I flatter myself to think that the proposition I conceive here is also
agreeable to you despite the cost. Here's a text without an author. It is yours.
No strings attached. May you enjoy it as a family man should.
You already have the afflicted works of authors, and such a plethora of them;
of authors, flanked or not by works, lined up down the street. But just think:
how many texts without an author have you seen in existence, deposited upon the
doorstep of your house? I speak only of true orphans, and not of those
illegitimate children which only need wait for success in life to reveal
themselves, only wait for such propitious circumstances to be recognized, or
even those at first assumed to be a poor relative, only later to turn into a
feather in the cap.
Believe me, I can well imagine the difficulty of your position: the law
designates that texts have authors, the authors ejaculate copy, and the public
only wants a sniff at copy with appellation d'origine contrôlée. And there you
go; the authors are always getting more and more insecure and ungrateful as they
continue to abuse their prostate while the noses of the readers get increasingly
clogged up.
The law and the public demand the trumpet blasts and shouts of authors; they
want works' confessions dug up and subjects fallen prey to the question of
meaning: vulgar mania, persnickety obsession, painful and cynical idolatry. As
for this work that I have abandoned without remorse, I hope that you will find
an "author" which might suit it, one that will act as one of your "interesting"
bulls enraged by syntax, one that will agonize, but not exhaust, itself with
being one of the most highly rated in your paddock, or as one of your highly
polished geldings with passible manners, straight as an arrow, without tripping
nor with too lively a gait, but without any hope of fertility. Suitability is
the only thing: the author must be able to present the story of its appearance,
the public must be able to represent it there for themselves without having read
anything yet.
It is for others at this point which, better again for the desire to appear
legitimate and not be incriminated by the confession that I have given to you of
my situation, that proud humility which makes me prefer obscurity to the vain
illusions of the magic lanterns of publicity which determined me, I entrust you
with this procedure of adoption. I incline to the deaf lantern of anonymity
rather than the heroic risk which might find me before that other lantern. But
here is what brought about the decision: I do not, in effect, have the stomach
for work nor do I want to set myself up as a pitiful salesman, the most pathetic
and ridiculous logophore and semaphore imaginable, for this work. I differ so
much from that type that even if I believed my opus would gain rapid
appreciation, readers wouldn't even give me the time of day, without exception.
I am so unlike that which I am, and I assure you that the author of crimes
couldn't pass for an author of writing, that the me which strives to cream civil
society is not the same me as the me which manifests in the maintenance of
everyday situations, in the society of authors and critics, in the exhibition of
their vices and commercial ends. The criminal me only watches them in their
works, and I do not watch them as the readers of Le Monde, as one indigenous to
the Island of Lanterns, as a Laputian like them. Imagine the deceptions that
would follow, the smoke and mirrors.
To tell of these adventures you need and author with the iron stomach for its
dangers, for the catalogues of seductions you need the boorishness of men before
women, for novels like that you need the shapes of deflated dolls, the pouts of
bland bourgeoisie, or bitchy yet subtle insinuations. I also believe (but you
are the professional here, the true expert, your instinct honed by years of
experience cannot deceive you) that you need some author (or actor, what's the
difference? different comedies, same paradox) who's a little sinister, who
resembles in anthropometry the twin of Jack Nicholson but with the refined
manners of André Gide.
You know, of course, about the group that prefers a masculine subject. It
must be able to hover, like a diffuse yet slightly sickly perfume, that fine
line of possible identification between your subject and my narrative. But, as
you know, murder -- and violent murder done quietly -- is the sole province of
the male half of the species: statistics prove it, public opinion believes it,
plausibility and homophony demand it. But women are not quite so sure. Their
reputation is so subject to unpleasant eclipses, dependent on such mysterious
rules of decorum. In all, only you can see how much that which I have confided
so little resembles, unfortunately, one of those "lady's books" where colleagues
and critics like to confine the feminine genius (such a gallant oxymoron!).
And we're only speaking of a short commercial print run! Don't even
contemplate a medium or long one. What disastrous investment, a bad investment
for a family man, that these authors never stop wanting to fall down the
slippery slope from the summit where zealous canonizers bombard their
colleagues. They think that from such dry massive slopes they will certainly
grow beyond their competitors, the flat Louvet and the plaintive Bernardin who
sleep together between ivory sheets without Ladys de G., de T., nor Lady R. (all
as plaintive as Bernardine, but so incomprehensibly bizarre in their lachrymal
predilection...). Furetière is enthroned there at the same level as Madame. de
L. of whom only the Rouchefoucauldian mask protects from the asphyxiation of
these rarified heights. There, Hemingway's fake machismo is not required, least
of all writing two strong volumes. There, it's the false layered-ness of Joyce
which they set in reliquaries while the prose of Virginia W., Gertrude S., and
Djuna B. don't even attract vultures to their graves. Chinese novelists, at
least, have the liberty of strolling by the water into the red room while
keeping secret the sayings of Lady M. and the pillow of Sei S... Adolph holds
his salon but inconsistently without Corinne. Musette, exhausted and rude but
not entirely, makes shit all after George S. cut off his novel-making organs.
The chronic ontological diarrhea of these shady hyenas stylographed there are
piously collected yet they too look down upon those same piles of shit. The ways
of the stercoraceous man are decidedly impenetrable.
You see well the root of my objection; not even you can miss the stench of
your own feet. Literature is, like murder, totally the affaire of men. The way
things are going, and if they keep going that way, now hold your objections,
these may very well be the last two careers (not withstanding that of rapist)
which will remain the ultimate privilege of male ambition, worried about being
pulverised in dejection under the constant march of posterity. That the
debauchery of novelists -- the women of letters piled up naked between the
covers of their books -- do not deceive us. From century to century, they have
known no conflict, no clatter of housework. Their territory has been clearly
marked: a little store from which to quarry this pile by the pen, and better yet
to plan out the occupation of memory. The crime, I have noted with the
admiration of a true amateur, is perfect: hapax, dispersion, dismemberment,
mysterious disappearances, elimination of witnesses, looting of heritage,
elimination of fingerprints, buried dossiers, steady research, and finally
cannibalization from an extinct criminal corpus, evaporated to a molecular state
into their style, all-consumed to the marrow. Ah! Muses! Ah! Cyclopes!
We just need an author (if you haven't found one yet), a sinister one as I've
already said (they come by it naturally), one that's a bit pedantic, as I
already set out for you (to retain verisimilitude), but one that's good company.
It's necessary for it to know how to play upon obscure passions, but only as
content, and the more expressive and obscure, the more visible as content.
Doubtlessly you know this virile tact is always doubled by an artistic ability
which births emotion forth from within its concealment; the spectator
understands well through this casual tone of the emotions residing within beings
which do not want to seem as though they are had lest they be brought to
ridicule. The sublimely efficient hideousness of these euphemists of nothing
which, before death, knows the separation to be between lies and nothingness...
As for me, dear editor, I efface myself, I efface myself and you have
guaranteed that from before my even contemplating body number 10, of a good
paperback volume with a sober cover, according to the usual quality of works
which you produce (I might be a criminal, but I have good taste and am
sensible...), all trace, all notebook, all original exercise will be consigned
to the fire. I guarantee you, upon my honour, the peaceful enjoyment of this
work. Truth be told, this isn't my first delivery, the first charrette so to
speak, nor the first crack at it. For it's toward a whole cathedral that I've
devised my attacks. Apse! Choir! Transept! Of all that I've saved the first for
you.
I am a criminal, as I've already said, but I'm sensible. This of course is
offside; but I must say it, so... Now, we must learn to speak and think better
of murder, which we haven't done yet. It is a necessity to blunt slightly the
extreme sharpness with which we speak of murder. Having understood the rumor of
opinion, we would think that all inconvenience falls on the side of the
murdered. Have you considered the respective ailments incurred and succumbed to
by the acuity of the stiletto itself or the brutality of a hemorrhagic fever?
Sensibly, I will suffer nevertheless without batting an eyelash, and as for
their stories you have carte blanche, you have full slaver's rights over them:
redact them, adjust them, interpolate them, cut them, blow them up, hem them,
fold them up, kick them in the ass as much as is required, profane my angelic
prose with guipures and froufrous of which "the author" will not lack in
insisting after putting on his Shirt of Nessus, but prevent yourself from
reducing my immoral idiosyncrasies to the middling decency of regular detective
novels, the kind of middle ground morality that cannot imagine a victim without
arousing the inquisitive impulse, nor crimes without a cop devoted to its
elucidation and punishment. There crime is a disorder where action is charged
with the rehabilitation of the law. It would be a good time to reduce this
syllogism to its original barbarity, and invert the vulgar proposition, giving
universal law to crime. Bovarizing and yet, cancanizing my prose too as
cynically as possible, I grant them to you...
Don't readers want something more than marshmallowiness and fucking? Don't
they delight in other things beyond confessionals and fornication? Don't they
use other furniture than the divan and the sofa? Do they not, rather, incline
towards the divine and sophism, towards divas and sapphism? I don't think about
these people much. But I will sacrifice without regret, since I too am spineless
and love amusement, the tragic purity of my aesthetic intentions to the pleasure
of seeing my Curate, that solemn imposter, pale and pedantic, proclaiming the
imprescriptible laws of creation, in forfeit sincerely admit that they have
escaped him. I would like to see him left secretly worried when one asks of him
if he has ever felt the troubling murderous urges of their heroes... and what
relationship exists between this novel and this enduring masterpiece which
produced these delicious Meditations on the sense of The Infinite during a
humanitarian mission upon the occidental shore of Lake Victoria-Nyanza?
You were not, dear editor, the original recipient I imagined for this story.
I had thought of dropping off, according to the rule laid down by a venerable
precedent, the manuscript upon the largest altar at Notre-Dame, but at all hours
of the day, groups of tourists are there pressed against the choir's roodscreen,
obstructing access: any remaining post hereafter is blocked, occluding the
shadowed mouth. Failing God, I imagined giving it sealed and folded to an honest
luxury convertible enthusiast, my Muse, my Mentor in mechanics; but Mr. de
Cadillac, such a fine mechanic, doesn't care as much about literature as his
premium mobile home. I had thought of giving it, then, to someone I just met in
the street, selected according to my tried-and-true principles -- for who would
dare give up our days to Providence in designating its addressee, in giving up
our inspiration for composition, the impulsion for murder?
It is, however, easier to kill some individual than to gift a work to them.
Simpler than passing an infection, like a baby... The attempt at donation was
less successful than my attempts at assassination to date. Upon presenting,
making an offer, of a package to an unknown person met in the street, he treats
you well, yet you impute the worst intentions; he imagines that you would like
to swindle him, to ridicule him, to drag him into some incredible turpitude.
Infernal probity of the masses! It is the best if he doesn't smack you in the
mouth and cry out for help, crazed. Pull out a knife, promise that you'll bleed
him out, open him up, kill him; he not believing your darkness, calls upon your
humanity, don't imagine that you want him badly, and in his emotion protesting
his friendship throws himself upon your naked blade, you embrace in death as he
turns his wound around your knife...
Thus, after God, after Mr. de Cadillac, after ungrateful "Swann", who drew
much gossip in the neighbourhood and guardians of the peace as though I made
them the most dishonest proposition or exposed myself to them, you were, Mr.
editor, my most reasonable interlocutor, the only one gifted by necessity. You
were also almost as abstruse as God, as fine a mechanic as Mr. de Cadillac and
less scrupulous than the random individual of whom it was easier to slit the
throat than shower with gifts. Your place was established at Swann's first
residence. We could not end up with a better tomb.
But I hear you from here: printers, bulletin boards, bookstores, management
of stock, you're bled out from all veins. An insatiable and if not small
immobilization of profits re-capitalized, these assets which devalue themselves
without warning. Abusive authors! And the press, good God, the press! And the
paper! I know enough about how much that costs! A difficult poker hand is your
ungrateful business... A game of chance and such an unromantic one... I
commiserate, I sympathize. I do not seek your ruin.
Whether you publish or not this story is immaterial. I hold to good authority
that letters always arrive at their destination and that even flying or rising
from the dead, a letter has always been known to reach its destination or bring
itself back to life. That they end their lives in a judicial file, under the
doormat of the Faculty or on its laboratory desks for dissection, in the boxes
of second-hand booksellers, in the windows of bookstores, in the all-season
merchant stalls draped delicately with the roundness of romaine lettuce and
escaroles, or highlighted on the cabinet of your own distinguished but
impecunious house, if you are able to wipe away your authors, of such little
importance. You will be eternally grateful of having fulfilled the only duty of
your office which is worth anything to me: to know how to make-read -- even by a
single unique reader, poor professional grazer upon prose -- my story. It just
needs a reader and one alone, a victim and one alone, if my project is to be
achieved, and the infinite trans-substantive reversibility of prose and crime,
of crime and prose is to be operable such that Swann would be removed in a
wing's beat or in a flash of light in "Swann," and "Swann" would be elevated
into ""Swann"."
Upon reflection, I would prefer a female reader.
Could you do me this favour? So that Mme de Saint-Loup can elevate herself
metaphysically into "Mme de Saint-Loup," "Mme de Saint-Loup" into ""Mme de
Saint-Loup"" and establish with the stroke of an enthusiast for lines, the truth
of my logical proposition. The scare quotes end up as so many masks; in an
infallible ascension Temps Perdu depopulates the world, murder decomposes
language and gives final rest to wandering names. Mme de Saint-Loup, oh
hypocritical reader, my sister, you devour my crimes like a book. And me, lector
lectori lupus, which in an ancient novel which I myself devoured made the law of
my decimations, I prove that only the criminal work is authentic.
