The Man Who Stopped Writing
In The Map and the Territory, which finally earned him the Goncourt prize last year, Houellebecq depicted his own murder. Nabe immediately outed himself as the culprit. What he really meant, of course, is that Houellebecq had committed literary suicide by selling out and writing a Goncourt novel. Losing the Renaudot prize, on the other hand, reaffirmed Nabe’s outsider status. Like his master, C éline, he remains untainted by recognition, alone against the world; beyond the pale.
With an eye on posterity, Marc-Edouard Nabe is biding his time.
Andrew Gallix reviews Marc-Edouard Nabe‘s L’Homme qui arrêta d’ écrire.
The Missing Links
Nabokov and the art of the self-interview. * Gabriel Josipovici on how to make a square move. * Write place, write time. * Steve Himmer at the Marketplace of Ideas (audio). * Owen Hatherley on Iain Sinclair‘s Ghost Milk. * 5 films by Guy Debord. * Albert Cossery and the political subversion of the transcendent […]
Canto XXXIII
When they took away our fucking clothes, we went
On the blanket; when they emptied our chamber pots
All over our fucking beds, only then did we
Start our dirty protest. The stench was appalling,
The cells were literally covered in shite,
And everywhere you looked there were flies and maggots.
It was like something out of Dante, you know,
Only this was really happening, in 1979.
Through the thick pane of frosted glass
I had gazed on many passing moons, when I
Woke to the banging of truncheons on perspex.
Before you could say ‘Up the IRA!’
By Philip Terry.