Reading Group - AN AUTHOR IN SEMI- SUBVERSIVE MODE
In ‘L’Armee Furieuse’, Fred Vargas manipulates, subverts, to a degree, but not totally, the genre of the ‘roman policier’. As a woman writer, she might be compared to Karangal, who was the subject of a previous Cercle de Lecture in this season, and there possibly are similarities- for a start, little variation in sentence structure or pace, Karangal favouring repeated commas, Vargas- if with a fraction more brio- the short sentence. Vargas, identical with Karangal, can be saccharine too, portraying her hero, Adamsberg, the police captain, as a determined animal lover who is prepared, at the novel’s start, to nurse a wounded pigeon picked up in the street. This wounded pigeon becomes a leitmotiv for the novel.
Where, however, Karangal struggles with her ideas and her research, Vargas seems to glide through the difficulties of a tangled plot and twisted characters. Vargas is, in the end, half- subversive. One might wish for the poisonous punch of a Houllebecq, but, from Vargas, we can expect at times a caress verging on cuteness, at times something more acerbic, though nothing so convincingly pungent as is to be found in Houllebecq.
The book may be ‘hokum’, the same as Conan Doyle’s ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’- its prose seems self- confident nonetheless. As is perhaps required for the ‘Roman Policier’, it is the plot that matters most, and the plot here rattles along like the express train that threatens to kill one of the detectives. Vargas, whether referring to immobile cows or a wounded pigeon that (eventually) flies away, weaves imagery into her prose, so that the novel seems to have a poetic ambiance- one underlined by the presence of the ghostly force, the ‘Furious Army’, intent on carrying away by murder those locals who are guilty of some misdeed. The ‘Furious Army’, which is derived from Teutonic myth, from the Viking origins of Normandy, represents justice in a medieval, bleak and irrational, mode, whereas our police captain hero, Adamsberg, symbolizes the modern, the rational, the compassionate, side of law enforcement.
This novel, in the end, seems to reassure us rather than confront us. It shows that we, now, are better than we were, in the past. History, all that has been decades and centuries previously, does not feature admirably in ‘L’Armee Furieuse’. The local detective, Emeri, eventually ‘outed’ as a serial killer using ‘L’Armee Furieuse’ as a smokescreen in a superstitious, backward- looking area of Normandy, is forever, with much pomposity, describing his high- ranking ancestor who fought for Napoleon at Eylau.
Dominic Glynn, from London University, pointed out that Vargas had a background in academic archaeology, and also alluded to her recent split with her customary publisher. Having introduced the book and the author, the moderator then, as usual, allowed the debate to spring and skip from person to person in the Reading Group, some of whom had gone through the novel in French, some in English translation.
At the conclusion of the event, one participant suggested, perhaps unfairly, that the novel was merely lightweight. This judgment maybe stems from the feeling that, being a ‘roman policier’, the work cannot essentially be a serious effort; nonetheless, the book, to repeat, could be described as semi- subversive. The author, Vargas, is on the side of the young Arab street lad in Paris whom a couple of corrupt millionaires try to frame for their own father’s murder (a dispute looming over what may be in the father’s will). Vargas’ plot also seems sympathetic to the rather strange members of an outcaste Normandy family- again being framed for a collection of murders in the unforgiving countryside. As we have commented, it turns out- and here we have the subversive glint once more emerging in this piece- that the stiff local detective, Emeri, is the ruthless, systematic organizer of this Norman carnival of blood.
Eventually, one can only use the term ‘semi- subversive’ with regard to Vargas’ ‘L’Armee Furieuse’, because of the genre in which she is participating. The ‘roman policier’ is, ultimately, encouraging us to look up to the police, to legal authority, even if it may be in the eccentric mould of an Adamsberg. The real dilemma of the police, with regard to the community and to the poor and dissidents and excluded minorities in the community, is necessarily glossed over. I referred to the much more cynical works of Raymond Chandler, and another participant commented on how Chandler’s police are corrupt and cruel- it is the outsider ‘private eye’, Philip Marlowe, who is the hero, or anti- hero.
The character of Adamsberg can at times verge on the sugary (note also the saccharine essence of Karangal’s ‘Reparer les Vivants’), but Vargas seems ready to inject verve and essential grittiness into her writing. The way she interweaves urban crime and rural lawlessness, and eventually handles her plot so as to speak out against wealth and authority (albeit with lots of candyfloss dotted here and there), appears ingenious.
The spectral ‘Furious Army’ is reminiscent of a redneck lynch mob. This same ‘lynch mob’ mentality might have condemned Mo, the Muslim Arab youth, a rebel who burns rich men’s cars, as a murderer; but Adamsberg’s hunch that Mo has been ‘set up’ by others- by the rich victim’s grasping sons- proves true. The personality of Adamsberg is, then, a display of modernity and enlightenment. Vargas backs away from portraying the police as they are seen, for example, in the movie, ‘La Haine’- like monsters who are no better than the criminals they pursue. To repeat, the ‘Roman Policier’ ultimately is a vehicle to merely comfort us, not challenge us- Vargas stretches, but solely to an extent, a literary form that is not very capable of anything revolutionary, that is more usually associated with ‘pulp fiction’. The dangerous poetry of crime may be explored by Chandler, but Vargas stops short of being so provocative.
The Reading Group ended. I exited the Salons, went down the steps to the front of the Institut Francais, slithered through the large glass doors, and found the grey streets of South Kensington before me. In the dark, I wondered if a phantom array of horsemen would be storming down the Cromwell Road, intent on grabbing the guilty among us. An impersonal police car was rather more likely to jerk past, and I traipsed morosely to South Kensington Underground Station.
ZEKRIA IBRAHIMI (AGED 57)