Creezy

by Félicien Marceau, Jim Underwood (Translator)

Creezy is a 1969 novel by the French writer Félicien Marceau. It tells the story of a young and wealthy Paris model nicknamed Creezy – derived into French slang from the English word ‘crazy’ – who has an affair with an older, married man, as the two of them engineer practical jokes, make love and travel around Europe. It was published in English in 1970, translated by Jim Underwood.

Creezy is a cover girl, her form – but not her name – is known to millions. Her beauty is flaunted on billboards, posters, and magazine covers to advertise everything from trips to the Bahamas to the newest washing machine. He is a politician on the way up, a man with a brilliant future, a man with a wife and two children. This is the story of their equally bitter and fascinating and finally unendurable love.

Creezy was an immediate popular success in France, where critics consider it the finest novel by Félicien Marceau. In its style and insights, this is a novel which captures the rhythms of today’s world. And in the character of Creezy, a combination at immense self-assurance and childlike tenderness, at once devastating and defenseless, Marceau has created a modern heroine no reader will be able to forget.

The book received the Prix Goncourt. It was adapted into a 1974 film also titled “Creezy”, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre and starring Sydne Rome alongside Alain Delon.

122 pages, Loose Leaf

First published March 27, 1969

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The end of the sixties of the last century was a flowery époque… And the spirit of that kaleidoscopic time is so magnificently trapped in this highly metaphoric and dynamic novel…
The narrator sorrowfully recalls the rapturous days of his overwhelming amour… Sentences and scenes flicker as if in the silent movie…

He could only be a man in her image, the same as her, born nowhere and at no time, with no childhood, no memories, brought into the world by a computer; two robots, we were two robots, walking toward each other with a squeak of metal.

Creezy – a corrupted form of the English word ‘crazy’ – is a sobriquet of a sublime fashionable model…

Surrounded by those voices jabbering from control towers, that jumble of words of which we understood nothing, you turned your wide green eyes toward me. I thought I would read a question in them. I read only a challenge. And I accepted it. Creezy of the Bahamas, Creezy of the emerald sea, Creezy of the airplane over Mont Blanc, that day my heart went out to you and entered your universe, your own universe, neon, plastic, aluminum, the white light of the glaciers, the jumble of words, the breathless voices, and the thunder of the jets.

He falls in love… And he falls out of reality… Exaltation… Elation… Ecstasy… But in all this bliss there is an invisible black hole that sucks in all the happiness out of existence…

I’m not talking about love. I’m not even talking about spending that night together. I mean those records, that moment when our eyes met, that moment of recognition, that moment when we were one. It’s not difficult in love. In that embrace, that struggle, that race, that game of hopscotch, that frozen instant of eternity, it’s not difficult to be one – or to have the illusion of being so.

One effortlessly moves through the grey days of living and then there is a sudden blinding flash of light and after it everything drowns in darkness – tragedy.

[Pascale · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like many novels about adultery and mad lust, this one is overblown and ultimately unconvincing. Politician falls for a "deeply mysterious" super model (or is she just brain dead?) and screws her for months until he comes to his senses and decides to end the affair... Of course, things go wrong, but don't worry, he'll make it through. The book is fluidly written, but Belle-du-Seigneur it is not.

[Jesús · Rating 3 out of 5]

Premio Goncourt de 1969. Una historia entre el romance y el drama que no me ha llegado del todo.

[Rose L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bien écrit personnage dérangeant inadapté point de vue très masculin, vintage

[Kantcrusher]

jean-luc godard core

[Dominique · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mon premier Félicien Marceau. Une histoire d’adultère entre un député bien ordinaire et une mannequin à la mode. 2 personnages qui respirent la tristesse et l’ennui pour une liaison finalement assez banale et sans consistance. Ce court roman ne m’a pas convaincu. Malgré certains moments de belle écriture, il m’a semblé plutôt ennuyeux et ce n’est que parce qu’il est auréolé de son Goncourt que j’ai fait l’effort de le terminer.

[Gursel Uckan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am very curious about the translation made by Cemal Süreyya. Looking forward to taste his lyric and sentimental style of his poems in this novel as well.