The Tutu: Morals of the Fin de Siècle

by Léon Genonceaux, Iain White (Introduction)

The nineteenth-century French writer and publisher Léon Genonceaux (1856―?) is as much of an enigma as those two legendary enfants terribles whom he was the first to Arthur Rimbaud and the Comte de Lautréamont. After he had done so, a conviction for publishing indecent literature followed, and Genonceaux fled to London, returning to Paris around 1900 and then disappearing forever around 1905, leaving behind a wild, stupefying masterpiece called The Tutu . The Tutu is one of those mythical beasts―a great lost book; a book that, if it had been published when it was written (in 1891), would have been one of the defining works of late nineteenth-century French literature. In fact it was published, but was never distributed to bookstores, and today only six copies of the original edition survive. Willfully scatological, erotic and gleefully Nietzschean in its dismemberment of fin-de-siecle morality, The Tutu is at once a sort of ultimate Decadent delirium and also a proto-modernist novel in the vein of Ulysses . Its existence was first posited in 1966 by a famous literary hoaxer, and until a handful of copies turned up some years later, in the early 1990s, it was presumed to be a fabrication. This is the first English translation.

Genres: Fiction, France, Novels

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkably fun and imaginative, gross in spots, sure - characters dining on rotten brains and sputum, detailed slimy snot eating - but it's fun and paradoxically life-affirming grossness, and even the thorough cynicism and absolute misanthropy comes off as energizing. So willfully and intentionally decadent it reads more as a sustained joke than a black bible of perversion, though a bible's worth of perversions are in its pages - a deformed Siamese twin prostitute birthing a four-headed monster which in turn is suckled by our protagonist given milky breasts by a cutting edge scientist, a conversation on the pros and cons of shitting, green grass snakes sucking a whore's tits (lots of titty sucking here), and a plot driven by our protagonist's urge to fuck his mother. And more! All this rendered with pulpy quickness and a tripping-over-itself modern inventiveness that presages Jarry and Roussel. It is in fact so enjoyably readable that part of me suspects a hoax... though the intro assures us it is a great lost novel from 1891. Refreshingly pointless titty sucking shit.

[Francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4/5

Testo di una modernità dissacrante, nonostante la prima pubblicazione sia del 1891.
La narrazione segue le peripezie di Mauri de Noirof, un dandy smemorato che attraversa una Parigi grottesca, muovendosi tra amori incestuosi, feticismi bizzarri e incontri surreali, come quello con una donna a due teste. Genonceaux, editore "maledetto" di Rimbaud e Lautréamont, riversa nel testo una amoralità gioiosa e feroce, smantellando pezzo dopo pezzo le ipocrisie della borghesia ottocentesca attraverso il nonsenso e il paradosso.

La prosa è un ibrido audace che mescola lettere, copioni teatrali e dialoghi brillanti, anticipando di decenni il surrealismo e il teatro dell'assurdo. Entusiasmante per la sua capacità di risultare più fresco e scandaloso di molta narrativa contemporanea, il libro è un inno alla libertà immaginativa più sfrenata.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

On paper, this scandalous buried novel screams cult classic. Atlas Press’s beautiful hardback reprint, with its enigmatic cover art and illustrations, enhances the feel of this novel as a true oddball treasure. The text itself is an incoherent soup of surreal set-pieces, Rabelaisian tangents, parodies of publishing figures of the period, and hilariously grotesque body horror, all of which makes for an entertaining divertissement of sheer indecent befuddlement that works as a hip curio for one’s bookshelves, if not a transgressive reading experience.

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Equal parts Lautreamont, Huysmans, Jarry and Purulent Spermcanal. If Lautreamont set out to smack the very face of God, Genonceaux instead chose to spin him around, stop the rotation suddenly with Moe's fish-hook and caper behind him for a proper bumming. Disgusting, juvenile, irreverent and stupid all at once - this book has nothing to offer anyone not interested in symbolist era fashionable satanism. Where Lautreamont and Huysmans wrote with brilliant prose and Jaryy with comparable intelligence, Genonceaux lacks in all these categories and more. Completely derivative, possibly apocryphal and completely bereft of any value outside the context of his superior peers - it's not so very hard at all to understand why The Tutu was ignored. Having said that - I don't see how you can call yourself a fan of such literature and avoid this book. Just because Carcass was the best and Impetigo was the most entertaining of the goregrind bands doesn't mean there's no place for Purulent Spermcanal - they were, after all, a combination of the best of the greats and perhaps listen to them more than their peers - they scratch a funny itch for me, and I guess in the same way Genonceaux will appeal to some. Still dogmatic and merely invertedly reverent, these bastard-sons of Rabelais via mostly the Panurge chapters offer a good time for those that thrill at the thought of offending the squares. Had Ed Gein read this - he might have just settled in to a good bowl of deer chili instead. Had Albert Fish read it however - there's no telling what cruelty he might have unleashed on humans in an attempt to out-do the merely literary offences offered by Genonceaux. If you REALLY want to be horrified - read Jakov Lind or Gert Ledig instead - if you seek a decadent experience in the symbolist mold offered by painters, and contemporaries, like Rops and Ensor - check out The Tutu.

[Jay Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fabulously gross and absurdist book, hilarious in places, sometimes just for its taboo breaking. Only three stars, though, because it could have been so much more, and because so many avenues are left unexplored. To give the Marquis de Sade his due, in the 120 Days of Sodom, he tried to exhaust his subject; but then, I guess, he had plenty of time in which to do so. Genonceaux's book provides just a taster of what could have been the most obscene, outrageous and hysterically funny book ever published. Instead, that prize goes to Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's. ;-)

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Capolavoro che allo stesso tempo non lascia nulla, un insieme di tanti (troppi?) estremi, un susseguirsi di scene da teatro dell'assurdo. Una stravaganza da avere nella propria libreria.

[Una (EX) precaria tra i libri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un applauso a Storie Effimere per il coraggio (e la perizia) nel pubblicare questo libro che, a quanto pare, è reietto in ogni secolo. Perchè? Datato 1891, in realtà vide la luce solo un secolo dopo per problemi di censura e alterne vicende, soprattutto grazie ad un critico che studiò il testo, lo attribuì all’editore francese Genonceaux e cercò di ridare vita al testo (purtroppo senza successo… nel 1966 ancora nessun editore voleva pubblicarlo).
Una premessa è dovuta: è per stomaci forti ed è impossibile che non vi infastidisca in qualche modo. Ce n’è per tutti: ped0fil1a, viol3nz4 sugli animali, copr0fag1a, v1olenz4 sulle donne, 1nc3sto, necr0fag1a... Se siete particolarmente sensibili anche solo a uno di questi temi… sicuramente troverete difficili da ‘ingoiare’ alcune pagine (o molte, dipende). Devo dire che mii ha molto aiutata la postfazione di Silvia Amalia Di Cocco, che contestualizza il valore e il senso dell'opera.
Il protagonista, Mauri de Noirof, è l’esteta decadente per eccellenza in quello che è stato definito il romanzo decadente definitivo. Per intenderci, Dorian Gray in confronto è una verg1n3lla. Vive solo in funzione del bello e della trasgr3ssione alle convenzioni (anche a suo discapito) in una sorta di costante stato di sonnambulismo cosciente (pare infatti essere affetto da momenti di totale amnesia, nei quali non ricorda anche lunghi periodi di tempo della sua vita).
Quest'ultimo aspetto è interessante, poiché traduce in realtà la noia del vivere tipica dell’eroe decadente, per sfuggire alla quale è alla costante ricerca di esperienze intense (le uniche, forse, che meritano di essere ricordate?). Molte delle grottesche stranezze con cui Mauri ha a che fare rientrano comunque pienamente nell’epoca in cui si presume fosse stato scritto il testo: le stesse cose che disgustavano la morale comune, erano poi fonte di lauti guadagni per chi sapeva sfruttare la morbosa curiosità di quelle stesse persone. Wunderkammern, fiere e baracconi delle stranezze umane (i cosiddetti freak show), rappresentazioni grandguignolesche spopolavano, a riprova che l’uomo è sempre stato affascinato da ciò che lo disgusta.
L’autore voleva chiaramente provocare il pubblico dell’epoca fino al disgusto e demolire i pilastri sui quali si basava la società: la famiglia, la religione, la politica. Inoltre gioca con i generi letterari: vengono citati frammenti (anche lunghi) di altri testi, sequenze oniriche, lettere, uno spartito musicale, brevi scene teatrali, frammenti di poesie … in un grande gioco/riflessione sul genere letterario e sulla sostanza dell’essere umani.
Più che un divertissement, io l’ho letto come una denuncia della degenerazione progressiva della società: d’altronde il sottotitolo dell’opera è Costumi di fine secolo.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work that could only have come after the secretion of Maldoror, a piece of despicable genius. This book, however, is unique in its more lighthearted, comedic tone that comes lightly salted with specks of fine, bitter sarcasm.

[V.🪼 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sono alquanto confusa dopo questa lettura ed anche un po’ schifata per determinate immagini.
Però è stata una lettura alquanto bizzarra ed insolita, mi ha colpito il modo in cui l’autore ti schiaffeggia a due mani la realtà e te la serve senza rimorso alcuno.
Consigliato per chi ha lo stomaco forte perché qui dentro chi più ne ha, più ne metta

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Think I must have missed something. Boring and unpleasant. Don't think a book has actually made me gag before - bleugh!

[TriCedratops · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delightfully bizarre

[rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

truly the sister to Maldoror (which was first published by Genonceaux), this covers social decay, incest, skin-flayed-art-dealings, quadrupleted baby body horror, politics, the godlike prowess of 19th century science, burlesques of political/religious trials of its day, scatology and eschatology, cannibalism and can-can dancing, penile guillotines and love and envy of all types.

the book also acts as an affront to itself; just getting good, working up prose to impress and then instantly turning to something else. the work stops just when the mother/son coupling that has been seducing us since chapter 1 tries to become vulgar, another misdirection from a purposely vulgar work. loved it. this protagonist is less sickly than Huysmans' Des Esseintes, I wanted more of him and less of his wife, though typing that out now makes the inclusions of the invectives against her, and social constructs like marriage as a whole, more thematic. Lautremont's book is more well written, more absurd and more cruel, but I mention it favorably, not to overshadow Tutu but to compliment it.

but why did the tutu kill *her*..? It was played for laughs (it worked) but I felt like there was a further joke, a logic to it that I missed.

[Sean Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended surrealist artifact chock full of of juvenile humor (think Mel Brooks on crack!) and enough shock imagery to rival a David Cronenberg film. Even if you think the style gets old quick the encyclopedic references to fin de siecle Paris make it a curiousity worth your time. My only qualm with Atlas Anti-classic is having the multutude of footnotes imprisoned in the back of the book instead of on the page you are reading since it slows down the process of reading significantly making full immersion somewhat difficult.

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scandaloso, bizzarro, disturbante e pensi ogni pagina ki quasi “cosa cazzo sto leggendo” non so se lo coniglio ma se avete intenzione di leggerlo dovete avere lo stomaco forte e la mente molto aperta perché è completamente surreale.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

So scandalous a mist ate it up. Paris. City of magik and filth. Fin de siècle. Delirious apocalyptic orgy. And fun! There is something to be said for partying like it's 1899. Genonceaux. Presumably. Writing under a piss-taking pseudonym. Another drop-out who dropped so far out he virtually disappeared (like Rimbaud, whom he published). And The Tutu almost disappeared too. One print run, basically gobbled-up by the firmament, but a very few copies floating out there (this edition contains a photograph in the introduction of the original, wonderfully becovered book). It would have been thought lost. Well, I cannot be the only one who, having encountered it - this lost treasure - once it finally reappeared in the early 1990s (2013 in English), am having a little trouble assimilating the fact that it actually exists. Hold it up curiously to the light. Did I actually just read you? Have I died and unbeknownst enter'd another parallel realm? This is literature as terrorist action. And as so often is the case w/ the best, most scurrilous of such actions: if someone were to violently loathe human society w/ the same fastidiousness as Mr. Genonceaux but were to be unable to find such animated amusement in so doing, such a person would be capable of visiting unspeakable horrors upon the earth. Indeed, The Tutu is rife w/ unspeakable horrors. But they are horrors to gladden the long-horrified mutinous monsters of the margins who crave their violent attacks on society and good taste between the covers of limited edition screeds like this one. But no. Not a screed. Not a screed at all. This is a little novel. And it is wildly inventive, not the least bit pretentious, startlingly profane, and straight-out heretical. People have been hung since time immemorial for writing stuff not half so wild as this astonishing thing from 1891. I want to believe Alfred Jarry came across a copy of that first suppressed run of The Tutu. It is the only way my world can remain intelligible at this moment. That Jarry would start doing what he did later in the same decade this thing happened, but have no knowledge of this thing, does not frankly pass the smell test. Jarry is more the flighty genius, though. He comes clearly from Bergson and Lautréamont. This thing, though in constant flight as well (and cribbing from Lautréamont), is earthy. Down and dirty. It is deadly careful to make each joke land. And there are no end to calculated hilarities herein. I guess it all goes back to Rabelais. Profound and world-modeling stuff w/ a whole lot of sacrilege and no shortage of body functions. Laughter of finitude in the abyss of the infinite. This book is one of the most astonishing objects that has ever been in my possession.

[Zaubin Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written... still not entirely sure it isn't a modern hoax, as I have heard some say. But very creative nonetheless. The failure of it, I suppose, is that there isn't much of a point. Or rather, it seems that the entire aim of the author is to offend or disgust the reader. But there really isn't anything to be learned, unless the conclusion is that humans are monstrosities, morality is inconsequential to life, all people are terrible, etc. The (pro, I suppose)tagonist drifts through life committing atrocities, and somehow remains aloof enough to not be concerned with the effects of his actions. There is a sort of zen-like being in the world and not of it... sort of. I enjoyed reading it overall, but not really one of my favorites, in that it didn't really make me think about anything. But like I said, the writing is clever and creative. Another possibility is that the purpose of this book is to be one giant insult to a person or persons that the author didn't like very much, the protagonist being a representative and his actions a caricature of said person.

[Silvia Amalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Il tutù” è un libro oltraggioso, assurdo, comico. Potrei raccontarvi la trama, le avventure surreali del giovane Mauri de Noirof, ma non voglio rovinarvi la sorpresa, perché in questo romanzo succede di tutto: aspettatevi un viaggio di nozze in mongolfiera in compagnia di una ranocchia, visioni apocalittiche di coccodrilli che cadono dal cielo, un’amante a due teste e un’altra che allatta serpenti, uno spartito musicale scritto da Dio in persona, un albero che produce esseri umani, uno scienziato pazzo, e la corrispondenza tra l’Elettrice di Sassonia e la Duchessa d’Orleans che parlano di andare di corpo. Letteralmente.

Per il suo primo e unico romanzo, Genonceaux ha scelto di non guardare in faccia a nessuno e il risultato è un viaggio unico nel suo genere. Folle. Divertente. Un po’ sacro e un po’ profano.

[Timothy Holst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jarry + Lautreamont + Huysmans. What could be better?