A Man's Place

Review

One of two Ernaux texts that a friend from work brought me back from Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Like just about every Ernaux, I love it. It’s a short text, only 76 pages. Ernaux’s clinical style and cold near-analysis of memory, recounting her father and the course of his life, make for lovely reading. I’m not sure why, but something about this way of writing makes everything so tangible. I could practically smell the place. Ernaux is one of those writers that I can’t read too much of, lest my writing just turn into an imitation of hers.

Notes

• p16 - The day before the burial we cooked a side of veal for the meal which was to follow the ceremony. It would have been thoughtless to send the people who do you the honour of attending a funeral home with an empty stomach.
• p33 - I am writing slowly. By choosing to expose the web of his life through a number of selected facts and details, I feel that I am gradually moving away from the figure of my father. The skeleton of the book takes over and ideas seem to develop of their own accord. If on the other hand I indulge in the personal reminiscences, I remember him as he was, with his way of laughing and walking, taking me by the hand to the funfair to see the huge, frightening merry-go-rounds, and I forget about everything that ties him to his own social class. Each time I face this dilemma, I have to tear myself from the subjective point of view.
• p35 - When the Germans entered the town, he returned to L–. The grocery store had been ransacked from top to bottom by those who had stayed behind. My mother came back and I was born the following month. In school, when we couldn’t understand sums, they called us the ‘war children.’
• p50 - For a long time, courtesy between parents and children remained a mystery to me.. Also, it took me years to ‘understand’ the kindliness with which well-mannered people greet each other. At first, I felt ashamed, I didn’t deserve such consideration. Sometimes I thought they had conceived a particular liking for me. Later I realized that their smiling faces and kind, earnest questions meant nothing more to them than eating with their mouth shut or blowing their noses discreetly.
• p54 - He’d had a nap that Sunday afternoon. I get a glimpse of him as he walks past the attic window. He is holding a book which he returns to the crate that the naval officer has left in storage. He chuckles as he catches sight of me in the courtyard. It’s a smutty book.
• p55 - He got cross when I criticized the curriculum or complained that I had too much work. He didn’t like the words ‘prof’ or ‘dirlo’ or even ‘bouquin’. And the constant fear OR MAYBE DESIRE that I would never make it.
  • TB: caps in original, small caps. Happens a few times, interesting.
  • prof - abbreviation of professor; dirlo - abbrev. of directeur; bouquin - slang for book.
• p58 - Maybe I am writing because we no longer had anything to say to each other.
• p62 - He made do with his own customers, those put off by the pristine stores in the new part of town, where the snooty salesgirls looked you up and down. No more drive. He had accepted the fact that his business was merely a means of survival which would disappear when he died.
• p63 - I was a guest in their house, they didn’t let my visit upset their routine. I was allowed to share their lifestyle and step into their world which, unlike mine, had nothing to hide, and which was open to me because I had forgotten the ways, the ideas and the tastes of my own background.
• p68 - Several months have passed since I started this narrative last November. It has taken me a long time because I find it is far more difficult to dig up forgotten memories than it is to invent them. Memory resists. I could not rely on personal reminiscence: the squeady doorbell of an old grocer’s shop and the smell of overripe melons would lead me to picture only myself and my summer holidays in Y–.