Pierre Goyotat - any good?
- Thread starter craner
- Start date
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yes! He's excellent. Only heard of him last year.
I like him even better than Robbe-Grillet. Fuck Houellebecq or however that's spelled.
I like him even better than Robbe-Grillet. Fuck Houellebecq or however that's spelled.
craner
Beast of Burden
Have you got to the end of Eden, Eden, Eden yet? Not that anything happens, apart from homosexual rape and multiple war crime atrocities, but I'd be impressed.
Has to be the only 150 page novel made out of one sentence. Barthes and Foucault loved it, though it was banned outright in France.
Guyotat is a really fascinating man. I urge you all to give it a go; this translation is breathtaking.
Anyway, I'll repost what I wrote back in 2003 when Tomb... was finally translated:
Just found out today that Creation books have finally - astonishingly - published an English translation of Pierre Guyotat's Tomb for 500, 000 Soldiers. The only Guyotat novel available in English before now was Eden, Eden, Eden, also published by Creation in 1995. Translating that was a minor miracle in itself. I don't think I've ever read it properly, even though I've read most of the actual text. To read it in the way it's intended - in one intense, unbroken burst (the 160-page novel is in fact just one continual sentence, a fervid, feverish series of clauses that break and bleed and clot) would just be too exhausting and dangerous. The only approach is a cautious offensive: attack and retreat, a succession of surges and breaks. It's a translation for which Graham Fox should take much credit, because there is nothing like this in the English language, not even Genet and Sade in translation match this damaged pitch of linguistic, visual and viseceral potency and force. First published in France in 1970 (and immediately banned) it's a novel that gets more potent and portentious with each new decade of debasement and atrocity (you thought it suited the 70s well, and that was that, but then it fitted the Balkan's 90s perfectly, and will carry on doing so, will always do so). Disturbing proof that experimental French novels are far from apolitical, because Guyotat writes the most extended, comprehensive, and acute political novels that I have read (or not read, if you follow, but experienced...).
Anyway, Tomb for 500, 000 Soldiers...
I haven't read it yet, but I did read Stephen Barber's introduction, in which he says that only one translation of the book has ever been attempted before Romain Slocombe's current version, by Helen R. Lane. Which interested me because she was one of the translaters of the definitive - the only - English translation of Anti-Oedipus (University of Minnesota, 1983). Barber says:
Soon after [Tomb]'s original publication, the sole typescript of an English language version by...Helen Lane was destroyed by fire, either by accident or intentionally; even Guyotat himself is unsure of the exact circumstances of this notorious calamity, though Helen Lane (who suffered a profound spiritual crisis during her work on the book) had certainly viewed its action - which she saw as being situated in a post-apocalyptic timeframe - as disorientatingly unlike any other work she had approached.
Don't quite follow Barber's mangled syntax - although who am I to talk? - but I can see that Helen R. Lane is an interesting person to know. Another one for my fantasy dinner party list, if not my 10-pin bowling team, alongside Sean Flynn, Nancy Cunard, Kenneth Tynan, Ingrid Pitt, Mercedes de Acosta and, I don't know, Cecil Beaton or someone. (Exotic spectators fascinate me.) (Actually I don't have a fantasy dinner party list. I just made that up.)
Has to be the only 150 page novel made out of one sentence. Barthes and Foucault loved it, though it was banned outright in France.
Guyotat is a really fascinating man. I urge you all to give it a go; this translation is breathtaking.
Anyway, I'll repost what I wrote back in 2003 when Tomb... was finally translated:
Just found out today that Creation books have finally - astonishingly - published an English translation of Pierre Guyotat's Tomb for 500, 000 Soldiers. The only Guyotat novel available in English before now was Eden, Eden, Eden, also published by Creation in 1995. Translating that was a minor miracle in itself. I don't think I've ever read it properly, even though I've read most of the actual text. To read it in the way it's intended - in one intense, unbroken burst (the 160-page novel is in fact just one continual sentence, a fervid, feverish series of clauses that break and bleed and clot) would just be too exhausting and dangerous. The only approach is a cautious offensive: attack and retreat, a succession of surges and breaks. It's a translation for which Graham Fox should take much credit, because there is nothing like this in the English language, not even Genet and Sade in translation match this damaged pitch of linguistic, visual and viseceral potency and force. First published in France in 1970 (and immediately banned) it's a novel that gets more potent and portentious with each new decade of debasement and atrocity (you thought it suited the 70s well, and that was that, but then it fitted the Balkan's 90s perfectly, and will carry on doing so, will always do so). Disturbing proof that experimental French novels are far from apolitical, because Guyotat writes the most extended, comprehensive, and acute political novels that I have read (or not read, if you follow, but experienced...).
Anyway, Tomb for 500, 000 Soldiers...
I haven't read it yet, but I did read Stephen Barber's introduction, in which he says that only one translation of the book has ever been attempted before Romain Slocombe's current version, by Helen R. Lane. Which interested me because she was one of the translaters of the definitive - the only - English translation of Anti-Oedipus (University of Minnesota, 1983). Barber says:
Soon after [Tomb]'s original publication, the sole typescript of an English language version by...Helen Lane was destroyed by fire, either by accident or intentionally; even Guyotat himself is unsure of the exact circumstances of this notorious calamity, though Helen Lane (who suffered a profound spiritual crisis during her work on the book) had certainly viewed its action - which she saw as being situated in a post-apocalyptic timeframe - as disorientatingly unlike any other work she had approached.
Don't quite follow Barber's mangled syntax - although who am I to talk? - but I can see that Helen R. Lane is an interesting person to know. Another one for my fantasy dinner party list, if not my 10-pin bowling team, alongside Sean Flynn, Nancy Cunard, Kenneth Tynan, Ingrid Pitt, Mercedes de Acosta and, I don't know, Cecil Beaton or someone. (Exotic spectators fascinate me.) (Actually I don't have a fantasy dinner party list. I just made that up.)
absolutley spot on...again i didn't finish it ; got halfway through and thought "i get the gist"
brilliant writer all the same.
