The Suspended Vocation

by Pierre Klossowski, Jeremy M. Davies (Translator), Anna Fitzgerald (Translator)

Made available in English for the very first time by NY based Small Press, Pierre Klossowski's debut novel, The Suspended Vocation, fictionalizes and satirizes the great erotic artist, philosopher, and iconoclast's brief, wartime flirtation with the priesthood, portraying the Church as a haven for conspiracy, idolatry, perversion, and even atheism. Written in the form of a disapproving monograph on an anonymous, confessional novel (itself titled The Suspended Vocation), it is the story of the hapless Jérôme, whose lust for holiness leads him astray in a cloistered world full of ideological and physical temptations.

Sometimes a knowing critique of "religious fiction," sometimes a wicked self-parody of Klossowski's own lifelong obsessions, and sometimes a sacerdotal spy novel, The Suspended Vocation is one of the strangest and most audacious debuts in twentieth-century literature.

“I discovered Klossowski by chance, really, reading his novel The Suspended Vocation while waiting for a friend in a bookstore. I thought it was very strange, and ended up buying it. It takes the form of a disquisition on a book that never actually arrives . . . about quarrels inside the church, between different factions in the Catholic church . . . The work is a combination of perversity and theology . . . a form of perversion as philosophy.”
— Raúl Ruiz, filmmaker, interviewed by Adrian Martin

“The Polish-Parisian writer-philosopher-artist-actor Pierre Klossowski lived a long productive life as a hospitable pervert. The two films Raúl Ruiz made from his novels are unique in cinema because Klossowski’s books are unique in 20th century literature—short but labyrinthine, obsessed with institutional hierarchies but uniquely modernist, strange in their attachment to detail.”
— A. S. Hamrah, author of The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002–2018

“Perhaps it’s an anti-novel, a Baroque allegory, a Borgesian meta-fiction, a history of theological disputes, a confessional memoir, an early theory of camp . . . ? Klossowski suspends the suspension of disbelief to reveal good faith and bad faith, virtue and vice to be vectors in an echo chamber of infighting. Stunningly translated by Anna Fitzgerald and Jeremy M. Davies, The Suspended Vocation shows that the starkest devaluations, simulated disputes, and sordid passions are haunted and conditioned by the continuous promise of a miracle.”
— Felix Bernstein, artist and author of Burn Book

Genres: Fiction, Religion

98 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 1950

About the author

Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905, Paris – August 12, 2001, Paris) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.

Reviews

[Domitori]

The first novel by Klossowski, published in 1950, adapted for TV by Raúl Ruiz in 1978, and translated into English last year, with an introduction by Brian Evenson. TSV is a preface to a book with the same title that doesn’t exist, or rather this preface IS the book. Or, as Evenson says in the introduction, “it’s a little like a John le Carré novel in which anyone might be a double or even triple agent, but instead of spies you have priests and nuns, and much of the plot and overt explanation has been drained away. “ Disorienting - but not nearly as vertiginously disorienting as the Ruiz film, where each of the characters is played by two different actors, and the particles of the black-and-white film-within-a-film are not merely contained within the “main” color film but are properly mixed, disturbed and freely floating as in a suspension (pun intended).

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is one to do when the truth is suspended? How is one to tell of this suspension, of this truth? For already we find ourselves intertwined in a demonic play of images and impulses.

Thus Klossowski does not give us an account of his loss of faith, or even the tale of a loss of faith. Instead, we have a narrative which parades itself as a piece of literary criticism, written on a work also titled La Vocation suspendue (we are thus at another level of disconnect from anything which might be considered "the truth"). This tale is at once that of a loss of faith, perhaps, as Jerome finds himself forced to abandon the church which he had entered. Of course, it is not so simple. For the church is made up of non-believers, and the laypeople are the ones who have embraced the faith. There is also an inquisition of sorts going on, where the faithful (the ecclesiastical) are made to abandon their "holy" vocation, just as Jerome does. But in abandoning the way of the clothe, returning to the people, might Jerome not keep, or regain, a faith which he had never lost except when confronted with the dogma of the Church? Is this the tale of a loss of faith, or of an altered faith re-called? Who's to say - for the whole text, as all of Klossowski's writings and thought, circle around the question of how to say the unsayable. Is there more, or less, fidelity to what cannot but remain infidelitous, beneath these "masques de forces obscures" (77)?

"Peut-on parler des forces démoniaques sans les nommer" (37)? Is the labyrinthine conceit of this récit not precisely to foreground the ineluctable layers of fiction and figure which must be sifted through only to find the "truth" which could never abide, or be abided by, the name of "truth"?

[WillemC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deze novelle bevat filosofische en religieuze bedenkingen van een anonieme commentator die een exemplaar heeft gelezen van een anoniem werk genaamd "De gefnuikte roeping". Dat verzonnen origineel krijgen we nooit te lezen en dat is spijtig: wanneer er tussen het moeilijk (en soms niet) te volgen gefilosofeer af en toe eens een narratief voorval uit die oorspronkelijke tekst opduikt, levert dat best wel goede stukken op, al liggen die veel te ver van elkaar verwijderd. Ook het nawoord slaagt er niet in de zaken voldoende te verhelderen. Gestopt op p. 45.

"Andermans wanhopige situaties bedroeven hem niet, maar brengen hem integendeel in extase, hij voelt zich erdoor aangetrokken."

[Mau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novela religiosa, revoltijo dramático, teatro espiritual. Todo el libro pareciera un preludio a otro. La exposición indirecta (el arte) del “secreto” de la Iglesia ante su sensibilidad a su conocimiento. La falta de resolución entre la interacción del dogma de la Iglesia (la fe) y la Inquisición (la razón). El dogma interiorizado (superyó). Los autómatas que esta misma produce, esclavos de la institución por su falta de conciencia, ¿realmente están mejor dentro de este estado de ignorancia? Recuerda inevitablemente a “Dios está muerto”. Dios vuelto poder, un simple icono.

[Nicopsetzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the genius of the concept at the get-go, the book peters out by getting bogged down in the very plot it aims to criticize.

[Josephine]

Upon this first reading, I cannot say I understood this book too well, but it was enjoyable and interesting

[Danae · Rating 2 out of 5]

No entendí casi nada.

[E.J. Matze]

erotisch getinte debuutroman