Eden,Eden,Eden by Pierre Guyotat

Eden ,Eden,Eden by Pierre Guyotat

French fiction

Original title- Éden,Éden,Éden

Translator – Graham Fox

Source – Personal copy

I saw this on the list of books published in 1970, I bought it up a couple of years ago just as it had Michel Leris’s quote on the back, and I knew he was a leading intellect in France around this time. Well, when I looked a little more into this book, I found out it is much more than that it was Banned in France for sale to minors. This caused figures like Pasplinl, Satre, Beuys and Genet, to name a few, to sign a protest to that happening. It also led to the Nobel-winning writer Claude Simon resigning from the Prix Medicis when it lost out on the prize by a single vote. This book is of its time in many ways , of the style of writing and the events of the time, It is also hard to describe as a work. Given the sheer power of the way he set out the book to the reader, it is an assault on you, and it is just so full of words and events just happening constantly told in a single breath.

Khamssieh moaning: nauseated by workers’ jism mixed, bland, with saliva in mouth; wrinkled penis retracting into pubic fleece / ; date-picker’s other hand grabbing, squashing Wazzag’s hardening member against belly, palm hollowing pubis, orgasm – thread of blood-scented jism streaming, without spasms, out of glans – shining and crying through whole body of date-picker; youth rolling, fastened to whore, over strip of floor along counter, pulling member from between Wazzag’s buttocks, standing up, bare legs spread planted on one side, other side of rump of whore sprawling on belly, toes delving into hairs, under armpits; slow, stroking, with dusty heel, shoulder, neck, greasy curls over sticky nape, palpating balls against jism-spattered thigh; toes closing eyelids of whore against wood:

One of the pasages much the same all the way through just relentless at times

How to describe this book well, the book is set in a hinterland of Algeria in what may now be a sort of apocalyptic future at a whorehouse, as the war is all around them. The book is a massive nod to writers like Beckett, Joyce, and Burroughs. It is a single breathless splattering of words in fact when IO put a picture of it up a fellow book lover described it as like a machine gun of words as bodies, sex, violence and the world they are in blur into just a stream of words are never ending no gaps no real breath in the text itself as the sex of the whore house and the violence of the Algerian war which he had seen for himself.

Hamza, running back to camp, crossing through bunk-house packed with

simmering bodies, naked, half-naked,

sprawled out away from scorching partitions, opening bag, taking out vapotizer of Eau de Cologne, stuffing bottle into pocket, running back in long strides, running back towards cirque: nomad, lizard devoured, wiping lips with strip of veil spread over shepherd’s chest; shepherd seated between thighs of nomad, crunching scales of lizard’s tail, claws, tongue of youth protruding, thick, between teeth, to lick greasy fingers of nomad; Hamza crouching down, breathless, vaporizing, between thighs of shepherd, rag sheathing sexual cluster; nomad wrenching vaporizer from Hamza’s fist, caressing blue bottle, grey bulb, vaporizing skull of shepherd huddled against chest, placing lips bridled by veil onto perfumed skull; beneath rag, shepherd’s member twitching, stiffening; nomad laying hand over shepherd’s sexual cluster: abscesses bursting with hardening of flesh:

Again just a barage of words and images actions for the read to work through

As you see with the quotes, it is hard to capture what is happening. It is more a mass of emotions, sex,horror, violence, body parts and bodily fluids drifting over you as you read the book. This isn’t a read for the faint heart and is very much a book of its time in many ways. I think it is a cousin to Penolpe from Ulysses, where we see Molly Bloom sexually outbursting in one breathless cascade of words like this book. Beckett’s play Not I, which is after this book, has a similar feel of that breathless torrent of words of images of prevents in a way this would be served performed like Not I is that mouth and those torrent of words. But for me, the work it hit most was the Burroughs Red Night Trilogy, a book that came out after this, but I wonder if Burroughs had read this book or if it was just the fact he had spent time in North Africa and in the desert. I can see its part in the books of the time as I said at the start. It isn’t a book for everyone, but more for those who like a challenge and love stream of consciousness as a writing style. This is it at its most abstract, though. The other image I had when I finished the book was what if the cinema Pardiso had been a bookshop, not a cinema and the priest had cut out the violence and sex and the bookshop owner pieced those cutouts together, like in the film, had put them all together well this is that book it is like the worst piece of the most sexual and violent books you have read thrown into one book! Have you read this book? my final read for this weeks Club 1970