malaise that overwhelms the modern world: “Cet essai est dédié à l’homme ordinaire. Héros commun. Personnage disséminé. Marcheur innombrable” (11). In La culture au pluriel, De Certeau further notes that in the twentieth century the marvelous no longer needs to manifest itself by unbelievable means. Rather, it is everyday life that can provide us with the most astonishing wonders: “Le quotidien est parsemé de merveilles, écume aussi éblouissante que celle des écrivains et des artistes. Sans nom propre, toutes sortes de langages donnent lieu à ces fêtes éphémères qui surgissent, disparaissent, et reprennent” (La culture au pluriel 244–45). The eccentric adventure hero, as embodied in the novels of Jean Echenoz, is also an ordinary man who spends most of his time idling away the hours listening to jazz records or wandering aimlessly through the city before he finds himself, accidentally and impassively, in the midst of exciting escapades. In L’équipée malaise, Echenoz’s characters drop out of society and live in small studio apartments before they swerve from their uneventful Parisian big-city existences by acting out fictional models of nineteenth-century adventure novels. In Cherokee, Georges Chave slips into a roman noir thriller with the improvised delight of the jazz musicians he enjoys listening

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Chapter Two to. In Lac, Franck Chopin is a contented, scientific fly specialist until he finds himself plunged into a cold-war spy novel. Although the fictional constructs around them vary from novel to novel, Echenoz’s common heroes remain charmingly uncomplicated and stubbornly ordinary. The “frames” of their quotidian may suddenly change, but they themselves do not. They react to what Freud perceived as civilization’s malaise by passively accepting alternative models of existence that seem out of date or purely fictional but point to ways in which fictional paradigms can be inserted into ordinary life. These paradigms function as the “languages” for the moments of jubilation that can come and go in even the dullest lives. Paraphrasing De Certeau’s Arts de faire, Luce Giard describes a paradigm of nonconformity that Echenoz’s characters subscribe to: La raison technicienne croit savoir comment organiser au mieux les choses et les gens, assignant à chacun une place, un rôle, des produits à consommer. Mais l’homme ordinaire se soustrait en silence à cette conformation. Il invente le quotidien grâce aux arts de faire, ruses subtiles, tactiques de résistance par lesquelles il détourne les objets et les codes, se réapproprie l’espace et l’usage à sa façon. (Qtd. in Certeau, Quotidien, back cover; my emphasis)

Echenoz’s characters reappropriate their chronotopes in accordance with the ways Echenoz himself reappropriates the various genres he borrows from, as he explains: “Le roman policier avec Cherokee, le roman d’aventure avec L’équipée malaise, le roman d’espionnage avec Lac. C’était à chaque fois une façon d’essayer de donner une version personnelle de ces modèles littéraires” (“Entretien” 20). The fictional genres in which Echenoz places his characters serve as a sort of prism with which his heroes can change the chronotope of their surroundings. Metaphorically, this prism also shapes these same characters’ immediate chronotopes. Perhaps bored in a daily routine where little changes, the scenarios they encounter add a new purpose to their lives, which, in general, become centered around a female ideal with whom they fall madly in love. Slowly, the once-ordinary men become willing participants in the jubilant and ludic narratives that are superimposed onto their once (pleasantly) blank existence. 70

The Clinamen In Echenoz’s universe, the viewing of one’s own daily life in terms of a literary genre is certainly an eccentric if not joyous way of creating a unique lebensform (form of life) that could fit into De Certeau’s proposed methods of passive revolt against contemporary technocracies: De plus en plus contraint et de moins en moins concerné par ces vastes encadrements, l’individu s’en détache sans pouvoir en sortir, et il lui reste à ruser avec eux, à “faire des coups,” à trouver dans la mégapole électronicisée et informatisée “l’art” des chasseurs ou des ruraux de naguère. (Certeau, Quotidien 43)

“L’art des ruraux” for Echenoz’s characters becomes the art of being a character in a spy novel, a thriller, or an adventure novel. Yet, what makes these characters eccentric is that they never conform to traditional representations of such characters, who are often portrayed as courageous, stern, and dashing. Echenoz’s characters are rather nonchalant and naive. When we are first introduced to them, they even seem to enjoy the solitary aspect of their bachelorhood, which they continue to revel in even as they pursue their respective femmes fatales throughout the novels. In Cherokee, Chave is presented in modest terms, and his being “un peu plus grand que la moyenne” is mitigated by the simplicity of his lifestyle: Georges Chave était donc un homme un peu plus grand que la moyenne, assez maigre par ailleurs, ce qui pouvait le faire croire encore un peu plus grand. Il possédait peu d’argent, grattant les derniers ors d’un héritage déchaîné qu’épiçait à peine un fond éventé d’aide publique. Il s’achetait peu de vêtements, qui étaient presque toujours de fabrication américaine et très souvent de seconde main, et qu’il procurait chez deux ou trois marchands, toujours les mêmes, Porte de Clignancourt. (16)

He is similar, in this introductory portrait, to Colin in Boris Vian’s novel L’écume des jours, who is also described in plain but engaging terms: On pouvait voir à qui il ressemblait, le blond qui joue le rôle de Slim dans Hollywood Canteen. Sa tête était ronde,

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Chapter Two ses oreilles petites, son nez droit, son teint doré. Il souriait souvent d’un sourire de bébé, et, à force, cela lui avait fait venir une fossette au menton. Il était assez grand, mince avec de longues jambes, et très gentil […] Il parlait doucement aux filles et joyeusement aux garçons. Il était presque toujours de bonne humeur, le reste du temps il dormait. (9–10)

Vian’s portrait of Colin also captures the essence of Echenoz’s Chave, who often thinks in terms of movie images or references and who seems very childlike in his naïveté and idleness. Like Colin, Chave is also a lover of jazz and becomes infatuated at first sight. When Chave meets his femme fatale, Jenny Weltman, the sanguine emptiness of his days becomes somewhat flavored with the added delight and sudden purpose of adoring a human being as opposed to the pictorial effigies of movie idols he has on the otherwise barren walls of his apartment: “C’était le milieu du jour, et Georges n’avait plus rien à faire. Il marcha le long des grands boulevards…” (63) and later: “Il se remit à marcher dans les rues, pensant à Jenny Weltman. C’était déjà une image dans sa mémoire, un souvenir clair, bleu-gris, noir et blanc. Il marcha. Il lui resta quatre heures à perdre avant la réunion du soir […] Il les perdrait” (65). Further on, as he desperately tries to find this woman that he had met by accident in the street like Baudelaire’s passante, he follows the traces of her name all the way to Ostend. As he tries to project himself onto a traditional scene of a man playing with his dog, he realizes that he feels somehow eccentric despite the apparent simplicity of his countenance. He feels a certain displacement in his thoughts and actions: Sur les galets détrempés des marées basses évoluaient les mêmes promeneurs qu’à Blankenberg, les mêmes collectionneurs de coques, le même chien courant après la branche que lui lançait et relançait l’homme seul. Georges se sentait comme ce chien mais sans branche; comme cet homme seul mais sans chien. (54)

His infatuation for the fleeting passante may reinforce his sense of loneliness but he is not any the less saddened because of it. He floats passively through the rest of the novel like an improvised jazz tune, as Philippe Habib has remarked in Esprit,

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The Clinamen describing Echenoz’s prose: “comme dans le surf et comme dans le jazz, la phrase est une improvisation” (Habib 163). Chave is a happy bachelor who enjoys indulging in his guileless preoccupation with Jenny Weltman. The Echenozian bachelor is the opposite of unattractive eccentric bachelors such as Huysmans’s Folantin in A vau-l’eau, who is primarily obsessed with finding different ways to have food prepared or delivered to him, or Henry de Montherlant’s Les célibataires (Léon de Coantré and his uncle, Elie de Coëtquidan), who are pathetically incapable of fending for themselves and, in their fifties, desperate to be taken care of after having squandered all their family investments for so many years. Unappealing, lacking foresight, insight, or any romanticism at all, Folantin and les célibataires die as insignificantly as they had lived, and without enjoying any part of their purely functional existences. Chave, on the other hand, and the rest of Echenoz’s bachelors, are blissfully independent and enjoy, above all, a total freedom that their lack of obligations entails. In one way, their freedom links them to the typology of the célibataire established by Jean-Pierre Bertrand in Le roman célibataire: D’“A rebours” à “Paludes,” which is focused on the concept of “contingency”: La contingence, c’est précisément son [le célibataire] affaire: le social ne le retient plus comme une somme de déterminations extérieures appliquées à l’individu, mais comme un espace où les choses qui comptent sont celles qui ne sont pas décidées d’avance. (189)

Indeed, Echenoz’s novels read like the bachelor novels of the nineteenth century as described by Bertrand because the bachelors Echenoz writes about are neither Don Juans nor dysfunctional hermits but disarmingly ingenuous, even romantic, suitors who drift in and out of difficult situations (imposed by the plots of their respective novels) with ease. They maintain their individuality with eccentricity rather than by marginality, which would have them oppose a given center, as Bertrand observes regarding certain decadent nineteenth-century bachelors: Si la société du personnage décadent paraît si réduite qu’elle en perd tout importance, c’est parce que l’individu entend

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Chapter Two montrer qu’il peut fonctionner en dépit d’elle. Il ne se contente plus de quelques marges illicites ou héroïques: être marginal, c’est encore reconnaître la forme d’un centre qui nous échappe et auquel on est lié par opposition. Or, les romans célibataires se caractérisent tous par l’invisibilité du centre. (202)

Not only is there no visible center in Echenoz’s novel, where even the gangsters seem eccentric (in Cherokee, for example, one criminal enjoys drinking tango panachés, a weak, childlike drink similar to the grenadine Gabriel enjoys in Zazie dans le métro), but Echenoz’s heroes give absolutely no consideration to what sort of society they are opposing or differentiating themselves from. As in L’écume des jours, the characters are driven, above all, by their innocuous whims. As Bertrand concludes: “Il s’agit de représenter un individu dans un état d’entière disponibilité. Cet homme est un modèle parce qu’il n’a aucune attente” (202). In a parallel observation, Sophie Bertho, summing up a whole generation of writers in France during the 1980s such as Toussaint, Christian Oster, Eric Chevillard, and Echenoz, sees these bachelors as postmodern décadents “[qui] ne se révoltent plus, ils ne brisent plus les idoles, notre attente ne ressemble plus à celle de Vladimir et d’Estragon: nous vivons dans une sorte d’apesanteur, joyeuse parfois, ludique le plus souvent” (Bertho 742). The lightness of Echenoz’s characters translates their own sense of liberty in terms of “disponibilité.” Their freedom is not defined as an opposition to a societal tyranny, for example, but, as openness. They can pursue the idiosyncratic adventures they encounter because nothing forces them to do otherwise. Some critics have attacked Echenoz for reflecting a vapid generation of writers. Jean Martin, for example, in an open letter to Esprit, vehemently denounces this lightness as a minimalist form of individualism: “L’idéologie de l’individualisme minimal au sens où l’individu s’est réduit au minimum en définissant sa liberté par soustraction des autres” (173). Yet Martin seems to miss the point of Echenoz’s characters’ joie de vivre: their personal perception of freedom is not at the exclusion of others; rather they are free to follow a personal myth that Chave’s affection for jazz symbolizes. If an “esprit fin de siècle” implies a lack of imagination, ennui, or reductionism 74

The Clinamen for Martin, it rather represents a vaporous, bubbly sensation of lightness for Echenoz or the “très soutenable légèreté de l’être” coined by Jean-Pierre Slagas in a review of Toussaint’s La salle de bain (Slagas 2). Echenoz’s heroes are predisposed to appreciate a wonderful lightness of being that is not accessible to everyone. When, in Cherokee, for example, Chave often asks himself “Que faire?” or realizes that “il n’y avait rien à faire,” he is not suffering from any kind of existential anguish or Beckett-like oblivion. What separates him from the masses is that he understands that wasting time can be a delicious activity, as when, in hiding in a countryside barn, he lets himself go in an orgy of solo jazz playing: Il n’y a rien à faire […] Georges se mit à jouer, debout dans le soleil qui tombait de la fenêtre, s’exerçant d’abord à sonoriser le paysage: vent dans les branches, troupeaux, tracteurs en passage […] Trois jours passaient. Sa barbe poussait vite. Vêtu d’un slip et d’une paire de lunettes noires, il jouait interminablement dans le soleil de la fenêtre […] La nuit, il rêvait énormément. (203)

This merry jazz improvisation weaves in and out of the novel as characters listen to Gerry Mulligan on the radio or make allusions to Bud Powell. Even at the end of the novel, as Chave goes off in a limousine with his femme fatale to the tune of “Cherokee” discreetly placed in a tape deck, Fred, one of the story’s (clumsy) criminals, cheerfully utters the last lines of the novel: “Qu’est-ce qu’on fait maintenant?” (247). These characters seem stationary and yet, they are in fact always in movement. Chave is often seen wandering the peripheries of Paris.2 At one point, after he is knocked out from having been “slipped a mickey” in his drink, he finds himself literally “in the clouds” aboard a private plane that flies over Paris and lands in a spatially ex-centered aerodrome near which Chave and his momentary kidnapper share a drink. This periphery becomes a liberating area and not a threatening one associated with urban blight, nor an intellectual no-man’s land far from the Parisian center: Après avoir frayé parmi les sens uniques congestionnés, suivi un tronçon périphérique où cela roulait comme

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Chapter Two d’habitude à cette heure-ci et passé trente kilomètres de zone suburbaine, lieu d’échange nerveux entre la ville et la province, l’autoroute du Sud fut enfin vide, presque vide, ils respirèrent plus librement. (126)

In Nous trois, the effervescence of the three main characters’ ménage à trois is taken all the way into outer space where they actually float in weightlessness as they circumnavigate the globe from the cosmos. As Echenoz confirms when confronted with the accusation that Nous trois is gratuitously light: “C’est un livre en apesanteur, ça se passait en partie dans l’espace, donc oui, évidemment […] D’ailleurs la légèreté ça connote plein de choses, ça peut renvoyer aux situations, aux rythmes, aux sons, aux dispositifs et aux agencements […] C’est un registre qui me convient” (“Entretien” 12). In L’équipée malaise, the characters are first seen monotonously entrenched in their Parisian studios, eating sushi (“comme s’ils retournaient à un stade primitif en mangeant du poisson cru” [18]), before expanding their horizons all the way to the ends of the globe. Indeed, they are first shown in a literal malaise (most of them have just broken up with their girlfriends) that is replaced by a mythical and exotic world for them, Malaysia, which they pursue, ironically, with indolence. They represent a hybridized, postmodern version of what Bertrand views as a decadent hero: “Les décadents font succéder […] l’expérience du célibataire retranché et mélancolique à l’aventure d’un héros conquérant, un projet narratif minimaliste à un modèle fertile en tableaux et péripéties” (206). The malaise of Echenoz’s characters in L’équipée malaise would indeed have resembled that of their nineteenth-century counterparts in eccentricity were they not so distinctly unnévrosé and mollusklike. While the nineteenth-century decadent was troubled by the turn of the century because he saw it as a source of exhaustion and worry, Echenoz’s characters are especially marked by their complete absence of worry, regret, or premeditation. Even their voyages are stripped of the exoticism or the tension of a real “swashbuckler.” L’équipée malaise takes place across many geographical spheres and time zones (Asia, Europe, oceans, continents) on the one hand and reduced, bare, closed spaces on the other (empty studio apartments, cramped ship 76

The Clinamen quarters or storage areas, bland hotel rooms) to the point where Echenoz plays on the double entendre of the title’s malaise both as the exotic “elsewhere” of Malaysia and the internal, spiritual sense of malaise and ennui. The main characters, in fact, form a team of malaisés rather than individual, conventional, energetic adventure heroes. Charles, for example, turns his back on society and lives a type of vagabond, homeless existence; Pons dwells in a soporific, bourgeois tranquility in Malaysia but is obsessed with building a giant telescope pointing toward abstract and infinitely distant galaxies; Paul slouches around his studio apartment on a street ironically named after the nineteenth-century Jules Verne and basks in a complacent and indulgent loneliness. Again, their eccentricity lies in the fact that they do not seek out their adventures, as Verne’s characters might. The adventures are brought to them on a silver platter that they greet impassively as if they were yawning throughout. Were they to resemble a Jules Verne character in particular, it would certainly be Captain Nemo, who circles the globe in a submarine in which an eclectic and vast library is more prominent than any of the scientific mechanisms that surround it. An aquatic Des Esseintes, Nemo feels driven to destruction by a modern society he scorns, and he is compelled to wander a most vast and vague chronotope, the ocean. The captain in L’équipée malaise, similarly, never touches dry land, often staying cooped up in his cabin. Yet, instead of being motivated by anger or pessimism, he is habitually nonchalant and gives his orders “malaisément” (172). At one point, Paul, preparing his big trip on a freighter, is forced to wait in Le Havre with nothing to do. Anemic, he awaits his orders: Mieux vaut attendre à Paris, conseilla Bob [a friend], reviens. Tu vas t’emmerder. Non, dit Paul, je reste. Je ne fais rien à Paris de toute façon, j’y suis mal […] Il se mit donc à lire, il sortit peu de sa chambre. (140–41)

For Bertrand, the nineteenth-century bachelor/décadent is self-indulgent because he is conscious of his social rank, which allows him every excess: “On conçoit sans peine que le personnel décadent appartienne de préférence à l’aristocrate, de souche, ou tout du moins d’esprit […] Membres de la classe de 77

Chapter Two loisir, ces grands rentiers qui forment le personnel fin de siècle ont anciennement acquis le droit de vaquer à leurs occupations moroses” (212–13). The Echenozian bachelor, however, is not an aristocrat but very humble and has no social predisposition to withdraw or be permanently on vacation. He does so haphazardly. The nineteenth-century Des Esseintes uses his house at Fontenay as a vessel with which he can let himself loose in every imaginable neurotic fantasy. When he tries to travel outside his private kingdom, he is disappointed because no external sensation that is acceptable to everyone, such as tourism, can match his own vibrant world. Echenoz’s characters, on the other hand, have no Fontenay upon which to build a repertoire of sensations. Their void makes their actual peregrinations even more sensational and out of the ordinary. Moreover, the fact that they can hang on to their passivity throughout their adventures reinforces their discrete form of eccentricity. Although for Bertrand, decadent eccentricity is founded on contingency via artifice (“la contingence se fait par le biais de l’artifice” [214]), Echenoz’s extremely subtle, unflappable eccentric is also linked to the combination of contingency and Echenoz’s literary artifice: his great sense of style. Through Echenoz’s lens, passed on to the eyes of his protagonists, everyday streets and objects take on a beauty all their own. His characters are able to appreciate these small pleasures rather than the potential adventure dramas of the plots they find themselves participating in. As the description of one of the characters in Cherokee implies, these characters appreciate the images and sounds suggested by everyday items rather than their intrinsic value: “Il aimait les images des choses, il y était plus sensible qu’à leurs noms […] qu’à leurs prix” (7). Another character, sitting on a pile of newspapers, “se mit à feuilleter son siège” (23); a public fountain becomes “une façon de sphinx moderniste qui vomit sans mollir un étroit ruban d’eau plate” (45); a gutter is transformed into “un Styx venimeux” (70). As JeanClaude Lebrun puts it: D’objets a priori insignifiants se dégage une singularité, une étrangeté, une beauté, auxquelles on ne pensait pas […] cette écriture invente une véritable poésie du monde moderne, le disant dans sa quotidienneté et le tirant hors de celle-ci. (42–43)

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The Clinamen Through a playful and elegant style, Echenoz endows his characters with a certain panache all their own that the reader would not expect of such seemingly dull protagonists. Thrust into particular genres, where the hero’s style is usually described in terms of debonair savoir-faire and “class,” much like Sean Connery’s James Bond or Maurice Le Blanc’s Arsène Lupin, Echenozian heroes approach their newfound adventure worlds with a twist. With a ludic appreciation for the everyday, their notion of style emerges from an original interpretation of the immediate and otherwise familiar space around them rather than from a glamorous fictional motif.

Etaix’s Eccentric Suitor When we are first introduced to the protagonist of Pierre Etaix’s 1963 film Le soupirant, he is already visibly excentered from the rest of the world. Locked up in his room, with ear plugs on, he is literally “spacey”: his walls are decorated exclusively with pictures of stars and galaxies, and he is shown studiously working on an astronomy chart. Indeed, a bachelor in his thirties living at home, without a professional occupation, he is comfortably “in the clouds” in his relations with the real world until his parents decide that he must get married. Initially, he is at a loss as to what to do. As he impatiently storms out of his family’s town house, he even asks the Swedish au-pair living with them to marry him, knowing full well that she does not know enough French to understand what he has just asked her. As he strolls along the banks of the Seine, observing romantic clichés such as lovers holding hands or couples embracing on the decks of the bateaux-mouches, he realizes that he must approach his task scientifically. When he comes back home, he imagines himself as a great seducer and “practices” the art of loving as he sees it: he elegantly waltzes with a broom in his room (but crashes into furniture and breaks a few things). Then, the next day, in the courtyard of his home, he dances with a bunch of leaves and flowers he has put together. He is so intoxicated with what is a completely novel concept of love that, under the skeptical gaze of his father, observing him from the top floor, he pirouettes and performs somersaults through the garden and creates a cloud of leaves

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Chapter Two and petals above him. He delights in an initially ethereal vision of love. The soupirant’s attempts to put his ideals into action fail miserably, however, when he leaves his family nest and ventures into Parisian reality. He chases after what appears from the back to be a beautiful girl, only to discover that all along he has been pursuing a dog being carried in the arms of an elderly lady; yet, as he takes notes after this mistake, he pays no attention to a poodle seated next to him in a café. A dashing gentleman, however, sees the dog, starts talking to it, and then flirts with the dog’s owner, a chic young woman whom he proceeds to invite to lunch. Later, the soupirant meticulously studies a man “picking up” a woman by impressing her with his fancy car; when the soupirant tries to do the same with his modest deux-chevaux, he is met with total indifference. When he sees a young woman struggling with a bag of groceries, he gallantly offers to help her. She readily accepts his offer because, as it turns out, she is helping an elderly woman whom the soupirant then must help down a long flight of stairs as the young woman vanishes. Finally, at a nightclub, he meets a drunken, hysterical woman whom he escorts back to her home (because, latching onto him, she is too drunk to walk on her own). Despite all of his refusals of her advances, she begins to pursue him relentlessly. When she first comes calling at his house to return a shoe he left hastily and accidentally by her doorstep, he tries to escape her by jumping off his balcony but finds himself, instead, gracefully landing before her and bowing in a courtly fashion. He spends most of his time playing hide and seek with this woman until one day, as she tries to seduce him in her apartment, he discovers, on television, a sexy cabaret singer aptly named Stella with whom he falls madly and obsessively in love. Replacing all of his posters of constellations with his new feminine ideal (from which con-[Stella]-tion can be read), he soon places himself in another type of cloud that ex-centers him even further than his previous interest in astronomy had done. When he walks through a crowded street, for example, he is so distracted that a mere incidental push from a pedestrian is enough for him to be somnambulistically turned in the opposite direction, like a floating object directed by waves in an ocean. When he is in a café, he is so much in another world

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The Clinamen that he puts the waiter’s tip, a pourboire, into his cup, then proceeds to drink from it, transforming the expression pourboire into a literal beverage. When he comes across Stella on television, not only is he oblivious to the leopard outfit and seductive dance his hostess is attempting to perform, but even his routine psychomotor skills are inverted: transfixed by the television voice, he pours tea into his lap, takes a bite out of his saucer instead of a tea biscuit, and pours cream into a nearby vase instead of into his cup. He becomes fixated with accumulating as much Stella iconography as possible, which, in turn, transfigures his quotidian into an anamorphic shrine to Stella. When he takes down a poster of Stella from a colonne Morris that a worker is in the process of putting up, we see a comedian’s bulbous head suddenly emerge from Stella’s svelte body. His captivation escalates until, after having infiltrated backstage at the Olympia where Stella performs, he realizes that she has a son his own age. Returning home, his bubble burst, he understands that true love was under his nose in the form of the patient and sweet Swedish au-pair who had been sadly watching his antics all along. As she is about to leave France for good, he races to catch her at the train station just before her train departs. Largely influenced by Buster Keaton, Etaix’s form of comedy is sculpted around a series of gags. Etaix has said that “l’histoire doit se raconter par des gags,” and yet, as he is quick to add, the gags must be steeped in originality; they must come about organically: “Tout ce qui est fait pour plaire me déplaît.”3 Because the gags, as in silent films, are purely visual, the soupirant’s individuality is expressed by a gestural eccentricity, rather than a verbal one. This silence, in fact, adds a poetic dimension to his encounters with the quotidian. As René Prédal remarks, Le soupirant is able to evoke an alter-quotidian that is nonetheless tightly bound to reality: [Il] évoque un Keaton qui saurait esquisser des gestes avec la grâce dansante de Chaplin. Le comique […] est doux, gentil, sympathique, sans la violence des grands burlesques, mais toujours enraciné dans le réel. Aussi, le film a-t-il été tourné surtout en extérieurs afin de ne jamais extraire l’effet comique de son contexte humain, ni du décor quotidien. (33–34)

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Chapter Two The soupirant may appear nondescript but through his gestures, he expresses his eccentric relationship with the rest of the world. His relationship to space, objects, and even language points to a fresh approach to society. Spatially, the soupirant is able to express himself by flying through space vertically, horizontally, and in zigzag. When he jumps from his balcony to flee the woman who is pursuing him, and lands on his feet gracefully in front of her, he inadvertently transforms a moment of panic and flight into a magically birdlike “flight” worthy of the most practiced gymnast. Conversely, when he realizes that he is in love with the au-pair, his leap from the balcony becomes a spritelike “flight of fancy” during which he takes off like a plane, lands on the ground, and continues his course, without interruption, all the way to the station. He is able to translate emotions as contrasting as fear and exultation into inventions of space and movement that transcend the quotidian without appearing excessive or unreal. They represent a gestural poetry unique to the soupirant. In his relationship to objects, the soupirant again enjoys a deliriously independent rapport in which objects seem to rebel within his sphere of influence. He can be so oblivious to his tangible surroundings and so unmaterialistically oriented that objects appear to take off on their own. As he waits to offer Stella flowers backstage, he involuntarily blends in with the circuslike atmosphere of the theater world. His head, for example, surfaces in the camera’s picture frame instead of one of the balls that a Japanese juggler is attempting to toss in the air. As he waits, he fiddles with the buttons of his jacket, which are connected to a thread that, in turn, triggers his handkerchief to pop-up intrusively and independently of his efforts to control his jacket. At home, as he searches for a diamond that he dropped from his ring, he pulls on the wrong wooden plank, which provokes the cataclysmic collapse of the entire ceiling. It is not only the fact that the soupirant has ex-centered himself in life and that he must settle at the age of thirty that is original. It is the manner and process with which he learns how to communicate love that is special. He must learn the language of love—infatuation, rejection, fear, lightheadedness—emotionally rather than verbally or cerebrally. The soupirant’s and the au-pair’s endeavors to communicate verbally are not effec-

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The Clinamen tive. When the soupirant flippantly asks her to marry him, the words are meaningless to her not only because she has not yet mastered French, but because they are also devoid of emotional content. The words are as abstract to her in the beginning of the film as the trite French sentences she tries to memorize by rote. As she mechanically recites “le livre est sur la table” with the book in her hand, the rest of the soupirant’s family looks at her in dismay, correcting her by telling her that “non, le livre n’est pas sur la table.” Frustrated, she throws the book on the table just as the soupirant walks in and screams: “Le livre n’est pas sur la table.” She does not need verbal language, however, to understand that the soupirant is infatuated with the cabaret singer. All she needs to do is observe him bringing in images of Stella, or see his room covered with her pictures. The hallucinatory aspect of his infatuation is highlighted for the au-pair when, one night, as the soupirant comes home, she first sees Stella’s head horizontally, then her legs, before she realizes that he is trying to fit a giant cardboard representation of Stella through the doorway. The most powerful moment between the two occurs when the au-pair, on the verge of leaving for the train station, explains to him in Swedish how she had not understood him at first, when he asked her to marry him, and that she regrets understanding this only before leaving him forever. As she gives him a farewell kiss, he comprehends what all his “scientific” attempts at learning the language of love could not teach him. Language, gestures, and first impressions are all less meaningful than the simplicity of combined experiences. His flight from the balcony in pursuit of her is a metaphoric “Eureka!” or, rather, a physical interpretation of an ecstatic moment of truth. If Beckett’s Molloy can sum up his existence by remarking: “Il me demandait du pain et je lui proposais du poisson. Tout mon caractère est là,” the soupirant’s eccentricity is also composed of visual incongruities such as the autonomous button scene backstage at the Olympia, or the colonne Morris transposition of Stella’s legs attached to the comedian’s face. Yet the soupirant’s incongruous moments remain out of step with the present without being wildly anachronistic because he is able to redesign Paris to fit his balletlike movements, which represent a supralinguistic form of eccentricity that can only

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Chapter Two be properly represented in cinematic form. As Robert Benayoun explains, Etaix’s creativity is grounded on nonverbal, pantomime-like communication: S’il pose son personnage par une infinité de gestes et de mimiques, ne le pose jamais par la voix, au contraire d’un Jerry Lewis […] C’est qu’il nous vient d’une tradition lointaine. (48)

In a modern Paris characterized by noise and activity, which Etaix describes in its most horrifying extremes in his film Tant qu’on a la santé (1967), the soupirant’s silence as he pursues love is all the more eccentric but no less courtly and tender. He offers an old-fashioned type of love that would be anachronistic to the young couples he studies in the street but which the Swedish au-pair, who also communicates in a nonverbal manner, understands like a Columbine responding to a Pierrot in a Watteau fête galante. Tant qu’on a la santé delineates a Paris that is antithetical to the soupirant’s sentimental universe. The soupirant’s spatial and gestural creativity point to a concept of Parisian life unavailable to the characters of Tant qu’on a la santé, who find themselves unwillingly in a conflict between the “natural” and the modern way of living. In the opening scene, for example, the drilling of construction workers is so loud that a newsdealer’s kiosk falls apart all around him just as he is extending a newspaper to a client; music notes come tumbling down off a score as a hapless pianist tries to compete with the urban noise; in one frame, we see a cute little garden being watered with a small pitcher before we realize that garden and pitcher are suspended in the huge scoop of a bulldozer. A man sitting through the cacophony of a traffic jam is subjected to a taxi driver’s optimistic sign urging passersby to: “Souriez! Souriez!” When people are not suffering the brutal roar of the city, they must endure the brainwashing of a constant and unrelenting television voice that instructs them, through nonstop advertisements, on what to do and say. At one point, the character played by Etaix, who is seen wandering from one chaotic scene to another, seems finally to enjoy some peace when he is invited for dinner at the home of a couple. Within minutes of entering

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The Clinamen their immaculate apartment, however, he fathoms that everything they are saying comes from a commercial, whether they are bragging about their home appliances or commenting on the various products they are serving. All their sentences are artificially produced. Etaix’s only escape is again a nonverbal one. When he accidentally leaves footprints on the pristine kitchen floor, his hostess is quick to show him the miraculous power of a new detergent. When she is no longer looking, however, he feels compelled to replace his erased footprints with some fresh ones as a personal defiance of the all-encompassing super-products. In the Soupirant, the protagonist’s years of withdrawal from society in his parents’ townhouse have allowed him to create his own spatial and temporal relations with the “outer world.” His silence, in fact, provides him with a type of creative bubble in which he can move about Paris at his own pace. Even if the rushing masses are able to change his course, he can remain agreeably safe within his own world in which he can communicate as he likes. The soupirant asserts his individuality and freedom from contemporary mores by remaining loyal to his personal ideals, which he can only express physically. He is as purely original in this way as Stéphane Mallarmé’s danseuse, who with every new movement creates a unique form of poetry: La danseuse n’est pas une femme qui danse […] mais une métaphore résumant un des aspects élémentaires de notre forme […] suggérant par le prodige de raccourcis ou d’élans, avec une écriture corporelle qu’il faudrait des paragraphes en prose dialoguée autant que descriptive, pour exprimer, dans la rédaction: Poème dégagé de tout appareil du scribe. (304)

In complete opposition to the very mediatized contemporary world—and even in contrast to a very verbal form of modern cinema—Etaix’s Le soupirant presents a tenderly eccentric and supralinguistic vision of love that Etaix describes as a “charmante obsession [qui est] malheureusement un sujet qui n’est plus d’actualité.”4 The last scene of the film, which begins with the soupirant leaping from his balcony to catch up with the aupair, ends with his being slowly carried away by a baggage trolley he stepped onto as he was searching for her from train

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Chapter Two window to train window. As he is gently carried away, he looks as though he were floating on air (the trolley gives the illusion that he is standing above the ground). He extends a graceful hand toward the Swedish au-pair, who was about to board the train. In fact, his hand gesture is all she needs to see in order to understand what he himself has just discovered: despite their lack of verbal communication, they have managed to fall in love. Although the soupirant’s journey through love is less geographically expansive than Phileas Fogg’s, for example, the soupirant’s unconventional quest for a soul mate (dictated originally by a very conventional family edict) can be seen as a cinematic ballet that offers a refreshing alternative to typical modern courtship rituals. Even though the soupirant does not fit in neatly within society, he uses his eccentric position creatively and in a clinamen-like fashion as he invents new conventions of love, which happily rival the conventions he scientifically tried to monitor and imitate at the beginning of the film.

Des Forêts’s Eccentric Chatterbox Similar to the soupirant in his initial appearance, Louis-René Des Forêts’s bavard is first presented as a simple stock figure: “Un de ces bavards qui, avide de faire entendre le son de leur voix, recherchent un compagnon dont la seule fonction consistera à prêter l’oreille sans être contraint d’ouvrir la bouche” (Le bavard 1). The chatterbox is a master of what is most trivial and vacuous in our society: “cet individu n’a strictement rien à dire, et, cependant, il dit mille choses; peu importe l’assentiment ou la contradiction de l’interlocuteur” (17). Immediately, the bavard is dismissed as an anonymous, annoying, but innocuous figure. He is comically on the outskirts of what is considered ordinary because of his verbal excesses. Yet, right from the opening lines of the book, “Je me regarde souvent dans la glace,” the reader is warned that a game of mirrors and anamorphoses will take place. The opening lines may initially appear narcissistic but they also resemble the words uttered by a thespian in his dressing room as he gathers the energy he needs before a performance: “Mon plus grand désir a toujours

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The Clinamen été de découvrir quelque chose de pathétique dans le regard. C’est dans le sentiment de ma différence que j’ai trouvé mes principaux sujets d’exaltation” (12). The rest of the book will consist of the bavard’s showing the reader exactly the ways in which this supposed “stock figure” is, in fact, eccentric and unique. Whereas a typical chatterer speaks into a void, purely out of a need to speak, Des Forêts’s bavard craves not only to be heard but to be admired for his individualism. This is the principal “swerve” that distinguishes him from a run-of-the-mill chatterbox. It is in fact an eroticized eccentricity that rests on his need to seduce, as he describes it: Je crois que je n’ai cessé de préférer aux femmes qui, soit par aveuglement amoureux, soit pour me retenir près d’elle, inventaient que j’étais vraiment bel homme ou que j’avais des traits énergiques, celles qui me disaient presque tout bas, avec une sorte de retenue craintive, que je n’étais pas tout à fait comme les autres. En effet, je me suis longtemps persuadé que ce qu’il devait avoir en moi de plus attirant c’était ma singularité. (8)

Indeed, were Des Forêts’s bavard a simple chatterbox and not an eccentric one, his book would be of interest to few if any. As such, when he declares “Mais aujourd’hui où j’ai perdu quelque peu de ma suffisance, comment me cacher que je ne me distingue en rien? Je fais la grimace en écrivant ceci,” there is a feeling that this “grimace” is a highly ironic smirk that is comparable to the Jungian trickster, which in the Trickster cycle is A figure whose physical appetites dominate his behavior; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs. (Jung, Man and His Symbols 112)

In the beginning of the book, the bavard is a variant of the primitive trickster who feeds on his need for gratification. He is driven to attract the reader/listener’s attention. Toward the end of the novel, however, the bavard’s narratives will grow in depth and complexity. As Jung points out: “This figure [the

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Chapter Two trickster], which at the outset assumes the form of an animal, passes from one mischievous exploit to another. But as he does so, a change comes over him. At the end of his rogue’s progress, he is beginning to take on the physical likeness of a grown man” (Man and His Symbols 112). Throughout the novel, the bavard affirms his individuality, at first appearing like a disjointed voice, and at the end, a type of deus-exmachina. Indeed, when, at the end of the novel, he asks “pour avoir longuement bavardé avec vous, ai-je pris du volume?” (204), he is not unlike Etienne Marcel in Queneau’s Le chiendent, who is also an amorphous shadow before he increases in “volume” after realizing that he exists (“je pense donc je suis”). The bavard, however, increases in volume not by thinking but by speaking, and his motto could rather be “je parle donc je suis,” since it is through his particular verbal craftsmanship that he can reveal his uniqueness. While a writer like Céline distinguishes himself from other authors he attacks as frauds (“chromos,” “robots,” “simulacres”) by his métro-émotif that he views as a pure, direct form of language, the bavard operates in a more cerebral and deceptive manner. He is aware that the image he puts forth is often a distorted one: Mais mon trouble et ma gaucherie m’en sont plus vifs. Il en résulte aussi que la déception que m’inflige le plus souvent la difformité de mon image […] tout en entretenant l’équivoque, me confirme dans l’idée que la seule part de moimême que je considère comme vraiment importante demeurant toujours cachée aux regards des êtres que je chéris le plus, tandis que tout ce que je peux montrer d’autre est sans importance, je ne serai jamais compris, compris se confondant pour moi avec aimé. (41)

Comprehension by the other should not, of course, be a priority for the trickster, whose main function is to fool and to beguile. As such, just as the métro-émotif subverts the mindless conventions of a pretentious society in Céline’s typology— “Je les lui fausse ces rails au métro moi! J’avoue! Ses rails rigides! Je leur en fous un coup! Des rails qu’ont l’air tout à fait droit, mais qui le sont pas!” (Entretiens 69)—the bavard sets out to undermine the reader’s trust and gullibility. The

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The Clinamen bavard transforms what is a superficially humiliating position of inferiority (that of being considered as insignificant or irritating as a gnat or a fly) into a triumph of nonconformity, freedom, and lucidity by creating an artistic labyrinth that simultaneously amuses and dupes the unsuspecting reader. When the bavard asks “n’est-ce pas fou de risquer sa réputation, de s’exposer aux sarcasmes pour la seule volupté de bavarder?” (150), he is, in fact, torpedoing the successful autobiographies of his time, notably Leiris’s L’âge d’homme, in which writing an autobiography is compared to bullfighting. He can even be seen as attacking Breton’s Nadja. If Breton can ask “Qui suis-je?” at the beginning of Nadja, and then continue to describe himself through his experiences with another, Des Forêts turns the tables by having his bavard pretend to expose himself in minute and candid detail: “Je crois nécessaire de remonter plus haut jusqu’aux origines du mal, quoiqu’il me paraisse d’une difficulté presque insurmontable de le décrire et de le rendre sensible à des lecteurs s’ils n’y ont jamais été sujets” (13), but ends up describing the Other (the listener/ reader) through his own experiences. Even if the reader has never been subjected to a chatterbox, the experience of reading about one will change that. The bavard’s question “Suis-je un homme, une ombre, ou rien, absolument rien?” (204) comes at the end of the novel because the autobiography has been turned upside down. By the end, Le bavard is no longer an autobiography because the narrator claims that everything he has said is a lie, as a variant of the classic dilemma of the Cretan liar: if everything I say is a lie, is what I am saying now a lie? “Ne craignez pas d’avoir perdu votre temps à prêter l’oreille à des mensonges,” the bavard says reassuringly, “puisque vous avez le privilège d’assister à une crise de bavardage, ce qui était certainement plus instructif que d’en lire un rapport fût-il pur de toute intention littéraire” (150). For Céline, the best revenge against an automaton-like public that spurns him is to hurl back the “pure truth” that it collectively represses. In Céline’s typology, the ideological posturing of seemingly ironclad institutional power is extremely fragile. All it takes is an eccentric voice to break its autodelusional spell on itself and the masses. Like the myth of the “emperor’s new clothes,” truth is the ultimate annihilator:

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Chapter Two Nous voici parvenus au bout de vingt siècles de haute civilisation et, cependant, aucun régime ne résisterait à deux mois de vérité. Je veux dire la société marxiste aussi bien que nos sociétés bourgeoises et fascistes. (Hommage à Zola 117)

In contrast, the bavard’s great weapon against the naive public is the lie. By constructing an uncertain autobiography, the bavard instills literary anarchy in the autobiographical genre. Just as political regimes cannot withstand the truth, “autobiographical regimes” that rely on their ability to convey the truth collapse if they are considered fraudulent: J’avais le sentiment de devenir d’un coup quelqu’un de prestigieux […] le révolté qui, n’entendant pas à se conformer à un état de choses qu’il réprouve et que tous admettent par veulerie ou par intérêt, n’hésite pas à blâmer les autorités qui le maintiennent dans l’oppression farouchement résolu à ne céder qu’après avoir remporté la victoire, fût-elle illusoire ou trop lointaine […] l’accusé, coupable ou non que traque dans son box une société pourrie d’honnêteté et de bon sens. (130)

For the bavard, the issue of truth in writing is largely irrelevant and hypocritical because truth is, above all, boring when it comes to literature. Readers, pushed by the interesting stories just read, have an urge to find out the truth; when this is not forthcoming, they would laugh at their entertainer were it not for anger and embarrassment at having just been tricked: Le cruel spectacle que celui d’un homme qui s’emmêle dans les fils de ses contradictions au fur et à mesure qu’il cherche à les décider! Ils veulent rire, je ne leur donnerai pas ce plaisir. Croient-ils se jouer de moi, ils seront joués. (141)

Yet, like Céline, who wants to break from the human herd but still refers to the collective as “nous” (“nous périssons tous en chœur, avec plaisir en somme, dans un monde que nous avons mis cinquante siècles à libeller de contraintes et d’angoisses” [Hommage à Zola 115]), the bavard’s consistent lying points to a universal condition collectively ignored. Similar to Céline, the bavard targets the hypocrites, who are far more odious, in his mind, than pure liars: 90

The Clinamen C’est entendu, je suis un bavard, un inoffensif et fâcheux bavard, comme vous êtes vous-mêmes et par surcroît un menteur comme le sont tous les bavards, je veux dire les hommes. Mais en quoi cela nous autorise-t-il à me reprocher âprement le mal dont vous êtes vous-mêmes affectés. (143)

It is the bavard’s unsettling comment on humanity’s collective hypocrisy that led Georges Bataille to consider Le bavard as “l’un des plus bouleversants [récits] qui étaient écrits” (qtd. in Blanchot 163). As Maurice Blanchot sees it, “[Bataille] le sentait proche de soi comme est proche une vérité qui glisse et vous entraîne dans le glissement” (163). This is why the bavard is no longer ashamed of his condition and remains defiantly proud. In fact, the bavard can continue with all the rhetorical strength and seduction of “legitimate” authors such as Sartre or Gide because he has a superior “talent to amuse”: On ne peut me demander de rester dans mon coin silencieux et modeste, à écouter se payer de mots des gens dont j’ai bien le droit de penser qu’ils n’ont ni plus d’expériences, ni plus de réflexion que moi-même. Lequel d’entre vous me jettera la pierre? (143)

Unlike “ordinary” people who are stuck in their own uneventful speech patterns, this manipulatively eccentric bavard is unique and as such is able to mesmerize an audience with his verbal dexterity (as opposed to conventional bavards, who often put their audiences to sleep). The bavard’s defiance is a direct counterexample to Rousseau’s groundbreaking opening to Les confessions. Rousseau had the courage to present himself “dans toute la vérité de la nature” and dared the reader: “Que chacun d’eux découvre à son tour son cœur aux pieds de son trône avec la même sincérité, et puis qu’un seul te dise, s’il ose: je fus meilleur que cet homme-là” (117). La nature de l’homme for the bavard is reversed: lying is more natural and truthful, and the bavard is the only one with enough selfconfidence to admit this fact. In this manner, the bavard’s enterprise breaks the mold in its own way, just as Rousseau had done with his declaration: “Je forme une entreprise qui n’eut jamais d’exemple et dont l’exécution n’aura point d’imitateurs” (117). 91

Chapter Two Similar to the image of contemporary artist Jeff Koons’s basketball, which is artificially placed in perfect equilibrium at the center of an aquarium filled with water, the bavard must prove that human balance is impossible. The bavard must continually zigzag among his narratives so that he can unsettle his audience. This seesawing between truth and lies insures him of a certain illusiveness with which he feels most comfortable: were he to be pinned down, he would suddenly be ordinary. It is crucial that he keep his eccentric impulse for uncontrollable originality alive through unbridled speech in order to avoid falling into what he sees as a homogenous quagmire. He is similar in this way to Céline, whose frenzied style sought to rattle a French elite accustomed to being programmed from the start of its education: “Ils entrent dans l’enseignement secondaire, comme les petites chinoises dans les brodequins rétrecis, ils sortiront émotivement monstrueux, amputés, sadiques, frigides, frivoles et retors” (Bagatelles pour un massacre 160). The bavard too breaks with the French literary/educational code by toppling the autobiographical tradition that precedes him. He proudly revels in what the stereotypical French schoolteacher would write as a leveling criticism of a student essay: “Du bavardage 0/20!” or “Ce n’est que du bavardage,” or as a disciplinary reprimand of a student’s talking during class: “Cessez ce bavardage!” As Blanchot defines it, “Bavarder est la honte du langage.” It is part of the vocabulary of power and punishment: “L’adulte le dit à l’enfant; tu n’es qu’un bavard, comme le masculin le dit au féminin, le philosophe à l’homme quelconque, le politique au philosophe: bavardage. Ce reproche arrête tout” (177). This is why the bavard presents himself, mockingly, as a guilty victim: “Tu me méprises lecteur, mais tu vois que je grossis mes vices” (10). He allows himself to be physically battered, in a fictitious episode of the book, “avec la passive humilité d’une victime consentante” (103); he accepts the laughter of others “comme un crachat reçu en pleine face” (110); he continues his narration in order to “subir jusqu’au bout l’épreuve qui consacra mon rachat” and finally “j’avais hâte de me laver de mon péché et je désirais avec ardeur obtenir mon propre pardon” (113). Yet, as defined by his talent, because the bavard is above all that guilt, he is the one who ultimately controls the strings of

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The Clinamen his audience as he explains: “Maintenant, j’invite ceux qui ont envie de rire à le faire ouvertement; je désire qu’ils sachent que je ne suis que trop disposé à m’associer à leur gaieté” (20). It is just as he had declared in the opening of the book: “Sitôt que vous tentez de vous expliquer avec franchise, vous vous trouvez contraint à faire suivre chacune de vos phrases affirmatives d’une dubitative ce qui équivaut le plus souvent à nier ce que vous venez d’affirmer” (4). In this way, he is able to mock his audience. Although his narrative sets itself up as a series of confessions, the bavard punctuates his declarations with ironic smiles: “Je suis obligé de sourire, et c’est en souriant que je vous réponds que je me flatte d’avoir peu de goût pour les aveux” (12). This constant grimacing at the audience serves as a mirror for the reader, who smirks at the bavard, who, in turn, smirks at the reader; and as an act of ultimate insight into the fickle aspect of human nature, he concludes: Vous découvrirez qu’il n’y a rien de plus difficile, à moins d’être échauffé par quelque conviction, que de parler de soi avec gravité en laissant de côté tous les agréables jeux de l’insolence; vous craindrez le ridicule, et pour consciencieux que soit votre épanchement intime, il y aura toujours une irrépressible ironie qui s’y donnera libre cours. (16)

The bavard’s eccentric revolt is therefore a didactic one. The trickster sheds light on aspects of human nature that have been repressed in society. He teaches the audience not to have a haughty attitude toward a chatterer who, in actual fact, cannot be resisted. In a short story, La chambre des enfants, Des Forêts takes up a related idea and points to a necessary conflict and rebellion between teacher/pupil or dominator/dominated as the only way one can be shaken out of the placidity that passive conformity breeds: Ne comprends-tu pas que les maîtres ont dramatisé les règlements en donnant à nos rapports avec eux qui se substituent à lui le caractère d’un conflit permanent? […] Résister sournoisement à une juste punition, c’est rompre sans cesse avec la docilité satisfaisante où nous risquerons de nous endormir. (175)

The confusion the bavard creates around the truth and autobiographical rules is so effective that every one is implicated, 93

Chapter Two including the narrator himself. Disobeying orders merely reinforces the power of the rules that are being disobeyed: “Reconnaître la puissance invincible du règlement qui ne vit en nous que par la fréquence de nos délits.” But creating a type of literary chaos upon which no one can feel fully grounded is the most potent form of rebellion because no one is spared. The result of this artistic anarchy is the perpetual doubt of the audience who, as a result of all the confusion, must simply learn to be more alert: Peut-on m’identifier avec le propriétaire de la main droite qui forme les présentes lettres? Comment le savoir? N’attendez pas qu’il se dénonce de lui-même […] Sait-il luimême de quoi je suis fait, en admettant que je sois fait de quelque chose? (152–53)

The key to the bavard’s one-upmanship is his ability to deceive the reader at will through the mazelike trajectories of his speech. This same ability sustains his power to illuminate and to create great art. The artist’s illusion becomes the magician’s conjuring. The bavard’s web of deceit is a verbal mirage that resembles an uncontrolled machine ignited by the sorcerer’s apprentice, “comme s’il se trouvait dans le même embarras que l’apprenti sorcier: la machine tourne sans nécessité, impossible d’en contrôler les mouvements” (12). The trickster, of course, seems out of control and yet is very much in control. His modus operandi is similar to Céline’s metaphor of refraction using the trick of the stick in the water: One has to take a twisted stick (“tordu” in the sense of “crooked” or, figuratively, “crazy”), in order to make it look “straight” (i.e., “normal”) via the illusion caused by refraction. As Céline understands it: Cassez-le vous-même, pardi! Avant de le plonger dans l’eau! Cette bonne blague! Tout le secret de l’impressionnisme! […] Ainsi vous corrigerez l’effet! […] de la réfraction! Il aura l’air droit votre bâton. (Entretiens 71)

Indeed, if refraction is “the action of distorting an image by viewing it through a medium” according to Webster’s Dictionary, the bavard’s medium is the autobiographical construct he

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The Clinamen proceeds to destroy. He is able to conjure different images of himself with very little besides his rhetorical imagination. His artistic vision is similar to the way Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman described his art in terms of his first experiences with a movie projector, which he perceived as a metaphor for deception and illusion: When I show a film, I am guilty of deceit. I use an apparatus which is constructed to take advantage of certain human weaknesses, an apparatus with which I am able to sway my audience in a highly emotional manner. Make them laugh, scream with fright, smile, believe in fairy stories, become indignant, feel shocked, charmed, deeply moved or perhaps yawn with boredom. Thus, I am either an impostor or, when the audience is willing to be taken in, a conjurer. (Bergman 17)

The bavard’s conjuring is not necessarily based on the deception of the human “eye” but rather, in terms of fiction/ nonfiction, on the human “I.” The bavard’s game is essentially grounded on readers’ need to believe the narrative “I.” Even if they do not believe, readers still have an insatiable desire to find out which elements are true and which ones are lies. This is the fundamental reason the reader continues to read or the spectator to listen. It is the process that counts, not necessarily what is behind it. This is the ultimate victory of the trickster: Once the trick has been played, he can go on to another victim; he does not have to linger to defend his ideas, as a philosopher or a polemicist might: Mais telle est ma puérilité que je me réjouis à l’idée que ma revanche consistera à le [le lecteur] laisser toujours ignorer si je mentais encore quand je prétendais mentir […] Je suis arrivé à ce que je voulais obtenir. Je me suis soulagé, et qu’on ne me dise pas que ce n’était pas la peine. (160)

The bavard’s triumph is a defense of an individual’s ability to say and do what he wants. There is no social contract forcing him to tell the truth as others dictate. Whether he is a popular success or not, the most important trick is to be able to unabashedly project the exact subjective image of one’s self

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Chapter Two that one wants to project (and not what others expect to receive). The ability to invent one’s self in everyday life in an imaginative way is what makes any person (even a simple bavard) original and interesting. This is why the bavard can shift from being a primitive trickster at the beginning of the book into becoming a “transcendent” one in Jung’s paradigm. As Jung explains: At the most archaic level of this symbolism, we again meet the trickster theme. But this time he no longer appears as a lawless would-be hero. He has become the Shaman—the medicine man whose magical practices and flights of intuition stamp him as a primitive master of initiation. (141)

The bavard’s mirror at the start of the book can serve, in fact, as a mirror for the audience, who can be transformed at the end of the novel because the bavard has been able to teach a few things on human nature: L’aveu d’un vice que personne n’ose secrètement reconnaître pour sien ne peut prêter qu’à des commentaires ironiques de la part des plus hypocrites et soulever chez les plus méchants qu’un concert d’imprécations déchaînées […] Aussi ne tenait-il qu’à moi de brouiller par moments la piste que j’avais soigneusement tracée. (150)

This is the essence of speech for the eccentric bavard. All those who speak become types of actors; it is only a matter of degree how far one goes in trying to impress a given audience: Rien ne m’est plus étranger que le soin pris par certains hommes d’exposer leur science d’eux-mêmes aux regards de tous. Cependant, il est inutile d’espérer ouvrir la bouche si vous ne pouvez vaincre votre aversion profonde pour les feux de la rampe. Vous êtes condamné à monter sur les tréteaux, il faut vous résoudre à y faire charlatan. (148)

Herein lies the bavard’s fundamental irony. A naive reader or listener who approaches a person with a “scientific” microscope (what is true versus what is not) ignores the glaringly obvious truth that a story or a person should be enjoyed through a kind of telescope: what is enjoyable and what seems distant

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The Clinamen or complicated is in fact right in front of us. Even if the bavard lies, he is telling the truth because his truth is to be a chatterbox. As long as he continues to speak, he is true to the essence of his being. In this way, Des Forêts’s bavard invites a comparison to the works of Raymond Roussel who, because of his eccentric writing methodology (and lifestyle), has often been branded a fou littéraire. Embraced by Breton as “le plus grand magnétiseur des temps modernes” (Anthologie de l’humour noir 384), Roussel created an extraordinarily intricate system of word associations that he used to produce his stories. He thought that the purest form of discourse was one that was based completely on the imagination rather than truth. Fanatically devoted to Jules Verne,5 Roussel, along with Huysmans’s stationary traveler, boasted that “de tous les voyages, je n’ai jamais rien tiré pour mes livres. Il m’a paru que la chose méritait d’être signalée tant elle montre clairement que chez moi l’imagination est tout” (Roussel 27). Roussel’s work is, indeed, particularly identifiable by its out of control overabundance of ingenious adventures and characters (in Impressions d’Afrique or Locus solus, for example). His reader is often left with a dizzying sense of hyperactivity. Similar to the bavard, Roussel is a spinner of numerous outlandish tales that are meant to accentuate the power of language itself to hypnotize people into a state of delirium. Roussel’s stories are “une machine à faire voir la reproduction des choses, insérée dans un instrument de langage,” according to Michel Foucault (Raymond Roussel 147). Roussel also believed that the author can only achieve this trickery by erasing all traces of his true self. His goal is to achieve an immaculate “disparition de soi” (Foucault, Raymond Roussel 40). Analogous to the bavard, who has the power to lead readers by the nose in order to later play tricks on them, Foucault points out that, for Roussel, “le lecteur pense reconnaître les errements sans chemins de l’imagination là où il n’y a que les hasards de langage traités méthodiquement” (53). Roussel masters what Annie Le Brun refers to as a “trompe l’œil” style (A. Le Brun 14) that he and the bavard both find equally inviting: “[il s’agit] d’une vacance absolue de l’être qu’il faut investir, maîtriser et combler par l’invention pure” (Foucault, Raymond Roussel 25).

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Chapter Two In terms of the clinamen, the lessons the bavard offers are simple despite the apparent complex machinery of his narrative weaving: do not dismiss what may initially seem banal because even the most banal-looking individual can be resplendent with originality and inventiveness. By the mere act of speaking, each one of us can be guilty of bavardage, and yet equally guilty of originality, depending on what “true” image of oneself we choose to project. Indeed, the bavard’s subtle swerve away from the norms of conventional discourse suggests that we are all capable of creating entertaining illusions in our daily lives. As an actor in Bergman’s The Magician reveals: “Truth is made to order, the most skillful liar creates the most useful truth” (Bergman 306). By remaining ferociously unique, the bavard is able to forge his own artistic vision with the participation of his listener. Seeking out the eccentric “magic projectors” of the quotidian, whether in a bar, or even on a bus, or in a café, can often provide more everyday truths than can be found in more conventional venues, such as certain moralizing texts or tracts, for example. This is Des Forêts’s ultimate lesson.

Perec’s Clinamen: Eccentricity, A User’s Manual Because of his work in the OuLiPo, it is natural to identify Georges Perec with the art of literary constraint. Indeed, his lipogrammatic masterpiece, La disparition, is a monument to his adhesion to what François Le Lionnais declared as OuLiPo’s credo in its second manifesto: L’activité de l’Oulipo et la mission dont il se considère investi posent le problème de l’efficacité et de la viabilité des structures littéraires […] L’efficacité d’une structure […] dépend d’abord de la plus ou moins grande difficulté d’écrire des textes en respectant des règles plus ou moins contraignantes. (OuLiPo viii)

Nonetheless, if rigid constraint is crucial to Perec’s work so is the clinamen, the error in the system. In fact, the clinamen is integral to his view of art and creativity. As Motte recounts, after a personal interview with Perec:

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The Clinamen A fervent devotee of highly constraining structures and uncompromising literary symmetry, author of a 5000 character palindrome and a 300 page lipogrammatic novel, Perec gradually became convinced of the creative efficacy of the minimal amount of chaos into literary structures of this sort. He told with relish the story of Chinese typographers who, after working for years to set an error-free text, would deliberately insert therein one typographical error. (The Poetics of Experiment 272)

In Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi, Motte has identified several examples of the clinamen. For example, although there should be a hundred chapters according to the formal structure of the novel, there are only ninety-nine. When the little girl in chapter 65 bites into the petit-beurre, she is metaphorically disrupting Bartlebooth’s perfectly symmetrical panorama. As Perec explains, the bitten-off corner of the petit-beurre represents the clinamen in his carefully constructed system: Il y a un chapitre qui a été suprimé à cause de la fille qui mord dans son petit-beurre. Plus profondément, il faut que ce chapitre disparaisse pour casser la symétrie; quand on établit un système de contraintes, il faut qu’il y ait du jeu, comme on dit, que ça grince un peu: il ne faut pas que ça soit complètement cohérent, il faut un clinamen. (“Interview avec Eva Poniatowska” 70)

Despite his adherence to formal constraint, Perec emphasizes that what really makes a work of art a masterpiece is the unpredictable, the imperfect, the unbalanced. His notion of the clinamen is similar in this manner to the modern fictional eccentric whose elements of chaos and imbalance underline moments of genius that are sparks of creativity. As Perec elaborates: C’est dans la théorie des atomes d’Epicure: “le monde fonctionne parce que au départ il y a un déséquilibre.” Selon Klee le génie, c’est l’erreur dans le système; je suis peutêtre orgueilleux en disant ça…mais dans la peinture de Klee, c’est très important. Alors, dans le chapitre 66, il y avait un certain nombre de choses qui devaient se passer, mais je ne savais pas comment l’organiser. (“Interview avec Eva Poniatowska” 71)

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Chapter Two Motte understands that Perec sees the clinamen as a “flaw scrupulously cultivated, in turn, as the real locus of free will, a reaction against the constraints (self-imposed, in Perec’s case) of rigid symmetry” (The Poetics of Experiment 275). It stands to reason that Perec’s formal interpretation of the clinamen can also be applied to the actual characters of the novel, who similarly transcend the structures imposed by society and act in unique ways as illustrators of the creative error in the structures of everyday life. The character who most powerfully exemplifies the image of the invisible clinamen in society is the building itself in La vie mode d’emploi. Indeed, on the outside, it is merely an old apartment house on the rue Simon-Crubellier in a popular old Parisian neighborhood. As described in the first chapter, the building is one among thousands of others in Paris in which ordinary people perform the same routines automatically and without any singularity, as if everyone belonged to a type of ant colony: Les habitants d’un même immeuble vivent à quelques centimètres les uns des autres, une simple cloison les sépare, ils se partagent les mêmes espaces répétés le long des étages, ils font les mêmes gestes en même temps, ouvrir le robinet, tirer la chasse d’eau, allumer la lumière, mettre la table, quelques dizaines d’existences simultanées qui se répètent d’étage en étage, et d’immeuble en immeuble, et de rue en rue. (Vie mode d’emploi 20)

The building appears to be the only sustaining monument to the lives who inhabit it. Although the creative trio in charge of making art out of the people who live in the building produces an ambitious plan, all that is left “on paper” from their grandiose vision are various forms of emptiness or blanks. Bartlebooth’s project of gluing together the five hundred watercolors of all the different ports he has painted during his trip around the world only to erase them all when he is finished is selfdestructive by design: Bartlebooth chercha un procédé qui lui permettrait de récupérer les marines initiales; pour cela il fallait d’abord recoller les morceaux de bois, trouver un moyen de faire

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The Clinamen disparaître toute les traces de coups de scie et redonner au papier sa texture première. (20)

As Perec admits, Bartlebooth is an eccentric traveler who is similar to Phileas Fogg (“car il y avait du Phileas Fogg en Bartlebooth” [80]) in the sense that Bartlebooth’s voyage around the world is designed with pure circularity in mind rather than geographical or tourist splendor. Nonetheless, the clinamen in Bartlebooth’s project is his accidentally going blind and then dying before he can obliterate the traces he leaves behind despite the extensive rules he creates in order to destroy them: Si l’on peut parler d’un échec global, ce n’est pas à cause de ces petits décalages, mais parce que, réellement, concrètement, Bartlebooth ne parvint pas à mener à terme sa tentative en respectant les règles qu’il s’était donné [sic]: […] Tous les puzzles ne furent pas reconstitués, et tous les puzzles reconstitués ne furent pas détruits à l’endroit même où, à peu près vingt ans plutôt, les aquarelles avaient été peintes. (481–82)

In a similar fashion, Winckler inevitably fails to complete the puzzle within the parameters of Bartlebooth’s complex set of rules. As John Pedersen points out, the puzzler and the puzzlemaker are synergistically linked by the fatality of their enterprise: Le préambule est repris, mot à mot, au début du chapitre XLIV, consacré à Winckler, justement, pour mieux faire comprendre le caractère “diabolique” de l’entreprise et l’issue fatale pour Bartlebooth qui ne parvient pas à terminer son ultime puzzle parce que la dernière pièce ne cadre pas avec le vide du tableau. (Pedersen 105)

Yet, whatever obstacles they encounter in the project, it is precisely the clinamen-like swerve in how one views the puzzle that Winckler is seeking: On va chercher partout où ce n’est pas ce qui est très précisément énoncé dans la définition même. Tout le travail consistait en fait à opérer ce déplacement qui donne à la pièce,

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Chapter Two à la définition, son sens et rend du même coup toute explication fastidieuse et inutile. (416)

As Pedersen puts it, Winckler is initiating a new way of looking at what we are seeing: “Ce que Winckler cherche à obtenir, c’est que l’on voie autrement ce qui nous est donné à voir” (106). As such, the artists behind the novel are architects of an eccentric way of viewing life. One of the epigraphs of the book, “regarde de tous tes yeux, regarde,” a quote from Verne’s Michel Strogoff, can be seen as a clue for understanding the novel: “How should one see life?” the book seems to be asking. One answer proposed by the epigraph is “by looking hard with all one’s might past the superficiality of first impressions.” Significantly, the epigraph to the preamble, “l’œil suit les chemins qui lui ont été ménagés dans l’œuvre,” a quote from Paul Klee, is another clue to reading the book correctly. If Klee’s idea of the “error” or clinamen is so dear to Perec, this epigraph is a hint that one should have faith in the labyrinthine voyage, not around one’s own room, but around the collective rooms of the buildings on the rue Simon-Crubellier. Finally, if Bartlebooth’s elaborate scheme is manifested by his travels, and the clinamen involved in Winckler’s craftsmanship is in his providing a swerve in the way one views the puzzle, Valène’s clinamen is linked to the initial quote from Michel Strogoff. Valène’s project is to paint the entire canvas of all the different rooms and inhabitants of the building. Although he works on the project for years, the only picture he actually produces is of a few blotches of paint on a canvas: “la toile était pratiquement vierge” (602). As such, he resembles Balzac’s Frenhofer in Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu. Yet, it is at the end of the novel, after Perec has in fact painted the rich lives and histories of the building, that the reader is aware of Valène’s own chef-d’œuvre inconnu. Although in appearance Valène has painted nothing at the end of the novel, the reader has just experienced the vast kaleidoscope of the living canvas within the building. Similarly, if one passes by a building like the one on Simon-Crubelier, one can overlook the microcosmic universe behind its ordinary walls. Again, Valène’s painting underlines Perec’s idea that it is not what you see but how you see that is important.

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The Clinamen In dedicating his book to Raymond Queneau, Perec reveals a bonding paradigm between the two authors. Valentin Brû in Le dimanche de la vie, for example, views life as an extended Sunday, and Perec sees it as a great game and puzzle (or the “‘jeux-dis’ de la vie”). Yet, the building resembles a compass that remains still and fixed while its inhabitants, such as Bartlebooth, circle the globe only to return to their point of origin. As Baudelaire painted his Tableaux parisiens, Valène tries to capture, in a single tableau, thousands of moments in the life of a Parisian building. Everyone within the building may be endowed with an aura of singularity or illusion, but the building’s great stabilizing power is the edifice itself. Hence, just as Fogg and Nemo were stationary travelers while actually being in motion because they brought their homes wherever they went, the building is the strong home that the inhabitants carry with them when they have left it. As such, the motto found beneath a family picture in Bartlebooth’s room could be the motto for the book, just as mobilis in mobile was for Captain Nemo: Domus Arx Certissima, “the surest stronghold is the home” (480) because everything else in life is composed of uncertainty and chance. Yet, if the building is a stable hearth, it can also be protean. Sometimes the building is described in terms of a natural world of organisms—“un monde de cavernes aux parois couvertes de suie, un monde de cloaques et de bourbiers, un monde de larves et de bêtes, avec des êtres sans yeux traînant des carcasses d’animaux” (447)—or a mystical iceberg containing an invisible, underwater world: “il imaginait que l’immeuble était comme un iceberg dont les étages et les combles auraient commencé les masses immergées” (444). Pedersen interprets these anthropomorphic images as a manifestation of the uncontrollable free will of the imagination that breaks out of Perec’s airtight system of constraints: L’imagination, le don de rendre visible, de mettre en images, pousse ici le narrateur vers l’élaboration d’un véritable univers sous-terrain, dont la description prend la forme d’un amoncellement d’éléments générateurs du texte. Tout se passe en effet comme si on se trouvait là devant le sub-conscient du texte, c’est-à-dire face à la partie non-contrôlée du

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Chapter Two travail textuel complètement indispensable du jeu de contraintes. (99)

At other times, the building is described as an ambiguous creature not unlike a Magritte figure. Sometimes, the building seems to stand still in a sort of “specious present”6 or is vibrant and very much alive: Ce sera quelque chose comme un souvenir pétrifié, comme de ces tableaux de Magritte où l’on ne sait pas très bien si c’est la pierre qui est devenue vivante ou si c’est la vie qui est momifiée; quelque chose comme une image fixée une fois pour toutes, indélébile. (159)

At another moment, Valène sees the building as a grotesque mausoleum where the present rots away along with all the other corpses: L’idée même de cet immeuble éventré montrant à nu les fissures de son passé, l’écroulement de son présent, cet entassement sans suite d’histoires grandioses ou dérisoires, frivoles ou pitoyables, lui faisait l’effet d’un mausolée grotesque dressé à la mémoire de comparses pétrifiés dans des postures ultimes tout aussi insignifiantes dans leur solemnité ou dans leur banalité comme s’il avait voulu à la fois prévenir et retarder ces morts lentes ou vives. (168)

At yet another time, he sees the building as a palpitating amalgam of different lives, beings, and memories: “C’était […] quelque chose qui palpitait quelque part, à la flamme vacillante de sa mémoire: un geste, un parfum, un bruit, un miroitement, une jeune femme qui chantait des airs d’opéra en s’accompagnant au piano” (91). The building becomes a mystical, public folly; yet, it is not its exterior that is eccentric but its inner architecture of the souls and experiences of ordinary people who somehow are all extraordinary in the way they go about life because they all make art out of their quotidian in some way or another: The couple who staged apparitions of Mephistopheles; Cinoc, the assassin of words; the kleptomaniacal magistrate and his wife, who try to outdo themselves in increasingly brazen thefts; the decorator who had to destroy the elaborate futuristic kitchen he had painstakingly created;

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The Clinamen the woman who invented a troop of nieces; the lord who made himself appear eccentric (by exhibiting pseudo-obsessions) in order to hide what he considered his true eccentric passions (boxing, spatial geometry, and Indian horse covers); the banker’s daughter who wanted to be an actress; the cook who wanted to be an actor; the necrophilic artist…Each of the protagonists of the five hundred stories of La vie mode d’emploi reinvent themselves or their spaces in some theatrical manner, whether they never leave their apartments or whether they travel around the world. Similar to Roussel’s Locus solus, which contained the elements for thousands of amazing stories, behind the facade of the ordinary-looking building lies a constantly regenerating myriad of adventures led by people who, also at first glance, are not extraordinary in and of themselves. Symbolically, along with this line of reasoning, when Winckler turns the last piece of the puzzle, an X, into a piece that can never fit, a W, he is asserting the power of the individual to impose a private signature on the world. If the X has traditionally represented the unknown or the enigma, Winckler’s W provides the answer to life’s riddle by affirming his own originality: the puzzle of life is solved by merely living according to one’s own notion of self, which, of course, is not supposed to fit into a united whole. Indeed, the building itself comprises a series of heterogeneous units separated by walls, ceilings, and staircases. What links them all, however, is a common thread of individualism and the freedom to carry through their respective passions. Perec discusses this point in an interview with Le monde. Whereas the reporter interviewing him suggests that the “mode d’emploi” Perec proposes is inherently a sad and futile one (“on part de rien pour arriver à rien, après avoir fait beaucoup de choses inutiles”), Perec affectionately defends the joyous passion for life shared by all of his characters: Ce qui lie tous mes personnages entre eux, c’est la formidable passion qu’ils mettent à aller au bout du monde, à trafiquer des coquillages, à devenir acteur, à concevoir comme Valène cet immense tableau de l’immeuble […] C’est pourquoi il y a en lui quelque chose qui relève du bonheur.7

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Chapter Two The building is also a monument, or an invisible public folly, dedicated to a slice of Paris that is vanishing. The lives Valène tries to capture and freeze onto his canvas are threatened not only by the passage of time (in Proustian terms, he is trying to recapture what may be lost in memories), but also by the active rebuilding of Parisian streets by urban planners and modern architects. Whereas the people in the building die by murder, suicide, natural causes, or broken hearts, only to be immortalized by the stories their lives inspire, the building can die without a trace and be forgotten entirely by future Parisians. Valène understands and cares about the building because it has character. All the different souls in the building constitute one unique soul. The building resembles a living person, with all its foibles, idiosyncrasies, and eccentricities. This is what distinguishes it from the modern high-rises that impersonal developers design to replace it. As such, when Valène meditates on the sensation of suspended time that his painting of the building inspires (“Valène, parfois, avait l’impression que le temps s’était arrêté, suspendu autour qu’il ne savait quelle attente” [68]), he is wistful because he is already feeling a nostalgia for an unrecorded past. Valène mourns the passage of the eccentrics who populate the various apartments because he realizes that what may appear to be insignificant to outsiders forms an important part of his microcosm, a world of poetic gestures, books, objects, and dreams that regularly go unrecorded even though they have made up the most important dramas of the building: Encore une fois alors se mettait à courir dans sa tête la triste ronde des déménageurs et des croque-morts, les agences et leurs clients, les plombiers, les électriciens, les peintres, les tapissiers, les carreleurs, les poseurs de maquettes: il se mettait à penser à la vie tranquille des choses, aux caisses de vaisselles pleines de capeaux, aux cartons de livres […] à la lente mise en place des meubles et des objets, à la lente accoutumance du corps à l’espace, toute cette somme d’événements minuscules, inexistants, irracontables. (169)

The lives depicted in La vie mode d’emploi are all incredible tales. That is why Perec chooses to refer to his book in the plural: romans. Although one might not immediately consider the apartment dwellers particularly adventuresome, all of the ten106

The Clinamen ants have had episodes in their lives that somehow captivate the book’s audiences. The fictional “generator” that keeps the reader from walking away from the book is the Scheherazadelike engagement of the stories that would have otherwise remained untold. The artificial construct that regulates the novel, Winckler’s puzzle or Valène’s painting, acts as a clinamen within the predictability of life. As Perec understands it, the book portrays: Tous ces gestes intimes en quoi se résumera toujours de manière la plus fidèle la vie d’un appartement et que viendront bouleverser, de temps à autre, imprévisibles et inéluctables, tragiques ou benignes, éphémères ou définitives, les brusques cassures d’un quotidien sans histoire. (169)

Valène is successful in capturing, at least in his mind’s eye and consequently the reader’s, the multifaceted honeycomb world within the building that itself will one day disappear, little by little: “Un jour surtout, c’est la maison entière qui disparaîtra, c’est la rue et le quartier entiers qui mourront” (109). Perec goes on to describe how a building so full of life, where the characters in the book live in relative freedom within their worlds on rue Simon-Crubellier, will be usurped by soulless, empty structures: Un à un les magasins fermeront et ne seront pas remplacés, une à une, les fenêtres des appartements devenus vacants seront murées et les planchers défoncés pour décourager les squatters et les clochards. La rue ne sera plus qu’une suite de façades aveugles, fenêtres semblables à des yeux sans pensées. (171)

If in the beginning of the book Perec dwells on the quote from Verne, “regarde, regarde avec tous tes yeux,” it is because he believes in the cliché “the eyes are the window to the soul.” In La vie mode d’emploi, the reader peeks through the window Perec has provided to look into the private rooms of the building. It is as though the reader had discovered a large treasure chest of letters and photographs in an attic belonging to the previous tenants of a newly occupied house. Perec alludes not only to Fogg’s eccentric voyage appropriated by Bartlebooth and to Nemo’s submarine library (which is re-created verbatim 107

Chapter Two as Bartlebooth’s library) but also to Verne’s L’île mystérieuse. As Nemo is indeed “no one” in Latin, the book’s characters are similarly anonymous to the world until, through the clues offered by each chapter, their identities are revealed one by one. As in L’île mystérieuse, where Nemo secretly helps the castaways, each of the book’s chapters can serve as a treasure chest of clues for the stationary voyager the reader becomes while reading the book in bed, for example, which, in turn, can also be an island (as revealed by the quote Perec uses from Leiris, “Lit = île,” in Espèces d’espaces). Indeed, in Penser/Classer, Perec’s main association with eyes is with reading. The chapter “Les yeux” opens with: “On lit avec les yeux,” and in Espèces d’espaces, he associates reading with both bed and Verne’s L’île mystérieuse: “C’est couché à plat ventre sur mon lit que j’ai lu Vingt ans après, L’île mystérieuse, et Jerry dans son lit” (Espèces d’espaces 26). By saying “regarde avec tes yeux,” Perec is also implying that one should read with all one’s eyes, and especially read one’s own surroundings (buildings, neighborhoods, neighbors) as if they were texts filled with clues and adventures. The clinamen in the context of reading the quotidian is the spark that leads one to see past banal appearances and toward the fantastic stories that are under our noses every day. As Tati’s Monsieur Hulot often demonstrates, modern urban life is a constant struggle between the habits and characters of old Paris and what Perec describes as the antiseptic builders of “ces cubes de verre, d’acier et de béton” (Vie mode d’emploi 171). With the approach of the leveling bulldozers imminent (“les bulldozers infatigables des niveleurs viendront charier le reste: des tonnes de gravats et de poussières” [172]), Perceval Bartlebooth’s grail-like quest tries to encapsulate as much of the mosaic that is rue Simon-Crubellier and the world of his travels as possible. The vastness of the cornucopia of lives in the building is similar to Proust’s vision of A la recherche du temps perdu as a large cathedral. Yet, if cathedrals imply centuries of longevity, the old Parisian building is faced with swift annihilation that is as natural to modern Paris as a human’s natural mortality. In fact, Valène often mentions the dust the building will become as a reference to the famous “dust to dust” passage in the Bible: “Images grotesques d’un immeuble

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The Clinamen jeté à bas, ramené à ses matières premières” (171); “la pierre deviendrait du sable, tout retomberait en poussière” (282). If the many references to artists not completing their work in the novel (Bartlebooth, Winckler, Hutting—the other painter in the novel) suggest the impossibility, even the lack of desirability of accomplishing everything in life, the novel seems to be urging the reader to seize as much of daily life in as original a way as possible and then not to look back with futility, as Orpheus might, when it is all over. Hutting’s unfinished portrait of Eurydice, for example, is reflective of the characters in the building and the building itself. We are told to “regarde avec tous tes yeux,” because what we are seeing is a fleeting image: Sur le mur du fond, un tableau représentant un paysage avec un coucher de soleil. A côté, une porte à demi-ouverte par laquelle on devine qu’Eurydice, il y a un instant, vient de disparaître à jamais. (586)

Despite the intricate series of constraints in the novel, and perhaps despite the many constraints one necessarily encounters in life, the building in La vie mode d’emploi stands tall as a symbol of the worlds of the eccentrics within it, who all act out their own free wills in imaginative ways. The various technical clinamen Perec peppers the text with (such as the girl taking a bite out of the petit-beurre and consequently out of chapter 65) can be expanded to include the idiosyncrasies of the inhabitants, who swerve away from the conventional, depending on how one views them. Winckler, the perfection-minded craftsman, decorates his apartment with miniature paintings from L’île mystérieuse to show how a Jules Verne novel can emerge from even the most boring of lives. “How to see life through one’s own eyes,” this is the ultimate message of the book as exemplified by Bartlebooth’s attempts to finish the jigsaw puzzle: Bartlebooth devait, pour trouver cet angle à vrai dire presque mais pas vraiment tout à fait droit, cesser de le considérer comme la pointe d’un triangle, c’est-à-dire faire basculer sa perception, voir autrement ce que fallacieusement l’autre lui donnait à voir. (416)

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Chapter Two Bartlebooth’s fragmented puzzle represents the fragmented, error-filled world of the eccentric who seems perfectly trivial from the outside but, upon closer reflection, is able to overcome certain limitations imposed by modern society. By being in touch with one’s inner clinamen, one can perceive the world creatively. Of course, in Bartlebooth’s case, the clinamen can also lead to failure or blindness. Indeed, this same clinamen may be a guarantor of free will, but not of happiness, as Salavin’s equally tragic itinerary also confirms. Yet, just as Homer’s blindness allowed him to write about the world with more intensity, Bartlebooth’s epic enterprise was not entirely in vain: despite the personal hardships and setbacks that have stood in his way, Bartlebooth leaves his vivid puzzle behind for posterity (just as Perec insures that the countless narratives within the building will live on through his novel). In this way, the eccentric can construct novel (or novelistic) ways of approaching the world and make a masterpiece—that is to say, a high point of creativity—out of everyday life.

*** This sampling of modern eccentrics results in a new profile of the eccentric. Just as their nineteenth-century predecessors had done, modern eccentrics view the world in reaction to the space and time that surround them. It is not surprising that these modern eccentrics are also bachelors. Because eccentrics are somewhat removed from the rest of society, they are unable or unwilling to nestle in a comfortable setting provided by a typical bourgeois family structure. Moreover, their bachelorhood is representative of another trait essential to all eccentrics: they are all autonomous with regard to conventional models of behavior or thought. Because they are happy with their given personas, they are not afraid to stand apart or to be alone. As Habib has mentioned regarding Echenoz’s writing, these characters revel in a certain “apesanteur de l’individualisme.” In Echenoz’s Nous trois, for example, the characters become so “light” that they are seen literally floating through their space capsule, while in Toussaint’s Monsieur, Monsieur’s inner growth is represented by his spiritual moments on the rooftop of his apartment building, as he translates the stars above him into newly appreciated quotidian icons. While Monsieur started 110

The Clinamen off as a depersonalized part of a sterile and hierarchical business structure, he learns to “lighten up” and examine his previously unexamined life. Des Forêts’s bavard’s space can be reduced to a “one on one” encounter with a single listener or audience, an encounter that he presents as a “one-way” trajectory for his speech. Yet, he is successful in calling into question traditional notions of bavardage in a creative storytelling encounter where truth and fiction are brilliantly reversed. Echenoz’s characters transcend the prosaic with novel approaches to their surroundings, which are transformed into glamorous worlds not because of the kind of aura of mystery or extravagance displayed by such nineteenth-century adventure heroes as Monte-Cristo, but because of a quiet reconfiguration of simple objects and spaces into humorous or imaginative ones. Etaix’s soupirant at first tries to learn the conventions of love from his laboratory-like room, but as he expands into real Parisian streets, he is able to impose an ethereal, balletlike form of love onto the hustle and bustle of a busy city. The eccentricity of these characters helps redefine prior eccentric typologies. The bavard subverts the stereotypical chatterbox, who is normally not considered eccentric, into a highly eccentric individual because he can translate meaningless patter into several different layers of discourse. Echenoz’s adventure heroes stray from the concept of the 1980s as an era devoid of imagination by re-creating the feelings of excitement one finds in reading a Jules Verne novel or in watching a film noir. They accomplish this not with far-fetched notions, but by a gentle flânerie through contemporary everyday spaces and objects. Modern eccentrics subvert stereotypical notions of time as well. The bavard reinvents the past according to his immediate need to spellbind in the present. Echenoz’s characters are supplied with fictional constructs from the past (in literature and film) to better appreciate the present around them. The soupirant, who has no notion of the past, attempts to imitate present courtship mores only to end up formulating a new set of conventions that are all his own. Modern eccentrics’ notions of chaos and excess also evolve chronologically from one type to another. While the early

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Chapter Two nineteenth-century eccentric types thrive on these two conditions, the bavard uses an apparent chaos and excess to seduce and trap his audience, which he will then control with a crafty sense of order. Salavin, on the other hand, is unable to resist an impulsive, absurd action that manages to disrupt the rigid bureaucratic order that had until then held him captive. In a chain reaction, this spark of disorder leads to complete chaos in Salavin’s personal world, which will be permanently turned upside down. Later eccentrics (Echenoz’s characters, the soupirant, Monsieur, the inhabitants of Perec’s apartment building) show absolutely no signs of outward disorder yet generate hidden “sparks” of chaos within apparently tightly wound personal universes. Their exuberance manifests itself in other ways. For the soupirant, an elegant gesture or pirouette translates either his joy or his sadness better than the overdetermined images of commercial life that surround him. Similarly, Echenoz’s characters react to the hyperactivity of modern life with an eccentric calm. Unlike the disdainful blasé behavior of the nineteenth-century dandy, the nonchalance of Echenoz’s characters allows them to enjoy the vast stretches of time before them because they choose not to get caught up in either the hysteria of the plots they find themselves in or the pressures of contemporary France. In nineteenth-century Huysmans’s A vau-l’eau, when Sunday rolls around, the hapless Folantin asks “Que faire? La semaine s’égouttait encore, mais c’était le dimanche qui pesait” (99). By contrast, all of the types of modern eccentrics I have mentioned know very well how to fill their days even if they are all Sundays (most of them either do not work or take a hiatus from the workforce in some way). They may not have a set “program,” but they approach each day with a certain creativity. Even when Echenoz’s characters are doing nothing, they do so with alacrity rather than with the heaviness more serious characters might be endowed with. Moreover, it is in the manner that they are able to invent their own timetables that a general que faire is replaced, in the reader’s eyes, by a “comment font-ils?” They each add a singular element of magic aimed at the quotidian rather than at the high society targeted by most nineteenth-century eccentrics for their daily “performances.”

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The Clinamen I have used the Lucretian clinamen as a construct to illustrate the rather discreet manner in which modern eccentrics assert their individuality. The philosophical implications of the clinamen accurately explain how an apparently minor gesture, such as Salavin’s yielding to an impulse to touch his boss’s ear, can lead to an inner emancipation from the constraints of modern life. Indeed, the eccentrics that I have analyzed have all grown into characters who are able to awaken either themselves or others from the stupor of a routine, conformist existence. The clinamen within them helps pave the way for their unpredictable trajectory or the “certain independence from the way things are supposed to be set up,” as Motte has pointed out, that results from the clinamen’s power to make one not a “slave to causality but rather lord of [one]’s self” (“Clinamen Redux” 267). “Je” may well be “un autre” for Rimbaud, but the battle cry remains “je suis je” for the eccentric. Yet, unlike the clinical representations of eccentrics of the early nineteenth century— such as Allix, Journet, and Berbiguier—who displayed their creativity in dramatic ways that were considered insane, the modern eccentric appears to be perfectly conventional and in control. This is why Magritte’s paintings provide such a rich pictorial matrix for the twentieth-century eccentric. The modern eccentric, in fact, represents a type of ekphrasis of Magritte’s “bowler-hatted man” motif that is not specifically pointed out by the characters in Monsieur (as Gustave Moreau was in A rebours, for example) but which nonetheless functions as an intertext. Monsieur is a modern variant of the representation of the bowler-hatted man with a dove in place of his face. He is at first seen as a generic, blank businessman whose “dove” becomes his liberating discovery of a creative approach to life (the quotidian as a constellation of stars). On a grander scale, the building in La vie mode d’emploi appears ordinary on the outside but actually hides a myriad of eccentric lives buzzing with adventure, romance, and art within its old and simple walls. The cinematic and the pictorial clinamen provided by these interdisciplinary matrixes add several elements to the modern eccentric’s composite. First, modern eccentricity comprises essentially interactive contributions to society rather than the

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Chapter Two narcissistic seclusion of the nineteenth-century Des Esseintes, or the ludicrousness inherent in Berbiguier’s obsession with elfin creatures. The process of eccentricity infused into Salavin’s or Monsieur’s corporate worlds allows them to respectively get in touch with their own corporeal, human worlds that had remained buried within their exterior molds. By learning how to embrace the pleasures of daily life, modern eccentrics are able to break free from the anesthetizing institutional chains of their respective work spaces. As in a Magritte painting, where a representation of a dove can emerge from the blank face of a businessman, there is a creative spark within modern eccentrics that inspires them to live their lives in a creative rather than robotic manner. It is by this process of eccentricity that the eccentric has evolved from being perceived as an individual who is fundamentally insane in the nineteenth century to one who can be crowned as quite wise in the twentieth. Yet, this perception of wisdom can only be discerned, as Magritte demonstrates so succinctly, by looking for the less visible, crypto-eccentricity hidden behind the various fronts of modern individuals.

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Chapter Three

The Eccentric’s Universe

The Sunday of Life The quote from Hegel that Queneau uses as an epigraph for Le dimanche de la vie could also be used to describe the space the modern eccentric inhabits and appreciates: “C’est le dimanche de la vie qui nivelle tout et éloigne tout ce qui est mauvais; des hommes doués d’une aussi bonne humeur ne peuvent être foncièrement mauvais ou vils.” If what most distinguishes eccentrics from marginal outsiders, as defined by Colin Wilson in The Outsider, is their penchant for lightness and comedy as opposed to the radical divorce from society favored by outsiders, it is natural to assume that this “sunny” disposition would have an effect on their conception of their surrounding space. If one were to take an author such as Céline as an example, one could hardly describe his outlook as sunny in light of his grim view of humanity and the world, and yet, through the dizzying, almost cartoon-like energy of his style, he is able to convert macabre or banal situations, such as life aboard the Amiral Bragueton in Voyage au bout de la nuit, into darkly comical ones. The eccentric characters who populate Queneau’s novels, on the other hand, do not share Céline’s ambiguous relationship to humanity. Their lives are truly like Sundays because the heavy burdens of life do not seem to oppress them. Instead, they tend to see the poetry in everyday life and are able to transform daily occurrences into fun-filled events. For Queneau’s characters, in particular, as well as for certain characters in the works of Vian and Toussaint, life is viewed with a childlike innocence and playfulness. If their lives resemble Sundays, it is not because they seem to always have time to waste, but because they approach each day as though it were a holiday made for fun. Zazie’s youthful exuberance for the Paris metro 115

Chapter Three is similar to the enthusiasm more-adult characters demonstrate for the quotidian in other novels: Pierrot adores and works in an amusement park in Pierrot mon ami; the narrator of Toussaint’s La salle de bain extends his enjoyment in taking a bath into actually living in his bathtub; Rohel in Queneau’s Les derniers jours considers taking the subway to be a relaxing and cathartic experience. As De Certeau remarks in L’invention du quotidien: “Pratiquer l’espace, c’est donc répéter l’expérience jubilatoire et silencieuse de l’enfance. C’est, dans le lieu, être autre et passer à l’autre” (198). A vernal discovery of pleasures that are either buried within a collective childhood unconscious or simply not taken seriously enough in adulthood transforms these characters into eccentrics in relation to hackneyed protagonists who may distinguish themselves by more typical acts of prowess or heroism. In the nineteenth century, literary figures such as Des Esseintes or Captain Nemo are considered eccentric because they retreat from the active world in order to create alternative universes of their own. Balzac’s Rastignac or Flaubert’s Frédéric Moreau are not considered eccentric because they seek to penetrate high society by playing intricate social-climbing games. In the twentieth century, eccentrics, by definition, are again apart from a homogenous world, yet their differences are no longer marked as dramatically as those of their nineteenth-century counterparts. Indeed, although modern eccentrics seem to be living a perpetual Sunday because they are not constrained by the rigors of a normal nine-to-five schedule, they allow themselves to break these very chains of routine and modern dreariness not because they are wealthy and can afford to do so, but because they have the imagination and wisdom to find beauty in the ordinary. In the twentieth century there is in fact a major class shift within the eccentric paradigm, from the elite to the popular. It is this shift that dictates the chronotopes the modern eccentric lives in. These eccentrics both define and are defined by their chronotopes because their spaces, which are in the process of disappearing, are intrinsically linked not only to their personas but to the very sociological conditions that threaten them.

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The Eccentric’s Universe

The Amusement Park For Alexandre Kojève, Pierrot in Pierrot mon ami represents “le prolétaire désintéressé, d’allure et de goûts aristocratiques” (“Les romans de la sagesse” 387). For Kojève, the proletarian/ aristocratic dialectic is essentially a relationship between slave and master. Pierrot is “d’allure et de goûts aristocratiques” not because he dresses elegantly or leads an extravagant lifestyle, but because he is master of his “sien propre.” Unemployed, he is free to do as he pleases. He is no longer slave to Pradonet, the owner of Uni-Park, the amusement park where he used to work. As Pierre Macherey asserts: “[Il est] l’esclave qui s’est libéré du désir du maître, parce qu’il a su maîtriser son sien propre, mettant ainsi fin aux conflits de la réalité” (15). In other words, Pierrot’s freedom comes from his artistic ability to create an alternative space around him. Similar to his predecessor in the Commedia dell’arte, or even in Watteau’s Gilles, Pierrot is most often associated with the words lunaire, other-worldly, and dreamy. In this sense, Queneau’s Pierrot is endowed with an aura of “unreality.” Because he has no last name, he is easily identified with the timeless pierrot figure of the art and theatrical worlds; but his talent lies essentially in his ability to drift between two separate dream worlds: the Uni-Park amusement park and the sacred Poldevian shrine next door. In Une histoire modèle, Queneau concludes that “[la littérature] désigne métaphoriquement le paradis perdu et mesure le malheur de l’homme” (103). Pierrot’s space is divided into two contrasting lost paradises: the “vert paradis perdu de l’enfance,” that is to say, the amusement park, and the historical “paradis perdu” sought after by the Knights of the Round Table or the Crusaders. As Kojève remarks in relation to Pierrot’s loyalty to the fallen Poldevian prince: “Ne venère-t-il pas, en vrai sage hégelien, un sépulcre [qui] représente les restes d’un passé aristocratique à jamais résolu, mais superbe et absurde, qui reste toujours dans sa mémoire?” (“Les romans de la sagesse” 388). As Macherey reminds us, the myth of Poldevia rests upon an empty grave, which in Pierrot mon ami is meant not to encourage lofty questers after an ideal, but to quell the expansion of the very mercantilistic owner of Uni-Park: Pradonet.

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Chapter Three Uni-Park may represent innocent youth to the naive Pierrot, but it is strictly a business enterprise to the mercurial Pradonet: Il apparaît alors que le culte dont la chapelle de Poldève était le siège se déroulait autour d’un objet absent: Le prince […] n’a jamais existé, ou plutôt Voudzoï [one of the custodians of the “shrine”] n’était que Voussois, et c’est lui-même qui a organisé cette mystification, afin d’enrayer la prolifération incontrôlée de l’Uni-Park. (23)

The melancholia traditionally attributed to a pierrot also represents, in Pierrot mon ami, the sadness inherent in humanity’s perpetual ex-centered position in relation to paradises lost and regained, as Queneau explains: La littérature est la projection sur le plan imaginaire de l’activité réelle de l’homme; le travail, la projection sur le plan réel de l’activité imaginaire de l’homme. Tous deux naissent ensemble. L’une désigne métaphoriquement le paradis perdu et mesure le malheur de l’homme. L’autre progresse vers le paradis retrouvé et tente le bonheur de l’homme. (Histoire modèle 103)

For Pierrot, the word lunaire characterizes and unites his eccentric and dreamy universe. In Pierrot’s chronotope, Uni-Park “Uni-fies” the pierrot’s typically childlike world, a luna-park (a park for Pierrot Lunaire) and the ethereal Poldevian chapel (threatened by the ruthless amusement park industry), which is run by Mounnezergues, from whose name “moon” or lune can be phonetically extracted. The chapel, in this lunar context, can represent the enchanted universe that Pierrot naively believes in and that is in danger of being overwhelmed by greedy entrepreneurs. Pierrot frequents spaces such as “la rue des Larmes,” “le Palace de la Rigolade,” “le métro fantastique,” and “la Rivière Enchantée.” Of course, in Queneau’s symbolic seesawing between paradises lost/regained, and dreams/reality, Pierrot is also found in front of the “Grand Serpent Vert” and “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” which, at first glance, seem to portray innocent fairy tales before revealing themselves to be forums for voyeurism and eroticism:

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The Eccentric’s Universe Il y a une femme couchée dans un lit, pour vingt sous on a le droit de viser dans une cible; si on met dans le mille, le lit bascule et on voit la poule rouler par terre. Elle est déshabillée, pas la peine de vous le dire. (Pierrot mon ami 43)

Contrary to nineteenth-century examples of eccentrics— such as Des Esseintes, whose eccentricity was decadent, or Captain Nemo, whose eccentricity which was obsessional— Pierrot is eccentric in relation to the rest of the Uni-Park crew because he is naive and innocent. Along with the fortune that allowed Des Esseintes to indulge his senses any way he pleased, came a certain sadistic, moral deviance, as when he corrupts a young orphan into becoming a misogynist. With Nemo’s extraordinary invention, the Nautilus, came the death of many sailors from all the submarine attacks he orchestrated. Pierrot belongs to the ideal world of the amusement park because his conception of the world is very simple and ingenuous in contrast to the world around him, which is consumed by the tawdry mechanics of urban life. Just as Uni-Park is geographically distanced from Paris proper, Pierrot is emotionally and spiritually ex-centered from what is fashionable or current. This is what makes him paradoxically extraordinary and ordinary. He is “common” inasmuch as he is neither wealthy nor excessively poor. He is a comrade to his fellow workers at the amusement park with whom he fraternizes at the “Uni-bar”; he is unique because his concept of life is free of vice and complexity in contrast to the leering “philosophes” who are preoccupied exclusively with watching women during the different Uni-Park attractions. Like so many of Queneau’s characters, he is Zen-like in his appreciation of the present and of the quotidian. As Andrée Bergens writes: Dans leur simplicité, ils [les personnages de Queneau] sentent qu’il y a quelque chose qui ne tourne pas rond dans l’existence […] mais qui est si vague, si lointain qu’il vaut encore mieux le prendre comme il vient sans chercher à savoir de quoi il retourne […] Il existe les formes individuelles de bonheur, taillées à la mesure de ceux qui les ont choisies, même si elles n’apparaissent pas comme telles aux autres. (Raymond Queneau 91)

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Chapter Three Nineteenth-century eccentrics were involved in seeking some unreachable state of absolute happiness, exemplified by Des Esseintes’s constant quest for new sensations; in trying to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks, like Fogg’s voyage around the world; or in expressing vehement dissatisfaction with the spirit of the times, typified by the Chat Noir groups. In Queneau’s world, there is no feeling of mal de siècle; rather, there is a simple appreciation of what is. Pierrot’s appealing contentedness is described in poetic terms by Queneau: Accoudé bien à son aise, Pierrot pensait à la mort de Louis XVI, ce qui veut dire, singulièrement, à rien de précis; il n’y avait dans son esprit qu’une buée mentale, légère et presque lumineuse comme le brouillard d’un beau matin d’hiver, qu’un vol de moucherons anonymes. (22)

While other Uni-Park workers, such as Paradis and PetitPouce, use the park’s bumper cars to chase women, “Pierrot ne choisit ni ne prit rien” (22). He prefers to mix with the atmosphere and energy of the amusement park: Les autres se cognaient avec énergie, les trolleys crépitaient contre le filet métallique, des femmes criaient: et […], dans tout le reste de l’Uni-Park, il y avait ce rameau de foule qui s’amuse […] Pierrot n’avait aucune idée spéciale sur la moralité publique ou l’avenir de la civilisation. On ne lui avait jamais dit qu’il était intelligent. On lui avait plutôt répété qu’il se conduisait comme un manche ou qu’il avait des analogies avec la lune. En tout cas, ici, maintenant, il était heureux, et content, vaguement. (22–23)

This “vaguement” is similar to the traditional pierrot of the Commedia dell’arte or of Watteau’s Gilles, who stands slightly apart from the rest of the actors and smiles with a feeling of vague contentment. Uni-Park is theatrical in a way that is similar to the slapstick theater of the Commedia. Pierrot’s fellow workers are in fact actors who play the roles of different amusement-park characters. Yet, while they are conscious of their role-playing jobs, Pierrot behaves naturally; he really is an amusement-park figure in and out of the confines of the park. The amusement park is his natural habitat and the reflection of his inner self:

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The Eccentric’s Universe Avec la musique en plus, un haut-parleur qui bramait “ô mon amour, à toi toujours,” il y avait vraiment de quoi laisser courir le long de son échine le frisson de la douce existence; et comme quoi il est prouvé qu’on peut très bien ne pas penser à la mort de Louis XVI et tout de même continuer à exister avec au moins une apparence humaine, et du plaisir dans le cœur. (23–24)

The fact that Pierrot does not think about Louis XVI, but rather thinks about nothing at all, points to several salient aspects of Pierrot’s eccentricity. In Kojèvian terms, Pierrot does not think of Louis XVI, who is a symbol of the fall of the monarchy and the rise of the French Revolution, because he is removed from history. Unlike Valentin Brû, the protagonist of Le dimanche de la vie, who tries to retrace Napoleon’s steps at the battle site of Jena, Pierrot is ahistorical in mind and spirit. Although he is proudly working class, his affinity with ancient aristocracies is in keeping with his instinctive notions of chivalry. He values the mythical and sacred monument to the fallen Poldevian prince for all the romanticism that this image evokes, while the blood lineages of aristocratic French families would have little interest for him. In any case, such a ponderously serious topic as Louis XVI’s death is foreign to Pierrot not only because he is so detached from real-world events, but because it is a grim thought. Pierrots are typically melancholy, as Pierrot is in relation to his unrequited love for his co-worker Yvonne (who plays the Columbine role in this context), but they also are supposed to make people laugh. When, in Uni-Park, as an assistant to the fakir during an act, Pierrot faints, he naturally causes laughter (“Dans la salle, on se marrait”). Almost everyone he comes in contact with outside of Uni-Park is equally amused by the things he says and does. His own reaction, at the end of the novel, is to laugh for no apparent reason: “Arrivé au coin de la rue, il s’arrêta. Il se mit à rire” (26). Since life is an amusement park for Pierrot, it is natural that he should be “amused” by life itself. In Pierrot’s eyes, an amusement park can and should be a poetic site: L’Uni-Park s’étalait lumineux, grouillant et sonore […] Audessus des multiples lumières, immobiles ou agitées, des avions attachés à un haut pylône, tournaient silencieusement

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Chapter Three en rond dans une zone déjà obscure et par conséquent poétique. (48)

But Queneau also reminds us that beneath its fantasy-like exterior, there is an undercurrent of crudeness and harsh reality: “Mais au-dessous cela ressemblait fort à un fromage où eussent rampé des larves noires éclairées par des vers luisants” (40). In fact, Uni-Park is not only ex-centered from the rest of Paris, it is ex-centered in a dangerous and sinister area that Mounnezergues describes in terms of: terrains vagues, petits ateliers, remises ou écuries, baraques zonières, entreprises insalubres, équarisseurs, fermes et près même. Le quartier était mal fréquenté: On y trouvait parfois des femmes en morceaux ou des moucherons exécutés […]. (63–64)

Pierrot’s lunar vision, however, sees past the harsh reality of the actual space of Uni-Park and focuses only on its enchanting qualities. There are many references to his myopia that underline the fact that he sees things differently from others. He sees things in a way that is similar to Rimbaud’s voyant: his senses interpret images according to the poetry he feels in his own heart. For Pierrot, these scrambled senses are translated into film images, because that is the technology that theoretically translates dreams or illusions into reality. This is why Pierrot describes his ethereal love for Yvonne in terms of Hollywood filmmaking: —Quand je vous regarde, je me crois au cinéma. Vous avez l’air descendue de l’écran. C’est impressionnant. Je vous assure. —Et quelle est votre star préférée? —Vous. —Ah! Et dans quels films m’avez-vous vue? —Dans des films pour moi tout seul, en rêve (75).

Even during his moments of melancholy, which he calls his “crépuscule intérieur” (166), Pierrot’s philosophical maxims are all pleasant and positive, such as “C’est marrant la vie” or “quelle drôle de chose l’existence” (167). When his feelings reach a crescendo, he describes his inner being in amusementpark terminology of sparkles, drawings, and movies: 122

The Eccentric’s Universe Quelques fusées sentimentales (le souvenir d’Yvonne) montaient au plus haut pour retomber ensuite en pluies d’étincelles. Un projecteur poétique, enfin, balayait parfois le ciel de son pinceau métaphorique, et Pierrot, voyant la scène qui se présentait à lui, se disait: “on se croirait au cinéma.” (167)

The Banlieue: An Ex-centered Paradise of Movie Palaces and Cafés The idea that film can be used as a metaphor for escapism is not an original one, of course. For Ingmar Bergman, for example, movies are meant to create illusions of reality. Yet, in Queneau’s Loin de Rueil, what is distinctively original about the eccentric protagonist Jacques L’Aumône is that he is able to incorporate reality and the artistic imagery of film into his own everyday life. In Queneau’s Le vol d’Icare, the characters manage to come out of their literary space as written words on a page and into the reality of their author; in Loin de Rueil, L’Aumône steps into the fantasy world of film. Like Pierrot, L’Aumône is ordinary. It is his capacity to dream, to want to believe in the cinema, that allows him to cross the boundaries between the realities of urban life and the exaltations of Hollywood adventures. In Pierrot mon ami, the Palais de la Rigolade is, for Pierrot, a royal palace where laughter is an essential element of daily life. In Loin de Rueil, the Palais de la Rigolade is replaced by the “Palace” of Rueil, a 1920s movie palace where people also seek alternatives to the boredom associated with most routines. Des Cigales, the poet also identified as a sage by Kojève because he never actually writes poetry, reflects on the importance film has on the collective unconscious: “Cet art —car c’en est un— nous fait oublier les misères de la vie quotidienne” (Loin de Rueil 40). Both Des Cigales and L’Aumône can be considered eccentric characters because they exemplify the modern eccentric’s vision of life as one long holiday. Des Cigales embodies the cliché of the poet in the 1920s. As his name “Cigales” implies (a reference to the La Fontaine fable, “La cigale et la fourmi”), he merely chirps clichés all day long without working at all. He is engulfed in a joyous idleness in which he does not even have to write poetry (which should be his profession) in contrast to the “ants” of the world, who must work hard within 123

Chapter Three the confines of their everyday jobs. Yet, like Pierrot with his “allure aristocratique,” Des Cigales’s name suggests a certain nobility as well. He has lofty ambitions, but he is also a popular representative of suburban Rueil, which, like Uni-Park, is ex-centered in relation to the heart of Paris. Indeed, this is precisely the way he describes himself as he gets drunk in his favorite café (after a shot of morphine an hour before and after having smoked from his hookah): Je suis un paradoxe vivant […] Contrairement au proverbe qui veut que le prophète ne le soit pas en son pays, ici, je fais autorité. On m’admire. Le maire m’admire. L’adjoint m’admire. Le rédacteur-en-chef m’admire. L’épicier m’admire. Le garde champêtre m’admire. Tout Rueil m’admire et Nanterre même et Suresnes et Courbe voie. Malheureusement dès qu’on a passé la Seine, les poètes de ces régions m’ignorent. Ceux de Paris, par exemple, et même ceux de Neuilly ricanent en entendant prononcer mon nom. (28)

Des Cigales is also similar to Pierrot in the way he entertains everyone. If he produced any writing at all, he would be like a nineteenth-century fou littéraire. Instead, he just looks and acts the part of the Romantic poet, as L’Aumône is the first to point out: Il admirait sincèrement la prestance de son interlocuteur, le jeté de la cape, le crayeux de la guètre, le nœud de la lavallière, la longueur du cheveu, la largeur du feutre noir. (77)

He would almost resemble a modern Jeunes-France were he not so carefree and happy: Le soleil est là déjà haut dans le ciel. Des Cigales se lève en chantonnant, se lave promptement, l’hygiène n’est pas faite pour les poètes, il s’habille avec méthode et recherche, il sort et renifle le grand air avec méfiance, il se risque enfin par les rues allègrement assez, il salue des gens à droite et à gauche, il entre chez Arthur, le café respectable, il y a là L’Aumône, s’assoit à sa table car l’autre paiera la consommation, et l’on se congratule à propos du temps qu’il fait qui est beau. (26)

For Pierrot, the preferred poetic space for dreaming is UniPark, for Des Cigales, it is the café, and for L’Aumône, it is the 124

The Eccentric’s Universe movie palace. When L’Aumône is at the movies all day, his father scolds him because: “Il n’y a que des gosses qui vont voir ça” (43). Yet, just as an amusement park is in theory “just for children,” but nonetheless functions as a catalyst for Pierrot’s dreams, the movie palace serves as a vessel for L’Aumône to slip in and out of multiple realities. The children’s world and the perpetual Sunday of the movie house enable L’Aumône to undergo several metamorphoses. Like Woody Allen’s Zelig, L’Aumône is able to transform himself into a movie star, a boxer, a cowboy, and a general without even being aware of it. The cinema is one of the most important recreational sites in town. As Thérèse, a local young woman, remarks, Rueil, in contrast to Paris, offers a satisfying simplicity and peace of mind: “T’as le cinéma le dimanche. Et si tu veux danser, tu peux descendre jusqu’à Suresnes où l’on mange des moules et où les frites sont bonnes. Qu’est-ce que tu désires de plus?” (15). Since Sunday is reserved for the greatest amount of excitement in Rueil, L’Aumône will try to extend this pleasure as long as possible. While Des Cigales still uses “old fashioned” methods of escape (morphine, alcohol, hookahs) in keeping with his image as an eccentric poet, L’Aumône plunges himself into another world via what is most “state of the art” in entertainment technology: the motion picture. For Des Esseintes, the maxim of departure appropriated from Baudelaire was “anywhere out of the world”; for Des Cigales, the goal is to be the misunderstood poet anywhere out of Paris; for L’Aumône, the cinema is the means to get loin de Rueil. L’Aumône has the magical ability to jump into films and become the characters he watches on screen, in a reversed variant of Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which the characters jump into the real world from the screen. As such, L’Aumône is truly protean. He takes Pierrot’s cheerful ethos that films can be an ideal version of life one step further. He actually is able to live out the ideal rather than simply put it on a pedestal. In this way, he transcends his bourgeois status as a banlieusard and enters the elite Valhalla of movie celebrities. Yet, since he is still in a perpetual state of flux caused by his constant changes, he becomes a classless, if not a ghostly, character. For Queneau, L’Aumône is in a class all by himself because he is never one thing at one time but rather a series of 125

Chapter Three projections of several cinematic heroes. The bavard was also able to project different visions of himself by playing with the dialectic between truth and fiction within an autobiographical framework; in Loin de Rueil, L’Aumône enters a surreal realm of disbelief or “magical realism,” in which he manages to change forms because he is able to realize (or réaliser) his dreams: Comme des fœtus miniatures parfaitement constitués, il faisait défiler devant lui tous les germes de figures sociales qu’il avait irréalisées. Il revenait de sept huit années en arrière et le voilà maintenant capitaine de l’armée hollandaise, directeur d’usine, attaché d’ambassade à Pékin, banquier, clown (célèbre), peintre (célèbre), archiviste paléographe, aspirant de marine (à bord des derniers voiliers), coureur cycliste (vainqueur du Tour d’Europe), champion du monde d’échecs […], barman (au Ritz), astronome (il découvre la première planète hors du système solaire), […] Lord anglais… (128)

Despite the gargantuan diversity of the lives he takes on, when he is not being “projected” in film, his life on earth becomes progressively empty. Similar to Pierrot when he is fired from Uni-Park, there is nothing for L’Aumône to do outside the movie house except wander or sit in a café: Il se trouva dans la rue, la rue Pigalle […] Il regarda vers le nord, vers le sud, ne sachant où aller, à quel courant de la foule se donner. Il n’avait rien de spécial à faire. Il n’était attendu nulle part, il n’avait pas envie d’aller ici plutôt que là […] Jacques alla s’asseoir à une terrasse de la Place Blanche. (126)

L’Aumône’s life becomes a reversal of Etienne Marcel’s (in Queneau’s Le chiendent). Etienne is transformed from a simple silhouette into a person when he starts to think (Queneau’s play on “je pense donc je suis”). L’Aumône shifts from being a person to being a flickering film silhouette when he stops thinking in the movie palaces. This is why his life becomes more and more devoid of social status or purpose when he finds himself outside of his magical world:

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The Eccentric’s Universe Il abandonna donc la piste saumâtre de son amour congédié pour examiner avec plus d’attention sa situation en tant qu’être social pourvu ou dépourvu de métier. Eh bien à cet égard, il ne représentait pas grand chose. Il ne représentait même rien du tout depuis que le théâtre où il jouait un rôle muet de domestique avait fermé ses portes huit jours après sa réouverture et ce rôle Jacques ne l’avait obtenu que grâce à la projection […]. (127)

Just as Monte-Cristo’s eccentricity was defined by the aura of mystery that his urban castle projected, Nemo’s character was defined by his submarine, and Des Esseintes’s by his extravagant retreat at Fontenay, Queneau’s eccentric characters are substantively linked and defined by the spaces they encompass. Pierrot is inseparable from the amusement-park world, and the amusement-park world becomes Pierrot. Des Cigales is a noble poet only in Rueil, but in Paris he is a laughingstock. L’Aumône can become a plethora of movie heroes only when the movie projector is on; otherwise, he is an ordinary boy. In each of these examples, eccentrics are able to distance themselves from the mundane norm by activating what is unique in each locale in conjunction with their singular visions of the world. For Pierrot, there is more to life than just greed, lust, and business. He believes in mirth and in enjoying the unspoiled pleasures of urban life that can only be found far from the heart of a harried metropolis. Although Des Cigales is not part of the Parisian literati, he makes the people of Rueil feel as though they have their own poet laureate and that the everyday life of Rueil can be a subject of poetry. When Des Cigales is “commissioned” to write an ode in honor of the marriage of a local couple and L’Aumône’s father remarks admiringly, “vous pouvez faire des poèmes sur tous les sujets. Même sur les chaussettes,” Des Cigales answers proudly: “Ça se chante aussi la chaussette” (28). As for L’Aumône, he would remain unsatisfied were it not for his ability to project himself out of the ordinariness of his situation. His poetic vision of himself is also a testament to the power of the cinema to transport him far from his suburban landscape. Unlike the eccentric retreats of Des Esseintes, Nemo, and Monte-Cristo, Queneau’s popular eccentrics have

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Chapter Three synergistic relationships with public areas. If they are eccentrically tied to these spaces, it is not to put themselves imperiously above the masses, but to shed light on spaces that these very masses may have overlooked. The decor that surrounds Queneau’s characters is rendered more charming because of these characters’ unusual appreciation of them. Similarly, the sprightly aspect that characterizes these characters is sharpened by their respective settings. Bergens has noted that there is a certain reciprocity between Queneau’s characters and the space they inhabit that makes the two sometimes indistinguishable from each other (“Personnages” 89). Yet, this inexorable bond that links the characters to their decor is not meant to inject a certain realism into these works—nor is it necessarily intended to introduce an element of the fantastic, which in order to appear truly so must have a basis in reality, as Tzvetan Todorov explains in his Introduction à la littérature fantastique. The reality of these spaces is meant to celebrate the ways in which individuality can be attained within quotidian surroundings. Because of their rejection of the profanum vulgum, nineteenth-century eccentrics felt the need to reinvent their spaces; Queneau’s twentieth-century eccentrics show how one can become whimsically ex-centered from society by reinventing alternative spaces. As Bergens states: Dans les romans de Queneau, la condition humaine est présentée dans sa médiocrité journalière et les décors où évoluent les personnages sont populaires et impersonnels— cafés et restaurants, cinémas et fêtes foraines, moyens de transports etc. presque toujours les mêmes d’un livre à l’autre. Dans les lieux publics, les personnages se sentent à l’aise, ils sont dans leur élément. (Raymond Queneau 117)

Contrary to Bergens’s assertion, however, Queneau does not present the human condition in a mediocre everyday life. By portraying his heroes as eccentrics within a popular setting, Queneau brings attention to the fact that while others may perceive these spaces as banal aspects of life, popular voyants can see beyond their daily function. They are able to transform what is seemingly an impersonal space into a very personal one. This personalization of popular space is highlighted, for

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The Eccentric’s Universe example, by these characters’ love for eccentric drinks. Whereas the modern adventure hero is portrayed in films as having a trademark, yet common and “manly,” cocktail, such as James Bond’s martini “shaken not stirred,” Queneau’s characters choose fantastic or childish beverages: Gabriel in Zazie dans le métro drinks grenadine, a favorite among French children, who mix it with water; Valentin Brû drinks a vin blanc gommé, an anachronistic reference to the nineteenth-century practice of watering down one’s wine; Cidrolin in Les fleurs bleues drinks l’essence de fenouille, which can be seen as a sort of Pernod or absinthe. The originality of these drinks lie somewhere in between Des Esseintes’s orgue-à-bouche and Colin’s “pianocktail” in L’écume des jours. They are just slightly different from the cocktail norm but they are eccentric enough to add a certain style, flair, or even joie de vivre to the ordinary aperitif ritual during which people adopt a drink that identifies or characterizes their tastes (whisky drinkers, sherry drinkers, beer drinkers, etc…). The bright-eyed pleasure of drinking these novel beverages combines an unaffected love of novelty with a merry Rabelaisian “thirst for life” reminiscent of the last word in Pantagruel, “Trinc.” The fondness Queneau’s characters demonstrate for their unique beverages highlights both their embracing of the popular and their slightly askew position in relation to everyone else. When Pierrot remarks, “Je ne sais pas si elles sont extra-ordinaires, mais en tout cas elles ne sont pas ordinaires” in answer to the question “Il vous arrive habituellement des choses extraordinaires?,” he is defining his own eccentricity: he is somewhere between the extraordinary and the ordinary. In contrast to those who are submerged, oppressed or numbed by the quotidian—such as Roquentin in Jean-Paul Sartre’s La nausée or Georges Perec’s Un homme qui dort, who drops out of society and takes all his meals standing up at café counters eating the same steak/frites—Queneau’s characters transcend the unpleasant aspects of the ordinary as they bring attention to what is joyous in everyday life. The aperitif, in this way, becomes a type of sacred ritual. Perec defines this aspect of the quotidian as l’infra-ordinaire, a part of everyday life that is not extraordinary in the sense of an “amazing” or phenomenal act of prowess; but rather something that adds to the

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Chapter Three ordinary, something that makes it important and interesting. In an interview with Gabriel Simony, Perec explains how unnoticed glimpses of poetry and magic can exist within simple articles of daily life: Catalogue de Saint-Etienne, Catalogue de la Redoute, des Trois Suisses etc… Mais ce sont des livres de mille pages souvent et qui font rêver les gens autant que les romans, parce qu’ils y voient la roulette de leurs vacances, la perceuse avec laquelle ils vont construire leur résidence secondaire […] (Entretien [avec Gabriel Simony] 13)

Perec’s vision of the infra-ordinary exemplified by Queneau’s characters differs from that of the surrealists, for whom hidden spiritual meaning can be construed from everyday occurrences. Perec believes that meaning is not “hidden” but straightforward and direct to the common person: “Quelqu’un qui a faim et passe devant un restaurant voit un menu. Cela peut le faire rêver, saliver alors qu’un poème le laissera complètement froid” (13). For Perec, the reason the beauty of the infra-ordinary goes unnoticed or unheralded is that people only take notice of things when they are cataclysmic, scandalous, or revolutionary. As Perec describes, the world is in such a collective stupor that people are not aware of what goes on under their very noses: Les journaux m’ennuient. Ils ne m’apprennent rien […] Ce qui se passe vraiment, ce que nous vivons, le reste, tout le reste où est-il? […] Interroger l’habituel. Mais justement, nous y sommes habitué. Nous ne l’interrogeons pas, il ne nous interroge pas, […] Ce n’est même plus du conditionnement. C’est de l’anesthésie. Nous dormons notre vie d’un sommeil sans rêves. Mais où est-elle, notre vie? Où est notre corps? Où est notre espace? (L’infra-ordinaire 11)

For Céline, violent, ridiculous “saturation bombings” of invectives were the only answer to Perec’s question “comment interroger la vie?” Playing with scales of events and issues, Céline magnified his insecurities to absurd proportions. Perec’s approach is less violent, of course, and his point of view is microscopically detailed and focused on the beauty of little things: “Ce qu’il s’agit d’interroger, c’est la brique, le béton, le

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The Eccentric’s Universe verre, nos manières de table, nos ustensiles, nos outils, nos emplois du temps, nos rythmes. Interroger ce qui semble avoir cessé à jamais à nous étonner” (12). In contrast to the nineteenth century, which marveled at what was exotic and “other” and for which travel and invention were wonderfully eccentric, the twentieth century offers urban surprises that are no less exciting. For Perec, it is this personal anthropology of ourselves that should be the source of our adventures: “Chercher en nous ce que nous avons si longtemps pillé chez les autres. Non plus l’exotique, mais l’endotique” (11). By pursuing the endotique rather than the exotic, Queneau’s eccentrics embody the mental shift advocated by Perec. In contrast to the nineteenth-century aristocratic eccentric, who embodied an outlandish and extravagant quest for what was inaccessible, the popular, fictionalized eccentrics Queneau creates have an appreciation for what is simple and taken for granted. The fictional eccentric is like a marker in life or, in Riffaterrean terms, an ungrammaticality, that brings the reader’s attention to what is important yet never properly heralded: the joys of café life, the thrill of the amusement park, the movie-palace experience. Even our most valuable antidotes to the weight of modern adult living are swallowed up before they can be understood and admired. With a vin blanc gommé or an enchanted movie screen, Queneau’s characters point to what Perec seeks in practical terms, as he concludes: Interroger ce qui semble tellement aller de soi que nous en avons oublié l’origine. Retrouver quelque chose de l’étonnement que pouvaient éprouver Jules Verne ou ses lecteurs en face d’un appareil capable de reproduire et de transporter les sons. Car il a existé, cet étonnement et des milliers d’autres, et ce sont eux qui nous ont modelés. (Perec, L’infra-ordinaire 12)

Queneau’s characters poeticize their spaces by providing comical alternatives to everyday routines, but they do so because it comes naturally to them. Their cheerful dispositions lend themselves to certain extravagances: Zazie’s quest for the metro leads to all sorts of adventures in which Paris is transformed into a sort of carnival/amusement park where all the monuments are scrambled. In Les fleurs bleues, Cidrolin’s

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Chapter Three barge, which is spatially ex-centered from the rest of the city, would represent the cliché “fleurs bleues” version of Paris found on postcards were it not also a launching pad for Cidrolin’s unconscious time travel. These spaces are transformed in natural parity with the personalities of Queneau’s characters, whereas the nineteenth-century aristocrat Des Esseintes, for example, artificially transforms his space. While Queneau’s characters reflect and enhance the popular spaces around them, Des Esseintes spends his time and energy trying to create a monastic cell through his special kind of optical illusion as he understands it: Arranger avec de joyeux objets une chose triste, ou plutôt tout en lui conservant son caractère de laideur, imprimer à l’ensemble de la pièce ainsi traitée, une sorte d’élégance et de distinction; renverser l’optique de théâtre dont les vils oripeaux jouent les tissus luxueux et chers […] disposer, en un mot, une loge de chartreux qui eût l’air vraie et qui ne le fût, bien entendu, pas. (157)

For Queneau’s characters the spaces are real, not for the sake of realism but because they mirror the characters’ lack of pretension or artificiality. As Bergens affirms, they are able to bridge the gap between the poetic and the real worlds they inhabit “grâce à une disposition naturelle qui leur est propre” (“Personnages” 89). Indeed, the fact that they seem to appropriate certain aperitifs and make of the drinks their own inventions is emblematic of the light and subtle eccentricity of Queneau’s characters. At first, these appropriations seem innocuous, yet they are effective in altering the realities of the cafés in which they are served. Drinks such as l’essence de fenouille or un vin blanc gommé seem to be simple acts of whimsy at first glance. When one realizes, however, that the characters mean what they say and that the café waiters serve them without surprise, it becomes apparent that something profoundly unusual has taken place. These drinks are not so odd as to seem outrageous or ridiculous, but just enough for us to understand the peculiarity of those characters’ interactions with the quotidian. Des Esseintes’s orgue-à-bouche is an invented object that functions as a metaphor for his own ability to reinvent the quo-

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The Eccentric’s Universe tidian, yet it is a metaphor on the grand, artificial scale he is accustomed to. Indeed, it is a model for the complete unreality of the world that he creates for himself. A cocktail becomes a synesthetic experience rather than an ordinary event: Il était parvenu, grâce à d’érudites expériences à se jouer sur la langue de silencieuses mélodies; de muettes marches funèbres à grand spectacle, à entendre dans sa bouche des solis de menthe, des duos de vespétro et de rhum. Il arrivait même à transférer dans sa mâchoire de véritables morceaux de musique […] D’autres fois, il composait lui-même des mélodies, exécutait des pastorales avec le bénin cassis qui lui faisait roulader, dans la gorge des chants emperlés. (A rebours 135)

In Vian’s L’écume des jours, the protagonists’ universe is also a fantastic one that is highlighted by the invention of the “pianocktail,” a modern orgue-à-bouche activated not by ancient ballads but by popular jazz. The “pianocktail” represents a combination of the youthful, contemporary, and slightly rebellious New Orleans jazz with the budding technologies of the twentieth century. In the words of its inventor, Colin, the machine is an eccentric device meant to capture the spirit of the aperitif ritual combined with somewhat marginal but free-spirited aspects of New Orleans jazz: A chaque note, je fais correspondre un alcool, une liqueur ou un arôme. La pédale forte correspond à l’œuf battu et la pédale faible à la glace. Pour l’eau de Seltz, il faut un trille dans le registre aigu. Les quantités sont en raison directe de la durée […] Lorsque l’on joue un air lent, un système de registres est mis en action, de façon que la dose ne soit pas augmentée: Ce qui donnerait un cocktail trop abondant […] Je vais m’en faire un sur Loveless love […]. (15)

The reinvention of the everyday by Queneau’s characters is less evident than the fantastic world inhabited by Vian’s characters; yet their own inventions awaken the reader to the uniqueness of their vision of the world. Their mark is significant in relation to the seemingly normal landscape that surrounds them. Both the “pianocktail” and the orgue-à-bouche are eccentric in relation to their respective environments on a

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Chapter Three greater scale because the characters of L’écume des jours and A rebours’s Des Esseintes live in spaces that are already bathed in an atmosphere of unreality. What Queneau does, within the realistic structure of the quotidian such as the café or the movie theater, is balloon a small detail of everyday life. He renames a normal object like Marseilles soap into an exotic one, “le savon phocéen” (Le chiendent 17), or a postman becomes a briffetréqueur (92). This nominating fantasy, as Claude Simonnet has observed, is at the heart of Queneau’s rhetorical power. Renaming objects or functions in an eccentric way can reconfigure a real universe into a fantastic one: “Queneau va s’efforcer d’utiliser les ressources profondes du langage à nommer les choses autrement […] C’est ainsi que des activités aussi habituelles que mettre un chapeau ou s’habiller se présenteront sous un angle bizarre” (Simonnet 84). Queneau also enlarges other aspects of the quotidian to show what is marvelous. These linguistic anamorphoses of normal objects are comparable to what Perec appreciated in the work of the Italian painter Domenico Gnoli. Although he was a hyper-realist, Gnoli was able to create an extraordinary effect by inflating the scale of banal objects: [Il] peignait, par exemple, des cols de chemise […]. Il peignait un pli de pantalon. C’était extrêmement précis. Simplement le changement d’échelle faisait que ça devenait un objet complètement de l’ordre du rêve. (Perec, L’infraordinaire 116)

This transformation of a very ordinary landscape into a dream world is accomplished by the slightly skewed perception of objects or surroundings by eccentric protagonists who approach life more playfully than everyone else. It is this attitude of lightness in relation to potentially heavy environments that shifts the scales and influences readers’ perceptions of what they are reading. Yet, the hallucinatory distortions of reality suggested by a world like Uni-Park or a magical movie-screen are achieved with a feeling of enjoyment and innocence that stands strong in contrast to the illusions created by Des Forêts’s bavard, who used the narrative “I” like a series of collapsible mirrors. The eccentric spaces, emblematic of Queneau’s characters—the café, the movie theater, the amusement park—are 134

The Eccentric’s Universe indicative of the celebration and poetization of the quotidian. These contented eccentrics see the proletarian or bourgeois spaces that they inhabit for their happy qualities, as opposed to their nineteenth-century counterparts, whose wealth was spent on altering their surroundings because they were not contented individuals. As such, when Queneau declares that “l’homme s’accomplit que dans la ville,” he is not referring to the wonders of technological progress Baju was enamored of, but rather to what is already firmly established, like the metro, which is also taken for granted and made routine. Queneau’s characters are eccentric because they are able to see the ordinary spaces in an infra-ordinary way, that is to say, a type of dream space propitious to simple yet engaging dreams.

The Vanishing Pleasures of Everyday Life If Queneau’s characters bring attention to the allure of everyday pleasures that are often overlooked, they also underline the fact that these landscapes are either in the process of vanishing or have already disappeared. The spaces inhabited by these characters have to be reinvented in fiction because they no longer exist or are being threatened. Nineteenth-century eccentrics viewed the approaching twentieth century with anticipation and wonder, using modernity as a reflection of their own limitless imaginations. The titles of Jules Verne’s books, for example, highlight the ways in which these spaces were conceived in terms of perpetual expansion and exploration: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, De la terre à la lune, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. Twentieth-century eccentrics, who have already experienced the full impact of the modernity only imagined in the nineteenth, retreat into their private spaces or valiantly try to cling to old habits that are out of sync with what is fashionable, whether conventional or avant-garde. Eccentrics are defined not so much because they are before their time, but rather because they are old-fashioned. What makes them especially eccentric is that they are not necessarily old, which would be a normal and traditional representation of someone who is behind the times. They are rather young or at most middle aged. In Queneau’s Les derniers jours, for example, Tuquedenne, a

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Chapter Three student at the Sorbonne, warns of the rapidity with which cities change and expand by writing a melancholic poem modeled after Baudelaire’s “Le cygne”: Puis il s’inquiéta de l’aspect changeant des villes et du devenir de leur configuration. Il composa un poème: Le Paris que vous aimâtes N’est plus celui que nous aimons Et nous nous dirigeons sans hâte Vers celui que nous oublions. (Les derniers jours 73)

Although he literally poeticizes the eclipsing space of vieux Paris, his classmate, Rohel, valorizes the modernity of the quotidian by transforming routine metro rides into cathartic adventures. For Rohel, it is no longer necessary to travel to “the center of the earth” to escape the dreariness of urban life. A few steps beneath Paris, an expansion toward an unknown “elsewhere” is accomplished by a microcosmic retreat into what is most familiar to all Parisians—mass transportation: Il prit le métro et changeant à chaque correspondance, il se mit à zigzaguer sous Paris. Plus encore que Tuquedenne, il aimait ce moyen de transport. Le Nord-Sud, notamment, car, prétendait-il, c’est là qu’on rencontrait les plus belles femmes. Quand il sortit de son voyage souterrain, il avait oublié ses déboires. (120)

The metro is a stable, reassuring means of escape that is still available to those who can appreciate it as such. By the time Queneau wrote Pierrot mon ami, the actual Parisian Luna Park, upon which Uni-Park is based, had been torn down. When he wrote Loin de Rueil in the early 1940s, the old movie palaces that had made moviegoing an event were already starting to be replaced by the more compact and efficient salles de cinéma, a transformation Charles Trenet would later wistfully recount in his song “Mon vieux ciné” (1953). When Queneau wrote Les fleurs bleues, living on a barge was no longer part of the traditional “fleurs bleues” postcard version of the Parisian landscape. If the eccentric can hang on to the last vestiges of another Paris, the reader becomes a sort of archeologist, and the eccentric, a

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The Eccentric’s Universe living monument to what is passing. The Poldevian shrine in Pierrot mon ami represents not what is ancient and abstract but the recent past, which has leveled huge chunks of what was quaint and delightful about the city. As Queneau determines in his poem “Il faut avoir du goût pour l’archéologie,” supermarkets and skyscrapers have hastily replaced entire neighborhoods: […] Les magasins réunis font face à un Monoprix L’immeuble qui abrite les uns vous éblouit de son modernisme moderne Celui de l’autre d’un qui fut extrême en son temps C’est à dire vers mille neuf cent Une propriété de Félix Potin c’est tout dire Le mot manutention se détache sur une fine mosaïque d’or le genre de chose qui sera plus tard fort apprécié Si les amateurs s’intéressent encore aux antiquités. (Courir les rues 55)

“Antiquités” no longer refers to what is “ancient” by many centuries, but to what is not swallowed up by a greedy modernity with a gargantuan appetite for change. Time goes so alarmingly quickly that what has taken years to become a habitual part of a city or a quartier, such as a building or a market place, is erased within seconds. Queneau describes this process in “Chacun son tour”: Les broyeuses entrent en action Les gens se disent faut se faire une raison c’est le programme et puis on a bien rasé Saint-Symphorien, Saint-Germain-le-Vieux, Saint-Christophe, Saint-Denis-du-Pas, Saint Martial, Saint-Jean-le-Rond qui existaient encore paraît-il en 1754. (Courir les rues 80)

In “Boulevard Haussmann,” Queneau recounts how, indeed, real estate greed seems to steal the very soul of Paris: “Les cheminées ont disparu / […] Leur demeure abolie / ne circule plus que sur une carte postale / Si elle eut cette chance / Si non, plus rien / Et l’ombre même des cheminées s’efface / Tandis que sourit l’agent immobilier” (Courir les rues 36). As

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Chapter Three modern buildings replace old ones, old jobs once considered essential to an urban landscape are threatened with extinction. In “Passés futurs,” Queneau warns: Le repasseur de couteaux Existe encore avec sa petite cloche Le marchand de journaux Avec sa sacoche Un jour on ne les verra plus Encore des métiers foutus. (Courir les rues 81)

Queneau echoes the voices of those who question the replacement of what was pleasing and old-fashioned with what is most efficient. In “Dites-moi zoù,” he asks: Où sont les porteurs d’eau? Où sont les petits savoyards? Un jour on demandera où sont les mécanos Les motards les chauffards Ils seront tous partis Dans le passé. (Courir les rues 81)

Only the subway escapes the wrecking ball. Its speed insures a constant “present” shared by every Parisian. Rohel can find either adventure or peace of mind there because it is stable and yet underground and therefore somehow removed from what goes on above. With daylight gone in most stations, the metro can even be compared to the movies. For Rohel, the metro offers a kind of entertainment that is detached from the reality of city streets. As Queneau explains in “Il faut en faire son deuil”: “La RATP c’est évidemment / La Revue des Arts et Traditions Populaires” (Courir les rues 89).

The Eccentric’s Reactions to the New World around Us How does the individual who appreciates the “old ways” cope with unbridled reconfiguration of the new urban world? In the eighteenth century, Rousseau grappled with such issues and sought to escape the city and run toward nature. Queneau is not against the city itself. For him, the metropolis is in fact laden with beauty and excitement: 138

The Eccentric’s Universe Qui donc a jamais pu croire qu’il y aurait un rapport quelconque entre l’homme et son milieu: un rapport nature? […] Les seules harmonies véritables, l’homme les a créées— l’esprit ne souffle que lorsque la nature s’efface et disparaît. (Histoire modèle 98)

What Queneau denounces is the replacement of what is old, yet urban, with what is antiseptic and inhuman. For him, it is a question of priorities: What is beautiful is exchanged for what is most useful. “Taking one’s time” is replaced by rushing. What was populated with friendly voices is overcome by abstract, uncaring sounds in “Cris de Paris”: “On n’entend plus guère le repasseur de couteaux / Le réparateur de porcelaine, le rempailleur de chaises / On n’entend guère que les radios qui babouillent / Des tourne-disques des transistors et des télés” (Courir les rues 113). In Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, the protagonist, Cosimo, flees society by creating a private utopia for himself in the trees. Metaphorically, he is never “grounded” in downto-earth activities. In his lofty arboreal universe, he transcends the mundane, communal lifestyle of the village and writes a treatise on an ideal “State of Trees” that is acknowledged by Diderot and Napoleon. The modern individual who wishes to remain in the city must find another way to spiritually live in the trees within an urban context. Calvino’s conception of the eccentric’s space as a natural but lofty universe happily removed from the rest of society can be transposed to urban French eccentrics who are also geographically and spiritually ex-centered from everybody else within a modern frame. During his reverie-filled existence, Pierrot manages to live in the equivalent of the trees by remaining perpetually “in the clouds” (dans les vaps) or “in the moon,” French euphemisms describing flighty, distracted states or individuals. The most graphic example, however, of a modern figure who is eccentric because he chooses not to follow the “express train” of progress is Tati’s Monsieur Hulot. As Tati himself has observed regarding the film Mon oncle: “It conducts […] a sort of defense of the individual, seen in a basically optimistic way” (Strick 53). Hulot’s revolt against modern society is eccentric because it is ludic as it underlines what is wrong with or overlooked by the increasing uniformity of contemporary life. 139

Chapter Three Similar to the baron in the trees, Hulot also lives in the clouds on the top floor of a colorful apartment building in an old quarter of Paris in contrast to his sister’s family, the Arpels, who live in a high-tech suburban house. Hulot resembles Pierrot because it is his very simplicity and naturalness that set him apart from the rest of the world. Yet, instead of living in the metaphoric world of the amusement park, he lives in “old Paris,” which is so out of touch with the state-of-the-art suburbs that it seems like a Disneyland version of France. In fact, along with Hulot, who is blissfully unemployed, all of the rest of the old quartier’s inhabitants appear to be on vacation in contrast to the suburbanites who, even when they are not actually going to work, turn their leisure time into regimented business. It is this very breezy quality that makes Hulot so attractive to children, especially his nephew, Gérard (who laughs and has fun only when he is with his uncle). For example, although Gérard is indifferent about a sophisticated and complicated toy car his parents give him, he laughs with excitement and delight when Hulot offers him a plain, old-fashioned rag doll. Whenever Gérard is with his uncle, he can roam freely with other children playing silly pranks, getting dirty, and eating greasy beignets from an old street vendor. At home, Gérard almost becomes another appliance. At one point, he comes home to find his mother gone and replaced by an automatic vacuum cleaner that is hard at work cleaning the floors. In the old quarter, people are seen singing, sitting at cafés, laughing, and arguing in a festive and chaotic manner. At the Arpels’, all the sounds are artificial: machines, electronic noises, cacophonous metallic noises. At night, the Arpels are seen sitting placidly alone in the dark in the flickering light of a television set while Hulot, whom the Arpels accuse of wasting time, is always seen involved in communal activities. Although Hulot seems alienated, at first, by the disapproval of regulated society, it is really the Arpels who are isolated from community life. Their world has eliminated the warmth inherent in the kind of social contact exuded by Hulot. Their alienation is illustrated by a scene in which the Arpels are locked inside their electronic garage by a band of roving dogs who accidentally trigger a door-closing mechanism. They have no

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The Eccentric’s Universe other recourse but to look helplessly through the garage’s two porthole-like windows trying to encourage their own dog to liberate them by stepping on the remote control. The garage seems to have eyeballs that roll as the imprisoned Arpels run from one porthole to the other. They are the opposite of Pierrot, who is master of his private space. They are slaves to the machines that were meant to serve them. In contrast, Hulot has full control of his space. All he has to do is climb up a set of stairs in order to find himself in a disorganized but comfortable landscape. The Arpels update the famous line from Axël, “Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous” (Villiers de l’Isle-Adam 249), by having their machines live for them. Throughout Mon oncle, Hulot is pushed more and more out of the strict Arpel environment until he is actually exiled to another town when his brother-in-law finds him a job far from Paris. His progressive removal is similar to Bardamu’s expulsion from the Times Square Automat in Voyage au bout de la nuit. In both cases, natural human impulses are punished in favor of conformity and regulation. Mon oncle, in fact, begins with images of bulldozers and the sounds of heavy drilling equipment smashing through an old building while a pack of ragged street dogs happily escapes the din in favor of Hulot’s warm old neighborhood. In an interview with Penelope Gilliat, Tati expands on the division he perceives between the individual and standardized society: I should like to film a little the differences individuals can make. Because, you understand, in this super-mechanized organization, there will always be a lad who will be fortified with a minute screwdriver and break down an elegant automatic lift that has muzak playing in it as you go up to the thirty-second floor. In the meantime, the screwdriver is doing its work and the lad is whistling a tune of his own. There are two universes now, you see. That is what I’m trying to show. (Gilliat 89)

The eccentric’s weapon against the bulldozer is not an angry one: it is rather comical, and above all, natural. Hulot is also a Kojevian sage because he does not seek to fight modernity; he simply holds on to his old ways. By continuing to do what he has always been doing, and by seeing life with Zen-like

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Chapter Three simplicity, Hulot stands against the main character in Jean Giraudoux’s Folle de Chaillot, for example, who is aggressively marginal because she adamantly refuses to cohabit with the modern world. She reads the same twenty-year-old newspaper over and over again and rejects any intrusions into her private world. While La Folle refuses to take part in society, Hulot offers an alternative to it. When the old and the new worlds collide, it becomes comical in Bergsonian terms of “mechanical inelasticity” or “corrective.” Hulot’s ex-centered relationship to objects, for instance, is not a poetic one, like that of Vian’s characters in L’écume des jours, but rather a functional one. On his way to the airport, he tries to light his pipe with a series of matches that he tosses out his car window one at a time; when his brother-in-law hands him a lighter, he instinctively tosses it out just as if it were another match. Similarly, when he discovers that a plastic jug he has dropped in the Arpels’ sanitized kitchen not only does not break but bounces, he tries to do the same with another jug that looks like plastic, but is not, and breaks. It is not that Hulot does not want to fit into modern society; he simply does not keep up with the new configurations of space and time that change all around him. When he passes out from the fumes at the job his brother-in-law gets him at the plastics factory, the products on the assembly line he is supposed to be supervising ooze out of the machines in irregular shapes and Hulot is fired. It is Hulot’s human, normal response to the toxic environment of the factory that leads to the nonconformist products that are suddenly produced on his watch. Hulot is unperturbed, however, by all the swift changes around him. As Tati has said: Hulot is not a reactionary […] he is not against progress. And he is not funny himself at all. He conducts himself according to strict rules of courtesy that do not ever allow him to express surprise. He has a certain braveness of gesture, like a music-hall clown. (Gilliat 23)

Hulot’s vision of the world around him is slightly excentered in relation to how the norm sees things, but his way of looking at things is ultimately more practical. For example, when he baby-sits one night, he takes two very uncomfortable, 142

The Eccentric’s Universe angular chairs, turns them upside down, and transforms them into a couch upon which he can take a nap. It is ultimately the technological pace of modernity that becomes impractical. Hulot’s eccentricity is one of rhythm rather than of actions. As Tati has explained in an interview with André Bazin and François Truffaut, it is the frenetic rate of progress that Hulot is most against. The Arpels forget how to have fun because they are always in a rush. In Hulot’s section of the city, people take the time to enjoy their days even if they are less productive, as exemplified by the street sweeper who pauses to speak to any passerby each time he begins to do his job: Human communication is more important to the quality of the streets; the actual dirt that has to be removed is almost secondary. Within the over-accelerated, stressful pace of the modern metropolis, it is even considered eccentric to be a flâneur: cars and rush hours have eclipsed the average citizen’s private space. As Tati explains, Hulot displays an inner confidence in the way a proper urban rhythm should be conducted: He promenades, that’s all. He takes a walk. Innocent and tranquil. He simply looks at things. Is it his fault if we have baptized him with our invented desires and needs? And if believing ourselves to be serious, we have insisted on being solemn? (Gilliat 14)

Although he seems to be doing nothing, Hulot is a beacon for how pleasant the world could be if it did not aggrandize itself with such self-importance. This is why Kojève believes Pierrot to be such a good example of a sage. He seems to think of nothing but it is precisely this “nothing” that is filled with beauty and that is easily overlooked by those who are always in a hurry. When Pierrot announces that “ça m’arrive souvent à penser à rien,” the night guard he is talking to answers sincerely: “C’est déjà mieux que de ne pas penser du tout” (41). The eccentric pause in life is a way of reappropriating from Time what modern times have appropriated from Space. Bulldozers can wipe out the old corner café, once a major component of any given community, and replace it with behemoth-like new buildings or highways, but the inner human warmth of these communities can still be perpetuated by the old habits of those who still appreciate what people no longer 143

Chapter Three have time for. Hulot can transform the space he inhabits by offering a more amusing and gentle way of looking at life wherever he is. Mon oncle, which came out in the late 1950s, examines the tension between the old-fashioned ways of living and the flashy technical ones. By the time Tati’s Playtime opened in the late 1960s, the hegemony of modern consumer-oriented innovation displayed in Mon oncle had fully usurped the old Paris of Monsieur Hulot. Playtime makes no mention of old Paris but places all the action at the Orly airport, a self-contained universe with offices, waiting rooms, and restaurants. Throughout the film, a busload of tourists never sees the actual city of Paris, but, as Brent Maddock asserts, “a capital whose celebrated monuments are only reflections in the glass doors of the many skyscrapers that have overtaken the city” (111). Hulot is displaced from his natural habitat and shown lost in a labyrinth in a mazelike construct of offices. As Maddock remarks: As one follows the film’s action throughout the city, one gets the sense of a never changing location. Every glass and steel building looks the same. Travel posters seen on the walls of one building depict scenes from around the world; each poster depicts the very same building. (87)

Playtime plays out Des Esseintes’s harshest criticism of tourism during his stationary voyage. Tati’s ubiquitous airport is similar to Des Esseintes’s conception of the Saint-Lazare train station as a place where one can experience as much of an international atmosphere as on an actual trip to England: A quoi bon bouger quand on peut voyager si magnifiquement sur une chaise? N’était-il pas à Londres dont les senteurs, dont l’atmosphère, dont les habitants, dont les pâtures, dont les ustensiles l’environnaient? Que pouvait-il donc espérer sinon de nouvelles désillusions, comme en Hollande? (68)

The airport and the tour buses in Playtime take Des Esseintes’s impressions one step further. Modern-day tourists do not want to move from their comfortable bus, but the views that they see from there and the experiences they accumulate

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The Eccentric’s Universe from bus to airport offer a vision of how the modern world is constructed. Whether one is in London or Paris, the landscapes are similarly uniform. Tati’s description of the set of Playtime has often been quoted: “I wanted uniformity; all the chairs, for instance, in the restaurant, in the bank: they’re all the same. The floor’s the same, the paint’s the same” (Rosenbaum 37). Hulot is able to hang on to his individuality by remaining a detached observer. His old-fashioned dress singles him out: his trousers and raincoat are too short; he sports his trademark pipe and striped socks; he carries an umbrella even when it is sunny; and as a vestige of the gallantry of older times, he offers one of the American tourists a scarf covered with drawings of old Paris and a bouquet of real flowers bought from a traditional street vendor. Indeed, Hulot’s gentle humanity is in stark contrast to the plastic flowers the other tourists carry and the artificial plants that decorate the airport. While the eccentric space lovingly presented in Mon oncle has all but vanished, the eccentric can still protest the onslaught of an increasingly sterile environment by presenting as many signs of the old ways as possible. Although Hulot seems eccentric to the contemporary supporters of urban renewal, Tati has full confidence that what seems eccentric now will in turn appear quite rational in the future. Reacting to a new highway planned for construction alongside Notre Dame, Tati remarks: In thirty or forty years, they’ll find it [building the highway] was so wrong, because it [Notre Dame] was so well built and arranged now. Boys play guitars there and the girls go and have little love affairs with them. That’s Paris. That’s why I did Playtime. (Qtd. in Maddock 95)

For Hulot, just as for the heroes of Queneau’s novels, the best resistance against the urban “eraser” is not only a matter of a staunch maintenance of one’s own individual quirks and habits but also a question of vision. These eccentrics know what to look at, whether it is Hulot’s preference for singing with his friends rather than watching television or Cidrolin’s predilection for essence de fenouille, the eccentric’s eye captures a glimmer of what will soon be forgotten. As Tati has said: “There are a tremendous number of things in the world that would be passed without being noticed; it is this genre of detail

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Chapter Three that is still irresistible to me. I have wanted to stop people, saying: ‘Look!’” (qtd. in Fischer 29).

Eccentric Space, Eccentric Time: The Eccentric’s Hour Glass If Tati’s and Queneau’s characters hold on to a slower pace in their lives in contrast to the speed with which their contemporaries seem obsessed, their spaces are also vestiges of this different pace: the café where one can linger over drinks; the movie palace where one can spend an entire afternoon; the amusement park where one can return to childish diversions. In the 1980s, characters in novels such as Toussaint’s La salle de bain or Echenoz’s L’équipée malaise often react to the collective speed around them with total inertia. In Tati’s series of films, there is a definite progression of events: Jour de fête showed to what extent technological innovations were incongruous in a traditional French village; Mon oncle elaborated the tension between the old-fashioned ways of old Paris and the increasing pace of suburban modernity; and finally, Playtime depicted the complete eradication of tradition. Fifteen years after Playtime, the 1980s, in keeping with Tati’s vision of where society was headed, are seen by postmodernists as a huge void. Similarly, for thinkers such as Lipovetsky, the 1980s are years of emptiness or “l’ère du vide.” The dialectic is no longer between old values and new, but between speed and immobility or rather between joining the superhighway of technological trends and dropping out completely. Within these dialectics, modern eccentrics reinvent the configuration of their surroundings in a more discreet fashion, and within a new fin de siècle, as during the last one, a modern névrosé emerges. Rageot had predicted such tensions at the last turn of the century. In L’homme standard, he anticipated how technology would actually create more immobility even though people could travel further. For Rageot, the world was becoming increasingly cinematic and unreal. Transportation or other pleasures could be replaced within the imagination without any effort from the viewers. In fact, he describes a protocyberspace that Jean Baudrillard would later write about in the 1980s:

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The Eccentric’s Universe L’une des joies du voyage est de voir, par la portière du wagon ou de l’auto, défiler le paysage. Ces décors viennent à vous, et ils vous offrent leur rêverie comme des fleurs leur odeur. Ainsi le cinéma: voyage immobile. (Rageot 50)

Rageot perceived a miniaturization of life as a result of people’s shrinking field of vision. What he labeled cinématisme referred to a metamorphosis of the space around us. In the past, the village church was the all-powerful center of the villagers’ actions; in the nineteenth century, new inventions such as steam and gas heat changed the way people thought about their surroundings by providing indoor warm temperatures all year long, or rapidly bringing distant cities together via train travel. Inventions such as the motion picture brought the world to individuals, who no longer searched for the world outside of their private realms: Il transforme d’abord les choses autour de lui, et ensuite les choses le transforment. L’homme du moyen-âge a trouvé sa foi dans la cathédrale, comme le Grec son idéal dans le temple et le théâtre. En plus petit, une baignoire transfigure un citoyen. (50)

In Toussaint’s La salle de bain, the narrator takes Rageot’s fanciful comment literally. For him, the bathtub indeed becomes his “temple” as he retreats into his bathroom for a day, at first, then for months in a fashion similar to Des Esseintes’s retreat at Fontenay. In the nineteenth century, Des Esseintes was an established eccentric who was wealthy enough to entertain and indulge every one of his fantasies. In the 1980s, it is considered more eccentric to retreat into minuscule spaces than to travel around the world because travel has become so easy. Indulging one’s fantasies in an exorbitant way no longer shocks because the wealthy have done this for so many centuries. Queneau’s world renders the quotidian sacred with the help of magical realism: It is Pierrot’s naïveté that transforms the amusement park into a true fantasy land; it is L’Aumône’s powerful belief in the cinema that makes his protean transformations into film characters possible. Within the bleak and empty landscape of L’ère du vide, however, living in a bathtub becomes a radical break from the rest of society. Yet, because

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Chapter Three it is an amusing, childlike image, it is considered an eccentric break and not a marginalized one. Toussaint’s bathtub man (who is nameless throughout the novel) is the direct opposite of the man in Paul Morand’s L’homme pressé. Morand’s title character was temporarily excentered from his era because he lived in an excessively accelerated fashion. His life was centered around constant activity and speed. The 1980s, however, where faxes, satellite communication, and supersonic travel produce a constant pace of rapidity and expansion, make Toussaint’s bathtub man’s fetal-like retreat all the more pronounced. His retreat is similar, nonetheless, to Des Esseintes’s initial days at Fontenay, where he hermetically seals his rooms and designs them to resemble “la cabine d’un navire.” Like De Maistre’s Voyage autour de ma chambre, on a grander and more luxurious scale, Des Esseintes is a stationary traveler: Il se procurait ainsi, en ne bougeant point, les sensations rapides, presques instantanées d’un voyage au long cours, et ce plaisir de déplacement qui n’existe, en somme, que par le souvenir et presque jamais dans le présent, à la minute même où il s’effectue, il le humait pleinement à l’aise, sans fatigue, sans tracas, dans cette cabine dont le désordre apprêté, dont la tenue transitoire et l’installation comme temporaire correspondaient assez exactement avec le séjour passager qu’il y faisait. (Huysmans, A rebours 101)

As for Valéry Larbaud’s Barnabooth, traveling within a realm of selected sensations and suitable readings is far superior to the drudgery of actual transportation: Le mouvement lui paraissait d’ailleurs inutile et l’imagination lui semblait pouvoir aisément suppléer à la vulgaire réalité des faits. A son avis, il était possible de contenter les désirs réputés les plus difficiles à satisfaire dans la vie normale et cela par un léger subterfuge, par une approximative sophistication de l’objet poursuivi par ces désirs mêmes. (101)

For Des Esseintes, the idea that one can re-create sensations of travel without actually moving comes as an epiphany. The retreat toward everyday objects that surround him, such as a

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The Eccentric’s Universe bathtub, is a tribute to his extravagant imagination. He is delighted by the thought that imagination and artifice can transform his surroundings as much as purchased objects. Since he has lived such a spoiled existence, this train of thought seems like a real shift from the attitude of his peers toward what is valuable and what is not. Because his tastes are so eclectic and so opulent, his images are equally resplendent. His experience in the bathtub, as such, is a grandiose and sensuous one: Là, en faisant saler l’eau de sa baignoire et en y mêlant, suivant la formule du codex, du sulfate de soude, de l’hypochlorotate de magnésie et de chaux; en tirant d’une boîte soigneusement fermée par un pas de vis, une pelote de ficelle ou un tout petit morceau de grandes corderies dont les vastes magasins et les sous-sols soufflent des odeurs de marée et de port; en aspirant ces parfums que doit conserver encore cette ficelle ou ce bout de câble. (Huysmans, A rebours 51)

Des Esseintes’s bathtub experience is carried out with almost scientific exactitude. It is an elaborate and detailed process: En consultant une exacte photographie du casino et en lisant ardemment le guide Joanne décrivant les beautés de la plage où l’on veut être; en se laissant enfin bercer par les vagues que soulève, dans la baignoire, le remous des bateauxmouches rasant le ponton des bains; […] l’illusion de la mer est indéniable, impérieuse, sûre. (103)

If Des Esseintes sets off on this imaginary voyage in such a calculated way that it becomes a reflection of his expensive lifestyle, Toussaint’s narrator radically breaks with the exterior world on a whim, and his fantasies are haphazard and bourgeois. His is a happy escape: Lorsque j’ai commencé à passer mes après-midi dans la salle de bain, je ne comptais pas m’y installer; non, je coulais là des heures agréables, méditant dans la baignoire, parfois habillé, tantôt nu. Edmondsson1 qui se plaisait à mon chevet, me trouvait plus serein; il m’arrivait de plaisanter, nous riions. (La salle de bain 11)

Only when he prolongs his stay in the bathtub does he begin to worry those around him: 149

Chapter Three Edmondsson pensait qu’il y avait quelque chose de desséchant dans mon refus de quitter la salle de bain, mais cela ne l’empêchait pas de me faciliter la vie, subvenant aux besoins du foyer en travaillant à mi-temps dans une galerie d’art. (11)

Unlike Des Esseintes, the bathtub man’s experience in the bathtub is not luxurious, but spartan. There are no special salts or oils, and the room is nondescript. It is the fact that he drops out of society and spends time doing nothing that is eccentric. Pierrot too is idle but he blends in with the workaday space of his surroundings. Whereas Pierrot’s personality is reflected in the activities of the amusement park, the cafés, the neighborhood streets, the bathtub man is in full retreat from the quotidian and people outside his window. His bathroom reflects his state of complete regression: Autour de moi se trouvaient des placards, des porteserviettes, un bidet. Le lavabo était blanc; une tablette le surplombait, sur laquelle reposaient brosses à dents et rasoirs. Le mur qui me faisait face, parsemé de grumeaux, présentait des craquelures; des cratères çà et là trouaient la peinture terne. (Toussaint, La salle de bain 12)

The narcissistic contemplation encouraged by his idleness within such a small, barren space coincides with an intense scrutiny of time itself: “Je surveillais la surface de mon visage dans un miroir de poche, et, parallèlement, les déplacements de l’aiguille de ma montre” (12). As the days during which he locks himself in the bathroom add up, he remains unchanged and motionless. He virtually basks in the idea that while time may be active, he most certainly is not. As the days go by, his life takes on a circularity that leads him to repeat his actions: Debout en face du miroir, je regardais mon visage avec attention. J’avais enlevé ma montre, qui reposait en face de moi sur la tablette du lavabo. La trotteuse tournait autour du cadran. Immobile. A chaque tour, une minute s’écoulait. C’était lent et agréable. (25)

Time becomes an abstraction for him because it is no longer useful. He does not have to be anywhere, go anywhere, or do anything. As he watches people rushing to work during a rain-

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The Eccentric’s Universe storm, he realizes that the quotidian for the rest of the world has also become an abstraction for him. They are as entertaining and as meaningful to him as multicolored fish in a fishbowl: “J’eus soudain l’impression que tous ces gens se trouvaient dans un aquarium. Peut-être avaient-ils peur? L’aquarium lentement se remplissait” (31). His monitoring of the slowness of his proper time-frame resembles the fascination many nineteenth-century poets had for the clepsydra, which used slow drops of water to mark the passage of time. As the bathtub man watches the raindrops at his window with fixed attention, he makes long-winded analyses of the philosophical importance of movement, immobility, and the rain: Il y a deux manières de regarder tomber la pluie, chez soi, derrière une vitre. La première est de maintenir son regard fixé sur un point quelconque de l’espace et de voir la succession de pluie à l’endroit choisi; cette manière, reposante pour l’esprit, ne donne aucune idée de la finalité du mouvement. La deuxième, qui exige de la vue davantage de souplesse, consiste à suivre des yeux la chute d’une seule goutte à la fois […]. (35–36)

His preoccupation with these “philosophical” issues comes from an essential boredom that his inactivity eventually produces; yet because he unabashedly enjoys his sloth, he never wearies of this boredom. Quite to the contrary, he rather enjoys it, which is why the people rushing to their activities frighten him. The fright is of time itself, because it is a reminder of his pre-bathtub days: C’est moi qui, devant ma fenêtre, par une confusion que justifiait la crainte que m’avaient inspirée les divers mouvements qui se déroulaient devant mes yeux, pluie, déplacements des hommes et des voitures, avais eu soudain peur du mauvais temps, alors que c’était l’écoulement même du temps, une fois de plus, qui m’avait horrifié. (31)

As opposed to Phileas Fogg, who watched time to master it, the bathtub man’s instincts are to roll the clock back, to return to an embryonic or childlike state devoid of responsibility. Both Fogg and the bathtub man begin by being overly conscious of

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Chapter Three time as they drift away from established domestic routines, yet, the water-filled circularity of the bathtub seems at first to be an ersatz womb and then a crib for the bathtub man, while Fogg’s circular voyage ends with his asserting his masculinity and adulthood. People come and visit the bathtub man like a newborn baby. Even his mother brings him food, as though he were incapable of independent actions: “Maman m’apporta des gâteaux. Assise sur le bidet, le carton grand ouvert posé entre ses jambes, elle disposait les pâtisseries dans une assiette à soupe. Je la trouvais soucieuse…” (13). When he leaves the bathtub to sit on his bed, he all but assumes the fetal position, “assis sur mon lit, la tête dans les mains” (31). At the beginning of the twentieth century, in Alain-Fournier’s Le grand Meaulnes, Frantz de Galais was considered eccentric because he retreated to an old manor house and transformed that space in order to re-create an ideal past; in La salle de bain, the narrator’s space is transformed in order for him to relive infancy. De Galais’s reconstruction of the lost domain was an example of his over-active imagination that was nourished by a rich understanding of poetry and myth; the bathtub, on the other hand, becomes a monument to the bathtub man’s lack of imagination and sloth. In Queneau’s Le dimanche de la vie, the pacifist soldier Valentin Brû is constantly shifting to escape the present: He fixates on the past by having a vision of the battle of Jena; he fixates on the future by masquerading as a voyante (Madame Saphir). He has a phobic reaction to the present because he identifies it with the approaching World War II, a cataclysmic event that will end time: “après une telle guerre, il n’y aura pas d’après” (Dimanche 189). Since he is so often unbalanced in relation to time, he tries to center himself by attempting to actually see time. Like the bathtub man, he is naturally indolent and becomes obsessed with trying to watch seconds go by because he has the time to waste: Il dut donc renoncer à développer son commerce et ce fut sa dernière tentative pour effacer son oisiveté. Il ne lui resta plus que la vacuité même du temps. Alors, il essaya de voir comment le temps passait, entreprise aussi difficile que de

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The Eccentric’s Universe se surprendre en train de s’endormir. Assis à sa caisse, il regardait la grande horloge fixée au-dessus du magasin […] et il suivait la marche de la grande aiguille. (161)

For Kojève, Brû’s identification with time, the fact that he does nothing and often thinks of nothing allows him to live a metaphysical life. Brû is able to transcend the banality of the everyday without physically having to change his lifestyle or domicile: Le soldat Brû ne vit-il pas en pleine métaphysique, puisqu’il ne pense généralement à rien […] et consacre ses vastes loisirs à l’identification du néant de sa certitude— subjective avec le néantissement de l’être-en-soi temporel, concrétisé dans et par ou mieux encore, en tant qu’une horloge? (Queneau, Le dimanche de la vie 394)

As opposed to the bathtub man, whose boredom is linked to an Oblomov-like indolence and an enjoyment of doing nothing, Brû seeks a Zen-like state of nothingness. Nothingness for him is an absence of the present that represents the inevitability of world war. Soon after hesitating about making vacation plans with his wife because “y aura la guerre avant” (166), Brû rushes to reattempt a state of emptiness in relation to time’s advance: C’est surtout l’après-midi qu’il peut s’appliquer à suivre la marche de l’aiguille, la tête bien débarrassée des images que la vie quotidienne y laisse traîner. Valentin, l’œil fixé sur l’horloge poussiéreuse, ne se sent guère vide. Des faisceaux de paroles quelconques traversent en crépitant une bande de gestes automatiques ou d’objets délavés, mais cela ne donne pas un désert. (167)

Daily activities, voices, newspaper stories, merge with Brû, and he becomes one with the everyday life of Paris rather than with time in the abstract: L’accent avec lequel Balustre lui a dit ce matin “J’ai du novémail pour vos cadres d’argent” permet à cette phrase de se répercuter indéfiniment […] Cependant les voix s’absorbent avec leurs ombres et les Ballustre s’efforcent avec

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Chapter Three les vues de Paris ou les photos de journal surimprimées par des paysages indifférents mais inconnus aux éclairages plombés. (167)

Although he tries to reach a benign state of emptiness, his imagination mixed with the pulse of the city transports him to such a dreamlike state that he forgets his original mission. He is relentlessly ex-centered in relation to the regulated tics of the clock, and even though he is physically immobile, his mind is in a constant floating state: Valentin remarque qu’il n’y pleut jamais. Sur le moment, il ne remarque rien. Il fixe une branche, un galet, mais il perd de vue le temps. Le temps a poussé l’aiguille de dix minutes sans que Valentin l’ait surpris. Et depuis la branche, le galet, il ne s’est rien passé. Et tantôt il se retrouve de lui-même accroché à l’horloge, et tantôt il a déjà parlé qu’il se croit encore la proie des mirages et des répétitions. (168)

When a discussion in a café with the neighborhood épicier about the ensuing war—“sera bombardé partout. Vous verrez Paris, qu’est-ce qu’on perdra” (177)—is interrupted by one as trivial as the weather: “Il fait beau aujourd’hui, hein?” (178), Brû drifts into a long meditation on the neutrality of time, which he wishes to emulate in his own life: Le temps qui passe, lui, n’est ni beau ni laid, toujours pareil […] Le passé ne conserve peut-être pas toujours la belle ordonnance que donnaient au présent les horloges, et l’avenir accourt peut-être en pagaye, chaque moment se bousculant pour se faire, le premier, débiter en tranches.[…]: Mais Valentin […] voulait se contenter d’une identité bien sectionnée en morceaux de longueurs diverses, mais de caractère toujours semblable. (178)

Because the world around Brû is apocalyptic and uncertain, what he seeks is the type of vegetative indifference the bathtub man relishes in his bathroom. Brû longs for a state of being in which time is irrelevant because the epoch he lives in is calamitous. For Brû, during this moment of reflection, it is the world that is chaotic and unstable and that leads him to want to disappear or to try desperately to think of nothing or to have a dreamless sleep: “Il essayait maintenant de découvrir la 154

The Eccentric’s Universe différence qu’il y a entre penser à rien les yeux fermés et dormir sans rêves” (167). If the world is increasingly cataclysmic, then dreams will certainly consist of nightmares. At that point, Brû endeavors to escape the wretched aspect of his present civilization by rising above it. He attempts to become a saint by depriving himself of quotidian pleasures. He also encourages his friends to become saints by tempting them with heavenly rewards for their religious actions. But, as the clouds of war progress, only those quotidian pleasures become meaningful and sacred: Le zèle des catéchumènes s’était refroidi avec la tiédeur de confort; aller à l’église n’était plus que l’un des éléments du complexe dominical, avec les croissants le matin, le quadruple apéritif de midi, et le cinéma vespéral. (232)

Failing to become a saint, Brû tries to get sent to the Maginot line as an ultimate act of self-sacrifice. When this effort also fails, he realizes that his only remaining option is to kill time quixotically: “Il ne lui restait qu’à tuer le temps et à balayer en lui les images d’un monde que l’histoire allait éponger” (234). Brû’s desperate attempts either to be one with, to control, or to destroy time differ from the bathtub man’s desires to waste time. Differences notwithstanding, they both resemble Hulot in his need to take time or prendre son temps in a world where time must be increasingly economized and rendered efficient. Nonetheless, Hulot and the bathtub man are ex-centered in relation to an ahistorical time. To them, past, present, or future world events matter less than the more general tension between modernity and speed on the one hand, and what is old-fashioned and slow, on the other. Because Brû sees history as time’s vicious weapon against human happiness, he makes visits to Napoleon’s battle sites. Although he tries to take comfort in the “glorious” historical past of the Napoleonic era, which is endowed with the same sort of monumental significance as the Poldevian shrine in Pierrot mon ami, Brû is neither inspired nor relieved. He realizes that war is inevitable and inescapable: “Les victoires et les défaites elles n’ont jamais leur fin où elles se sont passées. On les déterre au bout d’un certain temps pour qu’elles aillent pourrir autre part” (189). His job as a frame salesman can also be seen metaphorically as his way of 155

Chapter Three immobilizing and containing time. Brû lives a happy and innocent Sunday of life or permanent Sabbath, but he must also live in the shadow of the approaching Monday, which in Queneau’s paradigm means world war. Yet, as opposed to Céline’s demential rage in the face of the human death drive, Brû’s eccentric response is to see humor in everyday situations. His sister-inlaw must even warn him: “Il n’y a pas que des amusements dans la vie” (221). Like Pierrot, Brû drifts through life with a satisfied contentment that distinguishes him from his peers. As Kojève remarks: “Ce ‘dimanche’ que vivent les héros de Queneau, peut paraître à l’Esthète terne et banal, pour ne pas dire ridicule. Mais le ridicule ne tue que ceux qui le veulent bien” (“Les romans de la sagesse” 397). For Kojève, the proof of Brû’s wisdom is that he can allow himself to continue seeing life in a comical light even when events around him are engulfed in horror: Si la sagesse que fait naître en Valentin Brû cette guerre dernière est la sagesse authentique qui, loin de complaire son jeu stérile avec elle-même, prend immédiatement contact avec la réalité concrète sensible, ce constat ne provoquant chez le sage ni dégoût, ni angoisse, mais plaisir et joie, ce qui fait rire d’aise [sa] fidèle compagne Julia. (“Les romans de la sagesse” 396)

Brû’s attempts to reconcile himself with time differ from the passive coexistence with history that characterizes Cidrolin’s relationship with the Duc d’Auge in Les fleurs bleues. Like the bathtub man, Cidrolin lives in a state of relative immobility, metaphorized not by a bathtub but by a romantic but stationary vessel, his péniche: —C’est vrai qu’elle ne bouge jamais votre péniche? —Elle en est tout à fait incapable. Il faudrait remorquer. —Un petit remorqueur, ça ne doit pas être tellement coûteux. —C’est tout de même au-dessus de mes moyens. (Queneau, Les fleurs bleues 180)

If the sunny aspect of Brû’s outlook on life can be summarized by the title Le dimanche de la vie, Les fleurs bleues reflects Cidrolin’s system of values. Most obviously, the title suggests a dreamy kind of sentimentalism (from the French 156

The Eccentric’s Universe expression “C’est très fleurs bleues”), but it also refers to the “blue flowers of poetry” about which Novalis writes in Heinrich von Ofterdingen and which Vivian Kogan interprets as symbols of rebirth and optimism: “It [the blue flower] springs up identically from the mud of the deluge and thus represents the ironic recurrence of human hopes of escape from history” (58). Although Cidrolin’s barge is named L’Arche after Noah’s Ark, Cidrolin is removed from any kind of apocalypse. He seems, instead, to do little besides going for walks or lounging in his living room in a perpetual reverie. A dreamer, he is “fleurs bleues” because he sees the world in “fluffy,” ethereal terms. Most of his encounters are with passersby who, unlike Baudelaire’s passante, view Cidrolin not with passion but with bemused curiosity. A typical reaction comes from the man who interrupts Cidrolin while he is painting over the graffiti on his barge: —C’est du travail, ça? —En effet, répond Cidrolin, c’est très exactement de la distraction. De la distraction gratuite. —Vous vous amusez de peu. Et il montra l’immeuble qui se construisait de l’autre côté du boulevard. —Ça, c’est du travail, dit le passant. —C’est bien ce que je disais. (142)

Throughout the novel, Cidrolin’s contentedly fixed position as an idle daydreamer is contrasted with Parisian workers who are involved in constructive activities such as erecting buildings or toiling at serious jobs. Cidrolin is so happily removed from modern life that he refuses such contemporary amenities as televisions, radios, or even telephones. As his daughter, Lamelie, remarks, “doing nothing” is Cidrolin’s greatest form of activity. After Cidrolin announces that it would take a lot to make him bored, she muses: “Il trouve toujours quelque chose à ne rien faire […] Il sait très bien ne pas s’occuper” (62). Yet, although Cidrolin seems to go through life in an indulgent, amorphous stupor, he is not wasting his time at all. Rather, he is coexisting with historical time in conjunction with the Duc d’Auge’s march from prehistoric times to the present. Each time he is in a dream state, he seems to be living out the 157

Chapter Three Duc d’Auge’s encounters with historical events such as the Crusades or the French Revolution. Just as L’Aumône became confused as to who he really was because he had transformed himself into so many disparate film personalities, Cidrolin’s stationary external appearance on the barge is merely a front for incredibly intricate and confusing time-travel: Quand ça se met à tourner en rond, que je me demande où je vais basculer, il vaut mieux que ça s’arrête tout de suite, je perdrais les pédales, j’arriverais dans les temps anciens, ou futurs on ne sait pas, ou bien nulle part encore des trucs à vous foutre une trouille épouvantable. (65)

Cidrolin’s encounters with historical time transcend comparatively vapid entertainment that others might be contented to swallow. That is why when some of his friends suggest buying him a television set, his daughter comments: “Pour le moment, le mieux c’est de lui laisser faire sa sieste: c’est encore son meilleur cinéma” (66). Since his dream life is so active, Cidrolin’s seemingly gratuitous eccentricities, such as secretly painting graffiti on his own barge or making reservations under aliases at restaurants, represent his blithe attempts to assert his own individuality and identity in daily situations that he would ordinarily miss during his immobile excursions on his barge. For Cidrolin, both the historical world he dreams about and the eccentric one he lives out are manifestations of his artistic nature. In his dream world, a prehistoric Auge draws cave paintings that he will later compare to the masterful paintings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze. In response to his own mischievous graffiti, Cidrolin declares confidently: “Les graffitis, qu’est-ce que c’est? Tout juste de la littérature” (57). In both cases, written representations of inner needs for artistic expression are in and of themselves the means of making one’s “mark” on time, regardless of how uneventful one’s own actions may appear to others. If, as one of Cidrolin’s friends remarks, “[L’histoire] c’est quand c’est écrit” (63), Cidrolin makes history not only by writing it but also by dreaming about it, and therefore reliving it. This is why he does not participate in a discussion his daughters have about the nature of history versus the daily televised 158

The Eccentric’s Universe news. Although Cidrolin refuses even to watch television because he prefers dreaming, Yoland, one of his daughters, points out how didactic television news is because it brings history, perhaps a boring and dusty school subject for some, to life: Ça [les actualités] leur apprendra l’histoire de France, l’histoire universelle même […] Les actualités d’aujourd’hui, c’est l’histoire de demain. C’est ça de moins qu’ils auront à apprendre à l’école, puisqu’ils la connaîtront déjà. (62–63)

Time goes so fast that television and film are the only means Yoland can think of to capture the fleeting moments of what is immediate and contemporary. Technology, in her mind, imposes an artificial confirmation of historical events that Cidrolin instinctively acts out in his dreams. In response to a friend’s declaring “l’histoire, ça n’a jamais été les actualités et les actualités c’est pas l’histoire. Faut pas confondre” (63), Yoland asserts: “La tévé, c’est de l’actualité qui se congèle en histoire. Aussitôt fait aussitôt dit” (64). Yoland and her friend’s apparent confusion between les actualités (the present) and l’histoire (the past) is not so much different, in theory, from Cidrolin’s sometimes confused relationship with time that is manifested by an internal, creative, and personal television within his unconscious that is fully connected to France’s collective unconscious. In this way, although Cidrolin may have seemed initially anachronistic and ex-centered from average conceptions of time and history, he views history naturally while millions of modern television addicts do so through artificial means and without knowing it. Again, by sitting calmly on his barge, seemingly going nowhere and doing nothing, Cidrolin is able to “take his time,” which is both historical (his participation in Auge’s march through history) and quotidian (his encounters with passersby), while the rest of the world seems caught up in the over-acceleration of time imposed by media technology.

*** Cidrolin, Hulot, Brû, and the bathtub man put their own creative imprint on notions of time that most people never have time to notice for themselves. In this manner, these characters are 159

Chapter Three the direct opposites of Morand’s homme pressé, who got so caught up in trying to constantly catch up with the increasingly rapid treadmill set by the speed of modern times that he simply collapsed and died. Modern eccentrics have the courage and the imagination to define their own pace and their own relationships with time, no matter how silly or idle they might appear to others. Huysmans’s Folantin also viewed the changes that affected his notions of Paris during the nineteenth-century fin de siècle. Instead of cafés disappearing, however, Folantin felt menaced by the boom of Parisian nightlife: Des centres se déplacent. Maintenant tous les antiquaires, tous les vendeurs des livres de luxe végètent dans ce quartier et ils fuient, dès que leurs baux expirent, de l’autre côté du fleuve. Dans dix ans d’ici, les brasseries et les cafés auront envahi tous les rez-de-chaussée du quai! Ah! décidément Paris devient un Chicago sinistre! (A vau-l’eau 79)

Folantin struggled to find happiness in a Paris in which he did not feel comfortable. Twentieth-century eccentrics are not concerned with the increase of café life, of course, but its very destruction. For them, the centers are no longer moving from one rive to the other but are becoming so sprawling that there are practically no more centers at all in the modern city. This is why Pierrot and L’Aumône entrench themselves in the amusement park or the movie palace to escape both the modern wrecking-ball and an ensuing gentrification and homogenization that is, of course, anathema to eccentrics, who need to feel free within their own spaces. When melancholic Folantin sighs “Profitons du temps qui nous reste avant la définitive invasion de la grande muflerie du Nouveau-Monde!” (79), he does not really know how to take advantage of the time and spaces he cherishes. Modern eccentrics, in contrast, ex-center themselves by the ways they successfully seize the moments that are being taken away from them. Spatially, modern eccentrics extend their appreciation of their space into the rest of their lives. Pierrot’s world outside of Uni-Park becomes an amusement park itself. L’Aumône is able to travel far from Rueil while remaining in Rueil. In Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, the rest of the vacationers trans160

The Eccentric’s Universe pose their office lives onto their holidays, while Hulot is the only one actually enjoying his vacation. Hulot transposes his vacation life onto the office in Mon oncle and even in Playtime where, as the title indicates, people with an eccentric outlook can provide alternative, ludic spaces even after old Paris has been eclipsed by a glass and sterile airport world. In regards to time, modern eccentrics are able to reconfigure their own clocks despite societal or governmental edicts demanding that they do otherwise. Brû, for example, takes on not only time (with a broom!) but also history. For him, hanging on to the simplest pleasures of human contact is a way of combating the apocalyptic winds of war. For the postwar Cidrolin, it is no longer a question of fleeing time but merging with it. Even though buildings are being erected or televisions and radios are roaring all around him, Cidrolin can remain eccentrically immobile on his barge without a television and consequently without “contemporary history” (e.g., “news,” in Cidrolin’s vocabulary) because he is at one with the past (represented by the ubiquitous Duc d’Auge) instead of being swallowed up by the present. The bathtub man is less dramatic in his relationship with the past than is Cidrolin (he reads Pascal’s Pensées in his tub, and listens to Charles Trenet instead of the “hip” artists such as Frank Zappa that his friends listen to) but he also rebels against the meaningless speed of Parisian society. Like Cidrolin on his barge, the bathtub man simply stops moving altogether. The bathtub man’s “barge” is an ordinary tub that, unlike Diogenes, he is unwilling to transport out of the confines of his womblike apartment. The nineteenth-century Folantin “subissait dans ce Paris nouveau une impression de malaise et d’angoisse” (Huysmans, A vau-l’eau 99), but modern eccentrics distinguish themselves by first refusing to yield to the modern impulses they reject and, second, courageously designing new configurations of time and space with pleasure rather than with anxiety. Modern eccentrics may appear to waste time within the purely functional structures of modern life, but they are in fact reclaiming a slice of time that other people might think no longer exists.

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Conclusion L’excentrique retrouvé

Mystical dance! […] Mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolv’d, yet regular Then most, when most irregular they seem. John Milton Paradise Lost While in the nineteenth century, eccentrics strove to be noticed as they metaphorically cried their singularity from the rooftops, the twentieth-century eccentric is characterized by a sudden understatement that may account for the term’s absence from updates to such lexical sources as the Trésor de la langue française or even popular fiction, where it flourished a century ago. The lack of any great sartorial eccentricity is a particularly striking example of the modern eccentric’s newfound subtlety. Although the dandy made a point of not appearing outlandish or gaudy, dress was still a very important issue for him; by opposition, for the modern eccentric, it is a nonissue. While in real life, of course, there are many eccentrics who still dress in unusual and remarkable ways, in French fiction, it no longer matters what eccentrics wear. Since uncommon dress has always been associated with eccentricity, it is particularly striking when fictional eccentrics dress in very conventional or unremarkable ways. Thematically, freedom continues to be inexorably linked to the eccentric. From Saurin’s Anglomane, who sought to free himself from the political or societal rigidity of Paris by behaving and dressing as he pleased in London, to Toussaint’s

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Conclusion bathtub man, who seems to carry out a sort of collective wishfulfillment by arbitrarily extending a warm, delicious bath for days on end, eccentrics do as they please when they please. This organic quality is what ultimately distinguishes real eccentrics from pseudo-eccentrics who consciously attempt to singularize their speech or actions in order to be seen. From what do modern eccentrics need to liberate themselves? In the early twentieth century, the examples covered in Chapter 2 unconsciously rebelled against new constraints on their time. Salavin and Monsieur both rebelled against the hegemonic office structure that ruled their lives. The bavard deviated from the stereotypical label pinned upon him by behaving as a type of trickster. He weaved the listener around his finger in such a way as to make the listener into a banal figure rather than the other way around. Again, whereas nineteenth-century eccentrics were considered insane fous littéraires, in some cases, for daring to publish their chatter or else merely lightly entertaining in terms of the playful “excentricité du language” recorded by Larchey, the bavard renders himself unique by, ironically, appearing perfectly normal to the point of initially portraying himself as an annoying cliché. It is only by shrewd analysis that one is able to discern the bavard’s ingenious trickery. Since radio and television have increased the amount of chatter to such an extent that one is subjected to mechanical messages from all angles, the bavard teaches us to be alert and awake enough to realize what is a cliché and what is not. Along with the new eccentric’s relatively discreet profile, such as the bathtub man, who disappears from society, or Monsieur, who, by day, seems like a standard cadre only to break away from his office “frame” in increments when he is not at work, the modern eccentric is rather quiet. Nineteenth-century eccentrics such as Jean Journet or the fin de siècle hydropathes were very vocal; Monsieur, Echenoz’s characters, the soupirant, Monsieur Hulot, even the building in La vie mode d’emploi are practically silent. Just as it is now considered eccentric to wear understated clothing rather than to dress in an outrageous manner, modern eccentrics react to the increasing noise around them mutely. In Tant qu’on a la santé, Etaix’s character remains stalwart before the couple who speak only in terms of commercials. Similarly, the

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Conclusion soupirant does not need to recite poetry in order to learn the art of love. Because he is out of tune with his peers, who no doubt use “pick-up” lines to seduce, the soupirant affirms his originality by a singular type of urban ballet in which he leaps off balconies like a bird and in and out of street crowds like a feather rather than like a follower. There is also a sense within the modern eccentric’s chronotope that speech no longer matters as much. Politicians, from the birth of radio to today, have been known for their great (or rather mediocre) speeches, but unpopular gigantic actions such as wars or comparatively smaller ones such as the destruction of old-fashioned neighborhoods continue to affect people’s lives despite modern double-talk. In the nineteenth century, utopians like Fourier were certainly considered eccentric, but the ideals they propagated still had weight in a political climate where the Commune could be proclaimed at a moment’s notice. Curiously, May 1968 did not correspond to any increased appearance of eccentrics in French literature at the time. Rather the stability that both preceded and followed that upheaval has led to deeper fictional eccentrics who require a critical layer-by-layer “peeling” as if they accentuated their individuality by implosion rather than explosion, as was the case of nineteenth-century eccentrics. Another important shift from nineteenth- to twentiethcentury eccentrics has been that of class. In literature, the figure of the indulgent aristocrat has been replaced by a type of Everyman who is paradoxically eccentric because he remains Everyman despite pressures to be overtly original by the sensation-seeking 1980s Lipovetsky analyzed in L’ère du vide. Among the early-twentieth-century examples, Salavin met an unhappy fate because he lacked the power or the wealth to protect himself. He was too financially dependant on his job to “get away” with his eccentricity. In the latter half of the twentieth century, from Echenoz’s characters to the many eccentrics hidden behind the walls of the building in La vie mode d’emploi, eccentrics do not feel the pressure to conform or to rebel. They appear to enjoy a carte blanche autonomy to vacation through life as they see fit. But, as Perec reminds us, the perennial bulldozers and construction companies threaten the spaces these characters

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Conclusion inhabit, replacing them with “des fenêtres sans âmes.” While an eccentric can be invisible to the literary critic accustomed to reading very visible eccentrics, the eccentric’s space can be equally overlooked. The modest, simple pleasures of the quotidian appreciated by Hulot or Brû are in the process of evaporating in such an undramatic way that people no longer take notice. It is no longer scandalous when a café is replaced by a fast-food restaurant or a popular circus by a parking lot.1 Yet, little by little, the landscape will continue to change until even the periphery that Echenoz’s characters revel in will no longer be an ex-centered location but mixed into the homogenized megapolis Tati imagined in Playtime. In Des Esseintes’s nineteenth-century, notions of time and space were also changing with such speed that it exhausted the fin de siècle névrosé and caused him to retreat into a space that he could manage and control. At the start of the twenty-first century, the shape of the world is no longer being reconfigured by objects of wonder. People seem so numbed by so much technology that progress is expected rather than dreamed of. As Perec has remarked, the wonder that Jules Verne inspired still exists in forms that are now found in the “endotique.” With faxes and the Concorde, Fogg’s and Nemo’s voyages seem uneventful today. The business traveler Anne Tyler describes in The Accidental Tourist, for example, goes around the world many times for business but seeks out the familiar Hiltons and fast-food-chain restaurants. Technically these business travelers can travel like Fogg, but they do so out of slavish necessity rather than on a whim or quixotic principle. Yet, although glorious conquests of space were considered marvelously eccentric in the nineteenth-century, so were the travels of the “stationary traveler” based on De Maistre’s model. Modern eccentrics also react to the emotionless speed around them motionlessly. The bathtub man floats in his tub in a fetal bliss; Monsieur is either slumped in a hammock (on vacation), a lawn chair (at home), or a wooden chair (on his rooftop); Echenoz’s characters spend a lot of time sleeping, listening to jazz, or even dangling like pea pods in a space capsule (in Nous trois). The decadent eccentric of the nineteenth century reacted to the continual motion around him by looking backward toward

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Conclusion the decadent literature of the ancient past. The modern eccentric does not need to look back that far. If today’s Perec and Echenoz, for example, often cite the nineteenth-century Jules Verne, it is not simply out of nostalgia for a more innocent era but because the spirit that made Verne’s eccentrics so lovable is still alive within the new configurations of modern fiction. Verne is as much a myth to the modern eccentric as the decadent writers were to the névrosé because, as Perec announced by quoting from Verne’s Michel Strogoff, he instructs us to “open our eyes” and look not at what we see, but at how we see. Although I have spoken extensively of Fogg and Nemo, two other Verne characters also embody the essence of the modern eccentric. The first is the millionaire in Le testament d’un excentrique, William J. Hypperbone, who pretends to be dead so he can enjoy the randomly selected participants’ race across an America he has transformed into an immense jeu de l’oie board game (and which he also plays under the initials XKZ). The second forces an exception to my decision to concentrate only on male eccentrics: Miss Campbell, the “jeune Miss excentrique” (12) in Le rayon vert, who criss-crosses Scotland in mad pursuit of the “green ray” that can only be glimpsed for a fraction of a second but that promises happiness to the person who can perceive it. Although modern eccentrics are no longer millionaires, they are immobile, like Hypperbone in Le testament (sometimes they even appear semicomatose). Yet their chronotope is similarly transformed into an urban board game. In Monsieur, the metro below and the sky above become a type of celestial game that supplants an unexciting routine. The metro map Monsieur becomes fixated with turns into a source of amusement and invention for him in lieu of the “executive board” game he used to play at work by simply showing up. In La vie mode d’emploi, Bartlebooth recasts the lives within his building in terms of a jigsaw puzzle, and in Mon oncle, Hulot even makes daily life into a game for his nephew, who was bored by life with his humorless parents. For the modern eccentric, what is essential is that life should indeed be like a Sunday and that it should be as enjoyable as a game—not in terms of meaningless practical jokes (as Lord Seymour was known for in the nineteenth cen-

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Conclusion tury)—but in terms of the very thing that others may wish to flee: the quotidian. Along similar lines, modern eccentrics do not need to climb high and low to find happiness. It is right in front of them and they know it. Yet, like the elusive green ray that appears and disappears at sunset in the blink of an eye, eccentric pleasures exemplified by the friendly but inefficient human street sweeper and the inexpensive neighborhood movie palace have been replaced by the massive mechanized street sweeper and the video cassette. Despite these changes, eccentrics such as Etaix’s soupirant or even Toussaint’s Monsieur will continue to react in as original a manner as possible as countercurrents to the trends that might imperil their uniqueness. Although I began this book with a historical survey of dictionary definitions of the word excentrique, the modern eccentrics found in twentieth-century French literature will no doubt continue to write their own gestural, mental, active, and reactive definitions of eccentricity well into the twenty-first century.

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Notes Introduction 1. ARTFL: American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language. The designation ARTFL indicates a reference taken from the ARTFL database at the University of Chicago. Cited page numbers and editions correspond to hard copies. 2. In a similar manner, Beizer followed a specific female semiotic/ medical trail in her study on the figure of the hysteric in Ventriloquized Bodies: Narratives of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century France even though there are many examples of male hysterics. 3. The chronotope refers to the “intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature” (Bakhtin 84). 4. For more on these tensions within French society during the 1950s, as well as Monsieur Hulot’s place in it, see Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture.

Chapter One Nineteenth-Century Eccentric Prototypes 1. It was, in fact, a French version of the English magazine The Eccentric Magazine of Lives and Portraits or Remarkable Characters, started in 1814. 2. For more on this lexical transformation of these words, see Sangsue 14–27, and Schulman 175–87. 3. Qtd. in Gury 143. 4. Brunet and Peignot were both editors of Le Bulletin du Bibliophile. 5. Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier, also known as Berbiguier de Terre-Neuve du Thym. 6. . 7. Baudelaire: “De la part d’un homme aussi naturellement et volontairement excentrique, tout était possible” (167). 8. Bernard, Principes de médecine expérimentale (Paris: Baillière, 1878), qtd. in Trésor 11703. 9. “Il est avant tout habit, costume, apparence; mais apparence voulue, créé par oppositions à l’apparence naturelle. Le dandysme est le carnaval du moi” (Maude Sacquard de Belleroche, Du dandy au playboy [Paris: Del Duca, 1965], qtd. in Carassus 302). 10. Calinescu explains that “It was, significantly, after that date [1850] that ‘décadent’ underwent a process of semantic enrichment, which, during the 1880’s, resulted in a series of new and sometimes ironical-fanciful coinings, such as the verb ‘décader,’ or the labels ‘décadisme’ or ‘décadentisme’” (120). 11. In Verne’s theatrical version of Le tour du monde, Fogg belongs to the “Club des Excentriques,” however.

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Notes to Pages 35–149 12. It also inspired several other works noted by Sangsue: “Le succès du Voyage autour de ma chambre ne se démentira pas pendant tout le dix-neuvième siècle. Dans son intertexte direct, on peut citer La Bibliothèque de mon oncle de Töpffer, Le Voyage autour de mon jardin d’Alphonse Karr, et jusqu’à Un Voyage dans ma maison d’un certain S. D’Houay (Rouen, 1883). Ainsi que, au croisement des influences de Sterne et de Xavier De Maistre, des textes comme les Voyages en zigzags et autres Voyages de Töpffer, les Caprices et Zigzags de Gautier […]” (167) 13. Paul Bourget, Conflits intimes (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1925), 269, qtd. in Trésor 11. 14. Octave Mirbeau, Journal d’une femme de chambre (Paris: Fasquelle, 1900),116, qtd. in Trésor 13. 15. Qtd. in Caradec and Weil 81. 16. “Ecentrique—without center, out of center, without measure, whereof no measure can be taken. Fol ecentrique—an unrulie, or irregular coxcombre; one that can be held within no compass,” “Ecentrique” (Cotgrave).

Chapter Two The Clinamen: The Discreet Eccentric 1. See Campbell: “It is the purpose of this present book to uncover some of the truths disguised for us under the figures of religion and mythology by bringing together a multitude of not-too-difficult examples and letting the ancient meaning become apparent itself” (vii). 2. Chave’s suburban/peripheral itinerary follows the ones established by Jacques Réda in his collection of poems such as Hors les murs, Beauté suburbaine, and Les ruines de Paris. 3. Personal interview, 23 July, 1996, Paris. 4. Personal interview, 23 July 1996, Paris. 5. “J’ai un tel fanatisme pour ces œuvres que j’en suis jaloux,” qtd. in Foucault, Raymond Roussel 99. 6. Qtd. in Kern: “In an article of 1884 [William] James observed that it is impossible to experience the present because it is past before we can properly comprehend it [...] [E. R.] Clay argued that the present we experience is part of the recent past as the path of a meteor seems to be ‘contained in the present,’ and he defined this interval as the ‘specious present’” (82–83). 7. Interview in Le monde, 9 July 1976.

Chapter Three The Eccentric’s Universe 1. His girlfriend

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Notes to Page 165 Conclusion L’excentrique retrouvé 1. In the film Yoyo (1967), Etaix predicted that the Cirque Médrano would be sacrificed in order to put up a giant parking lot. Now that the Médrano has in fact disappeared, Etaix told me that the new mayor of Montmartre has plans for other such parking garages as well as a colossal mall in between the sex shops and the bus loads of tourists. “Alors, où iront les clowns maintenant?” he asked.

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Index Accidental Tourist, The (Tyler), 165 âge de l’homme, L’ (Leiris), 45, 89 Alain-Fournier, Henri, Le grand Meaulnes, 24, 152 A la recherche du plaisir (Magritte), 60 A la recherche du temps perdu (Proust), 108 Allais, Alphonse, Amours, délices et orgues, 38–40 Allen, Woody, 125 The Purple Rose of Cairo, 125 Zelig, 125 Allix, Jules, 18, 20, 113 ami intime, L’ (Magritte), 60 Amours, délices et orgues (Allais), 38–40 amusement park, the, 6, 7, 46, 117–23, 125, 127, 140, 146, 150, 160 Andrieu, Jules, 11 Anglomane, the (character), 4, 12–14, 40, 41, 42 Anglomane, l’ (play; Saurin), 13, 162 Anthologie de l’humour noir (Breton), 30, 97 A.O.B. Barnabooth: Ses œuvres complètes (Larbaud), 148. See also Barnabooth, A. O. B. apartment building (Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi), 43 as clinamen, 100–10, 111 apartments, studio, 76–77 apprenti sorcier (sorcerer’s apprentice), 94 A rebours (Huysmans), 27–30, 113, 134. See also Des Esseintes; Moreau, Gustave Arpels, the (Tati’s Mon oncle), 140, 141, 142 Arsène Lupin (Le Blanc), 79

ARTFL (database), 22, 169Intro n1, 169n6 Arts de faire (De Certeau), 69, 70 Auge, Duc d’ (Queneau’s Les fleurs bleues), 156, 157, 158, 161 “A une passante” (Baudelaire), 20, 72, 157 Automat, the, 52, 141 automatons, 50, 89 A vau-l’eau (Hysmans), 73, 112. See also Folantin Axël (Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Axël), 62, 141 Axël. See Axël bachelor, the, 73, 77, 78, 110 Bagatelles pour un massacre (Céline), 92 Bagueville, Marquis de, 15 Baju, Anatole, 30, 32, 40, 135 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 169Intro n3 ballon à vent, 40 Balzac, Honoré de, Le chefd’œuvre inconnu, 102 banlieue, la, 123–35 Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules, 25 Bardamu (Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit), 52, 141 Barnabooth, A. O. B. (Larbaud’s A. O. B. Barnabooth), 148 Baron in the Trees, The (Calvino), 139. See also Cosimo Barthes, Roland, 25–26, 35 Bartlebooth, Perceval (Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi), 99, 100–03, 107, 108, 109, 110, 166 basketball (Koons’s One Ball Total Equilibrium), 92 Bataille, Georges, 91 bathtub man, the (Toussaint’s La salle de bain), 7, 9, 146, 147–54, 159, 163

185

Index Baudelaire, Charles, 20, 27, 29, 72, 103, 125, 136, 169n7 “A une passante,” 20, 72, 157 “Le cygne,”136 Tableaux parisiens, 103 Baudrillard, Jean, 146 bavard, the (the chatterbox; Des Forêts’s Le bavard), 5, 43, 86–98, 111, 112, 126, 134, 163 bavard, Le (Des Forêts), 86–98. See also bavard, the Bazin, André, 143 Beauvoir, Roger de, 26 Bechtel, Guy, 19 Beckett, Samuel, 59, 75, 83 Molloy, 83 Beizer, Janet, 169Intro n2 Benayoun, Robert, 84 Berbiguier, Alexis-VincentCharles, 19, 20, 29, 113, 114, 169n5 Les farfadets, ou Tous les démons ne sont pas dans l’autre monde, 19 Bergens, Andrée, 119, 128, 132 Bergman, Ingmar, 95, 98, 123 The Magician, 98 movie projector, 95, 98, 123 Bergson, Henri, 142 “corrective,” 142 “mechanical inelasticity,” 142 Bernard, Claude, 24, 169n8 Bertho, Sophie, 74 Bertrand, Jean-Pierre, 73–74, 76– 78 Blanchot, Maurice, 91, 92 Bond, James, 79, 129 Bourget, Paul, 37, 170n13 bowler-hatted man (Magritte’s L’homme au chapeau melon), 113 Breton, André, 89, 97 Anthologie de l’humour noir, 30, 97

186

Nadja, 89 Brisset, Jean-Pierre, 18, 19, 20 La grammaire logique, 18–19 Brû, Valentin (Queneau’s Le dimanche de la vie), 103, 129, 152–56, 161, 165 Bruckhardt, Anna (Etaix’s Le soupirant), 66, 68 Brugal, Simon, Excentriques disparus, 18 Brummell, Beau, 13, 25, 26, 41 Brunet, Gustave, 17, 18, 169Ch1n4 bureaucrat, the, 44 Byronic, 13, 32 cabaret, 36–38, 83 café, the, 6, 19, 98, 123–35, 140, 143, 146, 150, 155, 160, 165 café concerts, 36–37 Calinescu, Matei, 28, 30, 31, 169n10 Calvino, Italo, The Baron in the Trees, 139 Campbell, Joseph, 44, 170Ch2n1 Campbell, Miss (Verne’s Le rayon vert), 166 Camus, Albert, 26, 27 caprice, 25, 28 Caprices et zigzags (Gautier), 170n12 Caradec, François, and Alain Weil, 170n5 Carassus, Emilien, 26, 169n9 Carrière, Jean-Claude, 19 Castres, Sabatier de, 12 célibataires, Les (Montherlant), 73. See also Coantré, Léon de; Coëtquidan, Elie de Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 52, 88– 90, 92, 115, 130, 156 Amiral Bragueton, l’ (episode), 115 Bagatelles pour un massacre, 92

Index Entretiens, 94 Hommage à Zola, 89–90 métro-émotif, 88 réfraction (notion of), 94 Voyage au bout de la nuit, 52, 115, 141 Certeau, Michel de, 69 Arts de faire, 69, 70 La culture au pluriel, 69 L’invention du quotidien, 71, 116 ordinary man, 69 Chambernac (Queneau’s Les enfants du Limon), 43 chambre des enfants, La (Des Forêts), 93 Champfleury, Jules, Les excentriques, 11, 16, 18–22 chanson populaire, 38 chants de Maldoror, Les (Lautréamont), 27 chaos, 47, 63, 66, 67, 111, 112, 140 chaos theory, 66 “subtle chaos,” 47 Chaplin, Charlie, 81 Charcot, Jean-Marie, 38 Charles (Echenoz’s L’équipée malaise), 77 Chat Noir, le, 4, 36, 40, 120 chatterbox. See bavard, the Chave, Georges (Echenoz’s Cherokee), 5, 43, 69–79, 170n2 chef-d’œuvre inconnu, Le (Balzac), 102. See also Frenhofer Cherokee (Echenoz), 69, 70, 74, 75, 78. See also Chave, Georges; Weltman, Jenny Chevillard, Eric, 74 chiendent, Le (Queneau), 88, 126. See also Marcel, Etienne Chopin, Franck (Echenoz’s Lac), 70

chronotope, 9, 52, 70, 77, 116, 118, 164, 169Intro n3 Cidrolin (Queneau’s Les fleurs bleues), 9, 129, 131–32, 145, 156–59, 161 Cinoc (Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi), 104 classicism, 13 vs romanticism, 13 clinamen (Lucretian), 6, 9, 43– 114, 66–67, 98 “swerve of the atoms,” 6, 7, 47, 67, 101 clinamen atomorum, 47, 99 club des excentriques, le, 32 Coantré, Léon de (Montherlant’s Les célibataires), 73 Coëtquidan, Elie de (Montherlant’s Les célibataires), 73 Coislin, Duc de, 15 Colin (Vian’s L’écume des jours), 71–72, 129, 133 collective unconscious, 44 College de ’Pataphysique (Jarry), 36 colonne Morris, 81, 83 Columbine, 84, 121 Commedia dell’arte, 117, 120 Commune, La, 164 comte de Monte-Cristo, Le (Dumas), 22–24, 40, 41, 45, 127 Confesion de minuit (Duhamel), 49–53. See also Sureau, M. confessions, Les (Rousseau), 91 Connery, Sean, 79 contingence, la, 73, 74 Cosimo (Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees), 139–40 Cretan liar, the, 89 Crusades, Crusaders, 117, 158 culture au pluriel, La (De Certeau), 69 “cygne, Le” (Baudelaire), 136

187

Index Dadaists, the, 27 dandy, the, 13, 14, 24–27, 32, 112, 162 Debureau, Jean-Gaspard, 37 De Certeau, Michel. See Certeau, Michel de De la terre à la lune (Verne), 135 Delepierre, Octave, 18 De Maistre, Xavier Expédition nocturne autour de ma chambre, 35 Voyage autour de ma chambre, 34–36, 58, 148, 165, 170n12 Democritus, 15, 47 vs Epicurus, 47–48 derniers jours, Les (Queneau), 116, 135. See also Rohel; Tuquedenne Des Cigales (Queneau’s Loin de Rueil), 123–27 Des Esseintes (Huysmans’s A rebours), 27–30, 32, 35, 36, 40, 41, 45, 77, 78, 114, 116, 118, 119, 125, 127, 129, 132, 134, 144, 147, 148–49, 150, 165 Des Forêts, Louis-René, 5, 86–98, 134 Le bavard, 86–98 La chambre des enfants, 93 deus-ex-machina, 88 Diderot, Denis, 20, 139 Le neveu de Rameau, 20, 22 dimanche de la vie, Le (Queneau), 103, 115, 121, 152–56. See also Brû, Valentin Diogenes, 15, 16, 161 Disneyland, 140 Domus Arx Certissima, 103 Duclos, Chodruc, 16 Duhamel, Georges, 5, 43, 49 Confession de minuit, 49–53 Vie et aventures de Salavin, 49–53

188

Dumas, Alexandre, 13 Le comte de Monte-Cristo, 22– 24, 40, 41, 45, 127 Du traitement moral de la folie (Leuret), 19 eccentricity. See also excentrique architectural (as public folly), 104, 98–113 aristocratic, 12–26, 131 as clinamen, 43–115 decadent, 27–31, 73, 76, 77, 78, 166, 169n10 fantaisie as, 28 gestural, 79–86, 167 as madness, 14–22 sartorial, 13–14, 24–27, 162 spatial, 117–35 temporal, 146–62 verbal, 86–98, 162 eccentric drinks, 129, 132 essence de fenouille, 60, 129, 132, 145 grenadine, 129 pianocktail, 129, 133 tango panaché, 74 vin blanc gommé, 60, 129, 131, 132 Eccentric Magazine of Lives and Portraits of Remarkable Characters, The, 169Ch1n1 Echenoz, Jean, 2, 5, 43, 44, 69– 79, 110, 111, 146, 163, 164, 165, 166 Cherokee, 69, 70, 74, 75, 78 L’équipée malaise, 69, 70, 76– 77, 146 Lac, 70 Nous trois, 76, 110, 165 écume des jours, L’ (Vian), 71, 74, 129, 133, 134, 142. See also Colin education sentimentale, L’ (Flaubert), 116. See also Moreau, Frédéric

Index endotique, 131, 165 enfants du Limon, Les (Queneau), 43. See also Chambernac England (English influence), 1, 12–14, 24–27, 40, 41, 162 ennui, 74 Entretien (avec Gabriel Simony) (Perec), 130 Entretiens (Céline), 94 Epicurus, 47–48, 99 équipée malaise, L’ (Echenoz), 69, 70, 76–77, 146. See also Charles; Paul; Pons ère du vide, L’ (Lipovetsky), 44– 49, 146, 147, 164 Espèces d’espaces (Perec), 108 Etaix, Pierre, 5, 8, 9, 43, 44, 79– 86, 111, 163, 167, 170n3, 170n4 Le soupirant, 79–86, 111, 164 Tant qu’on a la santé, 84–85, 163 Yoyo, 171n1 Everyman, 164 excentrique, 2, 3, 11, 12, 14–17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 41, 42. See also eccentricity excentriques, Les (Champfleury), 11, 16, 18–22 Excentriques disparus (Brugal), 18 Exercices de style (Queneau), 2 Expédition nocturne autour de ma chambre (De Maistre), 35 farfadets, Les (Berbiguier), 19 fantaisie (as a form of eccentricity), 25, 28 femme fatale, 71, 72, 75 film noir, 111 fin de siècle, 28, 36–40, 78, 146, 160, 163 hysteria, 31, 37 loufoque, 37, 42 mal de siècle, 120

névrosés, 29, 37, 76, 146, 165, 166 flânerie, 111 flâneur, 143 Flaubert, Gustave, L’education sentimentale, 116 fleurs bleus, Les (Queneau), 129, 131, 136, 156–59; See also Auge, Duc d’; Cidrolin “flights of fancy,” 82, 164 Fogg, Phileas (Verne’s Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours), 7, 32, 36, 39, 41, 45, 65, 86, 101, 103, 107, 120, 150, 152, 165, 166, 169n11 Folantin (Huysmans’s A vaul’eau), 73, 112, 160, 161 Folle de Chaillot, La (Giraudoux), 142 Fontenay, Chevalier de, 15 Fontenay-aux-Roses, 28, 78, 127, 147, 148 Foucault, Michel, 97, 170n5 fou littéraire, 17–22, 25, 43, 97, 124, 163 Fourier, Charles, 19, 164 Fourieristes, 18. 19 Frederick (Gombrowicz’s Pornographia), 45–46 freedom, 85, 89 free time, 10, 138–62 free will, 47–48, 51 vs aleatory, 47 French Revolution, 121, 158 Frenhofer (Balzac’s Le chefd’œuvre inconnu), 102 Freud, Sigmund, 69 der gemeine Mann, 69 Fumistes, 4, 36 Gabriel (Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro), 63, 74, 129 Galais, Frantz de (AlainFournier’s Le grand Meaulnes), 23, 152

189

Index games jeu de l’oie, 166 jeu de contraintes, 104 lipograms, 98–99 puzzle (Bartlebooth’s), 101–10 Scrabble, 57 gardens, French vs English, 13 Gautier, Théophile, 1, 2, 18, 62 Caprices et zigzags, 170n12 Les grotesques, 18 Jeunes-France, Les, 1, 25, 124 Gérard (Tati’s Mon oncle), 140 Gilles (Watteau), 117, 120 Gilliat, Penelope, 141 Giraudoux, Jean, La Folle de Chaillot, 142 Gnoli, Domenico, 134 Goffmann, Erving, 54 “orientation gloss,” 54 Golconde (Magritte), 60 Gombrowicz, Witold, 45, 69 Pornographia, 45 Goncourt brothers (Edmond and Jules), 18, 29–30, 38 Gordon, Rae Beth, 37, 38 Grammaire logique, La (Brisset), 18–19 grand Meaulnes, Le (AlainFournier), 24, 152. See also Galais, Frantz de Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 158 Grojnowski, Daniel, 38 grotesques, Les (Gautier), 18 Gury, Jacques, 12, 13, 169Ch1n3 Habib, Philippe, 72–73, 110 Haussmannization (of Parisian streets), 29, 137 Hayles, N. Katherine, 67 Hegel, G. W. F., 115 Heinrich von Ofterdingen (Novalis), 157 Hennequin, Victor, 18, 20 Heraclitus, 15

190

histoire modèle, Une (Queneau), 117, 118 Hollywood, 122, 123 Homer, 110 Hommage à Zola (Céline), 89–90 homme au journal, L’ (Magritte), 63 homme pressé, L’ (Morand), 148, 160 homme qui dort, Un (Perec), 129 homme standard, L’ (Rageot), 36, 146 horla, Le (Maupassant), 39 Hugo, Victor, 19 Hulot, Monsieur (Tati’s films), 7, 8, 9, 46, 58, 108, 139–46, 159, 161, 163, 165, 169Intro n2 Hutting, Franz (Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi), 109 Huysmans, J.-K., 22, 27–30, 37, 73, 97 A rebours, 27–30, 113, 134 A vau-l’eau, 73, 112 hydropathes, 163 Hypperbone, William J. (XKZ; Verne’s Le testament d’un excentrique), 166 hysteric female, 169Intro n2 male, 38 île mystérieuse, L’ (Verne), 108, 109 illuminés, Les (Nerval), 11 Impressions d’Afrique (Roussel), 97 incroyables, les, 27 individualism, 66, 74, 81, 85, 87, 88, 110 “hyper-individualism,” 43, 46, 49 individuality, 85, 88 infra-ordinaire, l’, 129–31, 134, 135

Index infra-ordinaire, L’ (Perec), 129– 31, 134 “Interview avec Eva Poniatowska” (Perec), 99 invention du quotidien, L’ (De Certeau), 71, 116 Ivoi, Paul d’, 33 “voyages excentriques,” 33

Kabbalah, 49 Kaltz (Toussaint’s Monsieur), 58, 59, 62, 66 Kant, Immanuel, 32 Karr, Alphonse, 170n12 Keaton, Buster, 81 Klee, Paul, 99, 102 Knights of the Round Table, 117 Kogan, Vivian, 157 Kojève, Alexandre, 7, 117, 121, 123, 141, 143, 153, 156 (Kojevian) sage, 7, 123, 141, 143, 156 Koons, Jeff, One Ball Total Equilibrium, 92

Larbaud, Valéry, A. O. B. Barnabooth: Ses œuvres complètes, 148 Larchey, Lorédon, 11, 18, 39, 163 L’Aumône, Jacques (Queneau’s Loin de Rueil), 47, 123–27, 147, 158, 160 Lautréamont, le Comte de (pseud. for Isidore Ducasse), Les chants de Maldoror, 27 lebensform, 71 Le Blanc, Maurice, Arsène Lupin, 79 Le Brun, Annie, 97 Lebrun, Jean-Claude, 78 Leiris, Michel, L’âge d’homme, 45, 89 Le Lionnais, François, 98 Lemaître, Jules, 18 Lettristes, les, 8 Leuret, François, Du traitement moral de la folie, 19 Lewis, Jerry, 84 Lipovetsky, Gilles, 6, 146 L’ère du vide, 44–49, 146, 147, 164 Locus solus (Roussel), 97, 105 Loin de Rueil (Queneau), 45, 123–28, 136. See also Des Cigales; L’Aumône, Jacques Loti, Pierre, 29, 33 loufoque, 37 Louis XVI, 120, 121 Lucretius, 47, 113 lunaire, 37, 118 Luna Park, 136 Luria, Isaac, 49

Lac (Echenoz), 70. See also Chopin, Franck Ladrague, A., 18 La Fontaine, Jean de, 123 Laforgue, Jules, 37 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 19

Macherey, Pierre, 117 Mac-Nab, Maurice, 36 Maddock, Brent, 144 magical realism, 126 Magician, The (Bergman), 98

Jarry, Alfred, College de ’Pataphysique, 36 jazz, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 165 New Orleans jazz, 133 Jena (battle of), 121, 152. See also Napoleon jeune cadre dynamique, 53 Jeunes-France, Les (Gautier), 1, 25, 124 Jour de fête (Tati), 146 Journet, Jean, 19, 113 Jung, Carl, 87–88, 96

191

Index Magritte, René, 6, 7, 57, 60, 104, 114 A la recherche du plaisir, 60 L’ami intime, 60 bowler-hatted man, 113 Golconde, 60 L’homme au journal, 63 Le pain quotidien, 60 Les vacances de Hegel, 61 malaise, 76–77, 120 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 85 la danseuse, 85 Marcel, Etienne (Queneau’s Le chiendent), 88, 126 Marcuse, Herbert, 51 Marcusian universe, 7, 51 Margueritte, Paul, 37 Martin, Jean, 74–75 mass homogenization, 48–49 Maupassant, Guy de, Le horla, 39 May 1968, 164 merveilleux, les, 27 Mes haines (Zola), 29 metro (Parisian), 136, 138, 166 métro-boulot-dodo, 49 Michel Strogoff (Verne), 102, 166 Milton, John, 162 Mirbeau, Octave, 29, 37, 170n14 mise en abyme, 61 mobilis in mobile, 35, 103 modernity, 92 Molloy (Beckett), 83 Mondrian, Paul, 60 Mon oncle (Tati), 58, 139–46, 161. See also Arpels, the; Gérard; Hulot, Monsieur; street sweeper Monselet, Charles, Les oubliés et les dédaignés, 11, 16, 18, 22 Monsieur (Toussaint’s Monsieur), 5, 9, 43, 53–69, 110–11, 112, 114, 163, 165, 166, 167

192

Monsieur (Toussaint), 53. See also Kaltz; Monsieur; Parrain, les Montbron, Fougeret de, 12 Monte-Cristo, Comte de (Dumas’s Le comte de Monte-Cristo), 22–24, 40, 41, 45, 127 Montesquiou, Robert de, 26 Montherlant, Henry de, Les célibataires, 73 “Mon vieux ciné” (Trenet), 136 Morand, Paul, 148 L’homme pressé, 148, 160 Moreau, Frédéric (Flaubert’s L’education sentimentale), 116 Moreau, Gustave (Huysmans’s A rebours), 113 Motte, Warren F., Jr., 47–49, 98– 99, 113 Mounnezergues (Queneau’s Pierrot mon ami), 122 movie projector, 126, 127. See also Bergman, Ingmar: movie projector movie theater, 6, 123–35, 136, 146, 158, 160, 167 Mulligan, Gerry, 75 myths, 44 Nadja (Breton), 89 Napoleon (Napoléon Bonaparte), 121, 139, 155 Jena, battle of, 121, 152 nausée, La (Sartre), 129 Nautilus, the, 119 Nemo, Captain (Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers), 35–36, 39, 62, 77, 103, 107, 108, 116, 119, 127, 165 Nerval, Gérard de Les illuminés, 11 Les nuits d’octobre, 26 neveu de Rameau, Le (Diderot), 20, 22

Index Nodier, Charles, 3, 17–18, 20, 25, 35, 40 Nous trois (Echenoz), 76, 110, 165 main characters (DeMilo, Meyer, Lucie), 76 Novalis (pseud. for Friedrich Leopold, Baron von Hardenberg), Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 157 nuits d’octobre, Les (Nerval), 26. See also Saint-Cricq, Baron de oddness, 11 One Ball Total Equilibrium (Koons), 92. See also basketball orgue-à-bouche, 29, 129, 132, 133 original, 3, 11, 14, 15, 16, 42, 82, 96 vs bizarre, 2, 42 vs insolite, 2, 3 Orpheus (and Eurydice), 109 Orsay, Alfred d’, 26 Oster, Christian, 74 oubliés et les dédaignés, Les (Monselet), 11, 16, 18, 22 OuLiPo, 8, 98 Outsider, The (Wilson), 115 pain quotidien, Le (Magritte), 60 Pantagruel (Rabelais), 129 Paris, 62, 68, 75, 84–86, 100, 106, 111, 125, 127, 136, 137, 153, 160, 163. See also metro old Paris vs new Paris, 106, 136–46 Parrain, les (Toussaint’s Monsieur), 57, 58 Pascal, Blaise, Les pensées, 161 Paul (Echenoz’s L’équipée malaise), 77 Pedersen, John, 101–02, 103

pensées, Les (Pascal), 161 Penser/Classer (Perec), 108 Perec, Georges, 130–31, 134, 164, 165, 166 Entretien (avec Gabriel Simony), 130 Espèces d’espaces, 108 Un homme qui dort, 129 L’infra-ordinaire, 129–31, 134 “Interview avec Eva Poniatowska,” 99 Penser/Classer, 108 La vie mode d’emploi, 9, 43, 98–110, 163 petit-beurre, 99, 109 Petro, Peter, 45–46 pierrot, 37, 84, 117–18, 121 pierrot lunaire, 37, 118 Pierrot (Queneau’s Pierrot mon ami), 45, 117–23, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 139, 140, 141, 143, 147, 150, 156, 160 Pierrot mon ami (Queneau), 137, 155. See also Mounnezergues; Pierrot; Pradonet, Eusèbe; Yvonne Playtime (Tati), 144, 145, 146, 161, 165. See also Hulot, Monsieur Poldevian shrine, 117, 118, 137, 155 Pons (Echenoz’s L’équipée malaise), 77 Ponson de Terrail, Pierre-Alexis, Rocambole, 25 Pornographia (Gombrowicz), 45. See also Frederick Powell, Bud, 75 Pradonet, Eusèbe (Queneau’s Pierrot mon ami), 117 Prédal, René, 81 Prigogine, Ilya, 66–67 Proust, Marcel, A la recherche du temps perdu, 106, 108

193

Index Proustian, 106 Purple Rose of Cairo, The (Allen), 125 Queneau, Raymond, 2, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 146, 147 Le chiendent, 88, 126 Les derniers jours, 116, 135 Le dimanche de la vie, 103, 115, 121, 152–56 Les enfants du Limon, 43 Exercices de style, 2 Les fleurs bleues, 129, 131, 136, 156–59 Une histoire modèle, 117, 118 Loin de Rueil, 45, 123–28, 136 Pierrot mon ami, 137, 155 his poetic spaces, 60, 131, 132, 134 Le vol d’Icare, 123 Zazie dans le métro, 63, 74, 129 quotidian, 68, 79, 81, 112, 116, 129, 153, 167 alter-quotidian, 81 Rabelais, François, Pantagruel, 129 Rageot, Gaston, 36, 146, 147 cinématisme, 147 L’homme standard, 36, 146 Rastignac (Balzac), 116 rayon vert, Le (Verne), 166. See also Campbell, Miss Réda, Jacques, 170n2 Reform Club, 32, 33 Revue Anecdotique des Excentricités Contemporaines, La, 11 Richepin, Jean, 37 Riffaterre, Michael, 131 Rimbaud, Arthur, 21, 113 le voyant, 21, 68, 122, 128

194

Rocambole (Ponson de Terrail), 25 Rohel (Queneau’s Les derniers jours), 116, 136, 138 Rollinat, Maurice, 29 roman d’aventures, 70 d’espionnage, 70 noir, 69 policier, 70 Romanticism, 13 Romantic poet, the, 124 Roquentin (Sartre’s La nausée), 129 Ross, Kristin, 169Intro n4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 138 Les confessions, 91 Roussel, Raymond, 97, 170n5 Impressions d’Afrique, 97 Locus solus, 97, 105 Sacquard de Belleroche, Maude, 169n9 Saint-Cricq, Baron de, 26 Salavin, Louis (Duhamel’s Vie et aventures de Salavin), 5, 9, 43, 44, 49–53, 56, 69, 110, 112, 113 Salle de bain, La (Toussaint), 146, 147, 149, 150. See also bathtub man Sand, George, 19 Sangsue, Daniel, 34, 170n12 Santeuil, Jean, 16 Sartre, Jean-Paul, La nausée, 129 Saurin, Bernard-Joseph, L’Anglomane, 13, 162 Scheherazade, 107 Schulman, Peter, 169Ch1n2 Ségur, Comte de, 12 Sentimental Voyage (Sterne), 34 Seymour, Lord, 16, 166 Simony, Gabriel, 130 Slagas, Jean-Pierre, 75 soupirant (the suitor; Etaix’s Le soupirant), 79–86, 111, 164

Index soupirant, Le (Etaix), 79. See also soupirant; Stella; Swedish au-pair specious present, 104, 170n6 stationary voyage, 32–36, 52, 58, 97, 144, 165 Stella (Etaix’s Le soupirant), 80– 83 Sterne, Laurence, Sentimental Voyage, 34 street sweeper (Tati’s Mon oncle), 143, 167 subway. See metro (Parisian) Sunday (of life), 9, 10, 115–16, 156, 166 Sureau, M. (Duhamel’s Confession de minuit), 49–51, 51 surrealists, the, 8 Swedish au-pair (Etaix’s Le soupirant), 81–83, 84, 85, 86 swerve. See clinamen (Lucretian): “swerve of the atoms” Tableaux parisiens (Baudelaire), 103 Tant qu’on a la santé (Etaix), 84– 85, 163 Tati, Jacques, 6, 9, 46, 48, 58, 108, 139–46, 165 Jour de fête, 146 Mon oncle, 58, 139–46, 161 Playtime, 144, 145, 146, 161, 165 Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, 160–61 testament d’un excentrique, Le (Verne), 166. See also Hypperbone, William J. Todorov, Tzvetan, 128 Töpffer, Rodolphe, 170n12 tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, Le (Verne), 4, 32–34, 36, 135, 169n11. See also Fogg, Phileas

Toussaint, Jean-Philippe, 5, 7, 9, 43, 74, 112, 114, 115, 116, 159, 163, 165, 167 Monsieur, 53–69, 110–11, 166 La salle de bain, 146, 147–54 Trenet, Charles, 136, 161 “Mon vieux ciné,” 136 trente glorieuses, les, 8 Trésor de la langue française, 22, 25, 162 trickster, the, 43, 44, 87–88, 95, 96 Truffaut, François, 143 Tuquedenne (Queneau’s Les derniers jours), 135–36 Tyler, Anne, The Accidental Tourist, 165 Ulysses, 34, 35 Uni-Park, 117–22, 124, 126, 134, 136, 160 vacances de Hegel, Les (Magritte), 61 vacances de Monsieur Hulot, Les (Tati), 160–61. See also Hulot, Monsieur Valène (Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi), 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108 Valhalla of celebrities, 125 Verne, Jules, 13, 22, 32–36, 40, 77, 97, 107, 109, 111, 131, 135, 165, 166 De la terre à la lune, 135 L’île mystérieuse, 108, 109 Michel Strogoff, 102, 166 Le rayon vert, 166 Le testament d’un excentrique, 166 Le tour du monde en quatrevingts jours, 4, 32–34, 36, 135, 169n11 Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, 35–36, 135

195

Index Vian, Boris, 71, 115, 133, 142 L’écume des jours, 71, 74, 129, 133, 134, 142 Vie et aventures de Salavin (Duhamel), 49–53. See also Salavin, Louis vie mode d’emploi, La (Perec), 9, 43, 98–110, 163. See also; apartment building; Bartlebooth, Perceval; Hutting, Franz; Valène; Winckler Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Auguste, 62, 141 Axël, 62, 141 Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Verne), 35–36, 135. See also Nemo, Captain Virilio, Paul, 35–36 vol d’Icare, Le (Queneau), 123 Voyage au bout de la nuit (Céline), 52, 115, 141. See also Bardamu Voyage autour de ma chambre (De Maistre), 34–36, 58, 148, 165, 170n12 Watteau, Antonin, 84 fêtes galantes, 84 Gilles, 117, 120

196

Weil, Alain, and François Caradec, 170n15 Weltman, Jenny (Echenoz’s Cherokee), 72–73 white-collar eccentric, 49–53 Wilde, Oscar, 13 Wilson, Colin, The Outsider, 115 Winckler (Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi), 101, 102, 105, 106, 109 Yoyo (Etaix), 171n1 Yvonne (Queneau’s Pierrot mon ami), 121, 122, 123 Zappa, Frank, 161 Zazie (Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro), 63, 68, 115, 131 Zazie dans le métro (Queneau), 63, 74, 129. See also Gabriel; Zazie Zeitgeist, 29 Zelig (Allen’s Zelig), 125 Zelig (Allen), 125 zigzag, 37, 82, 92, 170n12 Zola, Emile, Mes haines, 29 Zutistes, 36