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Lydie Salvayre: La Conférence de Cintegabelle (The Lecture)
You will notice that the French title of this book translates as The
Cintegabelle Lecture (Conférence is the French for lecture). I am assuming that Cintegabelle, a small town in the South of France, will be unknown to most English-speaking readers. In short the book consists of a lecture given in Cintegabelle.
The lecture is given by a very pompous, unnamed man. He is so impressed with his lecture that he had recently been in Paris and tried to persuade various publishers to publish it. They all declined so now he has returned home and it is his neighbours who will benefit from his words or wisdom, though only a limited number were worthy. After eliminating chatterboxes, patterboxes, loudmouths, soliloquists, and other cacophonists, we have established that only forty-eight people are suited to the art of conversation: forty-two of them are reasonably adept, five are talented, one is a genius, and guess who that is. He had a girlfriend/wife (it is not clear which but he did inherit from her after her death and refers to her brother as his brother-in-law) called Lucienne, whom he called Lulu. She has now died and he is in mourning for her, though she did leave him some money and a pension. It seems to have been a very odd match. He speaks quite highly of her and was clearly in love with her but he is also quite disparaging about her. For example he claims she only had a vocabulary of about a hundred words and she was often shouting and complaining.
There are other named characters, neighbours, particularly Monsieur Tribulet, the local butcher who seems to embody many of the characteristics our narrator abhors.particularly mediocrity. He has a Beware of the Dog sign on his front gate and our narrator wittily suggests it refers to Monsieur Tribulet himself rather than any canine. We never actually meet these neighbours, not least because they were not invited but they are mocked.
So what is the lecture about? It is about conversation. We may conclude, from our thorough investigation, that while it is generally admitted that speech is the achievement of all mankind, conversation is a specialty that is eminently French.
He gives a complete breakdown of what he considers to be the key basics of good conversation. We are given outlines of what he is going to talk about at the beginning of lecture, not surprisingly he veers off track on many occasions to comment on this, that and the other as well as course on Lulu and the neighbours.
Things are not as they were Conversation is going downhill and the country with it, . But he has a plan. He wants to improve considerably the standard of conversation and this will improve France and help it to take it rightful place as the guide to civilisation for the rest of the world and as he says to help those suffering from a conversational deficit. Like my Lucienne.
He gives various reasons why good conversation is important but the first one is for talking to women as women, he maintains, more attracted to a good conversationalist than to a good looking man. Conversation implies the activity of the senses and the stimulus of sex.
He indicates some of the basics for a good conversation and maintains a comfortable position is important but it helps if everyone had a large behind as that makes it more comfortable. He cites the case of Rodin’s The Thinker who is clearly very uncomfortable and therefore not able to have a good conversation. He maintains that it has been scientificality proven that there is a relationship between gluteal volume and amplitude of discourse.
He also deals with the quality of conversation, strongly maintaining that there is a distinction between conversation, that lily of the soul, and communication, that foul dunghill..
There are a host of worthy (in his view) pieces of advice such as Anger at a mean or foolish person must never last longer than three minutes and forty-six seconds and If you really must play the snob, practics on your wife. She is, all things considered, paid for that
We learn that when he was in Paris trying to get his lecture published he went to a literary cocktail party where he was spurned by pretty well everyone and is quite bitter about it, not surprisingly. At this point members of the audience ask him if he met various specific authors that they have in mind. He did not.
He concludes by giving examples of specific types of conversation and limit himself to five types, including talking to the dead. Clearly he talks to Lulu.
Modest, he is not. Sometimes I think I’m Jesus. I have his charisma, obviously. And Lulu is Mary Magdalene. Only chubbier. And less distraught. I have the charisma of Jesus, but I lack his good looks.
Nor is he modest about his country. France, ladies and gentlemen, is the incomparable land of the love of love. Because France is the land where love is spoken before it is made. Because France is the land of amorous preambles. in short he is the pompous ass that we can find, I would imagine, in pretty well any country.
Salvayre may well, I imagine, have a model her narrator, based on a specific individual of her acquaintance. Whether this is the case or he is entirely fictional, she clearly enjoys mocking his pomposity and superciliousness which, as mentioned, can be found anywhere. It is a most enjoyable book, as much because putting down people that you don’t like and maybe probably know is always enjoyable and I must admit I really did enjoy this book.
Publishing history
First published in 1999 byÉditions du Seuil
First published in English in 2005 by Dalkey Archive Press
Translated byLinda Coverdale