topics: |  fiction | french

This novel is told almost if one is watching a movie. Action follows action at rapidfire pace, punctuated by occasional thought processes and razor-sharp observations. it never slows down. it isn't until the tenth-last page that the protagonist is described - "We have not taken the time, in the nearly one year that we've known him, to give a physical description of Ferrer. As this rather intense scene doesnot really lend itself to long digression, we won't linger on it"

in between, it has time for pulling in a surprise punch in the plot towards the end, before fading off into an anonymous new year's party...

The story involves the protagonist's attempt to find the shipwreck the Nechelik, sunk in the arctic in 1957 while carrying some rare antiquities.

It won Le Prix Goncourt, given to the best novel of the year, in 1999. The title is given as "I'm off" in the British edition.

In the course of this narrative, the story touches upon a number of french tropes, referring to a large number of Paris landmarks including a touching narrative describing the upscale but private 16th arrondissement area (Boulevard Exelmans is referred many times), the metro at various off-hours, the effect of Schengen on European borders, and so on. It also incorporates a trip, on ship, helicopter, dog train, and then jet skis, to well above the Arctic Circle.

The work of Jean Echenoz deserves to be better-known in India. Hats off to Rupa for bringing out an Indian edition under its RUPA FRANCE series.

Excerpts

"I'm going," said Ferrer.  "I'm leaving you.  You can keep everything, but I'm
gone."  And as Suzanne's gaze drifted to the floor, settling for no good
reason on an electrical outlet, Felix Ferrer dropped his keys on the entryway
table.  Then he buttoned up his overcoat and walked out... 1

At nearly nine o'clock, this first Sunday evening in January, the train was
all but deserted.  Only a dozen men were inside, unattached, as Ferrer seemed
to have become in the last twenty-five minutes.  Normally he would have
rejoiced to find two empty facing benches, like a little compartment for
himself alone... But on this evening he scarcely gave it a thought,
distracted but less preoccupied than he would have imagined by the scene that
had just been played out with Suzanne, a woman of difficult character.
Having envisioned a more vehement response, cries interspersed with threats
and fiery insults, he was relieved, but somewhat put out by his own relief. 1

[looking for a quiet spot at the airport]
If he had a hard time finding one, it's because an airport does not really
exist in and of itself.  It's only a place of passage, an airlock, a fragile
facade in the middle of an open field, a belvedere circled by runways where
rabbits with kerosene breath leap and bound, a turntable infested by winds
that carry a host of corpuscles - grains of sand from every desert, flecks of
gold and mica from every river, vocanic or radioactive dust, pollens and
virtues...


[getting on a aeroplane]
it's always the same story: you wait; your inattentive ear listens to the
prerecorded announcements, your eye absently follows the safety
demonstrations.  The vehicle finally sets in motion, imperceptibly at first
then faster and faster until you takeoff.  Below the clouds, later, Ferrer
makes out an expanse of ocean, decorated with an island he cannot identify;
then an expanse of land with a lake in the middle, whose name he doesn't
know.  He dozes off, casually watches several opening credits of movies that
he has trouble following to the end, distracted by the comings and goings of
the stewardesses who aren't what they used to be...

Amid two hundred people pressed into a cabin, you are in fact more isolated
than ever.  p.5

all of Felix Ferrer's days except Sundays had been spent in exactly the same
way.  Up at seven-thirty; ten minutes in the toilet with some kind of printed
matter, from a treatise on aesthetics to a humble flyer; then preparing a
breakfast for Suzanne and himself that was scientifically balanced in
vitamins and mineral salts.  Next, twenty minutes of gymnastics while he
listend to the news on radio.  After that, he woke Suzanne and aired out the
house. 7

Always several vacuumings behind, the studio looked a lot like a bachelor
pad, or the lair of a hunted criminal, or a disused legacy while the heirs
were fighting it out in court. 9

--5--
Delahye was a man made entirely of curves.  Hunched spine, gutless face, and
an asymmetrical, uncultivated mustache that spottily masked his entire upper
lip and curled into his mouth; certain hairs even slipped backward up his
nostrils. 17

There are, as anyone will tell you, people with botanical features.  Some
make you think of leaves, trees, or flowers; heliotrope, jonquil, baobab.  As
for Delahaye, always ill-dressed, he called to mind those anonymous, grayish
plants that grow in cities, between the exposed pavements of an abandoned
warehouse yard, in the heart of a crack corrupting ruined facade.  Bony,
atonal, discreet but tenacious, they know they have but a small role to play
in life but they know how to play it.

[In contrast] Victoire seemed more wild than ornamental - more daturra than
mimosa. p.19

Then, lending only a distant ear to Delahaye's muddled statements, he did
everything, as casually as you please, to make himself attractive to her and
meet her gaze as often as possible. 19

He could have never imagined Victoire moving into his place within a week.
Had someone told him, he would have been delighted, though also no doubt a
little concerned.  But had someone also informed him that of the three people
gathered there that evening, each would disappear in one way or another
before the end of the month, he would have been supremely concerned. 21

--7--
Pointed pupil on an electric green iris, like the eye on an old radio, cold
smile but a smile all the same, Victoire had thus moved into Rue
d'Amsterdam.  26



Ferrer takes a house on the Rue d'Amsterdam, This 8eme
arrondissement neighbourhood has changed considerably since this 
late-19th c. painting by Camille Pissarro, 
(image:wikipaintings)



--8--
[In the ship Des Groseilliers, Ferrer falls from his berth.]
Magnificiently proportioned though she was, nurse Brigitte occupied the
entire bunk; no room to slip in even an arm... Ferrer decided to lower
himself onto the nurse with all the delicacy he could muster.  But Birgitte
began to balk and push him away... but little by little she relaxed.  Theey
got down to business, though with scant margin for error... 36


Ferrer preferred not to linger in Wager Bay; it was nothing more than a
group of prefab shacks with walls ofrusted sheet metal pierced by little
windows lit in dusty ochre.  p.37
(image: wikipedia)


--9--
[The pack of dogs]
Ferrer quickly understood that, as individuals, not one of these animals was
the sort you [could] know.  If you called one by name, he barely turned
around, then turned away again if he didn't see any food.  ... The leader,
aware of his importance, made a face and gave a cursory acknowledgment with
his eye - the annoyed eye of an executive under streess, the distracted eye
of a secretary doing her nails.  38

ice scattered on the rocks like a remainder of foa on the walls of an empty
beer mug.  39

As everyone knows, you never find anyone when you are looking; it's better
not to look like you're looking, act like nothing's happening.  It's better
to wait for a chance encounter... 44

11

[Delahaye's funeral, a chance to see how it goes]

In fact, it was fairly simple.  You've got a coffin on a trestle, placed feet
forward.

The poles, anyone can testify, are the most difficult region in the world to
study on a map.  You never quite get satisfaction.  [They're] always
necessarily incomplete. 54

Berangere Eisenmann is a big-boned, fun-loving girl, highly perfumed, really
quite fun-loving and really way too perfumed.  When Ferrer finally noticed
her, the deal was done within a few hours.  She had come by his place for a
drink, then they went out for dinner.  She said, Should I leave my bag?  He
said, Sure, leave your bag.  Then, after the first rush of excitement, Ferrer
had started to get suspicious: women who are too close pose problems, and all
the more so next-door neighbors.   Not that they were too available, which
would be fine, but that he, Ferrer, became too available to them, possibly
against his will.  55

15

Now you can't imagine how pretty the 16th arrondissement can be seen from
inside.  You probably imagine it's as sad and grey as it appears at first
glancee, but you're very wrong. Conceived as ramparts or masks, these austere
boulevards and streets only look sinister: actually they conceal houses that
are remarkably welcoming.  It's just that one of the most ingeniouus devices
invented by the rich consists in making you believe that they're boredd in
their neighbourhoods... 75

16

He'd had to stay longer than expected in Port Radium.  
Warmly adopted by the Aputiarjuk family, at whose home 
he had ended up taking all his meals and whose daughter, 
every night, came to join him in his bed... 81
(image: neatorama.com)

17

Ferrer exchanged more than one look with Sonia.

We all know these exchanges, these intrigues glances addressed at first
sightbut with insistence by two strangers who immediately please each other
in a group.  These glances are instantaneous but serious and vaguely
disquieted - their duration seems much greater than it really is.  They slip
quietly into group conversations, while the group in question doesn't notice
anything, or pretends not to.  86

19

Isn't it about time Ferrer settled down?  Will he forever accumulate these
sorry affairs, whose outcomes he knows in advance, about which he no longer
even imagines, as he once did, that this time it's for real? 95

20

[from] his large studio on Boulevard Exelmans [Baumgartner surveys the
elite neighbourhood.]  There's a short redheaded fellow with an absent look
and fixed smile, who does not extricate himself very often from the deck
chair on his terrace and who must be a producer or something, since when it
comes to girls the man's got a nonstop parade. 101

21

In summer, when Paris has cleared out a little, the sidewalk cafes are
relatively bearable, the light is steady and the traffic calmer, and there is
an unobstructed view of two entrances to the same metro station.

[Over his beer, Ferrer takes] a close interest in the female half of this
parade, which is at least quantitatively superior to the other half.

The female half could also, he noticed, be subdivided into two populations:
those who, just after you leave them, look back as you watch them walk down
the subway stairs, and those who do not.

But today no one is looking back... 106-7

22

Baumgartner slammed the doors on his way out.  Like a pitch pipe, a dial
tone, or the signal announcing the automatic closing of subway doors, this
curt, dull thud produced an almost perfect A that made the strings of the
Bechstein baby grand ring in sympathy.  For twenty seconds after Baumgartner
left the place, the ghost of a major chord haunted the empty studio before
slowly fading. 110


[as he is freezing Flounder in the refrigerated truck]

"It's over," Baumgartner repeat. "You are finally going to leave me in
peace."

"I've never bothered you," The flounder inanely observes. "Let me out now."

"I can't," says Baumgartner.  "You do bother me . You are liable to bother
me, therefore you bother me." 114

23

[he walks out of the sixth bank that refuses him a loan]

What tells us, physically, that he was weary, pessimistic or discouraged?
... most of all, that he sat without reacting when a woman passed through the
foyer.

She was a tall, slender young woman with statuesque contours, wel defined
lips, long, light-green eyes, and wavy copper-coloured hair.  She was wearing
high heels and a black ensemble, cut low at the back, with chevrons on her
hips and shoulders.  ...  anyone else, or he himself in his normal frame of
mind, would have judged that these clothes were there only to be taken off
her, even ripped off her.  120

24

[in the hospital room]

no colour but the distant emerald of a tree standing out against the sky in
the square frame of the window.  The sheets, the bedcover, the walls of the
room, and the sky itself were equally white.  The faraway tree, the single
gree note, could have been one of the thirty-five thousand sycamores, the
seven thousand lindens, or the thirteen thousand five hundred chestnut trees
in Paris. 123

26

Of course [Ferrer] saw that Helene was a beautiful woman, but he always
regarded her as if through a bullet-proof, impulse-proof window. 134

[when she brings him home after discharge].
he arrived home, or more precisely in front of his home.  Helene did not come
in.  But wasn't it the least he could do to invite her for dinner tomorrow or
the next day, later that week, I don't know, it seemed the right thing to do.
Ferrer thought so.  So let's say tomorrow, might as well get over with it as
soon as possible, and then we have to think of a restaurant... Ferrer
suggested one that had recently opened near Rue du Louvre, I don't know if
you know it.  She knew it.  So, tomorrow night then?  135


Rue du Louvre


--28-- 
[Baumgartner's] Fiat - a simple vehicle without options or ornaments, with
nothing stuck to the windows or suspended from the rearview mirror. 144

[B listens to people's conversations]
Four idle men compare their weights in kilos and each picks the name
for himself of the departement with the matching postal code; the thinnest
one is Meuse [55], the normal one takes Les Yvelines [78], the fairly stocky
one admits to pushing the Territoire de Belfort [90], and the
fattest surpasses the Val d'Oisre [95]. 

[B gives a lift to a woman in the rain]
"Are you making for Toulouse?" B asks. 
    The young lady does not answer immediately; her face in the shadows is
not very distinct. Then she utters in a monotonous and recitative voice, a
little mechanical but vaguely frightening, that she is not making for
Toulouse but going to Toulouse, that it is deplorable and odd that people
confuse these two expressions, which nothing justifies, and which in any case
is indicative of a general tendency toward linguistic sloppiness that one can
only protest ,that she in any case strongly protests, and with that she
rollos her sopping hair aginst the headrest and falls asleep.  She seems
completely deranged. 148

31

[At the divorce court]
He was, of course, not the only one in this situation, which was no
consolation: the waiting room was filled with couples at the end of their
journey.  Some didn'tseem to get along too badly despite the circumstances,
chatting quietly with their attorneys.  164

For makeup masks the sensory organs even as it decorates them -- of at least,
nota bene, those with multiple uses.  The mouth, for example -- which
breathes and speaks and eats, drinks, smiles, whispers, kisses, sucks, licks,
bites, pants, sighs, cries, smokes, grimaces, laughs, sings, whistles,
hiccups, spits, belches, vomits, exhales -- is painted (and that's the least
of it) to hoor it for carrying out so many noble functions. 

Also the eyes - which gaze, express cry, and shut in sleep.  
[But one doesn't put makeup on the ear, which has onlly one or two services. ]
168

32

We have not taken the
time, in the nearly one year that we've known him, to give a physical
description of Ferrer.  As this rather intense scene doesnot really lend
itself to long digression, we won't linger on it.  179

33

The telephones has begun ringing again, the collectors are opening a saurian
eye, their checkbooks leap like roaches from their pockets.  186

34

Ferrer, the man who has a hard time living without a woman, as we know, tried
to revive a few adventures.  These were potential amours, flirtations put on
the back burner or lures set in place long before, casesin progress, pending
files offering greater or lesser degrees of interest.  183

[after he thinks of cancelling his dinner date w Helene]... Everything
happened according to the desperately common process, meaning that they had
dinner then slept together; it wasn't a raging success but they did it.  Then
they did it again.  It went a little better that time, so they tried it again
and again until it became not bad at all... 184

Reviews: Spikenard and Cesspit

			Paul Kafka-Gibbons, NYT, March 25, 2001

Jean Echenoz's new novel, I'm Gone (New Press, $22.95), is very French.
Echenoz combines a crime story, an anthropological study of Paris, a
meditation on love and sex and a journey to exotic lands. "I'm Gone" won
the 1999 Prix Goncourt and is now crossing the Atlantic in an agile,
colloquial translation by Mark Polizzotti.

The novel's greatest virtue is its
rapid pace, which slows only for moments of cafe observation and
philosophy. We follow Felix Ferrer, a recently divorced, sexually hyperactive
gallery owner. Ferrer's assistant, Delahaye, tells him about the Nechilik, a
small commercial ship that was carrying a fortune in paleoarctic art when it
ran aground almost a half century earlier. The wreck was never recovered, and
Delahaye dies a few weeks after telling Ferrer about the treasure. So Ferrer
takes a sabbatical from his midlife crisis, his mistresses and his gallery to
fly to Canada, cross the Arctic Circle by icebreaker and trek via dogsled to
the ship's last known location. He finds the vessel and its antiquities
intact and returns with the loot to Paris, only to have the collection stolen
before he can insure it. Ferrer, a man without self-pity, bounces back.

The plot continues swiftly to a surprising conclusion. Along the way,
Echenoz delivers acute observations on everything from the Paris Métro
system to the problem with ill-fitting socks to obnoxious
perfume. ("Bérangère Eisenmann is a big-boned, fun-loving girl, highly
perfumed.... The perfume issue quickly became a problem. Extatics Elixir is
a terribly sour and insistent scent, which teeters dangerously on the cusp
between spikenard and cesspit, which satisfies while it attacks, excites
while it smothers.") "I'm Gone" combines the policier, the cultural essay
and the urban sex novel to create a vivid, entertaining hybrid.

author bio: Jean Echenoz

Echenoz was born in Orange, Vaucluse, December 26, 1947, and spent
his early years  Aveyron and in the Lower Alps.  His novel Cherokee is
made ​​into a film (1:25 - Director: Pascal Ortega; Scenario: Gerard
Stérin). Reading and meeting Patrick Manchette. Associated with the Banana
group ("founded by acclamation Sunday, April 11, 1993 at 18:30" - he signed
the manifesto as "Price Medici in 1983") We three (1992).. Large Blondes
(1995 prices in November) One year (1997).. I go (1999 Prix Goncourt). Lindon
(2001). The piano (2003). Ravel (2006). Running (2008). Lightning (2010).

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