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Emmanuel Bove: Mémoires d’un homme singulier (Singular Man)
We first meet our hero, the eponymous singular man, Jean-Marie Thély, in 1939. He seems to be drifting, unsure what he’s going to do with himself, apparently without funds or any source of income and living in a hotel where he owes back rent.
We only get his backstory well into the book. We learn that his birth was a result of an army officer pursuing a poor woodman’s daughter and raping her. The officer, Second Lieutenant Le Claud, declines all responsibility for the child. A local lady, Madame Mobecourt, who does a lot of good work in the area, particularly as regards orphans and illegitimate children steps in. However a comment made – there exist people who are convinced that it is how you start out that counts most in life. If it is a bad start we get, the worst misfortunes may well befall us. – seems particularly pertinent in this case. His mother disappears, briefly reappears and then disappears again. Her father, the woodcutter, is an alcoholic, a widower, with nine children. He is also partially paralysed from a stroke.
Jean is foisted onto various people, including one or two rich people who appear in the area and then disappear. He is often treated badly. He drifts around and joins up just as World War I is finishing.
He then moves to Paris withGermaine, but that does not last. He even meets his mother again.
He gets a job as an advertising agent and also meets Denise. The family are not entirely enthusiastic about him but reluctantly accept him. He and Denise get married but he seems to live off her money which, inevitably runs out.
He has a difficult relationship, not just with his father-in-law even more so with his father-in-law’s brother Richard, who will a greater role later on. The couple has moved to Paris, but still keep in touch with the family inCompiègne.
He sums up his situation: he is neither the son of someone from the middle class nor a working-man’s son. I was an ignorant young man, neglectfully raised,
He considers going back to the advertising agency, but that does not work and then Denise’s father dies and she inherits some money. Things continue in a difficult way and then it becomes much worse when Denise dies. He decides to leave the family and goes off on his own but he has no money, only what he has in his pocket. As we have seen at the beginning, he moves into a hotel but seems to make no effort to find employment of any sort. Denise’s uncle, Richard, who is a doctor helps him out but not surprisingly he feels that he should make an effort effort to find some sort sort of employment. Instead, he drifts around cafés and bars making casual friends.
He meets his mother again after a long gap and finds that he has two half-brothers, one of whom, who is studying medicine, is clearly his mother’s favourite I don’t need anybody. I ask nothing from anyone. I simply am. But overall, he seems just to be drifting with a few friends, virtually no prospects, no ambition and no money.
Richard challenges him you imagined—you still do—that your misfortunes gave you rights, that they authorised you to demand reparations, compensation. He denies this, but it seems to be true. He refuses money from Richard but then when some money is given to him by Richard’s lawyer, he accepts.
His basic problem, as mentioned, is that he does not fit in anywhere even when he is married to Denise there seemed to be considerable ups and downs in their relationship and, as also mentioned, with her family. In that period, of France in the 1930s, class status, as in many other western countries, played a much more important role than it does now and Jean’s status is not clear even to him, let alone to anyone else.
That changes this is something of an annoying book as basically Jean does very little. For example after Denise’s death when he was in the hotel in Paris, he seems to spend a long time in bed. Even when he gets up, apart from occasional flirtations which seemed to lead to nowhere, he just drifted around hoping to find someone to chat to in a café, all too often not having any success.
A more interesting point is that by the end of the novel we are in mid 1939 and there is virtually no reference to any impending war or the threat of the Germans or Hitler. Indeed, even in the Frst World of War there is little mention and and he joins up too late to participate.
The book was finished by 1939 but not published till 1987 so this is his swansong which for some reason, obviously, in part the war, was not published till nearly fifty years after it was written. It has had a mixed reputation since then, not least because of the title. Is the account of a man who has no idea where he stands, who he is and what he wants to do interesting? The answer is partly yes but also partly no in that the book does drag on somewhat.
Publishing history
First published in 1987 by Calmann-Lévy
First English publication in 1993 by The Marlboro Press
Translated by Dominic Di Bernardi