Dephine Through the Looking Glass
The Author as Victim - or Carnivorous Narcissist?
The prose style of Delphine de Vigan may not positively glitter, may not speak to our souls with a definite brilliance, but it nonetheless seems sturdy and workmanlike- rather as if an experienced columnist for ‘Le Monde’ who had always appeared most competent in dealing with prosaic news facts decided to produce some fiction instead. She is not a Hugo; she is not even a Hollebecq; still, this novel of hers, ‘D’Apres une Histoire Vraie’, pulls the reader in, yet I find its plot awkwardly conservative, conventional, and, dare I say it, bourgeois.
I had read from her works only ‘Nothing Stops the Night’ in English translation, so I had no idea of how she constructed her phrases and sentences in French. ‘D’Apres une Histoire Vraie’ could be called a page turner, even a manner of psychological thriller, and I did feel myself being cajoled and dragged into it by the author.
The problem with this novel is that it has a self- obsessed quality. The theme is actually quite a conservative one- of ‘normality’ under siege, of a female intruder, a disguised psychopath, emerging bit by bit as mentally deviant while she steps- oozes- into the life of a pressurized writer- that is, our putative heroine, Delphine, obviously modelled upon the actual author.
Delphine portrays herself as the victim- tired from having to publicize her book across France, signing copies, meeting readers in bookshops and libraries, and her celebrity makes her vulnerable to poison pen letters, and to stalkers. She describes very extensively the horror of writer’s block, of simply not being able to produce prose. There is something unhappily precious in her description of herself as a martyr being imposed on by her fans- so exhausted that she snubs someone asking to sign her latest book, and heads, prima donna style, for the Porte de Versailles metro.
As with ‘Nothing Stops the Night’, for all its shock impact in being a description of a mother with severe manic depression, Delphine appears in the end very defensive about her own family. In ‘D’Apres une Histoire Vraie’, Delphine conveys herself and her uninteresting husband and rather average children as basically decent- ‘normal’, so to speak- while someone who is essentially a stalker- called just L in the novel- is a dissembler, an ultimately dangerous schemer, a twisted imposition on Delphine’s urge to literary creativity. Calling Delphine’s putative nemesis just ‘L’ dehumanizes the author’s antagonist. The husband, Francois, is something of a non- entity, barely described, a cipher inserted into the plot merely to assist the author in a banal solid masculine sort of way.
‘Normality’ can be rather boring, even oppressive, after a while.
The concentration is on Delphine- what she thinks, what she suffers, what she writes or cannot write. The message, to be not so delicate, is ‘moi, moi, moi’.
The narrator- a writer, a rather nervous or even neurotic celebrity- is self- consciously based on Delphine de Vigan, and the book becomes a mirror to the writer. So Delphine de Vigan, across nearly five hundred pages, is by proxy exposing her own personality, as much as that of L- and the initial impression is of an individual absorbed into the world of literature, into the book market, into the often agonized process of writing. Much in the book is about the dilemma of an author simply not being able to write any more, at the computer, or with a pen and pad. Again, there is this precious, self- indulgent element in De Vigan, as she dwells with exaggerated hand- wringing upon the daily bleakness of her writers’ block.
One could hazard that L stands for her whole readership, that, in exposing so much of herself to the public, Delphine sub- consciously resents the audience on whom she is dependent- if they did not buy her books, she would be unemployed, yet they can be prying, demanding. The audience, in L’s manner, is intruding upon her, is, as it were, devouring her. Of course, in being so intent on revealing all she is, De Vigan, however much she may be producing an apparently lustrous personal mask by means of her work, is bound to tell more about herself than she may mean to. Possibly, L is the Freudian reflection of Delphine herself, is her own Id coming to haunt her. In truth, none of us as we really are would be very inspiring. ‘D’Apres une Histoire Vraie’ could be renamed ‘Delphine Through the Looking Glass’.
L is herself a ghost writer- a ‘negre’ in French- who customarily writes out for someone else an autobiography, or maybe a novel in the other person’s name. Thus, while the metaphor of a ghost writer and stalker haunting and as it were mimicking Delphine is not very subtle, the theme of the ‘double’ is always present. L, just as with the people she assists to produce a book, impersonates Delphine. L wants to be Delphine’s duplicate- and, ultimately, to take Delphine over. There is something of the overegged melodrama about the piece- it can be, as the moderator would later admit, ‘over the top’. The moderator compared the work to the Stephen King genre.
Here was the first Reading Group of the new season- 2017- 2018. There was a different moderator this time- a teacher of creative writing in French, who provided each of us with a typed sheet of questions in order to guide the discussion. Perhaps some of those present might have preferred a less disciplined, a less structured, approach to this debate on a modern novel (2015). After an absence that everyone in the Reading Group had regretted, Madame Line- Playfair, a co- moderator, had returned, to be embraced obviously gratefully by the head of the Mediatheque, Frederic Jagu. Madame Line- Playfair said she had been abroad, for the sake of self- development, which is never the easiest of tasks.
Comments and questions bobbed up in a rather tight, even tense, debate. I commented on the role of the female psychopath in American ‘noir’ novels of the mid- twentieth century such as ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ or ‘The Big Sleep’. Incidentally, these books- what the moderator described as ‘polars’- were made into films, as also has been Delphine De Vigan’s ‘D’Apres Une Histoire Vraie’ (by Roman Polanski). Maybe the idea of the dangerous but viciously fascinating mad woman is always bound to confiscate with an emotional wrench the attention of the audience, for it is the opposite of our usual conception- stereotype?- of the female as emollient and gentle. In any case, I opined that Delphine de Vigan is a lot less profound than a Raymond Chandler. The latter defined apparently charming but essentially depraved and murderous female protagonists as symptomatic of an American society that is absolutely eaten up by moral and spiritual decay. Delphine De Vigan prefers to be a lot less deep. Her take on society would seem to regard it as basically valid, she is on the side of normality, and it is the outsider, symbolized by L, that is the threat. There is just nothing subtle, let alone subversive, about the novel. An example of clunking imagery occurs on page 406, where two red fish bought by Delphine’s husband and daughter are situated in a pool outside the house. ‘L’ argues the piscine pets might be carnivorous, and could eat each other. This was a very overworked metaphor for the relationship between Delphine and L (later on, one of the outdoor fish actually does consume the other). I myself wondered if Delphine as much as L was the predator. After all, Delphine secretly- slyly- tries to extract L’s life story to produce a book about it. As stated before, does L represent all of Delphine’s readership, for whom Delphine has an odd carnivorous disdain?
The moderator described ‘D’Apres Une Histoire Vraie’ as a ‘psychological thriller’, yet it could be termed just run of the mill pulp fiction instead. My Italian neighbour at the Reading Group, of whom I did the accompanying sketch, commented that the book was a ‘bit of fun’, but he produced an Italian translation of ‘Nothing Stops the Night’, which he said he much preferred.
Much discussion occurred concerning how mental instability and illness feature in the book. One participant referred to French psychoanalysis. ‘L’ embodies and echoes several ‘uncommon psychiatric syndromes’ (the title of Professor Enoch’s textbook)- De Clerambault’s Syndrome (the emotional attachment to a stranger, often a celebrity, of a higher status than oneself), Capgas Syndrome (which involves the idea of the ‘double), and ‘folie a deux’. To pathologize, stigmatize, mental illness or madness so much as in this novel possibly betrays a lack of empathy towards those who are simply sick and seem to me to deserve sympathy and empathy. As a mere pasychiatric patient, I know what it is like to be locked out of society.
The conclusion leaves us wondering if ‘L’ is simply an invention of a fevered author during a writer’s block, since no definite evidence of her existing at all is located. ‘Was it all a dream- or nightmare?’
The Reading Group ended. Farewells were pronounced, and I headed downstairs, to the autumn darkness of South Kensington. Was there someone at the corner, someone not ‘normal’ at all’, following me to the tube station? I boarded the train, plunging into the darkness of the Underground’s tunnels...