Can Artists Create Art By Doing Nothing?

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This appeared in the Art and Design section of the Guardian website on 1 June 2009:

Can Artists Create Art by Doing Nothing?

Félicien Marboeuf, a fictitious author who never wrote a book, is the inspiration for a new exhibition. Andrew Gallix celebrates artists who have turned doing very little into an art form

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More than 20 artists will pay homage to Félicien Marboeuf in an eclectic exhibition opening in Paris next week. Although he’s hardly a household name, Marboeuf (1852-1924) inspired both Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust. Having been the model for Frédéric Moreau (Sentimental Education), he resolved to become an author lest he should remain a character all his life. But he went on to write virtually nothing: his correspondence with Proust is all that was ever published — and posthumously at that. Marboeuf, you see, had such a lofty conception of literature that any novels he may have perpetrated would have been pale reflections of an unattainable ideal. In the event, every single page he failed to write achieved perfection, and he became known as the “greatest writer never to have written”. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, wrote John Keats.

Jean-Yves Jouannais, the curator of this exhibition, had already placed Marboeuf at the very heart of Artistes sans Oeuvres (Artists without Works), his cult book that first appeared in 1997 and has just been reprinted in an expanded edition. The artists he brings together all reject the productivist approach to art, and do not feel compelled to churn out works simply to reaffirm their status as creators. They prefer life to the dead hand of museums and libraries, and are generally more concerned with being (or not being) than doing. Life is their art as much as art is their life — perhaps even more so.

Jouannais believes that the attempt at an art-life merger, which so preoccupied the avant garde of the 20th century, originated with Walter Pater‘s contention that experience, not “the fruit of experience”, was an end in itself. Oscar Wilde’s nephew, the fabled pugilist poet Arthur Cravan — who kick-started the dada revolution with Francis Picabia before disappearing off the coast of Mexico — embodied (along with Jacques Vaché or Neal Cassady) this mutation. Turning one’s existence into poetry was now where it was at.

“I like living, breathing better than working,” Marcel Duchamp famously declared. “My art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral; it’s a sort of constant euphoria.” The time frame of the artwork shifted accordingly, from posterity — Paul Éluard‘s “difficult desire to endure” — to the here and now. Jouannais celebrates the skivers of the artistic world, those who can’t be arsed. “If I did anything less it would cease to be art,” Albert M Fine admitted cheekily on one occasion. Duchamp also prided himself on doing as little as possible: should a work of art start taking shape he would let it mature — sometimes for several decades — like a fine wine.

Phantom works abound in Jouannais’s book, from Harald Szeemann‘s purely imaginary Museum of Obsessions to the recreation of fictitious exhibitions by Alain Bublex through Stendhal‘s numerous aborted novels or the Brautigan Library‘s collection of rejected manuscripts. There is of course the case of Roland Barthes, whose career as a theorist was partly a means of not writing the novel he dreamed of (Vita Nova). One of my favourite examples is Société Perpendiculaire, co-created by Jouannais with Nicolas Bourriaud and others in the early 80s. This “hyperrealistic bureaucratic structure”, dedicated to the “poetry of virtual events”, had no other function but to produce reams of administrative texts pertaining to projects that would never see the light of day.

The Société Perpendiculaire would have provided a perfect working environment for Flaubert’s cretinous copyists Bouvard and Pécuchet, whose influence looms large in these pages. Just as Jorge Luis Borges‘s Pierre Menard rewrites Don Quixote verbatim, Gérard Collin-Thiébaut set about copying Sentimental Education in its entirety in 1985. Sherrie Levine also reduced artistic production to reproduction by signing famous paintings or photographs by other artists. Erasure is an even more common strategy. Man Ray set the tone with Lautgedicht (1924), his painting of a poem with all the words blanked out, which anticipated Emilio Isgrò’s Cancellature of the 1960s. The most famous examples here are Robert Rauschenberg‘s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) and Yves Klein‘s infamous empty exhibition (1958).

Jouannais’s artists without works are essentially of a sunny disposition, totally at odds with the impotent rage of the “failure fundamentalists”, as he calls them.

Displaying a wealth of material — paintings, sketches, collages, photographs and installations — the exhibition focuses on Marboeuf the man rather than the author. Marboeuf as a beautiful child; in middle age, bald as a coot, with a creepy-looking smile on his face; Marboeuf looking suspiciously Proustian on his death bed; Marboeuf’s grave … This biographical angle is hardly surprising given the author’s limited output, but rather more so when you consider that he is purely a figment of Jouannais’s imagination.

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Can artists create art by doing sod all? That’s the question raised in my latest piece for the Guardian‘s website:

“…Jouannais believes that the attempt at an art-life merger, which so preoccupied the avant garde of the 20th century, originated with Walter Pater‘s contention that experience, not “the fruit of experience”, was an end in itself. Oscar Wilde’s nephew, the fabled pugilist poet Arthur Cravan, who kick-started the dada revolution with Francis Picabia before disappearing off the coast of Mexico – embodied (along with Jacques Vaché or Neal Cassady) this mutation. Turning one’s existence into poetry was now where it was at. ‘I like living, breathing better than working,’ Marcel Duchamp famously declared. ‘My art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral; it’s a sort of constant euphoria.'”

More here.

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The summer issue of Garageland — which includes a piece I wrote about Parisian phantom band L.U.V. — is launched today at Transition Gallery in London. The general theme is Nostalgia, the cover is by Alex Michon (who famously designed many of The Clash’s outfits) and you can buy a copy here.

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Susana Medina (pictured below) kindly asked me to read a story on Monday at The House of Fairy Tales which is part of Tate Modern’s Long Weekend. The House of Fairy Tales is a festival for children of all ages curated by Deborah Curtis and Gavin Turk. There will be readings courtesy of Tlon Books, Isabel Del Rio, Salena Godden, Melissa Mann, Susana Medina, Jason Shelley, Clare Stanhope, Jan Woolf and others. As I won’t be able to make it, my story — a bowdlerised version of “Enough Ribena to Incarnadine the Multitudinous Seas” — will be read by somebody else.

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Here’s the child-friendly version of my story:

Enough Ribena to Incarnadine the Multitudionous Seas

Once upon a time my sister baked a batallion of gingerbread men who seemed destined for doughy, doughty deeds so gallant were they. I simply couldn’t bring myself to eat them; had neither the heart nor the stomach to do so. A moratorium was declared by sisterly decree and the spice boys remained in battle formation on the kitchen table pending mum’s final verdict. You could smell the sensuous, exotic aroma from my bedroom, even behind closed door.

That night, I had this vivid dream in which the naughty gingerbread men rose from the baking tray Galatea-fashion. Still under the influence of the self-raising flour, they legged it upstairs to bother the Play-Doh model of the Girl Next Door I had lovingly sculpted and kept secretly beside my comics and sensible shoes.

Breakfast, the morning after, was a truly religious experience. I binged ravenously on the horrid homunculi, tearing away at their limbs, biting off their heads with sheer abandon, and washing them down with enough glasses of Ribena to incarnadine the multitudinous seas.

Heroin Love Songs Interview

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I am interviewed by Jack Henry in Heroin Love Songs 5 Spring 2009: 87-90:

JH: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

AG: My pleasure!

JH: My primary interest is in New Media and what some refer to as New Media Literature. In addition there seems to be a resurgence in writing and poetry. Perhaps this is due to so many online outlets. Also, movements such as the Brutalists and Offbeat Generation owe their existence to the Internet and various online outlets, including 3:AM. I think some of these movements and/or online journals have sprung from some post-punk anarchy reaction against mainstream publishing. I’ve read as much and agree with it.

Some of these questions may seem obvious, but I am sure others are curious, as am I, to your unique perspective.

What is the importance of a movement or school of work? Is it an idea or concept developed from a historical perspective or can it be witnessed in the present, as it emerges?

AG: We never sat down one day and said ‘Let’s launch a new literary movement!’. We sat down one day and realised that we were part of a movement. It was already there and all it needed was a name to gain visibility. It was the Emperor’s New Clothes in reverse. So, to answer your question, we have been observing the development of the Offbeat phenomenon since 2005 when we became conscious of it.

JH: What can a writer gain, if anything, from the inclusion within a movement?

AG: First of all, I must make it quite clear that the Offbeats are a movement and not a school of writing. Offbeat writers are individuals — they all have different styles and influences even though they all share certain values and a certain rebellious spirit. Writing is a solitary activity, so it feels good to also have that collective experience.

JH: What are the unifying characteristics of the Brutalists or Offbeats? What is their historical heritage?

AG: The Brutalists are not a movement; they’re a trio of writers (Adelle Stripe, Ben Myers and Tony O’Neill) who sometimes come together to write under that banner. Instead of forming a band, they write poetry. The Brutalists are very much part of the Offbeat scene.

What unites all the Offbeats is a rejection of a publishing industry increasingly dominated by marketing, rather than literary, concerns. The name ‘Offbeat’ is an obvious nod to the Beats, but punk is perhaps the biggest historical reference. At least for some of us.

JH: In a few interviews I have read, the Offbeat Generation does not exist within a single style or genre, I am curious what the literary influences have been to this group? And, more specifically, any influences from areas outside of writing?

AG: That’s quite right, and since there is no house style, influences are pretty diverse. There’s the Bukowski-John Fante Real McCoy school of writing embodied by Tony O’Neill. There’s the Maurice Blanchot-Francis Ponge-William Burroughs axis led by Tom McCarthy. There’s the Barthelmesque comic postmodernism of HP Tinker. There’s the more quirky Brautigan-tinged world of Chris Killen or Tao Lin. And then there’s all the others with their personal influences.

Music is indeed very important to many Offbeats. Tony O’Neill played in bands like Kenickie or the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Ben Myers is also a music journalist and he even used to have his own indie label. Will Ashon has a hip hop label. As far as I’m concerned, Howard Devoto’s early lyrics are right up there with the works of the greatest writers.

JH: As the Beats of the 50s/60s gained popularity, pop culture turned them into a caricature of their origins. Is there a fear that current movements could be mainstreamed and, potentially, lose their power as a dissenting voice?

AG: Definitely. In a way, it’s already happened. There are lots of young writers who think they’re being Offbeat by spouting clichés about sex and drugs.

JH: What is the goal of a movement? Is it collective? Or individualistic?

AG: Total surrender of mainstream publishing.

It’s both individual and collective.

JH: It is my opinion that America’s “disposable mentality” has migrated to literature and our literary tradition. Publishers rely on a bestseller to support their efforts with other books. In my opinion, a majority of these best sellers are total shit. Writers that repeatedly appear on bestsellers lists utilize formula and structure that will satisfy the widest possible audience, with limited concern for craft, exploration and daring. Subsequently, the wider audience is “dumbed down.” Additionally, marketing departments focus a majority of their budgets on bestsellers thereby limiting marketing funds for up and coming writers. In short, big publishers continue to promote disposable writing in order to earn the quick buck.

Does literature still exist, either via New Media or traditional outlets? What is the future of literature?

AG: I totally agree with your analysis of the state of things. It’s the same in Britain — perhaps even worse because of the presence of a huge middlebrow market. In the States, it’s either total shit or pure genius. But, yes, literature still exists and will continue to exist. I can’t predict what its future will be, but I think the western notion of The Writer may be on the way out. I think there will be fewer career writers in the future: writers who write simply because that’s what writers do. People will write a novel when they really feel the need to do so, but will also have other creative outlets.

JH: Returning to New Media, how important are New Media platforms (blogs, social networks, YouTube, etc.) to writers? Is there such a thing as New Media Literature?

AG: Well, I think you need to make a distinction between e-literature which uses the internet as a new medium and most online creative writing which simply uses the web as a medium. As I wrote here, I get the impression that the future of e-literature is to merge into digital art. That view seems to be highly controversial in e-lit circles.

As for, webzines, blogs etc. I think their role has been essential. The Offbeat movement is the first literary movement of the digital age. Without the internet, it probably wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

JH: 3:AM is a widely admired online journal and has been around awhile now. I have always been impressed with the quality of writing that comes out of it. With the Internet providing a global platform and online outlets (websites, blogzines, etc.) is there a dilution of quality writing? Or, more specifically, is there too much content? Or, perhaps, is it just too easy to get published online?

AG: Thanks for the kind words.

Interesting questions. A band that releases an album on its own label has credibility. Writers who do that are accused of vanity publishing. It’s true that there are thousands of rubbish writers out there who publish themselves on the internet, but there are also stacks of rubbish writers whose works are published by big concerns — just visit any bookshop to see what I’m talking about. Bad writers will give up eventually; the good ones will float to the surface.

JH: How important is marketing to a New Media outlet or, as a whole, “underground” writers and publishers? With my journal I market wholly to give exposure to the writers I admire and feel have talent. The only real cost is time. With the press, I have a different attitude. I want to promote the writer, but I want to have some profit, no matter how minimal, in order to publish more writers. In the age of New Media Literature and the expectation of everything on the Internet should be free or relatively inexpensive, how does a press survive?

AG: I’ve been editing 3:AM Magazine since 2000; we get thousands of unique visitors a day and yet I’ve never made any money out of it. There’s very little money in serious fiction.

JH: Is it more important to publish than publish and profit?

AG: Definitely.

JH: Okay, enough of my bullshit, let’s focus on 3:AM.

JH: Would 3:AM exist without the Internet?

AG: An emphatic no. I’d been toying with the idea of a post-punk literary journal for years, but the logistics just made it virtually impossible.

JH: In researching this project I have read through a number of issues from 3:AM. In terms of quality and content, it is definitely one of the better online magazines available. You have had a long tenure on the Internet, longer than most. What do you attribute that to?

AG: To the fact that we’re genuinely interested in writing and that we don’t expect to make any money out of it.

JH: What are the future goals of 3:AM?

AG: To continue to spread the word.

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Inés Martin Rodrigo mentions me in “Alunizaje perfecto de la armada offbeat” which appeared in Spanish daily ABC on 26 March 2009:

“Alunizaje perfecto de la armada offbeat”
La generación literaria más transgresora de los últimos años acaba de aterrizar en España. Heidi James, Tony O’Neill y Gerry Feehily ejercen ya de abanderados con sus primeras novelas en castellano.

La generación offbeat no tiene reglas y tampoco desea tenerlas. Su desembarco en la industria editorial española, observado con curioso escepticismo (por no decir morbo inquisitivo) desde las alturas literarias, desencadenó una extraña metamorfosis en la que ellos, potenciales alienígenas de la narrativa, se convirtieron en maestros del lenguaje y dejaron su nave espacial aparcada en el bar de la esquina, donde todos terminamos parando.

Heidi James, una joven escritora británica con pinta menuda y una extraordinaria lucidez en la oratoria, ha tenido el excelso honor de abanderar en España el aterrizaje (no forzoso) de una generación que, curiosamente, reniega del sistema al que tanto ha enseñado durante estos escasos días de lecturas y conversación.

Ha recalado en Madrid para presentar su primera novela en castellano, «Carbono» (Ed. El Tercer Nombre), el relato de un personaje que, en palabras de la propia Heidi, «está roto y por eso tiene una sexualidad subversiva, es como el síntoma de una enfermedad». La autora offbeat confiesa que su objetivo era «crear un personaje que se disolviera, que estuviera rompiéndose en pedazos y completamente inmoral». Objetivo alcanzado, pues la lectura de «Carbono» resulta tan explícitamente dolorosa como vehemente para comprender la posición de la mujer en la actual sociedad.

Ausencia de voces femeninas

Una mujer que, para nostalgia (y sucinto cabreo) de Heidi James (feminista confesa y practicante), prácticamente no existe en la generación offbeat salvo en el caso de la propia Heidi y de Adelle Stripe (fundadora del grupo poético «The Brutalists» junto a Ben Myers y Tony O’Neill). No obstante, tras enamorarse de las palabras al escuchar con tres añitos una conversación en la «habitación (nunca) propia» de su abuela y su madre, Heidi decidió dedicarse en cuerpo y sobre todo alma a la escritura.

«Crecí leyendo a Lynn Tillman, Clarice Lispector, Marie Darrieusecq, Angela Carter o Virginia Woolf. Siempre intento comunicar el realismo subjetivo de mis personajes, desestabilizar las modalidades que existen a nivel social, explorar diferentes modos de ser». Exploración que siempre lleva a cabo, con metódica y obsesiva obediencia, entre las nueve y media de la mañana y las cuatro de la tarde, aunque estos días haya visto agradablemente interrumpida su actividad para darnos a conocer «Carbono».
En este paseo literario por nuestro país Heidi James ha ido de la mano de Gerry Feehily, un reciente descubrimiento offbeat de Andrew Gallix (editor de «3:AM Magazine») en Francia cuya primera novela en castellano, «Fiebre», pronto veremos publicada. Sabemos a lo que han venido: «Queremos derribar las barreras que hoy en día existen en el mundo literario y examinar la vida en todas sus formas, lo que significa ser humano. La literatura de masas es decadente e inmmoral, también la española». Y, a juzgar por las señales, lo van a conseguir.

Las señales adecuadas

Una señales que han llegado a oídos de gente tan poco relacionada con la cultura de masas como Matt Elliott (está estos días en nuestro país presentando su último trabajo, «Howling Songs»), Nacho Vegas (recien llegado del «South by South West Festival» tejano), Rafa Cortés (en un break neoyorquino) o el mismísimo José Luis Cuerda. Ellos no fueron los únicos en seguir con atención los primeros pasos de la generación offbeat en España, pues una nutrida legión de no alienados fanáticos de la literatura de calidad escucharon con atención sus palabras, performances y lecturas en Madrid. Todo ello amenizado con música de raíz offbetiana como Primal Scream, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, los Ramones, My Bloody Valentine o The Velvet Underground.

Frescos, demoledores, ofensivos, renovadores, ambiciosos, desaprensivos, sin prejuicios, talentosos, genuinos y enganchados a la más adictiva de las drogas: la literatura. Así es la generación offbeat, privilegiados yonquis de la literatura sin pelos en la lengua. En España hemos sido testigos del aterrizaje de la primera hornada, pero el terremoto offbeat está por llegar.

¿Qué piensan de España el resto de offbeat?

Lee Rourke: «Los offbeats son una masa reaccionaria de disidentes literarios que simplemente quieren escuchar una nueva voz; nos hemos desarrollado, poco a poco, con nuestras propias condiciones y nunca nos hemos plegado a las demandas de los grandes conglomerados (no nos importa lo que piensen acerca de quiénes somos o lo que hacemos). Esto es un nuevo paso hacia adelante, un nuevo rumbo gracias al cual en España podréis descubrir a algunos de los escritores más apasionantes de nuestra generación».

Tao Lin: «Me encanta formar parte de la generación offbeat y estoy muy orgulloso y nervioso ante la posibilidad de que los offbeat empecemos a publicar en España».

Adelle Stripe: «Es maravilloso saber que los offbeat finalmente van a publicar en España. Siempre he pensado que existe un público objetivo para nuestra literatura en otros países y para alguien como Heidi James, una escritora a la que respeto muchísimo, es una oportunidad única a nivel internacional. Espero también que esto anime a otros offbeat españoles a escribirnos en respuesta. Sería un placer que nuestra literatura se leyese, digiriese y regresase a nosotros con pasión y firmeza».

The Socialite Manifesto

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I wrote a short presentation of Christiana Spens‘s The Socialite Manifesto for the Spring 2009 issue of Flux magazine (issue 68, p. 92):

From her publicity shots, Christiana Spens stares out at you with the faraway look of innocence lost. This 21-year-old Cambridge student is the precocious golden girl of our gilded age. Christiana launched her writing career at fifteen when she began filing copy for various arts and music magazines. “The deadlines gave me discipline, the music gave me dialogue and the art gave me ideals — so I was all set to start.” Last year, she published her debut novel which established her reputation as the poet laureate of elegantly-wasted Sloanedom. Reminiscent of Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh and Bret Easton Ellis, The Wrecking Ball zeroes in on the existential nightmare at the heart of the consumer dream — a theme that is also central to her latest project.

The Socialite Manifesto — which we showcase in the following pages — is clearly more graphic than novel. “My parents both write art books, so I grew up surrounded by picture books of every kind,” Christiana explains. “In a way, visual books are more natural to me than straightforward novels.” She was also inspired by a recent exhibition of collaborations between French writers and artists as well as a felicitous bout of writer’s block. “I started painting properly again when I had writer’s block in the spring. Painting seemed a more direct and sensual way to express myself, and gave me an elation writing didn’t. I swing from one to the other though. When one brings me down, the other brings me up.”

The Socialite Manifesto is meant to be the diary of one Ivana Denisovich whose name is an obvious nod to Solzhenitsyn. “I was interested in how there are all these Russian oligarchs around who have so much money it’s vulgar — and that that came out of communism. Where Ivan Denisovich was trapped by the Soviet regime, Ivana is trapped in the gilded frame of capitalism.” The writing is kept to a minimum to ensure that Ivana remains largely a blank canvas. “I was thinking of all the visual icons, like models and actresses, who never have anything to say but are stars because everyone projects their fantasies on them. I wanted my main character to be everyone’s personal fantasy, so to do that I couldn’t make her speak too much. If she started talking you might not want her anymore.” Christiana Spens subverts the traditional division between author and reader by inviting us to colour in the artwork and fill in some of the diary entries thus transforming the book into a truly collaborative experience. As for the eponymous Socialite Manifesto, there is not one — “just blank pages and a feeling that something isn’t quite right.”

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Why a 17th-Century Novel is a Hot Political Issue in France

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This appeared in Guardian Books on 31 March 2009:

Why a 17th-Century Novel is a Hot Poltical Issue in France

Nicolas Sarkozy’s well-publicised scorn has turned The Princess of Cleves into a focus for opponents of the French president

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During a meeting back in February 2006, Nicolas Sarkozy took the opportunity to mock the “sadist or idiot” who had seen fit to include questions about a 17th-century novel in an exam for public sector workers. “When was the last time you asked a counter clerk what she thought of The Princess of Cleves?” he enquired, playing to the gallery. Cue laughter from the audience. The future president’s point was a moot one: just because an acquaintance with the classics isn’t strictly necessary to perform administrative tasks — menial or otherwise — it doesn’t mean it should be discouraged. What was doubtless intended as a populist plea for more common sense came across­ as haughty philistinism. Should time and money be wasted teaching counter clerks to read above their station? Do these people want to end up crushed by a bookcase à la Leonard Bast? Let them eat Da Vinci Code!

But the presidential aspersions cast on Madame de La Fayette‘s masterpiece have kept coming. Last year, for instance, Sarkozy declared that voluntary work should be taken into account when civil servants are considered for promotion. It’s just as important as knowing The Princess of Cleves off by heart, the clearly traumatised head of state argued. He went on to confess, in a joking tone, that he had “suffered” at the pages of that confounded novel as a schoolboy, which prompted Régis Jauffret — a famous author — to surmise that his mother must have soundly spanked him for getting a poor mark on the subject. Le Figaro, meanwhile, suggested that the president’s aversion may be due to the fact that his personal secretary (allegedly) failed an exam because she was incapable of saying who had written the book — ironic, given that its authorship remains shrouded in mystery (it’s now generally thought to be a collective work orchestrated by Mme de La Fayette).

So what’s the story with this book, so famous in France, so little-known elsewhere? The Princess of Cleves is undoubtedly a literary landmark. It is widely regarded as one of the first historical and psychological novels; indeed, it’s one of the first novels full stop. Its intellectual take on matters of the heart made it a template for much French literature and cinema. Yet, in spite of its brilliance, it is also a resolutely old-fashioned tale of unconsummated passion in which duty triumphs over love — one that most French people are force-fed at school and are happy never to read again. Until now, that is.

Sarkozy’s personal vendetta — cloaked in anti-elitist demagoguery — has managed to turn The Princess of Cleves into an unlikely symbol of political resistance. In the eyes of many, it now exemplifies the sheer effusion of a culture that cannot be squared with this government’s vulgar mercantile ethos. Christophe Honoré was so incensed by the president’s declarations that he adapted the supposedly irrelevant novel into a teen movie set in a Parisian lycée (La Belle Personne). University lecturers and students, who have been on strike against governmental reforms for the past two months, have organised several marathon readings up and down the country. The most prominent one so far was staged outside the Panthéon in Paris: Louis Garrel, who played a leading part in Honoré’s film, was among the numerous people who took turns to read five-minute extracts until the last sentence was uttered more than six hours later. The book has been claimed by sundry protesters and declaimed through megaphones during recent demonstrations where banners bearing messages of support —­ “Free the Princess of Cleves” —­ also flourished. A pastiche of the novel, drawing parallels between Henry II‘s lavish court life and Sarkozy’s bling-bling presidential style, is doing the rounds in academic circles. Heavyweight politicians (Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou) and intellectuals (Régis Debray, Elisabeth Badinter) have publicly sided with Mme de La Fayette. On television, Jauffret invited every French citizen to send a copy of the book to the Élysee Palace in protest at Sarkozy’s “glorification of ignorance”. The novel even sold out at the recent Paris book fair and more than 2,000 “I’m reading The Princess of Cleves” badges were snapped up in record time (for those who can’t lay their hands on one of them, you can join the inevitable Facebook group). When Télérama, France’s top cultural weekly, asked 100 writers to name their favourite books, The Princess of Cleves came third behind Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Joyce’s Ulysses. Such a result would have been highly unlikely pre-Sarkozy.

France may no longer be the centre of world culture, but culture remains at the centre of what it means to be French. Ask any counter clerk.

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My article on The Princess of Cleves as a symbol of resistance to Sarkozy was published on The Guardian‘s website today. Here’s a short extract:

“Sarkozy’s personal vendetta — cloaked in anti-elitist demagoguery — has managed to turn The Princess of Cleves into an unlikely symbol of political resistance. In the eyes of many, it now exemplifies the sheer effusion of a culture that cannot be squared with this government’s vulgar mercantile ethos.”

To read the whole thing, please go here.

The Resurrection of Guy Debord

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This appeared in the Guardian Books blog on 18 March 2009:

The Resurrection of Guy Debord

The situationist arch-rebel has finally been recognised as a ‘national treasure’ in France – but would he have appreciated it?

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Guy-Ernest Debord would be spinning in his grave — had he not been cremated following his suicide in 1994. The arch-rebel who prided himself on fully deserving society’s “universal hatred” has now officially been recognised as a “national treasure” in his homeland.

The French government has duly stepped in to prevent Yale University from acquiring his personal archives, which contain almost everything he ever produced from the 1950s onwards: films, notes, drafts, unpublished works and corrected proofs, as well as his entire library, typewriter and spectacles. The crowning jewel is, of course, the manuscript of The Society of the Spectacle, Debord’s devastating pre-emptive strike on virtual reality. The small wooden table on which his magnum opus was composed is also thrown in.

It’s difficult to convey how bizarre it is to hear Christine Albanel — Sarkozy’s minister of culture — describing the revolutionary Debord as “one of the last great French intellectuals” of the second half of the 20th century. A love-in between a resurrected Andreas Baader and Angela Merkel would be only marginally more surprising. Then again, intellectuals have been something of a Gallic speciality ever since the Dreyfus Affair. They’re accorded the privileged status usually reserved for the likes of Bono on these shores. Jean-Paul Sartre’s funeral, in 1980, attracted some 50,000 punters. I doubt whether Noam Chomsky or Tom Paulin will top that.

But however incongruous her position, Madame Albanel is spot-on: no one — not even his sworn ideological enemies — can deny Debord’s importance. Even though the young prankster soon turned into a curmudgeonly old soak, his influence is all-pervasive. In fact, it was precisely because he hated the modern world with a passion that he was able to analyse it so presciently. “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation,” he observes in the opening pages of The Society of the Spectacle — a statement that’s only grown in truth since he made it, back in 1967.

Howls for Sade, his first movie, certainly was not “mere representation”. It was the cinematographic equivalent of a meeting between Yves Klein’s monochromes and John Cage’s 4′ 33″: the screen remains blank throughout — all-white when there is some dialogue and all-black the rest of the time. During the last 20 minutes, the film plays itself out in total silence and obscurity.

Guy Debord co-founded not one, but two, radical movements: the Lettrist International (1952) and the more famous Situationist International (1957), which popularised concepts such as “dérive” and “détournement”. The situationists’ hour of glory was undoubtedly the student uprising of May 1968, which they partly shaped, but their influence has kept on growing ever since, from Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid‘s work with the Sex Pistols to the current crop of British psychogeographers (Iain Sinclair, Will Self, Stewart Home et al) via Factory Records and The Idler‘s anti-work ethic.

In 1959, Debord and the artist Asger Jorn published Mémoires, which was bound in sandpaper so that it would attack any book placed next to it. For years, this lethal dust jacket served as a perfect symbol of Debord’s abrasiveness: he was the ultimate outsider whose ideas could never be assimilated by the mainstream. So what went wrong?

The official recognition of Debord’s work tends to dissociate the revolutionary from the writer whose classical prose style has been compared with that of great memorialists such as Saint-Simon. This negates the situationist belief that politics, literature and art must go hand in hand: “The point is not to put poetry at the service of revolution, but to put revolution at the service of poetry”. Revolution was supposed to lead to the “supercession of art” by enabling human beings to live poetry and become works of art. From this point of view, Debord belongs to the tradition of dadaists and surrealists such as Jacques Vaché, Arthur Cravan or Boris Poplavsky.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book,” Oscar Wilde famously wrote. “Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” The French have long made this aphorism their own, as exemplified by the reception given to the likes of Rimbaud, Céline, Jean Genet or Dennis Cooper. It seems that the only crime an author can commit on the other side of the Channel is poor writing — although you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.