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Cartea fugilor
"Cartea fugilor" (1969) descrie cu o fina intuitie psihologica angoasa fiintei in fata constiintei subite a faptului ca lumea a devenit un spatiu de nelocuit, din care nu exista alta posibilitate de evadare decit o fuga perpetua. Antrenindu-ne in virtejul unui ritm nebunesc si al unei imaginatii debordante, calatoria pe care o intreprinde in jurul lumii tanarul Hogan, un vietnamez de nouasprezece ani din Lang Son, ne dezvaluie un univers ostil, monstruos, impinzit de orase alienante, populatii care mor in cea mai neagra mizerie si intinse regiuni devastate, un univers in care nimeni nu poate prinde radacini. Transformind calatoria intr-o adevarata „arta a fugii“, Le Clezio surprinde cu o subtilitate admirabila dorinta de evadare si foamea obsesiva dupa o alta lume care il mina pe tanarul Hogan de la un capat la altul al pamantului, il impiedica sa se aseze in vreun loc anume, il constring sa ramina permanent in miscare.
„Simtindu-se acasa pretutindeni si nicaieri, acest exilat de bunavoie si-a mutat mereu centrul dintr-un punct intr-altul al planetei, nereusind sa prefere sau sa aleaga unul anume. Le Clézio este scriitorul fugilor – un dezradacinat prin vocatie, un om fara adapost pe intreg cuprinsul lumii –, preferind hazardul calatoriilor rutinei mult prea linistitoare a unei patrii… ” (Le Figaro)
„Simtindu-se acasa pretutindeni si nicaieri, acest exilat de bunavoie si-a mutat mereu centrul dintr-un punct intr-altul al planetei, nereusind sa prefere sau sa aleaga unul anume. Le Clézio este scriitorul fugilor – un dezradacinat prin vocatie, un om fara adapost pe intreg cuprinsul lumii –, preferind hazardul calatoriilor rutinei mult prea linistitoare a unei patrii… ” (Le Figaro)
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
9 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
J.M.G. Le Clézio
167 books651 followersJean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, better known as J.M.G. Le Clézio (born 13 April 1940) is a Franco-Mauriciano novelist. The author of over forty works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le Procès-Verbal (The Interrogation) and the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
January 8, 2018
I would like to be able to write to you, as though in a letter, all that I am living through. I would like so much to be able to make you understand why I have no choice but to go away one day, without a word to anyone, without explanation. It is an action that has become necessary, and when the moment has come (I cannot say where, or when, or why) I will carry it out, just like that, simply, keeping quiet about it.
*
Everyone thought, everyone had ideas, longings, words, and that whole lot stayed hidden inside their skulls, their bowels, even their clothes, and one could never read everything that had been written.
*
But, in fleeing, shouldn’t I turn round from time to time, just a quick glance, merely to see whether I’m not perhaps going too fast, whether people are still following me? Hmm?
*
There is nothing to understand, nothing at all. There are no chains of events, no reasons. Got to keep moving at all costs.
*
The nothingness was so great that it could not even be called solitude any longer. It was like walking on top of oneself, crawling eternally over the same bit of ground at the bottom of a crevasse. It was like being spreadeagled on the ground, without respite, or being fastened down on an esplanade in the middle of a desert of automobiles. It was like floating on the ocean, thousands of miles from land, while tiny waves sweep forward in ripples. The very idea of solitude had vanished from the surface of the earth; it had been swallowed up by the sand, gulped like water. Everything had been instantly filled to the brim; the sky had been stretched taut, an invincible ceiling harder than steel. The black mountains reared up, the dunes were frozen in mid-movement; the line of the horizon lay close to the sky, a thin black thread that never ceased to contain, to retain. And above, the sun was a glowing dot, nothing but a dot. It would have been impossible to add a single thing more: this was a world crammed full to overflowing, a world with a bulging bag, standing guard against intruders. There was no room for anyone.
*
I am nowhere. I have left my world behind, and have not yet found another. That is the tragic adventure. I have departed, but not yet arrived.
*
Everyone thought, everyone had ideas, longings, words, and that whole lot stayed hidden inside their skulls, their bowels, even their clothes, and one could never read everything that had been written.
*
But, in fleeing, shouldn’t I turn round from time to time, just a quick glance, merely to see whether I’m not perhaps going too fast, whether people are still following me? Hmm?
*
There is nothing to understand, nothing at all. There are no chains of events, no reasons. Got to keep moving at all costs.
*
The nothingness was so great that it could not even be called solitude any longer. It was like walking on top of oneself, crawling eternally over the same bit of ground at the bottom of a crevasse. It was like being spreadeagled on the ground, without respite, or being fastened down on an esplanade in the middle of a desert of automobiles. It was like floating on the ocean, thousands of miles from land, while tiny waves sweep forward in ripples. The very idea of solitude had vanished from the surface of the earth; it had been swallowed up by the sand, gulped like water. Everything had been instantly filled to the brim; the sky had been stretched taut, an invincible ceiling harder than steel. The black mountains reared up, the dunes were frozen in mid-movement; the line of the horizon lay close to the sky, a thin black thread that never ceased to contain, to retain. And above, the sun was a glowing dot, nothing but a dot. It would have been impossible to add a single thing more: this was a world crammed full to overflowing, a world with a bulging bag, standing guard against intruders. There was no room for anyone.
*
I am nowhere. I have left my world behind, and have not yet found another. That is the tragic adventure. I have departed, but not yet arrived.
April 28, 2013
This is not a novel, it is a catalogue of powerful words about the claustrophobia of everyday life and the varied paths of escape. I was drawn in by the poetic descriptions but frequently lost track of where I had come from and often wasn't even sure about where I had arrived. It was an interesting journey.
half-read
November 15, 2013Half of any Le Clézio novel appears to be the appropriate length. Completely original and unlike anyone else out there (at a push, akin at times to Alan Burns or Michel Butor), but as experimental fiction goes, only dip-into-able. Apocalyptic visions punctuated by metafictive self-castigation. He has shorter books.
May 14, 2017
The Book of Flights’ is a work of outstanding imagery, of incandescent imagery, variegated shades of luminous light radiate from the novel, creating an atmosphere of perpetual phosphorescence and bucolic brightness-take, for example, his description of sunlight;
“Not a path of colour left anywhere, nothing but this unbearable whiteness that had penetrated each corner of the town. The giant searchlight held this circle of earth in its beam, and the light particles bombarded matter unceasingly. Each shape and object had been transformed into a tiny lamp whose incandescent filament glowed brightly in the centre of its crystal bubble. The whiteness was everywhere. Vision was blanked out.”
Clezio is able to bring his startlingly original powers of description to auditory as well as visual passages-sounds, sights and smells are all painted with a sense of irreverence and beauty until the world which Clezio describes becomes a succession of surreal images, a kind of sensory super-abundance washes over the reader;
“The bus brushes the sidewalk as it passes…it scrapes the ground, spreading out a like a volley of sharp flints. It zigzags, it spits from the machine gun’s barrel, and it’s bullets ricochet explosively from the walls, smash into human flesh and open up little stars of blood. The heavy machine gun fires upon the world, while a peculiar grey-blue cloud spreads out, acrid, deadly the cloud of mortal dust, the dangerous fog which penetrates through the skin and disintegrates life”
The reader gradually drowns beneath a succession of images and impressions, although the narrative loosely follows Hogan’s journey around the world, the novel feels more like a series of impressions than a coherent story-at times this can become disjointed and jarring, especially in the latter half of the novel, where Clezio seeks to further experiment with different narrative forms and the novel can occasionally become worn-down in tendentious political and social commentaries which do not suit it. Nevertheless ‘The Book of Flights’ is a completely original and beautifully written story with many memorable passages and descriptions.
“Not a path of colour left anywhere, nothing but this unbearable whiteness that had penetrated each corner of the town. The giant searchlight held this circle of earth in its beam, and the light particles bombarded matter unceasingly. Each shape and object had been transformed into a tiny lamp whose incandescent filament glowed brightly in the centre of its crystal bubble. The whiteness was everywhere. Vision was blanked out.”
Clezio is able to bring his startlingly original powers of description to auditory as well as visual passages-sounds, sights and smells are all painted with a sense of irreverence and beauty until the world which Clezio describes becomes a succession of surreal images, a kind of sensory super-abundance washes over the reader;
“The bus brushes the sidewalk as it passes…it scrapes the ground, spreading out a like a volley of sharp flints. It zigzags, it spits from the machine gun’s barrel, and it’s bullets ricochet explosively from the walls, smash into human flesh and open up little stars of blood. The heavy machine gun fires upon the world, while a peculiar grey-blue cloud spreads out, acrid, deadly the cloud of mortal dust, the dangerous fog which penetrates through the skin and disintegrates life”
The reader gradually drowns beneath a succession of images and impressions, although the narrative loosely follows Hogan’s journey around the world, the novel feels more like a series of impressions than a coherent story-at times this can become disjointed and jarring, especially in the latter half of the novel, where Clezio seeks to further experiment with different narrative forms and the novel can occasionally become worn-down in tendentious political and social commentaries which do not suit it. Nevertheless ‘The Book of Flights’ is a completely original and beautifully written story with many memorable passages and descriptions.
October 1, 2017
I think this is a brilliant book. I'm just not bright enough to understand it.
June 14, 2025
Am găsit idei bune, interesante, dar structura m-a derutat, câteodată m-am pierdut prin carte.
Iar finalul...
Iar finalul...
July 11, 2015
Opened this in a bookshop and it fell open on a page in which a man is walking in an unnamed town and there is a large white sun. And because of this strange light everything around the man is white: the sky the pavement, the air. His breath becomes white light. He becomes the white light.
I was initially disappointed to find that the book of flights is not about the physical act of flying but of fleeing.
Y. M. Hogan flees his life and everything he thinks he knows about it to see what is left.
In the process Hogan finds out what makes him - not in the conventional 'man finds himself way', rather he muses about his existence. He falls into phases of hardened indifference and awed compassion and altruism to a backdrop of gorgeous cultures and saturated descriptions.
I too found this hard to get into but it picks up, ironically, after page 40 :) I figured that if Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008 - it might be worth sticking with this for a while.
This book is poetry in an unfamiliar guise. I read it aloud sometimes so beautiful is the writing. I found some very, oddly, familiar ideas: I've had similar thoughts of flight, similar imaginings of "who am I without my possessions, my people, my country. With all that gone...what is left?"
These are the afternoon daydreams you weren't even aware of - in the written word.
It's beautiful and I think you'll enjoy it.
I was initially disappointed to find that the book of flights is not about the physical act of flying but of fleeing.
Y. M. Hogan flees his life and everything he thinks he knows about it to see what is left.
In the process Hogan finds out what makes him - not in the conventional 'man finds himself way', rather he muses about his existence. He falls into phases of hardened indifference and awed compassion and altruism to a backdrop of gorgeous cultures and saturated descriptions.
I too found this hard to get into but it picks up, ironically, after page 40 :) I figured that if Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008 - it might be worth sticking with this for a while.
This book is poetry in an unfamiliar guise. I read it aloud sometimes so beautiful is the writing. I found some very, oddly, familiar ideas: I've had similar thoughts of flight, similar imaginings of "who am I without my possessions, my people, my country. With all that gone...what is left?"
These are the afternoon daydreams you weren't even aware of - in the written word.
It's beautiful and I think you'll enjoy it.
January 22, 2012
"Stories end in reverie, tragedy, or forgiveness."
― Jeanette Winterson, interviewed on West Coast Live
Experimental literature — and this was surely experimental in the 1960s and still has some of the experimental cachet in this 2nd decade of the 21st century — forces our attention to be more explicitly focused upon what we are reading than, perhaps, it would be were we reading the latest best-selling thriller or romance.
In this instance of experimentation, as it often is in Literature, Language rises to a pre-eminence. The variation in this experiment is the idea of flight. Le Clézio (and his translator) have given us myriad ways to see the term: fly, flee, flight. Consider this text a travelogue in which the author-cum-narrator-cum-protagonist wanders in search of meaning, in search of self, in search of a universal language, the literary Holy Grail.
The pacing was difficult, for me, in the beginning. Probably intentioned so by the writer who surely wanted to discomfit the reader, to force the reader onto “a different page” as it were. Once I had accommodated to the pacing, the tale — for it is a tale, a story — flowed more readily while continually drawing my attention to ideas of travel, of flight, of fleeing, of lurching into language, into language as description, as mode of perception, as culture.
Ah, but back to that epigraph. I will argue for reverie.
A tour-de-force.
― Jeanette Winterson, interviewed on West Coast Live
Experimental literature — and this was surely experimental in the 1960s and still has some of the experimental cachet in this 2nd decade of the 21st century — forces our attention to be more explicitly focused upon what we are reading than, perhaps, it would be were we reading the latest best-selling thriller or romance.
In this instance of experimentation, as it often is in Literature, Language rises to a pre-eminence. The variation in this experiment is the idea of flight. Le Clézio (and his translator) have given us myriad ways to see the term: fly, flee, flight. Consider this text a travelogue in which the author-cum-narrator-cum-protagonist wanders in search of meaning, in search of self, in search of a universal language, the literary Holy Grail.
The pacing was difficult, for me, in the beginning. Probably intentioned so by the writer who surely wanted to discomfit the reader, to force the reader onto “a different page” as it were. Once I had accommodated to the pacing, the tale — for it is a tale, a story — flowed more readily while continually drawing my attention to ideas of travel, of flight, of fleeing, of lurching into language, into language as description, as mode of perception, as culture.
Ah, but back to that epigraph. I will argue for reverie.
A tour-de-force.
October 26, 2014
Plot-free impressionistic vignettes and surrealistic experiments, part travelogue, part reflection on the human condition and on the process of writing. Yeah I know.
A real slog to get through, this one. The rambling, twisting flights of fancy frequently left me feeling a little lost, and I'm not sure if that was because I'm not clever enough to fully grasp Le Clezio's meanings, or because he himself was a little lost, or because he was bad at explaining himself. Probably all three to some extent.
What was he fleeing *from*: everything? nothing? his culture? stability? language? objectivity? subjectivity? reality? unreality? writing? Seriously, someone sit me down and expain it to me, because at various points I thought it might be all of the above.
At various points, though, when I was in the right mood and he was on top of his game, I found myself enjoying it: there were some original vignettes, some lightning-bolt images, some clever and funny experiments.
I think my predominant feeling right now is that I've somehow failed by not 'getting' this book or finding it more enjoyable, because clearly there's something interesting going on, but I can't really recommend it.
A real slog to get through, this one. The rambling, twisting flights of fancy frequently left me feeling a little lost, and I'm not sure if that was because I'm not clever enough to fully grasp Le Clezio's meanings, or because he himself was a little lost, or because he was bad at explaining himself. Probably all three to some extent.
What was he fleeing *from*: everything? nothing? his culture? stability? language? objectivity? subjectivity? reality? unreality? writing? Seriously, someone sit me down and expain it to me, because at various points I thought it might be all of the above.
At various points, though, when I was in the right mood and he was on top of his game, I found myself enjoying it: there were some original vignettes, some lightning-bolt images, some clever and funny experiments.
I think my predominant feeling right now is that I've somehow failed by not 'getting' this book or finding it more enjoyable, because clearly there's something interesting going on, but I can't really recommend it.
June 20, 2021
Something that my high school self enjoyed immensely and that I would like to read again now as an adult from a different lens.
January 19, 2018
I have to confess that I don't think I have understood all the intricacies of Le Clezio's writing. I felt at times that I was falling into a very long Walt Whitman poem. And there was only so much I could take in at a time. But there is no doubting the incredible power of this author's writing. His descriptions are ultra surrealistic and vivid. I am still reeling from his various depictions of that hot sun and the visceral white light which I interpreted (possibly mistakenly) as symbolic of having your eyes fully open and staring full on at reality. I loved looking through Le Clezio's sharp lens at the urban monolith the acquisitive "first" world cultures are growing all over the world. He humorously depicts one city, for example, as having been overtaken over by cars which snake everywhere, with drivers and pedestrians all obedient to red and green signals. The informed accuracy of his observations of poverty in places of this world in contrast to the wealth of the colonising peoples, is stark and disturbing. My reading of this novel is of a man uneasy with the limitations he sees in humanity and within himself. Hence the continual flight. Toward the end of the book he alights on the fact that that what he will find at the end of the torturous journey is himself. This book has a philosophic bent which I may not fully appreciate, but the character seemed to me to be on a rather pointless and self defeating search for the meaning of his existence which left him feeling continuously angry. The universal themes of humans struggle such as loneliness, sexuality, relationships, disappointment in oneself and the casual cruelties of life, all emerge in the boundless leap of thoughts in words which is this book.
February 10, 2022
When reading this book, I could already feel somewhere like I would be on a journey of life. Even though the protagonist was on probably every continent, doing something and examining the surroundings, I still felt deeply inside like he would be in the middle of mysterious space, racking his brains or what is the point of time, movement and all of events that once have taken place.
March 17, 2020
Tried this author again after the debacle of the last one. More of the same drivel. God knows who was handing out Nobel Peace Prizes when this book won it but I can promise you whoever was on that panel was definately NOT your average Joe or Jane. Complete piffle.
March 1, 2021
Un récit d'une incroyable cinématographie et délicatesse, l'irréel onirique qu'on a, peut être, tous vécu dans notre jeunesse.
July 19, 2023
* I did not finished this book. *
January 17, 2024
We are all on a journey to we don't know where.
Read
May 10, 2019Although Le Clezio is one of my favorite writers, I found The Book of Flights difficult. There is no plot, which I don't mind, but the book is just meandering ideas written in a poetic, sometimes philosophical way. There is no adventure, and even the narrator admits that he wanted to write an adventure, but couldn't. He seems disgusted with the world. It's highly experimental, unlike Desert or The Prospector or Mondo & Other Stories, all of which I loved. Before the late 1970s Le Clezio's writing was experimental, so I thought I'd try it out. The Interrogation was odd and I put it down, thankfully it was rented from an online archive. This book is simply ideas. Nothing happens. There is no story, and some of it is grotesque, such as when an animal has sex with a woman. It is hard to comprehend. What's the point? Is there one? Maybe that's the point. That the narrator took "flight" away from the world, but ended up still within it. There is no escape, and he says this often. He feels claustrophobic. He is a bit pessimistic. But what draws me to Le Clezio is his writing style. It's beautiful, especially in his later, more mature works. If you enjoy experimental work, you may love this, but you might find it's like listening to a rambling speech from someone inside a mental institution, someone who is tired of the world. But some parts of it were so good that expanding a single chapter would have made for a better book. I'll try "Giants" from Le Clezio next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 28, 2019
111213: this is only the most recent le clezio read, though it dates from 1969, but is consistent with most of his other writing before he made something of a turn to accessible, solid, characters to inhabit and experience his beautifully described worlds. almost all description, this book details human life in many worlds throughout time and place in modern life, mostly as existential crises of escape, of 'flight' in that sense...
near the beginning there is a passage where the narrative voice talks about how the room is prison, then the building, the city, is somewhere he must escape, how typical human life is a prison. love that passage...
and oscillates wildly from sensuous, immediate, engaging and then pretentious and frustrating... it is more the former than latter. again, as with most all le clezio, the writing is in translation- and probably in French too- lyrical, affecting, amazingly easy to read even in longer passages. also, there are no evident plots, nothing more than character who is centre for senses, nothing like a story arc...
but yes, high points cancel boredom and frustration. high points are more than most authors read.
note of surprise: have read almost all my le clezio this past year. must like him?
near the beginning there is a passage where the narrative voice talks about how the room is prison, then the building, the city, is somewhere he must escape, how typical human life is a prison. love that passage...
and oscillates wildly from sensuous, immediate, engaging and then pretentious and frustrating... it is more the former than latter. again, as with most all le clezio, the writing is in translation- and probably in French too- lyrical, affecting, amazingly easy to read even in longer passages. also, there are no evident plots, nothing more than character who is centre for senses, nothing like a story arc...
but yes, high points cancel boredom and frustration. high points are more than most authors read.
note of surprise: have read almost all my le clezio this past year. must like him?
February 4, 2015
It is written in the same style as Le proces-verbal, only more so; the main character is not really even a character, more of a moving point of view, there are no events at all, and the book is punctuated by short chapters called "autocritiques" in which the author tells you that he can't really write and how terrible the book is. It is the story of a man "fleeing" from himself, the world, words, silence, other people, emptiness, etc. (not really consistent) through most of the world; he walks in cities (near the beginning), nearly dies of thirst in a desert, visits various places in Asia, New York City, South America. Toward the end, he is in very poverty stricken areas and there is some social criticism of a vague kind mixed in. At least this is the appearance, but it's never certain whether anything is real or not, much of it seems to be symbolic or imaginary. I could take this if there seemed to be any real point, but there isn't any I could discover. I admit many individual passages were good, but they didn't add up to anything. On the whole, it seemed very adolescent and self-indulgent, and knowing it was written six years after Le proces-verbal (and in the middle of the 1968 events in France!) I was less inclined to be tolerant.
September 23, 2011
This is really quite an astonishing piece of work, and if it had been half its actual length I would probably have been able to finish it. If you are a writer of any kind then there are parts of this book which will speak to you, in ways you thought only you could imagine, and the effect is quite remarkable, unsettling at times. Unfortunately le Clezio drags it out for too long, and there is only so much monkey business a person can stand - when I reached the section where he chronicles the life story of a tree, I had to say "enough's enough"....
May 25, 2017
The flights of The Book of Flights then are flights away from stillness and the everyday. There are literal flights from cities; but also flights of thought, imagination and desire. Le Clezio, we are reminded at every angry interruption, every narrative thread left dangling, is both bored and disgusted by contemporary life, by the mindlessness of domesticity and the ennui of city living, consumer culture, property and material prosperity, of socially acceptable desires and tastes.
June 3, 2013
A book of disconnected fragments of fiction that is literally swirling and altogether taking the readers off guard. It projects flashes of images onto the mind like French movies. The self-criticism parts are novel and helps us connect the pieces and understand the writer. A good read for an open mind.
December 30, 2014
I sipped from this book over a 5-year period, a few pages here, 50 pages there, and recently finished it. Sad it's over. Seeing the world through Hogan/JMG's eyes has changed the way that I see the world, and hearing his thoughts have made help me to articulate my own.
February 5, 2017
So so much less than a sum of its parts. beautifully written but a very indifferent whole. Some of the descriptions have the beauty of the true poetry but... without any cohesion at all between them it fails spectacularly as a novel.
December 30, 2008
Okay, I know he's the 2008 Nobel Laureate in literature, and lots of things get lost in the translation, but trying to read this was like being made to eat steel shavings...
March 26, 2020
Fug și nu mă mai opresc.
November 12, 2016
this guy is really good at making mundane normal things or actions seem really strange and nighmarish
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews