Amélie Nothomb

[Liam]

I don't know, why don't you drop him a kindly PM? From what I remember, you guys had a LOT in common, .

[Eric]

I suppose I could drop him a line. Wonder whether he's still in the British Midlands, or has moved to France as he used to mention a lot.

Haven't read any Nothomb lately, as I haven't had the time. But she, like Clarice Lispector, is one of those short-novel authors I'd like to read more of.

[Cleanthess]

At some point in time Amelie Nothomb must have said to herself:

'What's up with that biche who wrote 50 shapes of grapes? I've been writing about domineering older men and their reluctantly submissive female partners for years now, why couldn't that biche come up with her own Shitte?'

So, deciding to cash in on the action without infringing the copyrights of Ms. Meyer, Amelie quickly found a public domain suitable fable: Barbe Bleue. Anatole France, Michel Tournier and many others have already revisited that fable, so no one should complain of plagiarizing.

Now, I'm reading this book slowly because it's so much fun and I don't want it to end, just like Joyce is said to have read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Pynchon blurbed about Even Cowgirls get the Blues.

A couple of gems: the Barbe Bleue character is a Spanish grande living in exile because one of his ancestors accused Generalissimo Francisco Franco of being 'a Socialist/gauchiste'.
This Barbe Bleue dude claims that his ancestry goes all the way back to that most Spanish of all the Spanish people: Jesus Christ himself. And he also claims to be more Spaniard than anybody else, except for Jesus, of course.

[Cleanthess]

Well, I just finished Barbe Bleue by Amelie Nothomb. And while on the surface the book is just light entertainment, it contains many wonderful moments along the way.

For example, when Amelie finally confirms that the main character is an assassin, the female antagonist thinks:

I wanted you not to be a murderer. I am an idiot just like so many others are today. Recently, a worldwide bestseller has claimed that there are vampires that are nice and innocent. These days people are the happiest when they're told that evil does not really exist. You see, the bad guys are not really bad guys, they are attracted to goodness too. What kind of degenerate cretins have we become to swallow and love these pathetic theories? I failed to escape, just like the others.

J’ai voulu que vous ne soyez pas un assassin. Je suis une idiote dans le style d’aujourd’hui. Récemment, un best-seller mondial a prétendu qu’il y avait des vampires gentils et innocents. Les gens ne sont jamais aussi contents, désormais, que quand on leur affirme que le mal n’existe pas. Mais non, les méchants ne sont pas de vrais méchants, le bien les séduit, eux aussi. Quelle espèce de crétins abâtardis sommes-nous devenus pour gober et aimer ces théories à la noix ? J’ai failli marcher, comme les autres

And she does pull a brilliant Borgesian trick at the end:

What I understood from these verses is that each system tends to fill its cup with delights until it runs over, and systems are organized to fulfill this desire. Maybe all versions of the universe converge to a single fulfillement of such a kind that we can not even imagine its rapture.

Ce que j’ai compris de ces versets, c’est que chaque système tend au comble de son plaisir et s’organise en fonction de lui. Peut-être toutes les versions de l’univers convergent-elles vers une jouissance unique dont nous ne pouvons même pas imaginer la violence.

[lionel]

I failed to escape, just like the others [=]
J’ai failli marcher, comme les autres

Um. 'Marcher' is used colloquially here, and means 'to fall for' in the sense of being conned, so an accurate translation would be 'I nearly fell for it'.

[Cleanthess]

Um. 'Marcher' is used colloquially here, and means 'to fall for' in the sense of being conned, so an accurate translation would be 'I nearly fell for it'.

Yes, that was my first reading of the sentence. But what confused me and gave me pause was that the others didn't nearly fall for it. The others fell for it and died as a result. So, I guessed (wrongly) that it could be the other meaning of marcher: to walk. Thank you for your correction. I made a rookie mistake (and let's not even get on the subject of failli + verb <> fail + verb).