About Ti Kreiz , POL, 2010
Claude Lucas, by the irreducible
Rapahël Sorin
First there was a look, penetrating an unfathomable sadness. I discovered on the cover of the book by Claude Lucas, Suerte , published in the Terre Humaine, Plon, 1995. This stranger joined Claude Levi-Strauss, Robert Jaulin, James Agee, John Duvignaud, all identified by Malaurie. Ethnologists, backpackers, adventurers, writers. Suerte and its sub-title, written in red letters, it snapped like a challenge: Exclusion voluntary.
A quote from Emmanuel Levinas, placed emphasis, immediately put the bar very high, near "human nudity ... who shouts to the world's strangeness, loneliness, death, hidden in his being" . It was enough to start reading to not release this extraordinary book, between fiction and testimony, and persuade themselves that would remember forever. He crushed the literature of the most unlucky, complacent and early, with some exceptions (such as the poignant story of Alain Dubrieu, The Desert Iguana , reprinted in "The Black "by Gallimard).
Lucas had committed a robbery with hostage taking in 1987. Arrested in Spain, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for "carrying weapons". He spent six in English prisons harsh. Extradited to France in 1994 after two years of trial, he shall be sentenced to twelve years imprisonment. His six years in prison in Spain were not taken into account. A support committee, when he was locked up in prison in Caen, sent a letter to the president by seeking a pardon. The appeal was signed by publishers, booksellers, priests, artists, librarians and writers. Jacques Lanzmann, Alphonse Boudard, Paul Ricoeur, Germaine Tillion, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and many others, recognized the word of a new man. On Suerte he had retaken all his life, his skin.
SILENCE OF DEATH
Lucas published two short novels by Flammarion in 1998 Trail flowers followed Desert. The city of Caen, to award him his prize, had left his cell for a day! He was finally released and went to live with Helen at Ushant, his wife. At the opening of Suerte he announced what territory, after years of deprivation of liberty, he intended to live, "a parallel universe so similar to another" .
And that's exactly what he did for seven or eight years to produce a novel that is a real book to escape, quite confusing, as its title suggests Breton, Ti Kreiz . His publisher, POL, thinking perhaps (like myself, and I acknowledge my guilt naivete) that the reputation of Suerte enough to awaken Critics played counting absolute: no back cover hype, no biography of the author. We are witnessing the emergence of a unique book whose reception is equal to zero (Bertrand Leclair only saves the honor in Politis -week of May 13 to 19-in indignant silence of death lasts from early February and accompanied his funeral).
Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, Sancho and Don Quixote, Don Juan and Sganarelle, the couple formed by Simon Balard obscure writer, and Andros Laimb, author of thrillers and pulp fiction, the two protagonists are Ti Kreiz machine in motion a romance where comically summarizes the human condition. The novel as invented, mime life without merging with it. It would have pleased Perec and Queneau, two writers greedy illusions. Everything seems necessary and free, funny and tragic.
Each horns alternatively take the floor. He is playing with her. A woman gets involved, which complicates everything. Incidentally, there are beautiful pages that look at Ushant, its powerful waves, its thick fog. Sometimes it looks like a detective story, a diablogue. I think Nabokov, too, have found that the game is worth more than a candle. Alors, il serait temps de relire Suert e et de se perdre dans Ti kreiz .
21 mai 2010
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