Music-hall!

by Gaétan Soucy

Music-Hall ! ou l'épopée new-yorkaise dans l'entre-deux-guerres. Épopée moderne, faite de grues, de parpaings, de façades, de camions et de bennes dans "une ville debout", comme disait Louis-Ferdinand Céline de la Grosse Pomme dans Voyage au bout de la nuit. Ici, côté cour et côté jardin, le décor est celui de la démolition, des chantiers, des éboulis. Et dans ce bouillonnement, ce joyeux chaos, des êtres esseulés, écrasés par le roulis continuel de cette effervescence, essayant bon gré mal gré de tirer leur épingle du jeu : Xavier X. Mortanse, immigrant hongrois, tout juste débarqué sur le nouveau continent, apprenti démolisseur mais baraqué comme un oignon vert ; un "philosophe" doyen de l'ordre des démolisseurs ; un contremaître baptisé "la Terreur des murs", capable d'abattre à lui seul une maison à mains nues, irrité par la moindre note de musique ; des hommes massifs, bâtis comme des pianos, des pillards, des démolis démunis, une logeuse accroc à l'argent… Entre ces personnages, une haine sourde, des trafics financiers, des femmes fatales objets des premières amours, un soleil brutal, des rues bondées, des visages et des corps tremblant dans la lumière brûlante et les émanations d'asphalte surchauffée…

Music-Hall ! est un arc-en-ciel de destins à New York, plongés "dans un enfer capable de toutes les merveilles", où il ne manque rien : ni l'émotion, ni la petite musique verbale, ni la puissance d'évocation articulée autour de la démolition. Il n'a pas suffi à Gaétan Soucy de jouer sur un décor original. À la manière de John Dos Passos dans Manhattan Transfer, il a aussi ajouté un récit foisonnant, porté par un même élan, celui des temps modernes. --Céline Darner

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Canada

391 pages, Broché

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Gaétan Soucy est né à Montréal, le 21 octobre 1958. Après des études en physique et en mathématiques à l’Université de Montréal, il termine des études littéraires à l’Université du Québec, puis obtient une maîtrise en philosophie par un mémoire remarqué sur la théorie transcendantale des sciences dans la philosophie critique kantienne. Enfin, il consacrera quelques années à l’étude exclusive de la langue et de l’écriture japonaises.

Il publie son premier roman, L’Immaculée Conception, en 1994. Il donne ensuite L’Acquittement (Boréal, 1997), qui remporte le Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. Toutefois, c’est son troisième roman, La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes (Boréal, 1998), traduit en une vingtaine de langues, qui établit sa renommée internationale. Il est le lauréat du prix Ringuet de l’Académie des lettres du Québec.

En 2002, il publie Music-Hall! (coédition Boréal/Seuil) qui remporte le Prix des libraires du Québec, de même que le prix France-Québec/Jean-Hamelin. En 2003, il reçoit également le Grand Prix de littérature française hors de France (Fondation Nessim Habif) pour son œuvre et plus particulièrement pour Music-Hall!

Il était également professeur de philosophie au Collège Édouard-Montpetit à Longueuil.

Écrivain exigeant, Gaétan Soucy laisse derrière lui une œuvre qui se distingue par la somptuosité de l’écriture et par la profondeur de la pensée. Ses personnages, souvent des marginaux, atteignent une résonnance universelle dans leur questionnement désespéré devant le mystère de la vie, dans leur soif de pardon et d’apaisement.

--------

Gaétan Soucy was a Canadian novelist and professor.

He studied physics at Université de Montréal, completed a Master's degree in philosophy, and studied Japanese language and literature at McGill University.

His third novel, La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes (translated as The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Fischman) caused a sensation in Quebec and was immediately translated into more than ten languages.

Soucy lived in Montreal.

Reviews

[Selin Saracoglu Bayraklı · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ben bu kitabı elimden bırakamadım. Goodreads puanının düşük olmasına, Türkiye'de de neredeyse hiç okunmamış olmasına anlam veremiyorum. Dili güzel, hikâyesi artık duymak bile istemediğimiz klişelerle dolu değil, akıcı...

[☯Emily Ginder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually based on a Loony Tunes movie from 1955. You can view it here: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=...

The book takes 432 pages to tell the story while it only takes 7 minutes to view the film. Xavier finds himself on a NYC dock in 1929. He believes he has a sister Justine back in his home country of Hungary, where he lived near the Saint Lawrence River. (Yes, I know that Hungary and the Saint Lawrence River are not on the same continent.) He writes to Justine as he struggles to survive in New York. Everything is wacky and disjointed in this novel as we learn with Xavier who he really is.

The first part of the book was great with wonderful character development, but the second half dragged with one despicable person/act after another. It did take the author about 15 years to complete the book and this shows.

[Tubi(Sera McFly) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yazar kendi Şarlo'sunu yaratırken 1920'lerde fantastik ve absürd öğeleri gözümüze çok sokmayan bir nevi steampunk atmosferi kurmuş. Tam da müthiş komik bir kitap diyecekken okuru duvara toslattığı hüzün dolu bölümlerde şaşırtıyor. Enteresan bir kitap kısacası.

[Coco · Rating 1 out of 5]

I absolutely dispised this book. I didn't find the characters believable and the events made no sense to me. It just didn't work for me on any level.

[Quince · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Warning: My thoughts will definitely offend you if you liked this book. Remember, I’m expressing my opinion. My opinion is quite harsh. I’m not trying to insult anyone who enjoyed Soucy’s work.*

Absolute trash. I despised this book. Good God, it was awful.

Let’s begin. The characters. One dimensional non-compelling carcasses. The main character is Xavier, an idiot of excessive proportions. I loathed him. It was impossible to sympathize and feel genuinely invested in this lifeless husk of a pseudo-human. All the characters are pretty much underwhelming, but none so much as him. The dialogue. Lord. So inorganic. Just read the thing and you’ll get what I mean. The plot. What plot? This story had no fucking point.

I’ll calm down. But can I? This book was a masturbatory sensationalist piece of garbage. I bet the author thought he was so edgy and avant-garde when he wrote this. I’m sorry Soucy but you can’t just throw around the N-word, vaguely introduce some transgender elements and expect your book to be somehow good. The themes this author chose to touch on were treated with utter disrespect. I was seething throughout this whole book. God, I loathed it. It pushed no boundaries, on the contrary it was a regressive mess.

Now let’s touch on the sexual elements of this book (can we even call it that at this point, I feel like it would be insulting to assimilate this trash to genuine literature). SO MUCH gratuitous sexual content that served no other purpose than to shock the reader. Look I’m no prude, but I do believe in purpose. The author was visibly only using sex as a means of inciting a strong response in the reader. To what end? None. Soucy just wanted to do it. Good for you my guy, you wrote a book in which a frog jerks off, have you come yet? Jesus Christ.

You may be wondering why I continued reading this novel when I clearly despise it so thoroughly. Well, I was hoping it would get better. The whole book felt like exposition. I was always waiting for the real story to start, but it never did. Upon realizing this was it, this was the thing, I had already passed the halfway mark. I always give books a fair chance, and I was wrong to give this one one. What can you do? I should have never finished it, but I had read so much, I couldn’t really stop there. To be fair I let about two weeks elapse between reading the first and second half of this story. I just couldn't bear facing this cacophony after having basked in the glow of such fluffy wonders as "Lucky Jim" and "Changing Places". Eventually I submitted myself to the tortuous final stretch. After all, how could I possibly write such a scathing review without knowing how this anti-story played out?

Look, I hate this book. I could write an essay on how the writing was lazy (and pretentious), the plot was loose, the length of the book was immense for the actual content it delivered (I like bricks but make them have substance please!), the characters barely had any depth or development, etc, etc... But I won’t because I cannot bear thinking about “Music-hall!” a minute more than I have to.

Anyways, I’ll go cleanse my mind with Stendhal’s “Le rouge et le noir” in hopes of forgetting this mess. Happy New Year!


*** I read this book in French, the original language. Maybe it's better in translation? Probably not. ***

[Mary Soderstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gaétan Soucy died July 9, 2013, age 54, of a heart attack. What a shame that we will hear no new stories from this interesting and original writer.

Vaudeville! is one of his two best books, I think. The time is a 1929 that never happened. The place is a New York where the Order of Demolishers is tearing down buildings, and the Demolished are looking for shelter wherever they can find it. At a Demolition site Xavier, a young apprentice Demolisher, finds a little casket a with talking, singing female frog inside. He takes her back to his tenement room, and it looks for a while as if she will be his ticket out of his troubled life if he can work her into a vaudeville act.

But all is not as it seems in Gaétan Soucy’s third novel which is sometimes very funny and sometimes creepily prescient. The frog is not a cartoon character transplanted to a novel nor is Xavier the immigrant from Hungary he thinks he is. It turns out he is not even Xavier, but a creature just as unnatural as the devastated landscape left behind by the Demolishers.

Soucy has spent much time in Japan, and began the book in Nagasaki, site of the second A-Bomb detonation in 1945. The destroying civilization he describes in Vaudeville is completely concordant with the one which developed nuclear weapons, while the New York he paints looks like the pictures taken near Ground Zero after September 11, 2001. Subplots like the one telling the interwoven stories of a pretty hairdresser and a bed-wetting super-macho Demolisher only make the novel more complex and compelling. The ending, as Soucy’s fns have come to expect, is surprising, disturbing and weird.... "

[Kaisu Koskelin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read again, one of my all time favourites!! Very odd, very beautiful.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Arvosanani olisi pikemminkin 2½ kuin 2 tähteä.

Music-Hall ! kertoo nuoresta pojasta, Xavierista, joka sanoo matkanneensa 1900-luvun alkupuolen New Yorkiin Unkarista. Xavier värväytyy erään hajottajaryhmän oppipojaksi ja kirjoittelee samalla kirjeitä valtameren taakse jääneelle siskolleen Justinelle. Pian Xavierin elämä muuttuu, kun hän löytää työmaalta rasian, jonka sisällä on laulava ja tanssiva sammakko.

Kaikessa outoudessaan ihan mielenkiintoinen kirja. Vaatii aikaa ja kärsivällisyyttä edetäkseen (vaikka onkin helppolukuista kieltä) ja vasta lopussa salaisuudet aukeavat. Ilman Xavierin hassua käytöstä tai reilulla huumorilla tai outoudella varustettuna kirja ei olisi yltänyt kahteen tähteen. Jos haluat kokea WTF-elämyksiä, niin tämä voi olla juuri se oikea kirja luettavaksi.

[Alex Handyside · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave it my best shot: if I'm going to toss a book I'll usually give it to page 80. This one I got as far as page 100, and still it didn't grab me. Bye-bye.
And usually I bail because I can't relate to the characters, but this book was different - it was the story that sent me to sleep: the characters were really quite interesting!
The dapper frog was an ever-present distraction, yet the workplace death should have been but wasn't.
I dunno, I'd give it 4 stars for the characters, but 1 for the story - average is 2.5 (rounded down).

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het leest vlot en je blijft echt doorlezen maar de hele tijd zat ik me af te vragen wat ik nu eigenlijk aan het lezen was. Het verhaal is warrig, springt van het ene personage naar het andere zonder enige verklaring en uiteindelijk gaat zowat iedereen dood.

[Ka Vee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zeer bevreemdend, maar echt goed geschreven. En wat een fantasie heeft Soucy, knap.

[David Grassé · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange and beautiful.

[Allyssa]

I keep meaning to read this. This review at amazon intrigues me (in part) : "The translator thought it would be funny to give the English version a French title, as the original French version had an English title. Yeah, guys, ha ha, but "Vaudeville" doesn't at all capture the nature of this book and its vision of America as echo chamber, full of noises that may sound impressive to the busy ant-people down below, but are tinny and cheap in the vastness of infinite space. Think of those widescreen movies from the 50's and 60's like Giant or Two for the Seesaw, when directors hadn't yet learned how to fill the extra space so that you got this suffocating impression of useless inflation and empty bloat. That's America; and that's Music-Hall!

Soucy has described himself as a "rageaholic" and it's true, there are many passages in this book where you can practically see the veins bulging on the author's forehead. He has a way of setting up lots of details and potential byways for the story to follow, and then just terminating them all with one brief, scarifying scene, leaving you with an impression of unquenchable cosmic fury, of God's waste."

[Matti Karjalainen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Vastikään edesmenneen kanadanranskalaisen Gaétan Soucyn "Music Hall!" (Gummerus, 2004) on 1920-luvulle sijoittuva romaani nuoresta Xavier X. Mortensesta, joka ei oikein tiedä kuka on tai miten on päätynyt New Yorkiin. Jonkinlaisia muistikuvia hänellä on kuitenkin Unkariin jääneestä siskotytöstä, jolle on hyvä kirjoittaa kirje jos toinenkin, mutta joka ei koskaan tule vastanneeksi.

Xavier työskentelee pahamaineisessa hajoittajakillassa oppipoikana, mutta rakennusten tuhoaminen ei oikein suju odotetulla tavalla. Eräänä iltana hän löytää kuitenkin työmaalta pienen rasian, joka sisältää uskomattoman kauniisti laulavan sammakon - eikä siinä todellakaan ole vielä kaikki.

"Music Hall!" lienee yksi merkillisimmistä romaaneista, joita olen koskaan lukenut. Se on todennäköisesti myös niitä kirjoja, jotka jakavat mielipiteet melko tehokkaasti tasan (vrt. Tähtivaeltaja-lehden yhden tai viiden tähden elokuva-arviot). Minulle tämä ei vaan toiminut, mutta kirjan puolustukseksi on todettava, ettei sitä lukiessaan ainakaan pystynyt etukäteen päättelemään mihin suuntaan tarina lähtee viemään.

Lukekaa itse ja kertokaa mitä mieltä olitte!

[Hannah Petrunko · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read the whole book and still haven't caught the author's idea, though I've done my best. I had to be REALLY patient and attentive not to miss any details and to resist the temptation of throwing it away. Maybe I'm just too young for the book...The most terrible feeling was that I wasn't getting it, and it made me feel really exhausted. However, when some part of it became clear in the end of the book, it turned out to be something worthy. Not because of the plot. Because of the way the author commented on some problems. And the most interesting thing about the book is the language - sometimes banal, pretentious, sometimes just silly (nothing to add), something gorgeous, rich and juicy, but always obvious to have loads of information hidden inside the words. I'd like somebody to make all the points clear to me... Such books make me feel both helpless and witty. All in all, I wasn't enjoying it but I do now, having finished.

[Kierkegaard's Pancakes · Rating 2 out of 5]

A difficult read,
but two themes emerged, giving me some context and a reason to keep reading.

Those themes were:
1)A 1920's Steampunk setting, and
2)A modernized take on Frankenstein's monster.

This would have been a more enjoyable read if I had had those two ideas in mind when starting out.

Depending on how deeply you read into the authors story, you can see some social commentary on science. Though this was written years before the 2008 economic crisis, I couldn't help but see the "Demolishers" as a symbol of those who arbitrarily risked and lost the finances of millions.

This is a novel that may prove a harder then normal read, but the reward will be a story that stays with you. You will find yourself puzzling and pondering its themes and characters months after you've put it down.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rare caught-my-eye-while-walking-by-the-shelf find. Vaudeville! is a dark but highly imaginative and linguistically playful story of a mysterious delicate and neurotic young immigrant in the 1920s working on a demolition crew, until he finds a singing frog. Starts fun, gets deranged.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky story set in New York in the 1920's. Story of a demolition apprentice struggling to survive after arriving here from Hungary. Interesting read, it surprisingly keeps you wanting to figure out what is going on but dragged in the last portion of the book.

[Baki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I even don't wanna say anything about this book.

I didn't like.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A modern pinocchio story without happy ending.