Matamoros No. 29 , Alain Farah is a very curious novel . Call it novel, written under the title - as the title page in the back cover. Sometimes, indeed, that the term "novel" is on books, attached to securities without any justification. Here, it is not the case: the designation of the novel is legitimate and weighed, but the novel form is raised here to be brought to its limits, so that the elasticity of its borders being tested. Formally, the device of the novel - plot, characters, dialogue - is present, it is even declined at by some of his Genre (provincial manners, romance, etc..) but it is set to work with forces that call for them far more open and broken - where the instructions and definition have their place - certainly originated in contemporary poetry . It also notes that the authors cited in Matamoros No. 29 are certainly a literary genealogy that irrigated the writing of Alain Farah: Alain Robbe-Grillet (who is even a character), whose novels began their critique of the fundamental elements of romance historical legacy, James Joyce, whose Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are both works of fiction and total limits, as they pushed away the linguistic experiments, and Nathalie Emmanuel Hocquard Quintane, contemporary poets, also working on the novel form, and authors of a reflexive poetry, struggling with the abstract and prosaic, with the speculation.
The coexistence of these two forces brought into tension with one another is essential here in Matamore No. 29 between the strength of the poetic form that wants to break the novel, which opens opportunities to overflow continuities of narrative, and the strength of the novel form that takes all the lights and arrows all means to take them around the arc of a story.
In brief paragraphs and suites of heterogeneous materials that force field extends up to twenty-form nine chapters and a novel about 170 pages:
And Hegel, I've never read
Who says that the meaning of things is determined by their purpose.
Yes.
champion ends his salmon tartar, do not yet know he does not digest, tells me about this phrase from Hegel, and we are all overwhelmed by the turn that takes the grand finale,
Zinedine Zidane gave his opponent a whim.
's my shirt you want?
No, I would rather do your ****** sister.
Egghead in the heart of Bologna: it lost the championship.
We are not at the end of a film, but in the middle of the book,
Somewhere where it condenses,
In the egg, yes.
My God, my God, I wish things go nicely. But I was telling a simple story: he loved a tennis player, his parents were Fertile Crescent.
There were complications.
Dear Diary,
I'm sad today because Joe left Montreal and moved to a province, at least, does not pretend not to be one. This leads to serious discussions on this land of ours, which is nothing else precisely, a part of the country, our province who tells stories: she can not say I , The simplest expressions.
Joe's comment concerns me: we're not saying I But Chu .
Joe talks about the habit of people to say: "Chu chu ben like", I pointed out the weakness of a verse of George Dor "La Manic" ( dirty streets / cross ), I am sad to see Joe go, we're talking about sadness, dark matter, very dense, it produces, this lead that took shape in the intestine.
I remember yes (ie currency) that When Zazou, her cat, died at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Joe felt a sadness so strong that this dark matter has indeed accumulated in the intestine until it explodes to reveal its name:
the-dark .
(pp.84-86)
In this novel, what is the plot? The author sends a strange agent and alter ego Joseph Marriage, in search of her past - that of the author - to see more clearly and to understand something. But between the author's life and marriage, with the places where they were, who they loved, references which they depend and the stories they crossed it a whole mess of thoughts, timing, space and obsessions that will sweep. The writing and the events seem to go in all directions, over (to son, rather) the association of ideas and episodes of life is a web of obsessions and polysemic cross is woven with a fancy and wacky humor delightful, where the recurring number 29 (author's age at the time of writing the book), a tennis champion Polish, Poland, which drift toward the pope on one side and to Bologna the other, Egypt, Dalida, sole, place the chicken and eggs, the way tennis points are counted, potatoes and their possible use as a projectile barrel appointed Patator - which means a second time will be assassinated in Dallas, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Over this energy to bounce back - with blows of onomatopoeia Bop Bop Bop Bop Bop - in those heady chip breaks In this network of coincidences emerge episodes of the young life of the author - because reporting is the mission of Joseph Wedding - of episodes which one feels the emotional power and depth of experience, and with this drawing event truly tested, as and when it progresses in the novel a blackness that appears in the zaniness. We meet more often pain, sadness and illness, missing persons, all of this together into a substance called generic the-dark , another recurring motif, it also dealt with alacrity and enthusiasm, crossover then repelled before they can return by a circuitous route, we would déprenne and we continue to play like hide and seek with him.
Matamoros No. 29 is also a way of self-fiction - and the dark secret and stealth that is registered his heart and stirs powerful brand - bringing the narrative excitement and wacky humor autofiction this approach to its limits, where it confronts what is it, and that it involves all the opposing forces to each other, as knows how strong the literature, literature risky.
A novel by a young author Quebec (b. 1979) he is very happy to see published in France, and which finds its place perfectly in the beautiful and exciting collection of novels intractable Laureli (where the novel is precisely worked and moved by poetry, and vice versa), headed by Laure Limongi , published by Leo Scheer.
(Alain Farah, Matamore n°29 , Léo Scheer, collection Laureli, 2010.)
© Anthony Poiraudeau – 2010
Images : Cover Matamoros No. 29 by Marion Pannier - Portrait of Alain Farah, F. Duchesne
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