A Singular Man

by Emmanuel Bove, Dominic Di Bernardi (Translation)

In a state of permanent tension and relieved moral paralysis, Jean-Marie Thély, an anguished bystander confined to the margins of polite society, has based the whole of his existence upon the idea that he is unlike others. He derives his singularity from his origins as an illegitimate child; bounced from one condescendingly charitable household to another only to be rejected by the bourgeois families that raised him. Restricted to an ordinary education, barred from an officer's career, he is unable to do what he wants and eventually becomes trapped in a life of utter indecision.

Genres: France, Fiction, Literary Fiction

181 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Emmanuel Bove, born in Paris as Emmanuel Bobovnikoff in 1898, died in his native city on Friday 13 July 1945, the night on which all of France prepared for the large-scale celebration of the first 'quatorze juillet' since World War II. He would probably have taken no part in the festivities. Bove was known as a man of few words, a shy and discreet observer. His novels and novellas were populated by awkward figures, 'losers' who were always penniless. In their banal environments, they were resigned to their hopeless fate. Bove's airy style and the humorous observations made sure that his distressing tales were modernist besides being depressing: not the style, but the themes matched the post-war atmosphere precisely.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man of low means and questionable background, narrator Jean falls in love with a woman from a wealthy family and suddenly finds himself navigating a social stratum much higher than his own. Among said family he feels out of place, inadequate, fraudulent. Things don’t go well for Jean—they never did and they probably never will. Like many of Robert Walser’s narrators Jean is a dreamer, a flâneur. He is content to float along without a steady job—or any job at all, ever. He is erratic in his dealings with people—both strangers and those he knows. He has an ambiguous relationship with his mother. He likes to be alone but being alone also frightens him. It’s engrossing to follow such a character, one who is so often uncomfortable in his own skin.

Divided into three parts, the book opens with a somewhat disorienting section that raises questions about Jean’s situation. It draws the reader in to the point where one craves answers. The retrospective second section divulges many of these answers. Part three returns to the present. The story’s design is simple and elegant, and Bove’s prose is brilliant in its subtlety and finesse. Jean’s first-person narration is captivating, threaded with incisive observations on life and society, particularly in post-WWI Paris, yet often universal in their relevance. This is yet another unassuming novel deserving of a wider readership, especially among those who don’t mind a meandering anti-plot, provided it’s narrated by an astute observer of life’s nuances.

I took off my overcoat, then my hat. I shut the window. I checked to see that the objects belonging to me were all in their places. It was a habit I had. All my habits were waiting for me. They had followed me into this room. They had grown more numerous with each passing year. Yet it would take very little to enable me to be free of them. All it would take would be one event that removed me from everyday life.

[Silvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ritengo sia un precursore di Modiano, romanzo in cui tutto avviene per caso, tutto è solo accennato ( a tratti ho provato irritazione) il protagonista oscilla nella mia opinione tra vittima delle circostanze e parassita. Scritto nel 1939 ha un tocco contemporaneo e dallo stile purissimo, devo approfondire quest'autore così amato da Rilke e Beckett.

[Christopher · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one sticks out in what we have in English of Bove’s work. Split into three parts, parts one and three compose the present split by an event. Part two we get the back story - a huge interruption in the narrative (it comprises half of the book) that wrecks it. Part two isn’t even narrated in the humorous voice typical of Bove’s books. Thoughts and scenes don’t proceed, they just flatline and change, and points of view are confusing, which is strange given Bove’s general precision. So there is very little pleasure after about a third of the book (which first third is really great and reads like an additional story you might be able to tack onto My Friends). In this book, all the seams are showing.

But the true difference is the unleavened self-pity of it all, the simple relation of pitiful detail. Bove is perhaps THE novelist of self-pity without seeming it because of the irony that lifts up the despair into an image of immobility, of stasis as the humorous, relatable mental state of a stuck in-betweenness that may never resolve. He makes an art of depicting despair as something entertaining. Not here. You get to a point where you are burning through part two’s blunders of naivete to find out how the present story resolves. For that effort, I might add, you go completely unrewarded. The boredom turns out to be relentless and the prospect of finishing the book feels like a jail sentence. Skip this one, it’s his worst.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

I spent good money on this somewhat rare (or somewhat scarce, I forget the proper distinction) book and it basically sucks. The first part (it is divided into three) is brilliant, some of the best stuff Bove ever wrote, but the second is dull and vague (even for this particularly vague writer) and the third is unendurable. I stopped reading with a mere 20 pages to go. I could not continue. There are so many books I must read and, who knows, I may be close to death. So I'm moving on to other things...

[Pascale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bove doesn't break new ground with this book, centered once again around a slippery and spineless antihero, but this is nonetheless a treat for for readers who appreciate an unreliable narrator. Jean-Marie, often called simply Jean, is the illegitimate child of a sub-lieutenant and a lumberer's daughter. After a fractured childhood spent in the care of various more or less reluctant well-wishers, he briefly drifts into the life of a pimp, out of sheer naivety according to him: "Je ne comprenais pas pourquoi le fait d'accepter de l'argent d'une femme se livrant à la prostitution était un délit." This is quite typical of Jean's presentation of himself as a hapless victim of circumstances, when in fact he knows better and paints quite a different picture in seemingly uncontrollable bursts of self-awareness. In spite of all his shortcomings and lack of social standing, Jean then manages to seduce and marry Denise Dechatellux, the daughter of one of the prominent families from Compiègne who took a hand in raising him. As is often the case, the opposition of her entire clan only serves to strengthen Denise's loyalty towards the supposed underdog, and Denise's brother Richard tries to set Jean up in business, to no avail since Jean is bone idle and doesn't even report to work. After a few years, the young couple is completely broke, when all of a sudden Denise is taken ill and dies. Jean doesn't even stick around for the funeral and leaves without waiting for Denise's will to be read. Like so many of his gestures, it is motivated both by the compulsive need to appear beyond reproach and the calculation that it sometimes pays to take the moral high ground. In this instance it does since Richard, impressed with Jean's withdrawal from the succession, chooses to pay him a monthly pension. The novel actually starts 4 years after Denise's death when Richard, disgusted to see that Jean has made no effort to look for employment and seems content to live off him for ever, has decided to stop payments. This is a fascinating character study of a man whose blatant bad faith exacts its own price. Disgusted by the hypocrisy and meanness of people around him, Jean is even more disgusted by his own behavior, but can't help himself. Whenever he has a chance to make good among decent people, he fouls up because ordinary petit bourgeois happiness offends him like a lack of good taste. Definitely one of Bove's best. Jean's narrative is both elliptical and excruciatingly candid, deeply bitter and profoundly sad.

[Mark Broadhead · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure where it went about a quarter in, but it wasn't interesting. Sort of tried to be quirky. But wasn't.