{"id":16945,"date":"2015-11-05T14:55:24","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T18:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=16945"},"modified":"2015-11-05T14:55:24","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T18:55:24","slug":"amelie-nothomb-petronille","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/11\/05\/amelie-nothomb-petronille\/","title":{"rendered":"Am\u00e9lie Nothomb: P\u00e9tronille<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago I finally read one of Am\u00e9lie Nothomb’s novels, something I’d been looking forward to but had been putting off.\u00a0The novel was one of her\u00a0most recent,\u00a0Life Forms<\/em>, and I was delighted by it. I didn’t know what to expect, but I quickly came to appreciate Nothomb’s brand of precocious humor, which is often employed to explore\u00a0manipulative or destructive relationships.\u00a0In Life Form<\/em>, it was the relationship\u00a0via mail between “the author” (Nothomb writes it as if it really happened to her, and maybe some of it did) and\u00a0Melvin Mapple, a U.S. soldier stationed in Baghdad.\u00a0In her latest,\u00a0P\u00e9tronille<\/em> (2014; tr. from the French by Alison Anderson, 2015), “the author,” let’s call her Am\u00e9lie,\u00a0is back to examine her odd, slightly threatening,\u00a0relationship\u00a0with another author, P\u00e9tronille Fanto, from the earliest days of Am\u00e9lie’s literary fame until the present day.<\/p>\n

\"Petronille<\/p>\n

The book begins in 1997 when Am\u00e9lie had just moved to Paris, a successful thirty-year-old novelist (just like Am\u00e9lie Nothomb herself). Well, let’s step back. The book actually begins with a kind of hymn to drinking:<\/p>\n

Intoxication doesn’t just happen. It’s an art, one that requires talent and application. Haphazard drinking leads nowhere.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As an art, it can help one reach new frontiers, but it also\u00a0requires discipline and respect. Am\u00e9lie\u00a0is appalled by the conventional approach to this art:<\/p>\n

Drinking and wanting to avoid intoxication at the same time is as dishonorable as listening to sacred music while resisting any feeling of the sublime.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Am\u00e9lie\u00a0seeks the sublime in alcohol, a state of transcendent inebriation that is not tainted or minimized by food or miserable company.\u00a0Yet company, for her, is a requirement to reach that ideal state.\u00a0She\u00a0needs a drinking companion — or, because that word is “all wrong,” a comvinion<\/em> — someone with whom she can attain the sublime.<\/p>\n

One day in 1997, already feeling that her fame placed some barrier between her and most people around her,\u00a0Am\u00e9lie is at a book signing when she encounters P\u00e9tronille Fanto, a young woman in her early twenties, not yet published. Am\u00e9lie had already created a persona for P\u00e9tronille because P\u00e9tronille had written her a letter, and it didn’t match the actual P\u00e9tronille standing in front of her. This is not uncommon, though it usually means there will be disappointment:<\/p>\n

To go from an encounter on paper to an encounter in the flesh implies a complete change of dimension. I don’t even know if it emans going from the second to the third dimension, because perhaps its the opposite. Often when I meet the actual correspondent, there is a regression, and I lapse into platitudes. And the awful thing is that this is irremediable: if the other person’s appearance, for God knows whatever reason, does not match the loftiness of our correspondence, then our correspondence will never attain that level again. It is impossible to forget or to disregard. Or impossible for me, at any rate. Which is absurd, because there is nothing remotely romantic about these exchanges.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this particular instance, though P\u00e9tronille is not the same person Am\u00e9lie had been creating in her mind, they begin a tentative friendship. For Am\u00e9lie, the friendship is instigated because she feels she has found the convinion she has been searching for. For P\u00e9tronille . . . well, we don’t necessarily know why she agrees to hang out from time to time with an established author. At times, in fact, she seems to resent the relationship, as inconsistent as it is over the years while each woman writes and publishes novels, Am\u00e9lie’s commercially successful, P\u00e9tronille’s critically regarded.<\/p>\n

Their relationship is sporadic, and sometimes years go by without any communication. When they get together, Am\u00e9lie wants to drink and P\u00e9tronille wants to do something a bit crazy, sometimes making Am\u00e9lie an uncomfortable bystander. Am\u00e9lie may even find something familiar in a fan letter Jacques Chessex eventually writes to P\u00e9tronille: “When I spend time with you, I feel as if I am being devoured.”<\/p>\n

While the book is always playful and seemingly random (indeed, I stopped at one time and told my wife that I had no idea why I find Nothomb’s work so compelling when it often seems to be frivolous), the tone does shift as we get to the end. There’s a sense of the real Nothomb playing with some of her own demons, and\u00a0the conclusion\u00a0put a fulfilling cap on an already interesting story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trevor reviews Am\u00e9lie Nothomb’s novel 2014 P\u00e9tronille<\/em>, just out from Europa Editions in Alison Anderson’s translation. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[384,800],"tags":[572],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-16945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amelie-nothomb","category-book-reviews","tag-french"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Petronille-Cover.jpg?fit=600%2C937&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4pj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16951,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16945\/revisions\/16951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16945"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}