Pulp Fiction discussion

This thread is for our July 2024 discussion of Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo, our group poll winner for our European Vacation read.

Jean-Claude Izzo was born in 1945 in Marseille, France. His father was an Italian immigrant and his maternal grandfather was originally from Spain. Although Izzo was "forced into a technical school" (per Wikipedia) because of his status as an immigrant, he eventually found his way into writing during military duty as a journalist and photographer for the military newspaper.



Total Chaos is the first book in Izzo's Marseilles Trilogy, followed by Chourmo and Solea. All three books feature detective Fabio Montale who was described in a 2012 Europa Publishing edition book blurb as "the perfect protagonist in this city of melancholy beauty. A disenchanted cop with an inimitable talent for living who turns his back on a police force marred by corruption and racism and, in the name of friendship, takes the fight against the mafia into his own hands"

The Marseilles Trilogy, which could be best described as "Mediterranean Noir," would be Izzo's greatest success as an author. Sadly, he passed away in 2000, just two years after the publication of the third installment, and never saw the 2005 publication of books in English.

Please keep your comments to a general nature and avoid (or tag) any spoilers for the first 10 days or so, in order to give members a chance to finish the book.

Who's in for this one? I'm excited to read it after all the good things I've heard about it. I expect to start it tomorrow.

I'm reluctant to start yet another series, but the premise is interesting, and I found a cheap eBay copy, so I'm in.

I'm in, but I already started Night Film and this book is huge and hugely disturbing / fascinating.
I might have to read them in parallel, because it took me more than a couple of weeks to reach halfway with the Marisa Pessl story

I had picked this up a couple of years ago after listening to the podcast Point Blank. I'm glad it's been voted in. I'll start it after I finish Day of the Locust.

I managed to start it, and I kind of love the setting and the style of presentation, the strong social engagement and the obvious love of the author for his native city. How well the plot holds together remains to be seen, but I have a feeling I will continue with the next two books in the series.

The Prologue was really slow for me for some reason, but once I got to Chapter 1 it started moving much faster. I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far. I think it's more "hard-boiled" than "noir" but I guess that depends on how you split those particular hairs. I agree with you, Algernon, that the setting is one of the most compelling things about the story so far.

One thing I've noticed about the author's style is that he quite often jumps around in time from one paragraph to the next with little to no warning. One minute the narrator is talking about right now and then next sentence he's talking about something that happened years ago. It's a bit jarring and it took me a while to get used to it. I wonder if it is a style choice by the author or something to do with the translation to English? I suspect it's the first and not the second but I can't say for sure.

I'm about a week away from finishing this one. After the first couple days it just grabbed me and I'm really enjoying it now.

Who else has started besides Algernon and me?

I'm a little more than halfway through and thoroughly enjoying it.

I finished it last night. It has some awkward moments, like the detective getting in bed with all the beautiful women, and some unlikely coincidences coming to help him solve the case, but I actually loved the style, in particular the author's love for his home city, something like Ben Aaronovitch and London.
I plan to read the next two books before the end of this year.
Also, I like the original title Total Kheops better, because the other two books also have unusual titles. This one is a reference to a Mediterranean rap song.

I am struck by the author's descriptions of Marseilles. On one hand, he depicts it as a Mediterranean seaport with plenty of good areas as well as plenty that are not so great, with a mix of various cultures that haven't succeeded in blending well yet have created a flavor of its own, similar but different from what one might consider "French culture." The blatant and virulent racism, particularly the anti-Arab sentiments, is somehow not what we might expect from the French, despite stories of soccer hooliganism in Europe and other frightening sentiments. Essentially, Marseilles is a character in the novel. Not necessarily the most important character but an irreplaceable one to be sure.

I finished this last night and I enjoyed this. I concur with you RJ on the setting being one of the characters. Izzo does a wonderful job of showing us the gritty side of Marseilles at the time. Suffice to say, you really feel as if you are walking the streets with our main character Fabio. Then again, in my humble opinion, the best noir and pulp fiction books really do this well regarding the setting.

Like most other books (and really most every book) the protagonist has troubles and skeletons. He does seem real, believable. There is not a page in this book that I found, how shall I say, fantastical. Fabio is a tough dude, maybe not as tough as Ugo and Manu, but tough and passionate.

DNF - couldn't do it. The word "turgid" kept coming to mind during the prologue, and didn't leave once the story started. On to George Simenon's The Engagement.

I really enjoyed this one and loved the setting and characters - stayed up to 1.30am last night finishing it as it got really hard to put down towards the end!

Will definitely give the rest of the trilogy a go at some point.

I finished this one a few days ago but this is really the first chance I've had to sit down and collect my thoughts. (Busy at work, helping daughter with some college papers and internship stuff, a weird health thing that knocked me out of commission for a bit, and now daughter home for a brief visit...but enough about all that.)

Like Girard, I had a tough time with the Prologue. Izzo has a style where he bounces around back and forth in time without warning and in the early goings this was jarring to me. His narrative in that Prologue especially was at times almost impressionistic (those who are more well-versed in the Fine Arts will probably laugh at my fumbling choice of words here) and it was only after reading it and moving on to the main story that I got the whole picture. Also, the Prologue focused on a character who ended up dead within a few pages. Was that a wise choice by the author? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure the Prologue was necessary. It might have been better to tell the whole story from Fabio's POV and let him uncover what happened and why, as he did later in the book anyway.

Having finished the book, I can only say that the story itself (and I will avoid spoilers here) was disappointing. Taken by itself, it really is a mess. I think it all came down to: well, there was a power struggle in the local organized crime syndicate and a bunch of people ended up dead. It was coincidental, I suppose, how many of these people happened to be good, close, personal friends with Detective Fabio.

The characters got really confusing at times too. Some of this is probably because a lot of them had names that sounded similar to each other, and many of the characters weren't well-defined enough to stand out. I counted two characters whose names started with "Z," two more whose names started with (I think) "B," and two more whose names started with another letter of the alphabet that I can't remember, and I already loaned away my copy of my book so I can't look it up. But it got confusing. Also, there were a few too many characters in general, for such a short book (roughly 250-300 pages as I recall).

And how many girlfriends does Fabio have, anyway? Female characters in this book existed merely to throw themselves at him at every opportunity, except for the older lady who just cooks for him. I guess the book was written 30 years ago but it does need some kind of comment, I think.

Is this really "Mediterranean Noir?" I tend to think of noir usually told from the point of view of the criminal, or maybe even just an average Joe who makes some bad choices. This story was more "Hard-Boiled" I think, with a tough guy detective (although, to be fair, Fabio wasn't really all that tough) who gets beaten up, stabbed, shot, and whatever but still forges ahead to the resolution. But "Mediterranean Hard-Boiled" doesn't sound as good on the book blurb, I guess.

It sounds like I'm really down on the book, but surprisingly I actually liked it quite a bit in spite of all these quirks and oddities. As I pointed out above, the city and its neighborhoods and the melting pot culture with all the immigrants from Italy and North Africa made a great setting with a ton of potential. I even liked Fabio, who had a burned out, world-weary manner that fit nicely with the feeling of one man attempting to take on a system stacked against him (which is also what the Arab father felt, by the way).

I ended up giving it 4 stars, which was probably a little generous in hindsight, but I feel good about it because I did enjoy the trip to Marseilles.