Am?lie Nothomb: Sulphuric Acid

[Noumenon]

The time came when the suffering of others was not enough for them; they needed the spectacle of it, too.

Sulphuric Acid, by Am?lie Nothomb (trans: Shaun Whiteside)

Without warning, ordinary people are snatched from their world of casual freedom and transported en mass by cattle-tuck to a detention camp, boasting only one significant difference from those used by the Nazis ? everything is filmed. With great care, ordinary people are selected from the applicants to be the guards ? if they can look and act the part, the rest will come naturally. This is Concentration, where reality television has reached a new level ? it doesn?t get more real than unjust death.

Sulphuric Acid comes out of nowhere like a mugger, batters you (emotionally), then is gone as quickly as it arrived. It certainly snatches your attention; the difference is that it leaves something with you too ? exactly what it leaves is another matter. We enter this world alongside Pannonique, a lovely young woman amongst more ordinary victims, all of whom are forced to work hard pointless labour as they are slowly starved and harshly beaten, with the weakest or least entertaining contestants regularly taken away to die. Realising that to react plays into the hands of their captors, she closes herself off ? but her statuesque resilience makes her a national icon and makes the programme an astounding success.

Aside from having an enchanting name, Pannonique is presented as universally appealing: beautiful, generous, intelligent, well meaning, wilfully idealistic and courageous. Far more interesting then is her principle adversary, the superficially simple-minded Zdena. Less than unremarkable in life, she first seeks nothing more than to fulfil a role, any role; passing the tests to become a Kapo is the first achievement of her life. For embracing the twin excuses of ?they must have done something? and ?only following orders?, her cruelty towards the prisoners makes her a national scapegoat, reviled by the audience to salve their continued guilty pleasure. Zdena too becomes obsessed by Pannonique, first dimly seeing and hating her as the embodiment of everything she herself lacks, then growing enchanted; but they are on different sides of a crucial line and though Zdena wields all the power Pannonique refuses to bend.

The chapters flick by, channel-hopping between the elfin heroine, her butch and brutal Kapo admirer, the callously self-interested TV executives and the callously interested audience. I found it powerfully affecting stuff (I?d been reading it right before sleep and having rather unpleasant dreams the last few nights) right up until the finale. But I?m not sure if I enjoyed where it goes in those ultimate pages.

My impression on closing the book was that, after rapidly accelerating through the cruelties towards a cataclysmic finish, at the final moments Nothomb sheaths her claws and pulls that final punch ? but I?m not so sure it?s that simple. Like the fictional audience made complicit simply by watching, the reader is denied that sweetest taste of blood which Pannonique represented. I was certainly moved by the story throughout, it is angry, passionate material; yet I felt I had been cheated out of some bestial catharsis in the end, which may have been the intention, but still left me feeling cheated. A bit. I think.

[Stewart]

My impression on closing the book was that, after rapidly accelerating through the cruelties towards a cataclysmic finish, at the final moments Nothomb sheaths her claws and pulls that final punch ? but I?m not so sure it?s that simple. Like the fictional audience made complicit simply by watching, the reader is denied that sweetest taste of blood which Pannonique represented. I was certainly moved by the story throughout, it is angry, passionate material; yet I felt I had been cheated out of some bestial catharsis in the end, which may have been the intention, but still left me feeling cheated. A bit. I think.

I wasn't too keen on the ending myself. But then I don't know what I would have wanted. I'm a little hazy on the title. In my head, I'm seeing Pannonique as the titular sulphuric acid, as given by the listed components of the Molotov cocktail, and this all makes sense to me. Why, however? To me because the Kapo Zdena couldn't obtain her. Bit weak, so there must be more. Your thoughts?

[Noumenon]

I wasn't too keen on the ending myself. But then I don't know what I would have wanted.

I agree really. As with another potentially dark-ending euro fantasy fable, Jose Carlos Somoza's The Art of Murder, I think the more powerful option is to tear the throat out of the reader's moral expectations - but neither he nor Northomb do so, which makes them and the two books a bit soft in the final analysis.

I'm a little hazy on the title. In my head, I'm seeing Pannonique as the titular sulphuric acid, as given by the listed components of the Molotov cocktail, and this all makes sense to me. Why, however? To me because the Kapo Zdena couldn't obtain her. Bit weak, so there must be more. Your thoughts?

I took it to refer not to Pannonique but to Zdena - just as the bloodthirsty ignorance that she supposedly represents is misleading, the lethal sulphuric acid she claims to be in the bottle isn't that at all*; one is a (half) lie to free everyone of responsibility for permitting this inhuman horror show, the other a genuine lie to get everyone out of the death camp alive.

* and in both cases you have potentially explosive contents actually resulting in a fizzle...

[gonfler]

This book reminds me of a lot of things.

First, of Big Brother and Panopticon. It seems to me a mockery of our Reality TV culture. ETC channel doesn't seem to run out of them, right? Second, of Laura Mulvey's theory of scopophilia or the love of looking. But here it is the pleasure of looking at violence. It seems to say that we have a cathartic need to experience violence through our favorite TV shows. Third, I don't know how much Japan has influenced the writer, but her idea of beauty (reflected in Pannonique) reminds me of something very Japanese. Hmm, how do I describe it? It's been a while since I read Sulphuric Acid, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. (I'll add more next time.)

And yes, like others, I find the ending a bit soft and safe.

[Eric]

I've said on other threads that I really appreciate Nothomb's somewhat fairy-tale style, which nevertheless touches on the darker side of life. I acknowledge that Nothomb may be a little wrapped up in her own Japanese-cum-Belgian life but I admire her, not least for her brevity in this age of 1,000-page novels.

No one has yet given me a concrete reason why her books are thought of as so awful. I think that some younger males are not on the same wavelength as this rather private author with a kind of photogenic image who nevertheless gets on with writing books. This was Daniel's response to my awful, blushing confession that I had read and actually enjoyed, "The Book of Proper Names":

Seriously Eric, you can't be serious with this comment. Please tell me you were drunk!

This no chick lit, this is not literature at all. I felt like I was reading the script of a Latin American telenovela!

The characters are just plain and empty. The story is really weak and it goes worse to the end. The scene where she tries to commit suicide and what happens later is just implausible. Then the terrible resource to plunge herself into the story as a character just for half a page and with no purpose or reason it's just terrible.

Terrible in all senses, maybe the worst book I've read this year.

De gustibus..., and all that. I tried to borrow the Dutch translation of Sulphuric Acid from the public library yesterday, but had already reached my miximum borrowing level. There are plenty of things I can take back today or tomorrow. Such as Kader Abdolah...

[saliotthomas]

No one has yet given me a concrete reason why her books are thought of as so awful.

Shit smells bad,no reason for it,it just does.

I think that some younger males are not on the same wavelength as this rather private author with a kind of photogenic image who nevertheless gets on with writing books. ..

Have you ever thougt of writing Lit critic for Fashion magazin ?
Like say Elle or Biba, not vogue mind you.
You do have have style when it's a book you did read.
Really cute.

[Eric]

I started reading "Sulphuric Acid" this afternoon. I've not yet read twenty pages, but for me the conflating, as Gonfler suggests, of the Big Brother House and Auschwitz was a stroke of genius.

Neither Saliotthomas nor Daniel del Real actually analyse the novel. Whether the end is weak or not, as Stewart suggests, I have still to find out. I did find that the Plectrude novel ended a little suddenly and robbingly. Nonetheless, I find Nothomb much more astute, tuned in to real life, and able to handle words, than quite a few others, including the much praised Kader Abdolah, who tells a good tale, but whose psychological depth is, so far, rather lacking and cardboardy. ("So far" means reading from page 9-73 of the Dutch edition.)

If I read all of Nothomb, the novelty would no doubt pall after several novels. But I would rather read all her books than have to plough through Bola?o, Littell, Verhaeghen, or any of these other verbose masters.

[saliotthomas]

Good for you.

Them try Marc levy.
It's also short and smart.

[Daniel del Real]

Neither Saliotthomas nor Daniel del Real actually analyse the novel.
If I read all of Nothomb, the novelty would no doubt pall after several novels. But I would rather read all her books than have to plough through Bola?o, Littell, Verhaeghen, or any of these other verbose masters.

Eric, at least we take the time to read an author to make an opinion and criticize their works. We have more entitled opinions about Nothomb that you would ever have from Bola?o without have read him. You're just stubborn.

[Eric]

Of course I'm stubborn, Daniel. I choose my own authors to read, not necessarily ones that are being hyped in all the bookshops. I simply don't want to spend so much time reading huge postmodernistish novels that everybody's reading because of the endless hype. Even if they turn out to be good, and I would have to eat humble pie, they're just too long. Life's too short. I'm on the same wavelength as Nothomb, so I'd rather read her.

I don't think that many of you are very adventurous on this forum. Many of the books discussed here are available in first-hand bookshops now. Isn't it more fun to go by the byeways than the highways? Exploring is surely more fun than following the crowd.

[saliotthomas]

....... not necessarily ones that are being hyped in all the bookshops.

EErrr you are talking about Nothomb right?.

I don't think that many of you are very adventurous on this forum. Many of the books discussed here are available in first-hand bookshops now. Isn't it more fun to go by the byeways than the highways? .

A hero in is own mind.

and about Nothomb again
Byways indeed.
Hyghway to hell more like.

[Stiffelio]

Of course I'm stubborn, Daniel. I choose my own authors to read, not necessarily ones that are being hyped in all the bookshops. I simply don't want to spend so much time reading huge postmodernistish novels that everybody's reading because of the endless hype. Even if they turn out to be good, and I would have to eat humble pie, they're just too long. Life's too short. I'm on the same wavelength as Nothomb, so I'd rather read her.

I don't think that many of you are very adventurous on this forum. Many of the books discussed here are available in first-hand bookshops now. Isn't it more fun to go by the byeways than the highways? Exploring is surely more fun than following the crowd.

I understand where you are coming from,Eric; I also hate heavily hyped writers. But in the case of Bola?o, the guy is good, very good at times. And you don't have to tackle Savage Detectives or 2666 if you are put-off by long books. You may want to try Bola?o's shorter fiction, where you can have a sense of his style and then decide if you'd like to read him again or not. I recommend the short novels The Distant Star or By Night in Chile. They are both concise and not post-modern at all. They are excellent. And neither exceeds 150 pages.

[Daniel del Real]

Of course I'm stubborn, Daniel. I choose my own authors to read, not necessarily ones that are being hyped in all the bookshops. I simply don't want to spend so much time reading huge postmodernistish novels that everybody's reading because of the endless hype. Even if they turn out to be good, and I would have to eat humble pie, they're just too long. Life's too short. I'm on the same wavelength as Nothomb, so I'd rather read her.

I don't think that many of you are very adventurous on this forum. Many of the books discussed here are available in first-hand bookshops now. Isn't it more fun to go by the byeways than the highways? Exploring is surely more fun than following the crowd.

Totally agree with you Eric, and this is what makes us learn more and more with readings every day. However if an author suddenly becomes famous this is not a reason for me to not reading him/her. I also prefer shorter books, because there are so many wonderful authors waiting to be explored, and you're right, life's too short.

Stiffelio recommendation is good, he has brief novels and short stories that can tell you how is his writings.

[Mirabell]

Of course I'm stubborn, Daniel. I choose my own authors to read, not necessarily ones that are being hyped in all the bookshops. I simply don't want to spend so much time reading huge postmodernistish novels that everybody's reading because of the endless hype. Even if they turn out to be good, and I would have to eat humble pie, they're just too long. Life's too short. I'm on the same wavelength as Nothomb, so I'd rather read her.

I don't think that many of you are very adventurous on this forum. Many of the books discussed here are available in first-hand bookshops now. Isn't it more fun to go by the byeways than the highways? Exploring is surely more fun than following the crowd.

Nothomb must be among the most heavily hyped writers on the damn planet. "byways" my ass.

[Eric]

Mirabell, your residence in Karl-Marx-Stadt and Bonn may not have awakened you to the fact that although Nothomb is indeed very much hyped (for once, rightly so, in my opinion) all over Europe, Shaun Whiteside's English translations have hardly caused a murmur in the UK from all the usually excitable critics in the Guardian, Independent, Times, and Telegraph.

As far as know (I don't live there), Nothomb hardly exists for the British reader. If I'm right, why not? If you have proof to the contrary, and that Am?lie Nothomb is either drooled over or despised by British critics, please furnish concrete proof.

[saliotthomas]

....................please furnish concrete proof.

Or he will use cattle prods one you genitals.

[Eric]

Saliotthomas, which of Nothomb's books have you read? Do try debate, rather than abuse. (Shall I translate this into Saliotspeak?)

[Mirabell]

Mirabell, your residence in Karl-Marx-Stadt and Bonn may not have awakened you to the fact that although Nothomb is indeed very much hyped (for once, rightly so, in my opinion) all over Europe, Shaun Whiteside's English translations have hardly caused a murmur in the UK from all the usually excitable critics in the Guardian, Independent, Times, and Telegraph.

As far as know (I don't live there), Nothomb hardly exists for the British reader. If I'm right, why not? If you have proof to the contrary, and that Am?lie Nothomb is either drooled over or despised by British critics, please furnish concrete proof.

So when you said "many of you" you referred specifically to British readers only?

I have spent most of my life near Heidelberg, by the way, and a few years in Dresden and just over two in Novosibirsk, just in case you are keeping a list.

Always happy to help.

[Eric]

Mirabell, I am specifically interested why it is that Nothomb has not caught on in the UK, but is extremely popular in several neighbouring countries, not only French-speaking ones.

As for your residence, Mirabell, it of course fascinates me, someone who deals a lot with parts of the former Soviet Union, what the connection is with other people have with that strange, now almost forgotten, realm.

I we get beyond the duelling scars clich?, it is obvious that someone like me finds it strange and interesting that a German literary scholar from near Heidelberg, now living in Bonn, spent time in Dresden and, of all places, Novosibirsk. I don't like lists, but these place names certainly make one full of Krummspr?nge.

[Mirabell]

Mirabell, I am specifically interested why it is that Nothomb has not caught on in the UK, but is extremely popular in several neighbouring countries, not only French-speaking ones.

As for your residence, Mirabell, it of course fascinates me, someone who deals a lot with parts of the former Soviet Union, what the connection is with other people have with that strange, now almost forgotten, realm.

I we get beyond the duelling scars clich?, it is obvious that someone like me finds it strange and interesting that a German literary scholar from near Heidelberg, now living in Bonn, spent time in Dresden and, of all places, Novosibirsk. I don't like lists, but these place names certainly make one full of Krummspr?nge.

The full list is

Novosibirsk > Dresden > 2 places near Heidelberg > Chemnitz > Bonn