{"id":37869,"date":"2021-01-12T09:45:06","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T08:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=37869"},"modified":"2022-09-25T16:09:28","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T14:09:28","slug":"lorgie-litteraire-de-max-lobe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/lorgie-litteraire-de-max-lobe\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Lobe's literary orgy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday books - Jonas Follonier<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A veritable orgy of words, sexual allusions and a carnival of sounds, colors and shapes, Max Lobe's new novel is a must-read. His Phall'Excellence's Promise<\/em>, just published by Editions Zo\u00e9, is an infernal carnival. But behind this hullabaloo, a thunderous denunciation of totalitarianism is combined with a delight in language and bodies. For once, I invite you to discover this world in the company of Max Lobe himself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Max Lobe's new novel is a health hazard. You come out exhausted, as if after an hour's discussion in a language where you only understand every other word. With His Phall'Excellence's Promise<\/em>, the Cameroonian-born author from Geneva has taken a sort of Rabelaisian gamble: to offer his readers a crazy feast, in a new language. The reference is striking. In fact, as soon as the book is opened, it's already announced by the author: \u00abI was chatting with Rabelais... he asked me to say hello to you\u00bb: as I read this kind dedication, all I wanted to do was to go and have a chat, in my turn, with Rabelais, the author of Pantagruel<\/em> and Gargantua<\/em>.

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As Max Lobe opens the door to his apartment, he's all smiles; it has to be said that he loves to talk about his novels - and he loves to talk at all. A bit like his narrator, both talker and glosser, who warns readers from the very first sentence of the novel: \u00abIf you don't agree with the language I'm going to use to tell this story, then just join me here in Elobi, on the terrace of Uncle Godblessyou's bar\u00bb. So here I am, with a drink in hand, talking to Max Lobe about his lovely madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

First, I have to tell him the truth: I'm not sure I understood his new book. Let me reassure him. I enjoyed the novel in all its excess, and while I may have missed some of it, I found meanings in it that I appreciated even more. Her text is neither gibberish nor gloubi-boulga. Rather, I read it as a literary orgy that assumes itself as such and abounds in symbols. For example, consider the narrator of His Phall'Excellence's Promise<\/em> as a sex maniac would be wrong - or, let's say, incomplete. The presence of tendentious images in one word out of ten (\u00absa Phall'Excellence\u00bb \u00absa Clith'Alttesse\u00bb, \u00abclitharicot\u00bb, \u00abnom d'un phallanus!\u00bb...), can be a good way to laugh at inclusive writing, where genders (feminine and masculine) become omnipresent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abThe blackbirds, the nightingales, the thrushes, some owls there hold my name at the end of their beaks. They cackle that Oooh! I'm sexist-sexuce, that Oooh! I'm misogynist-misogynist. That I'm just a poor \u2019Ah mes chers fr\u00e8\u00e8res\u201c. A phallancouille! But I, Mista AcaDa-Writa, storyteller, have my phallancilles in place, the big-right and the little-left. And that doesn't make me a phallomacho. Du-tout-du-tout. And even if I were? Where would it itch, eh? There? On the phallanus? Or down there, at the clitharicot?<\/p>

[...]<\/p>

I'm not afraid of Auntie P\u00e9lagie, or even of her mother-con's Ecriture inclusive machins-trucs-chattes. Du-tout-du-tout. Don't confuse things. Keeping quiet doesn't mean being afraid.\u00bb<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On this subject, Max Lobe develops his point of view. \u00abIt's indeed a possible interpretation. I play with language and its instrumentalization for political ends. Language doesn't makes<\/em> It's not politics, it's just an instrumentalization. If someone says \u2018dear Swiss\u2018, they may not mean it.\u2019 The instrumentalization of language by ideologues with totalitarian tendencies is also a subject present, in the background, in his novel. We follow a resilient population, that of the \u2019Republic of Crevetterie\u00bb, who swallow everything they're told and wait for the Great Day when \u00abHis Phall'Excellence\u00bb and \u00abHis Clith'altesse\u00bb will appear. It's a topical subject. \u00abAnd not just in Africa,\u00bb the author tells me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00abWhat interests me most is the way they speak,\u00bb continues the novelist. \u00abAll the characters speak out at some point, saying things that complement, contradict or clash with each other.\u00bb Facing them is an aging regime, with a dictator presented as a baby in a stroller. The words with which the characters express themselves are always the same, the streets and crossroads have very similar names, and the narration itself becomes one gigantic, sumptuous psittacism. And if at first the narrator is the only one in doubt, it's the reader himself who gradually begins to doubt the credibility of this alcoholic storyteller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

When reading this book, one thinks in particular of Meursault, counter-enquiry <\/em>Kamel Daoud's ingenious way of doubling down on illegitimacy, even in what we are told. But it's literature in general that lends itself wonderfully to this. Max Lobe has found this seam to express his praise not only of doubt, but of emancipation. \u00abDoubt is pure freedom. It's also thought: that's why I talk so much about my characters\u00bb natural hair. If I put on a wig, it's not my thought, it's a thought that comes from somewhere else.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n