Nicolas pages

by Guillaume Dustan

« Je me lève, j'écris, je me lève, je cherche un haut, je tombe sur un tee-shirt de Nicolas, le vert, c'est celui du train, il sent, du temps passe, je me représente son visage au dessus du tee-shirt quand il est arrivé, ses yeux que je croyais bleus et qui sont verts, (. . . ) je pense que je l'aime, je pense que son tee-shirt pue en fait. »
Guillaume, écrivain, flashe sur Nicolas, écrivain, fors d'une signature en Belgique. Les prémices d'une histoire d'amour « je t'aime - tu me jettes » sont posées. L'occasion de faire le point sur ses dépendances, sur sa façon d'aimer, en faisant la rétrospective de ses dernières histoires.

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Fiction, Gay, France

538 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[James Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

An "improvised morning orgy" is how Nicolas Pages starts, auspiciously. We're in an apartment in Paris in May 1998 after a night at the club and the partying is kicking on into the daylight hours. "I've never known how. To live. Too hard," Guillaume Dustan writes, as himself, "Thank God there are drugs". Present at the orgy is one Nicolas Pages who Guillaume met at a recent writing event: "Vodka on ice. I looked at him. He looked at me. That's when it started to get serious". Nicolas is a Swiss author and artist, "like me but not like me". Like everyone in this novel, Nicolas is probably a real person (a gossipy glossary of characters and places is more amusing than enlightening) but try Googling him and you'll find only what might be traces. You will, however, find this book. Read more on my blog.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book intrigued me by its intense detail, but after a while, it seemed indulgent and egotistical. The most interesting parts of the book were the essays he included about gay life and its possibilities and controversies. I had a lot more respect for the rest of the book when he put his words in an intelligent, structured form instead of the endless rambles of the rest. Now that I think about it though, it was great to read something so brutally honest and unabashed. Even in writing about my own life for myself, I think there are things I don't want to write, but he just puts them all out there for everyone. Freeing. I just wish it had come in a smaller dose.

[Nicklaus Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dustan’s work reinforces his prominence in contributing to the late-AIDS era effervescence of sex, drugs, politics, freedom, and the desire to be loved. A meandering collection of stream of consciousness, narrative, politically-charged essays, and journal entries, Nicolas Pages emerges as another foray into the gay community of Paris in the 90’s after the scourge of AIDS.

Unapologetically himself, Dustan is a force whose lines, whether they be about E or having hardcore sex, contribute to a new wave of gay acceptance that assert visibility. I feel incredibly lucky to have access to his work; to feel reminiscent of a world and scene in which I didn’t exist but feel so universally connected to by a desire to be touched, listen to house music, and flirt a little. rest in peace Guillaume Dustan, thank you for everything.

[Clem McNabb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finding it difficult to write this review. I think I will re read this book a few times in my life. There is so much to read, that I don’t think is possible to get just on the first go. I did not expect to be so moved - I read In my room a while ago and really liked it, super sexy, smart, funny, stylish. Nicolas pages is all that and then some more. There are more parts that don’t necessarily work in this book than in his others, but I think that is part of what made it so moving to me, and fully realised in a way. For me, this book felt like a long love letter to trying, trying to love, live, die, party, etc, over and over again. There is a deep sense that his relationships are not actually shallow/ transactional but deeply, deeply felt. Just because of the pace he chooses to move through life, does not make it callous. This is Dustan at his most vulnerable I think. I have more to say but also I have much to think about this book and I would like to re read. This review is a bit all over the place, but so is the book.

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pulsing, shimmering, living prose. I want to kiss the translators on their foreheads.

[brennan 🕊️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I jerked off thinking of him, repeating aloud I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, until I came (my ejaculations got stronger and stronger as I rediscovered the sacred character of sex).”

My fourth Guillaume Dustan work (in translation), and I can comfortably say I love his voice. It is incredible to be able to read about complex gay men who own and assert their faggotry—especially HIV-positive gay men in the 1990s who love sex, drugs, and dance music. The mentor I can only have through literature.

Nicolas Pages is a love story. Dustan seemingly sets off to write about his failed affair with artist/writer Nicolas Pages, but the text repeatedly morphs form and structure as his love flowers. In the end, it is as much a love story about writing, dance, sex, music, drugs, clubbing, faggots, his family, exes Nelson and Stephane, as it is about Nicolas. I really appreciate his challenge of respectability politics by writing without reserve. A provocateur. It is a text filled with personal philosophy, extensive reference, humor, sexuality, literary criticism, politics. It is pornographic, not just for his abundant and explicit writing about sex, but also for his deeply personal explication of his own humanity.

“We all have difficult lives.”

This is certainly Dustan’s most ambitious of his first four books, in content and form, and I am not sure it is so approachable for an unacquainted reader. I’d start with his earliest work first.

There is so much to write, but I’ll end it here with some lines I really like:

“It’s ultimately from dance that I derive my authority. From some of my writing, too. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta…”

“No good DJ ends without a last delicate caress after the lovemaking.”

“I hated my body, that body that wanted men. I hated my dick, my balls, which were perfectly normal, but which I would have liked to be enormous to prove to others that it was not true that I wasn’t a man. My thick body hair was a kind of supreme joke. I seriously believe that if I had a really small dick and no hair, I would have committed suicide.”

“I think that everyone should do the same thing: recount your life. Get to know yourself. Give yourself a form. Put yourself in order.”

“I also wanted to write about sex for militant reasons related to the situation after AIDS. Because of AIDS, sex had become evil. I couldn’t accept that.”

(((Also, I wish the editors/translators had done another read to catch typos/errors in translation, just as I had wished so for the first volume containing his earliest work—alas, there is probably a tiny budget and it is likely a miracle this translation exists at all. They should ask me to do a read through before publishing the next Dustan work.)))

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Live, laugh, love Guillaume Dustan! I’m always on the search for “my” kind of fags and he definitely is one! It’s rewarding to find a kindred spirit in the legacy in his work of unabashed sexual and individual freedom (with such style none the less)! 🕶️

[heyyonicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

J'ai rarement lu un livre aussi fort, dense, pesant et passionnant. C'est une aventure émotionnelle, une véritable traversée d'une période de la vie de l'auteur, sans que l'on puisse vraiment identifier laquelle. Ou plutôt, on sent que le récit est fait pour entretenir une sorte de confusion quant à la façon de cerner réellement ce qui se passe, ce qui se vit, comment les sentiments se développent pour une personne puis pour une autre... Comme le dit très bien Thomas Clerc dans sa préface, c'est un véritable roman d'amour, et Dustan sait retranscrire la multitude d'effets que cet état peut produire en la personne amoureuse. Plusieurs livres s'enchâssent dans le même livre, et il est extrêmement plaisant de passer de la fiction à la théorie à n'importe quel autre genre d'une page à une autre. C'est clairement une littérature radicale, intransigeante et engagée. J'ai l'impression que ce livre s'est intégré à ma vie sans que je ne m'en sois rendu compte et j'ai déjà hâte de le retrouver et le redécouvrir dans les années qui viendront.

[Trevor Shealy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeremy Atherton Lin pls take note

[grostulate]

If I had ever met Dustan in person, I would likely find him absolutely insufferable, but you have to admit that it's not everyone that can publish 500 pages of bitchy, diaristic rambling - that's actually a good laugh to read. Respect!

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best way to get rid of an obsession is to give in.

[Luke McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A love story.

[June Gormin · Rating 3 out of 5]

i have some very complicated feelings about this book. on the one hand, it’s an excellent oral history of french gay culture in the time of AIDS. on the other hand, it took me forever to get through and holy shit it gets repetitive. there’s nothing wrong with that, but it feels like it could benefit from several good trims. like massive trims. there are parts that are five stars, and a lot of parts that are two stars, there are parts that are more and less but it’s just one of those books that feels unfinished. it’s hard because it’s a posthumous release, something that he did right before he died, which makes it more sentimental. i think it feels very raw and real, but at the same time it’s written in the same tone the whole time. it has junky-like descriptions but is about 200 pages longer, and it just gets suffocatingly dull after a bit. there isn’t a central story, a core theme, a plot. there is guillame dustan being guillame dustan, fucking guys and getting fucked, thinking about one guy every hundred pages, and “jerking off, smoking a joint, taking e, and going to sleep.” the momentum just isn’t there to make this book great.

[Nikolaj Tange Lange · Rating 5 out of 5]

a wild ride of sex, drugs and house music, wild rants and trivial details, love stories, more sex, more drugs, and then suddenly 40 pages of rejected articles with tributes to Greg Araki's highly underrated 'Nowhere' and radically liberalist body politics, and though it takes some effort to get into, it's pretty fantastic to read this obsessively transgressive text by someone who was 32 in 1998 when I was 17 and only just about to attend my first pride parade; I didn't just read a book, I read a human being, and though there were parts where I thought, wtf are you on about, I'm still grateful I was allowed it all, and now just have to re-adjust to the thought of books that, no matter how great they are, are still just books

[Keith Marran · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I suppose this book is useful to someone, not me. I was a baby-gay in the 90s and trying to figure out what that meant in a time when HIV was pretty much a death-sentence. I cannot relate to his experience at all.

I can appreciate that Dustan wanted to write something sexual and free and queer that wasn't another dying-of-aids view of what it meant to be gay at the time, but he and so many others swung so far in the opposite direction that they traded tragedy for a solipsistic way of life that feels meaningless to me.

There are a lot of great writers from the queer 90s that have a lot more to say about being queer: Ethan Mordden, David B. Feinberg, even John Preston. I didn't find anything of value in Nicholas Pages.

[Julian Ranz · Rating 5 out of 5]

a VERY original and brilliant work.
an absolutely unapologetic and raw account of being gay in the post-AIDS and post-shame era in Paris filled with art, music, sex, drugs, energy. A combination of stream of consciousness journal entries, philosophical essays, a grocery list, a film draft, a random love story dedicated to RuPaul, excerpts of noises in a club. Took me a bit to get into (it's very dense at times) but I am wowed by the brutally honest account of himself and of truly feeling alive with no fucks given.

[Will Lyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book (and Dustan’s writing in general) have become bibles to me. Nicholas Pages is by far one of my favorite contributions to the AIDS canon, so full of wit and heart and prescience. I know that I’ll be coming back to NP for the strength of the narration alone, and for the way it speaks to queerness as I know it.

[Sergio Caredda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro non semplice da approcciare, immagino ancora meno da tradurre. Forte, ma che spiega il perché di ogni scelta di stile. A lunghi capitoli di romanzo si alternano veri e propri saggi, che ne fanno un collage unico e dirompente.

[Lucas Lauterjung · Rating 3 out of 5]

rambling.

[Siggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good and quite mundane in some parts I really enjoyed it overall tho

[Marc Rosen · Rating 3 out of 5]

beautiful and stunning despite the fact that in opposition to bourgeois literary censorship he includes every time he sh*ts

[anon · Rating 5 out of 5]

bible

[Ava]

Early work of autofiction. Lovely

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tedious, but I can appreciate the project. Too long, definitely, and seems more like an archival effort than something narrative or intriguing to read front to back. Great insight into autofiction and the correlation between being gay and doing drugs, perhaps the best parts.

[Josh Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A challenging read at times, but totally fucking worth it. Guillaume Dustan was writing so-called "alt lit" nearly 20 years before that term even emerged — and with more style than almost anyone to emerge from that "scene."

[Andrea · Rating 1 out of 5]

J'hésite à dire que c'est une grosse merde, mais bon, disons que c'est...chiant. Un foutoir amassant brides de conversation, morceaux de romans inachevés, extraits de journaux intimes, et essais sur la condition homosexuelle des années '90-2000; le tout servi à la sauce "moi, je", et pimenté de scènes chaudes des Marais. Au moins il y a ces dernières pour capter le lecteur, mais mêmes celles-ci, répétitives et mécaniques, deviennent lassantes à la longue.

OK, d'accord, il n'y a pas que les aventures d'un mec qui aime baiser sans capote; on y trouve aussi une réflexion sur son statut (à l'époque, quand il parcourrait, perruqué, le PAF) de provocateur auto-désigné, mais ça tourne vite en rond, autour de sa personne, bien entendu. Le pompon c'est peut-être le chapitre intitulé "Mes livres: pourquoi et comment" Au secours, bastante chico! Mais rest in peace quand même.