Virgile, box 47, 2e basement (Autumn 2020)
Le maître des histoires parlait. Ce soir-là, the girl of box 52 s'était glissée au premier rang, elle était pourtant discrète, certains disaient qu'elle vendait son corps à des hommes. Elle n'avait pas résisté à la voix du maître des histoires. Grave and veloutée, elle ensorcelait. The maître des histoires racontait d'étranges légendes. The description of Paris on the surface, with riches, near the Seine, with its cafés and rutilated toilets, has the possibility of being in my own gardens, its tranquil libraries, its magazines are luxurious and guarded by the vigiles of Venus in the mountains. The racontait qu'il avait connuit intimement ce Paris du Quartier Latin, où l'on flânait au bord de l'eau en regardant les étals des bouquinistes, où l'on discussion of the hours durant aux terraces de café en regardant les passants, near Notre-Dame. Les other rigolaient. Il était fort, ce maître des histoires. Do you have time to walk and look at many books or at the table of cafes and discuss?
The Sorbonne's origins are in black sombre. Il repenssait à Innocent et Scholastique. All three of them are inseparable, reconnaissable between the mille and the costumes of velours, which are worn out, are impeccable in the French language, and the négligés with the jeans are trouser and the baskets are fatiguées. Virgile, toujours tire à quatre épingles, n'avait jamais compris pourquoi les enfants de bourgeois voulaient tant faire pauvre.
C'était dans les années 90. Eux trois, ils se désignaient pour rire « le club des non-alignés ». Ou les “decolonized”. Innocent était guinéen, Scholastique, burkinabé. Ils étaient inscrits en sciences politics. Virgile, the Sénégalais de la bande, étudiait les modern letters. The rêvait de travailler sur la ponctuation chez Proust. Et plus exactement sur le point-virgule. Virgil aims at long phrases, at tiroirs, rivières grasses sinuant dans leurs lits, voluptueuses à l'oreille. Donc Proust. Donc les subordonnées qui s'enchevêtrent. Donc le point-virgule. Innocent l'engueulait. Compter les points-virgules dans la Searching for lost time, a novel from the Blancs discussed in the XIX salone avec d'autres Blancs de problème de Blancs, ça lui semblait grotesque alors qu'il y avait tant de révolutions à mener. Scholastique is rêvait en new Sankara. Son grand frère avait été envoyé à Cuba pour faire ses études et devenir un révolutionnaire. When Sankara is available to assassins, the world is available to all. Scholastique était obsédé by Sankara and by Frantz Fanon. Travaille sur Frantz Fanon, mon frère, répétait-il. Mais Virgile this tête de mule ne voulait rien entendre. Frantz Fanon, all Frantz Fanon. Toujours Black skin, white masks. Toujours les damnés de la terre. Toujours la politique.
Virgil avait finalement renoncé à Proust. The professeur proustien star de la fac affichait complet, il avait dû se discountre sur son directeur de maîtrise actuel, a quinquagénaire las et amer, qui se plaignait sans cesse du manque de considération dont il souffrait à l'université: lui, spécialiste de littérature comparée, était écrasé par la mafia des Proustiens et des Céliniens qui faisaient la loi en lettres modernes à Paris IV. Il avait tenté de conquérir la terra incognita des littératures comparées et créé a new UFR de « littérature francophone ». The professor is available without being a student for his troupes. The espérait qu'il y gagnerait quelques colloques sous des latitudes exotics. Rate. It doesn't have a budget for French language.
Littérature francophone comparee et littérature des îles. C'était l'intitulé de l'UFR. Virgile avait suggested de consacrer son mémoire de maîtrise à une étude de la poésie de Senghor et de Baudelaire. The professor has access to the moue, which is a concurrent de Paris III, in this case, he will benefit from a commemoration cycle for the purpose of the research budgets. The professor also prefers a Haitian, non-important lequel, Haiti is très à la mode. Virgil s'était discountu sur Aimé Césaire. Innocent and Scholastique râlèrent. Fanon, prends Fanon! Césaire, pour eux, c'était presque un collabo. Afterwards, the owner of Fort-de-France is available. Et la revolte? Et l'esclavage? Et les reparations? Et ça repartait pour des hours. Parfois, Virgile en avait assez de parler de la traite: seuls Proust et les salons de la duchesse de Guermantes the faisaient vibrer.
Doan Bui, La Tour, ou un chien à Chinatown: novel, (Paris: Grasset).
Virgile, Box 47, 2nd basement level (Autumn 2020).
The Master of Stories spoke. That evening, the girl from Box 52 had slipped into the front row, but she was discreet; some said she sold her body to men. She couldn't resist the Master of Stories' voice. Deep and velvety, that voice was enchanting. The Master of Stories told strange legends. He described the Paris of the surface, the Paris of the rich, near the Seine, with its cafés and gleaming toilets so clean you could see your reflection, its quiet bookstores, its shops so luxurious they were guarded by security guards from countries like their own. He said he knew this Paris of the Latin Quarter intimately, where people strolled along the waterfront and looked at the booksellers' stalls, where they talked for hours on café terraces and watched the passersby near Notre Dame. The others laughed. He was powerful, this Master of Stories. Who had time to go for a walk and look at old books, or to drink coffee and discuss things?
He remembered the Sorbonne and its dark wood-paneled corridors. He thought of Innocent and Scholastica. The three of them were inseparable, unmistakable in their old-fashioned but immaculate velvet suits, while the French wandered about sloppily in their ripped jeans and tired sneakers. Virgile, always impeccably dressed, had never understood why the children of the bourgeoisie wanted to be poor so badly.
It was the 90s. The three of them jokingly called themselves the "Club of the Non-Aligned." Or the "Decolonized." Innocent was from Guinea, Scholastique from Burkina Faso. They were enrolled in political science. Virgile, the Senegalese member of the group, was studying modern literature. He dreamed of writing about punctuation in Proust. More specifically, about the semicolon. Virgile loved long, compartmentalized sentences, fat rivers meandering through their beds, pleasing the ear. So, Proust. So, nested clauses. So, the semicolon. Innocent yelled at him. Counting semicolons in the search for lost timeA novel in which white people discussed white problems with other white people in 19th-century salons seemed grotesque to him, when there were so many revolutions to be waged. Scholastika dreamed of a new Sankara. Her older brother had been sent to Cuba to study and become a revolutionary. When Sankara was assassinated, everyone wept. Scholastika was obsessed with Sankara and Frantz Fanon. "Work on Frantz Fanon, my brother," he kept saying. But Virgile, that stubborn man, wouldn't listen. "Frantz Fanon, always Frantz Fanon. Still." Black skin, white masksAlways the wretched of the earth. Always politics.
Virgile had finally given up on Proust. The university's star professor was fully booked, and he had to resort to his current supervising professor, a tired and embittered man in his fifties who constantly complained about the lack of appreciation at the university. He, a specialist in comparative literature, was being crushed by the mafia of Proustians and Célinians who held sway in modern literature at Paris IV. He had tried to conquer the terra incognita of comparative literature and had founded a new educational and research unit for "Francophone literature." The professor needed students to bolster his ranks. He hoped this would win him some colloquia in exotic latitudes. It didn't. There was no budget for Francophonie.
Comparative Francophone Literature and Literature of the Islands. That was the title of the educational and research unit. Virgile suggested dedicating his master's thesis to an examination of the poems of Senghor and Baudelaire. The professor wrinkled his nose and pointed to a rival from Paris III, an arch-enemy who wanted to exploit a commemorative event to grab all the research budgets. The professor would have preferred a Haitian, any Haitian, since Haiti was very fashionable. Virgile had chosen Aimé Césaire. Innocent and Scholastica grumbled. Fanon, take Fanon! To them, Césaire was practically a collaborator. After all, he had been mayor of Fort-de-France. What about the revolt? What about slavery? What about the reparations? And so it went on for hours. Sometimes Virgile had had enough of the slave trade: only Proust and the salons of the Duchess of Guermantes fascinated him. 1
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "Les Olympiades. Here, around the concrete slab of this high-rise complex in Paris's Chinatown, the Truong family has settled—boat people who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Victor Truong appreciates the imperfect subjunctive and the poems of Vic-to-Lou-Go (Victor Hugo). Alice, his wife, is a Justin Bieber fan but hates Mitterrand, that damned 'communist' who was elected president the year their daughter Anne-Maï was born. After a childhood in which she dreamed of being blonde like a true Frenchwoman, Anne-Maï found herself single at 40, much to her parents' despair."
This Tower of Babel, where a thousand languages whisper to one another, is a wonderland of colorful characters. There's Ileana, the Romanian pianist now living in exile as a nanny; Virgile, the undocumented Senegalese, a Proust reader and virtuoso of fabricated stories, who occupies the parking lot and earns his living as a con man. We also meet Clément, the man from the Sarthe region, obsessed with the Great Replacement and convinced he's the reincarnation of Michel Houellebecq's dog, his idol. All these fates intersect in a picaresque fresco marked by love, grief, separation, and exile.
Perecs La Vie mode d'emploi Published in 1978, when Les Olympiades was just being written, how would Perec describe contemporary Paris? Doan Bui's debut novel attempts to answer this question by also creating a meticulous topography of a place and its inhabitants. The author recounts contemporary France, from the 98 FIFA World Cup to the 2015 attacks, in a choral novel of grim humor. (Translation from the publisher's announcement.)>>>
