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The Impersonal Adventure
A traveling businessman decides to tarry in an unnamed city, dons a new name and profession on a whim, and rents a room in a mediocre hotel on the island lying at the city’s edge. As he wanders through the streets of unvisited storefronts and abandoned offices, driven by only a faded name and address penciled into a notebook, he encounters and comes to know a strange constellation of characters: a sinister night watchman; his spiritual half-brother, the “professor”; and a mute, hairless beauty who quickly obsesses him. They in turn lead the narrator into labyrinths of crowded curio shops and secondhand furnishers where the secrets of the island lie buried behind armoires and delirium. As the narrator pieces together the fragmented drama at the heart of the abandoned quarter and its excess of antiquities, he discovers missing elements to his own biography and the less than fortuitous role he is to play as witness to tragedy.
Marcel Béalu’s novella, written in the 1940s but not published until 1954, slowly peels away an oneiric banality to reveal doubled lives and secret stories. The Impersonal Adventure utilizes a dreamlike logic to translate postwar trauma, urban devastation, alienation, and anxiety into a disorienting detective tale that unfolds in the empty streets and bric-a-brac shops of a De Chirico painting.
Marcel Béalu’s novella, written in the 1940s but not published until 1954, slowly peels away an oneiric banality to reveal doubled lives and secret stories. The Impersonal Adventure utilizes a dreamlike logic to translate postwar trauma, urban devastation, alienation, and anxiety into a disorienting detective tale that unfolds in the empty streets and bric-a-brac shops of a De Chirico painting.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
February 15, 2025
(Full review 10/30/22)
You ever have a dream that seems perfectly reasonable at the time (Yes of course I live in this huge abandoned warehouse that is sometimes my old high school instead, along with these other strange individuals that I appear to have a long history with), only to have forgotten the significance of everything almost immediately upon awakening? That feeling is still there, like you really knew these people and could even recall past encounters with them while in the dream, but it's all simply gone in seconds, making the bits of retained images little more than nonsense.
That's my experience with this 1954 novel (as well as with Bealu’s earlier The Experience of the Night). While reading, the MC's nighttime wanderings around the bizarre small island town and its labyrinthine curio shops, as well as the various underlying mysteries and eccentric characters (such as the enigmatic, elusive bald woman) within, made some sort of dream logic sense, but when thinking on it later it was almost no use trying to piece it all together.
I've always been drawn toward dark-ish, surreal tales that take place (seemingly) over a single hallucinatory night among unfamiliar city streets and batshit characters. Scorcese's After Hours is a prime example, as is the quite similar Stephen Dobyns novel Cold Dog Soup, Hans Henny Jahnn’s The Night of Lead, Ramsey Campbell’s Needing Ghosts, and Murakami’s After Dark. This one is definitely up there for me, as I was entirely enveloped by the thick and eerie atmosphere as well as the strange, ever-shifting locations. It's one of those books that's probably best read late at night or the small hours of the morning to get into the proper punch-drunk vibe.
It certainly won't be for everyone, but for those who don't mind disorienting mysteries, weirdness for the sake of weirdness, fluid realities, and utter lack of any concrete explanations, you could certainly do worse than this.
4.5 Stars.
You ever have a dream that seems perfectly reasonable at the time (Yes of course I live in this huge abandoned warehouse that is sometimes my old high school instead, along with these other strange individuals that I appear to have a long history with), only to have forgotten the significance of everything almost immediately upon awakening? That feeling is still there, like you really knew these people and could even recall past encounters with them while in the dream, but it's all simply gone in seconds, making the bits of retained images little more than nonsense.
That's my experience with this 1954 novel (as well as with Bealu’s earlier The Experience of the Night). While reading, the MC's nighttime wanderings around the bizarre small island town and its labyrinthine curio shops, as well as the various underlying mysteries and eccentric characters (such as the enigmatic, elusive bald woman) within, made some sort of dream logic sense, but when thinking on it later it was almost no use trying to piece it all together.
I've always been drawn toward dark-ish, surreal tales that take place (seemingly) over a single hallucinatory night among unfamiliar city streets and batshit characters. Scorcese's After Hours is a prime example, as is the quite similar Stephen Dobyns novel Cold Dog Soup, Hans Henny Jahnn’s The Night of Lead, Ramsey Campbell’s Needing Ghosts, and Murakami’s After Dark. This one is definitely up there for me, as I was entirely enveloped by the thick and eerie atmosphere as well as the strange, ever-shifting locations. It's one of those books that's probably best read late at night or the small hours of the morning to get into the proper punch-drunk vibe.
It certainly won't be for everyone, but for those who don't mind disorienting mysteries, weirdness for the sake of weirdness, fluid realities, and utter lack of any concrete explanations, you could certainly do worse than this.
4.5 Stars.
October 30, 2022
Last night I had two lengthy vivid dreams, something which hasn’t happened in a very long time. This oneiric double-feature was likely due to an unprecedented five-hour block of uninterrupted sleep. The dreams were both quite detailed and intricate—replete with long stretches of dialogue, moments of high drama, and casts of characters of whom many bore no resemblance to anyone known to me in waking life. When I woke much of the detail remained front of mind, for which I was very grateful. It is in this post-dream state that I finished reading Marcel Béalu’s novella The Impersonal Adventure, a text in which the line between dream and reality blurs, perhaps in an even more deceptive way than in Béalu’s novel The Experience of the Night. While I found the novella interesting enough, aspects of it reminded me a bit too much of other books that I’ve read—an increasing detriment to my reading enjoyment. The distracting encroachment of my own lingering dreams from the night before may also have played a role—if only minor—in the mildness of my reaction to the book. It may in fact be that I am losing my taste altogether for the oneiric in literature. A hint of bitterness has crept into that taste, for books I read in this vein now remind me too much of the erosion of my own dream life as a result of disturbed sleep, a plague which I can never seem to fully cure myself. All of this is to say that my reaction to this book is highly personal and not meant to dissuade readers. There is much to admire in Béalu’s vision and style here, and as usual kudos are due to the folks at Wakefield Press for their tireless efforts in bringing these lost gems back into the light for English-language readers to discover.
May 30, 2023
First off, a huge thank you to Goodreads friend Nancy Oakes for gifting me a copy of the book. It was an incredibly kind gesture. Please go take a look at her blog, Reading Avidly!
Wakefield Press continues to do the (insert your favorite deity here)'s work, especially with their sub-series "The School of the Strange," a series of possibly forgotten novellas and collections by some of the 20th-Century's most under-rated and lesser known European writers in translation. Through the books I've read in this series (Malpertuis, Waystations of the Deep Night, and now this) and several other gems from other publishers, I've developed a strong taste for continental European works in translation. I suppose having spent half my childhood in Europe has something to do with it, but I've become enamored of finding and exploring these works. Since my German and Latin are sub-par, and since there are so many languages I don't have time to learn, I really appreciate what Wakefield (and others) has done here. They've presented an excellent primer for works of "The Weird".
Marcel Beaulu's The Impersonal Adventure continues this trend. The title, as one might guess, is tongue-in-cheek, with several meanings, at least a couple of them laced with irony. The situations that the main character, Fidibus, finds himself in speak to the crumbling of individualism, the loss of "me" in what I will call crowded situations. Simultaneously, Fidibus discovers that his singular importance has been hidden even from himself by the overwhelming tyranny of the majority in which he finds himself. And what if the majority imposing such tyrrany is altogether mad? What if it is so mad that you are unsure of your own sanity? And when one comes to their senses, what happens when the fact that everything making sense doesn't make sense anymore? There's a powerful sense of surreality throughout, which the appended analysis of the novella interprets in Freudian terms (while disavowing a proprietary interpretation - it is pointed out that this is only one way in which the text may be interpreted and acknowledges that this is probably the wrong way to approach the book anyway). Even this last essay at the end of the book adds a further element of ambiguity.
What is not ambiguous about the work is the sheer atmosphere presented here. In my notes, I characterized it as Alfred Hitchcock meets David Lynch, and as I continued reading the book, this feeling never diminished. I felt as if I was immersed in a world created by these two, but in an admittedly anachronistic sense. If you're a fan of Vertigo and Twin Peaks, for example, I think you'll like this book!
This novel becomes more and more claustrophobic, in a social sense, as it goes along. Questions of personal identity vis-à-vis other's expectations and the expectations of society at large are at the forefront. In sum, this might be the greatest gaslighting story ever told, but its surreal tone and bizarre conclusion make it much more than that.
Wakefield Press continues to do the (insert your favorite deity here)'s work, especially with their sub-series "The School of the Strange," a series of possibly forgotten novellas and collections by some of the 20th-Century's most under-rated and lesser known European writers in translation. Through the books I've read in this series (Malpertuis, Waystations of the Deep Night, and now this) and several other gems from other publishers, I've developed a strong taste for continental European works in translation. I suppose having spent half my childhood in Europe has something to do with it, but I've become enamored of finding and exploring these works. Since my German and Latin are sub-par, and since there are so many languages I don't have time to learn, I really appreciate what Wakefield (and others) has done here. They've presented an excellent primer for works of "The Weird".
Marcel Beaulu's The Impersonal Adventure continues this trend. The title, as one might guess, is tongue-in-cheek, with several meanings, at least a couple of them laced with irony. The situations that the main character, Fidibus, finds himself in speak to the crumbling of individualism, the loss of "me" in what I will call crowded situations. Simultaneously, Fidibus discovers that his singular importance has been hidden even from himself by the overwhelming tyranny of the majority in which he finds himself. And what if the majority imposing such tyrrany is altogether mad? What if it is so mad that you are unsure of your own sanity? And when one comes to their senses, what happens when the fact that everything making sense doesn't make sense anymore? There's a powerful sense of surreality throughout, which the appended analysis of the novella interprets in Freudian terms (while disavowing a proprietary interpretation - it is pointed out that this is only one way in which the text may be interpreted and acknowledges that this is probably the wrong way to approach the book anyway). Even this last essay at the end of the book adds a further element of ambiguity.
What is not ambiguous about the work is the sheer atmosphere presented here. In my notes, I characterized it as Alfred Hitchcock meets David Lynch, and as I continued reading the book, this feeling never diminished. I felt as if I was immersed in a world created by these two, but in an admittedly anachronistic sense. If you're a fan of Vertigo and Twin Peaks, for example, I think you'll like this book!
This novel becomes more and more claustrophobic, in a social sense, as it goes along. Questions of personal identity vis-à-vis other's expectations and the expectations of society at large are at the forefront. In sum, this might be the greatest gaslighting story ever told, but its surreal tone and bizarre conclusion make it much more than that.
January 16, 2023
before I post my thoughts on this one, I'll be going through it one more time. The writing and especially the imagery are topnotch here; the story weird in a very good way.
more soon
more soon
October 28, 2024
What a stunning, bizarre, tumbling dream of a book! Béalu is completely new to me, though I will be looking up more of his work as soon as I can, or as soon as it is made available in English, thanks to the comprehensive and thorough introduction by the translator of this piece, George MacLennan. The narrative here is slight, though that is purposeful: like trying to find one's way through the crammed aisles of a junk-store. On either side, artifacts and treasures teeter, threatening to collapse on one's head as one navigates the prose. Characters warp and shift in mirrors not seen prior, often collapsing in on themselves before transforming entirely, and the entire thing is seen through the fish-eye lens of the narrator, who themselves is even unsure what has brought them to this strange place.
Beneath it all—or perhaps above it—runs a striking current of dread. Though time is malleable and fluid (much like the waters which surround the island serving as the setting of the cursed city), there is a sense of quickening throughout, as if the story is being sharpened to a point: a whittled weapon that just might be used to pop the fragile membrane of dreaming.
Intensely liminal, unmistakably fantastic—not to mention handsomely presented in a beautiful perfect-bound paperback with French flaps—the imagery of this delirious novella will haunt me for a long time to come, and I am eagerly awaiting my next book from Wakefield Press.
Beneath it all—or perhaps above it—runs a striking current of dread. Though time is malleable and fluid (much like the waters which surround the island serving as the setting of the cursed city), there is a sense of quickening throughout, as if the story is being sharpened to a point: a whittled weapon that just might be used to pop the fragile membrane of dreaming.
Intensely liminal, unmistakably fantastic—not to mention handsomely presented in a beautiful perfect-bound paperback with French flaps—the imagery of this delirious novella will haunt me for a long time to come, and I am eagerly awaiting my next book from Wakefield Press.
August 21, 2017
Ik begrijp dat Magritte dit boek graag heeft gelezen. Zo verontrustend surreëel, zo'n donkerzwarte humor. "Het is een soort apotheose van hallucinatoire elementen", zoals Jeanne Holierhoek, de vertaler, beschrijft in het nawoord. Heerlijk bevreemdend. #marcelbéalu #onpersoonlijkavontuur #coppensenfrenks
Currently reading
September 2, 2025Need time to let everything settle in and marinate... but it's safe to say I really like this book.
The book's immediate effect is strong. I enjoyed this for its strangeness, its mystery, its palpable atmosphere, its twisty corridors and shifty characters. A short read, but one which packs a real punch. One I'm sure to come back to.
The book's immediate effect is strong. I enjoyed this for its strangeness, its mystery, its palpable atmosphere, its twisty corridors and shifty characters. A short read, but one which packs a real punch. One I'm sure to come back to.
October 29, 2023
I quite enjoyed this short, odd little book, the story of a traveling businessman who, while taking a little time to visit part of the city he's in, becomes immersed in strange happenings. He meets a collection of unusual people, and finds himself in the middle of a sort of power struggle. It's difficult to explain further without giving too much away, but suffice to say that the happenings are surreal, and quite dreamlike.
December 16, 2022
I'm greatly reminded of Alain Robbie-Grillet. An island, people pass by obscured, thoughts that lead nowhere, a fake name. Somewhat hard to follow and what exactly happened, sometimes. Didn't Michael Cisco have something to do with this at one point? What happened with that? Also there's chapter names in the index but they don't not appear in the book itself - only as page breaks.
"Where will I be led by my distracted turn of mind if, from the start, I let myself be enticed by the slightest hints of mystery?"
"I'm now only listening distractedly."
"You seem to come from nowhere and we run into you everywhere."
"In short, this professor, knowing everything doesn't know much."
"My uneasiness becomes intolerable."
"Where are we?"
"Where will I be led by my distracted turn of mind if, from the start, I let myself be enticed by the slightest hints of mystery?"
"I'm now only listening distractedly."
"You seem to come from nowhere and we run into you everywhere."
"In short, this professor, knowing everything doesn't know much."
"My uneasiness becomes intolerable."
"Where are we?"
December 31, 2024
The auction scene is 💯
March 4, 2020
Beetje Kafkaiaanse allegorie op het leven. Knap geschreven, beklemmende en bevreemdende sfeer. De beeldspraak kwam blijkbaar recht uit het leven van de schrijver zelf, wat het spanningsveld tussen fantasie en werkelijkheid alleen maar boeiender maakt. Hier en daar verloor in de weg wel, maar dat was niet anders dan het hoofdpersonage deed...
December 30, 2022
The latest from Wakefield Press, this “novel in the form of a labyrinth” is a prototypical surrealist work (insofar as there can be such a thing) that you’ll probably enjoy if you’re a fan of this niche subgenre. Personally, though, I found it a bit underwhelming. The translator’s afterward arguing that everything was in fact Freudian allegory was interesting, but ultimately I don’t buy it, leaving me with the conclusion that The Impersonal Adventure is a dreamlike work that is strange for the sake of being strange, with little underlying substance. Fidibus’s wanderings around the strange island, stumbling upon vast rooms filled with treasures and junk, running into doubles of people (or perhaps they aren’t people at all, but dolls) is mildly entertaining, but I wanted there to be something underlying the surreal nature of the work to elevate it into something special. I didn’t find anything that had that effect; maybe you will. I give this one a 3/5. If you want a book with some similarities that I believe worked much better overall, check out Malpertuis by Jean Ray, another work with a Wakefield Press edition that is well worth your time.
February 19, 2024
For much of the reading around weird writers I’ve been doing since the autumn, I’ve become particularly fascinated by how much certain publishers hold attention more than others. I’ve become as loyal to Snuggly Books or Exact Change as I used to be towards Atlas Press. But I do think the best of them all at the moment is Wakefield Press
It’s not only because they rediscover strange and unsettling things like this (which is great, by the way - a surprisingly accessible nightmarish trip into madness), but because as well as being beautiful artefacts in and of themselves they’re also beautifully edited and introduced. The best thing in this book is by far the afterword, which gently but effectively suggests a reading that I probably would have otherwise have missed. And I do appreciate that it’s only a suggested reading rather than somehow pretending it’s somehow authoritative. It’s this careful framing of their books that makes each Wakefield book a genuine treat
It’s not only because they rediscover strange and unsettling things like this (which is great, by the way - a surprisingly accessible nightmarish trip into madness), but because as well as being beautiful artefacts in and of themselves they’re also beautifully edited and introduced. The best thing in this book is by far the afterword, which gently but effectively suggests a reading that I probably would have otherwise have missed. And I do appreciate that it’s only a suggested reading rather than somehow pretending it’s somehow authoritative. It’s this careful framing of their books that makes each Wakefield book a genuine treat
May 18, 2024
This is a book published by Wakefield Press, a publisher known for their choice of dreamy-weird books by authors largely from Western and Central Europe. Béalu's book is very much a typical Wakefield Press book.
The oneiric atmosphere is unmistakable (and even analysed as such through Freud's theory by the translation MacLennan in the Afterword), but it wasn't my kind of atmosphere. Too claustrophobic, without going anywhere for a long time; too quick to resolve in the last few pages, without heeding the mood. That's not necessarily an unhappy combination—not for a dream—but as a book I didn't find it interesting, beyond, of course, the standard interest I have in experiencing new exponents of the dreamy weird.
Instead of this book, for a series of oneiric adventures, I recommend Bruno Schulz's Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.
The oneiric atmosphere is unmistakable (and even analysed as such through Freud's theory by the translation MacLennan in the Afterword), but it wasn't my kind of atmosphere. Too claustrophobic, without going anywhere for a long time; too quick to resolve in the last few pages, without heeding the mood. That's not necessarily an unhappy combination—not for a dream—but as a book I didn't find it interesting, beyond, of course, the standard interest I have in experiencing new exponents of the dreamy weird.
Instead of this book, for a series of oneiric adventures, I recommend Bruno Schulz's Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.
March 3, 2025
Did I understand everything? No. Did I enjoy reading it? Yes. Was it an easy reading? No.
This bizarre novella was written between 1945-49 but not published until 1954. Béalu's friend René Magritte was an admirer of the story - and you can see why. Béalu's style & themes reminded me E.T.A. Hoffmann, Kafka and his contemporary, Anna Kavan. It tells us dark and at times complicated story of a narrator with gaps in his memory, visiting a semi-abandoned town of retail business, in which no one can sell anything anymore. Maybe that's a dystopia of the fallen capitalist city, which gave me the impression of seing Metropolis in cinema - with a nightmarish flavor of Dark City.
P.S. Thanks to translator for his great foreword & afterword about this little-know writer!
This bizarre novella was written between 1945-49 but not published until 1954. Béalu's friend René Magritte was an admirer of the story - and you can see why. Béalu's style & themes reminded me E.T.A. Hoffmann, Kafka and his contemporary, Anna Kavan. It tells us dark and at times complicated story of a narrator with gaps in his memory, visiting a semi-abandoned town of retail business, in which no one can sell anything anymore. Maybe that's a dystopia of the fallen capitalist city, which gave me the impression of seing Metropolis in cinema - with a nightmarish flavor of Dark City.
P.S. Thanks to translator for his great foreword & afterword about this little-know writer!
December 11, 2023
A short novella which, I suspect, one needs to read two or more times to appreciate it. Written during the Second World War but not published until 1954, it has elements of a Freudian searching for an unattainable truth and elements of a Kafkaesque frustration at the unknowable. It has an index of reference points but no chapters. Its text blurs the spoken or thought words of different speakers. One sentence perhaps sums up the whole:- '...what seemed to me to be sentimental prattle was the expression of a marvellous, unfathomable reality'. Béalu himself describes 'a realism without limits'.
June 14, 2025
I need this philosophic dexterity, writing that rattles my perspective. Wakefield Press is doing the good work. Saving not the already saved but the nearly overlooked. I like how all the intros are written by someone obsessed with the book. I think an introduction is super drab, too drab if the person doesn’t sound obsessed. I like going into the book with the conviction that I’m about to share in a holy water. Through Wakefield I’ve become familiar with books that nail very specific creative intentions.
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February 24, 2025an odd curio of the surrealist movement, rather than an undiscovered gem. an excursion in flâneurie that detours into an excavation of male fantasy--and its limits. the novella never really came alive for me, but i did find a disquieting beauty in its oneirism.
January 7, 2024
For what is unique in you must become commonplace. You yourself must represent your uniqueness so that everyone can recognize it in themselves.
Muta, "she whose life has no purpose".
Muta, "she whose life has no purpose".
December 30, 2024
Not for me. I'll stick to my own nightmares about capitalism, thanks.
January 1, 2025
This is a concise, compact, and really enjoyable piece of surrealist art. A wonderful world to inhabit for a while.
January 3, 2025
Realism without limits!
May 2, 2025
Maybe it’s just me but I barely understood what was happening! Thankful to be done with this one.
August 6, 2023
It's a credit, I think, to Marcel Bealu that on finishing any given page of his book one has to shake loose a heavy sense of somnambulistic manipulation. His prose is so true to the casual absurdity of dream logic and its grotesque sensations and savagery that he gets readers to effortlessly follow him down tight corridors piled high with elegant detritus that form cityscapes where mannequins suggest their human doppelgangers and characters who were just leading a conversation abruptly crumble into dust. This story is difficult to follow, but that might not be the point. Bealu has created a city of the mind that is nearly impossible to penetrate, but hints at the dreary, narcotic world of commoditized lookalikes we're all too familiar with.
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