Aseroë by François Dominique

Published 2020 by Bellevue Literary Press, translated by Richard Sieburth & Howard Limoli; published in French as Aséroé in 1992

There’s a certain strain of what would probably be described as modernism (but isn’t really) that persists in France and other European countries with an established state-sponsored literary scene, that often arrives into bookstores with glowing reviews in well-designed indie press editions that I feel I am constantly being told I – as an intellectual-adjacent reader (I’m dumb as shit but I don’t choose to spend time with people on my intellectual level?) – should adore. Rarely do I, though… of course, when I do, they are some of the books I love the most. (No examples provided.)

This type of book does exist in other cultures than French, of course, but I think the most numerous ones I’ve had thrust upon me without response have come from that fabled land across that little sea.

Paaaaaaartly I think this might come from over-enthusiastic publishers and reviewers seeing any literature translated from French as inherently intellectual, fancy and worth notice – especially in America, a country with entrenched Gallophilia bought cheap with a hollow statue 200 years ago.

Yes, one could argue (and I probably would) that the greatest novel of all time is French (make a case for anything other than A la recherche du temps perdu in the comments and please don’t say anything definitively worse (and don’t confuse “greatest” with “favourite” – my “favourite” novels I can roll off in my head and though none of them are shit, I wouldn’t try to argue any of them are “the greatest” unless there were caveats (e.g. the greatest sad novel about a gamekeeper shagging his posh boss written by a dying man; the greatest British postwar novel about grief that’s published in unbound pamphlets in a box; the greatest Doris Lessing sci-fi novel set on an ice planet with an autobiographical epilogue, etc etc etc)))-

One could argue that the greatest novel of all time is French, so there’s that in its favour… But that doesn’t mean that every novel in French is as great as its writer or translator claims, and-

This novel, then, is less a novel and more a collection of writings.

It is about a writer living his writerly life and, tho not wholly naturalistic, it is written in such a way that a very dated sexual encounter with a woman who looks like the woman off of a famous Renaissance painting (and maybe is the woman off of a famous Renaissance painting omg omg omg 😱😳😱) is told with the same deadpan intellectualised, conspicuously alcoholic slur as the discussion of researching the historic names of various species of mushrooms, of going for a walk, of visiting a friend, of doing admin, of just like moseying about…

Some people must love this stuff, but I find it cold.

Writing about shagging and eating isn’t inherently physical, isn’t inherently embodied, isn’t inherently…… human ……..

…. Yeah it just is too cold for me

There are examples of novelistic novels about writing that aren’t cold, that are both myopic and expansive, that are revelatory of the human condition and what it means to live and be alive, and these exist that are both highly intellectual and highly engaging (for me (personally, of course, this is all effing subjective, I know that)), and these can take research and make it interesting, they can take an obsession with an element of the natural world and offer insights of specificity and generality, that can write sex that is fantastical without feeling like a fantasy.

Maybe François Dominique got too horned up imagining what he would write next in the sex scenes that he came and, middleagédly, lost all interest in the book before bothering to tidy it up and make it literature…

Yeah, the edition is nice.

But it just felt like an utterly pointless text: an intellectual exercise, a performance that may well be virtuoistic (like really good in a way snobs say? have I typed the right word???), but it just lacks any feeling, any vigour, any life, any point.

Maybe I’m too stupid to understand why this is good. But for me, it felt vapid, pointless, cold and of essentially no literary merit!!!

Whoops!!!!

Read more about the book and order it direct from the publisher here, if you must.