Notes on The Fetishist (and Other Stories) by Michel Tournier

(Minerva Press, 1992)

 

 

I. 

 

This collection of short stories by Michel Tournier - originally published as Le Coq de Bruyère (1978) - is a queer and often disconcerting mix of the sordid supernatural (to borrow the author's own description). 

 

Such a mix will, of course, not be to everybody's liking; one anonymous reviewer dismissed the tales as curiosities at best and sneered that Tournier was "no more than a cerebral Joyce Carol Oates, lazily toying with dark urges and forbidden pleasures" [a].   

 

Other readers - myself included - who enjoy philosophically-informed fiction that explores the porno-mythic imagination and accelerates what Jonathan Dollimore termed the perverse dynamic, will, however, like this book - and like it a lot. 

 

To be perfectly frank, I don't care if Tournier is a didactic writer, or if his characters "often seem more like prototypes, moving with the momentum of the ideas they embody, than like real people" [b]. The last thing I wish to encounter in works of art are real people. I meet real people every day in the real world and I'm sick to death of them.

 

Perhaps that's why I was so excited by the concept of photogenesis in 'Veronica's Shrouds', one of the stand-out stories in The Fetishist, which "implies the possibility of producing photos that go beyond the real object" [c]. Such photos do not merely capture a model's likeness or reveal a hidden aspect; they create something new and allow for a becoming-photogenic (even if this process can prove fatal, as it does here, to poor Hector).      

 

Other tales that I absolutely loved include 'The Red Dwarf' and 'Death and the Maiden' - both of which inspired posts on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here, for example. The young female protagonist of the latter, Melanie Blanchard, is, for me, one of the most memorable figures within 20th-century French literature; a character that might have been given us by the great Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb. 

 

As for the story which, in the English translation, lends its title to the collection and which I was particularly looking forward to read, well, I have to admit, it's a bit disappointing. I don't know why that is, but suspect it's because I don't quite share the protagonist's passion for slips, stockings, panties, and bras, etc. Nevertheless, it's a story worth commenting upon at more length ...

 

 

II.

 

'The Fetishist' is a mildly amusing story of sexual obsession; the monologue of an erotomaniac, Martin, who has briefly escaped from the asylum where he has been confined for many years after attempting to steal a garter belt from a woman on the Paris Metro. An extremely harsh and unjust punishment for a man who, whilst he may have kinky tastes and be very highly-strung, isn't mad even in the assessment of the asylum's medical director.              

 

As something of a philosopher on the catwalk, I share Martin's love of clothes and his contempt for nudity: 

 

"They say that the tailor makes the man. How true! A naked man is a worm without dignity, without a function - he has no place in society. I've always had a horror of nudity. Nudity is worse than indecent - it's bestial. Clothes are the human soul. And even more than clothes - shoes." [d] 

 

This is true too, of course, for women - perhaps more so, inasmuch as womanhood and the question of style are inextricably linked (and may, in fact, even be one and the same). And Martin's fate is to be consumed with desire for women and their clothing; not just their underwear, but also their hats and dresses and even handkerchiefs. 

 

Again, what he can't stand is female nudity - not even that of his wife, Antoinette, on their wedding night:

 

"When I went back into the room [...] Antoinette was lying on the troika. Stark naked! And she was looking at me smiling, a little red in the face even so. But I didn't recognize her. Oh yes, there was her face, with its smile that I loved, but that big white body displayed there in front of my eyes like ... like ... Like something in the butchers window! And I was ashamed for her, for myself, for us both." [203]

What saves the situation for Martin is spotting the chair on which his new wife has discarded her clothes:

 

"It was like a little island of solid ground in the middle of a swamp. So I went over to the chair [...] and, well, I went down on my knees and buried my face in the pile of clothes. A warm, soft pile, which smelled good, like new-mown hay in the summer sun. I stayed there a long time like that, on my knees, my face hidden. [...] Next I picked up the clothes and held them in a bundle against my face, and stood up, keeping them there so as not to see anything. I walked over to the bed and scattered them over Antoinette's body. And I said: 'Get dressed!' Then I rushed out like a maniac." [203-04]

Readers will doubtless be pleased to know that Martin does eventually consummate the marriage; but only when Antoinette consents to be fucked fully-dressed. Afterwards, they establish an agreed set of rules governing their lovemaking: "To start with we had agreed that she would never appear naked in front of me." [205] Antoinette quickly grows to like this arrangement, as it secures her a fashionable wardrobe and a wide range of expensive and sophisticated lingerie. 

 

Unfortunately, Martin's fetish develops in a new direction - one that leads him along a crooked path; first stealing an "adorable  little bra in mauve satin trimmed with lace" [210] from a cashier working at the local cinema, and then ... well, then came the regrettable incident on the Metro: "That was what wrecked everything. I must have been mad!" [212] 

Enflamed after a shopping expedition to buy still more fancy lingerie for Antoinette, Martin notices a pretty girl push pass him as he enters the Parisian subway system. That might have been the end of it, only there was a sudden gust of wind:

 

"A ferocious draught was rushing through the half-opened gates. It hoisted up the girl's miniskirt and held it there for a moment, even though she quickly clamped both hands down on her thighs. But in that split second I had seen a suspender belt, and what a suspender belt, it burned me, it pierced me, it practically killed me [...] In black nylon, gathered wide, the white skin of her thighs contrasting sharply with the long, very long, suspenders which started at the belt and travelled down to collect her stockings in their little chromium-plated clips." [212-13]  

 

Of course, he has to have it. And so the story goes from being a Benny Hill-like fantasy, into an unsavoury tale of sexual assault:

 

"I chased after the girl. I caught her up, and wedged her into a corner. Luckily we were alone. I stammered: 'Your suspender belt, your suspender belt, quick, quick!' At first she didn't understand. Then, without hesitating, I pulled up her skirt. She screamed. I repeated: 'Quick, your suspender belt, and I'll go away.' Finally, she obeyed. In the twinkling of an eye, it was done. I had my trophy [...] I was radiant. I brandished my suspender belt like a Red Indian flaunting his Paleface's scalp." [213]

 

When Antoinette discovers what he has done, she leaves him and Martin's life pretty much collapses. He starts stealing from the hoisery section of his local department store, but his heart is no longer in it. Secretly, he longs for the day he is finally caught: "I'd had enough. I wanted to make an end of it." [214]

 

Eventually, he is caught and is sent to prison. Then is interviewed by a psychiatrist and sent to the asylum. But soon he is gripped once more by his fetish for women's underwear. The fact is that whilst some men stand to attention before the flag of their nation, for illicit lovers like Martin it's frilly black knickers and pink nightslips that make them stiff with respect and desire. 

 

And, whilst I don't condone the incident on the Metro, neither do I condemn fetishists for their peccadilloes.     

 

Notes

 

[a] From a review of The Fetishist in Kirkus Reviews (15 August, 1984): click here to read online. 

 

[b] Bob Halliday, 'The Sexual Imagination of Michel Turner', The Washington Post, (28 October, 1984): click here to read online. 

 

[c] Michel Tournier, 'Veronica's Shrouds', The Fetishist, trans. Barbara Wright, (Minerva, 1992), p. 96.  

[d] Michel Tournier, 'The Fetishist', ibid., p. 199. Future page references to this story will be given directly in the text.

 

 

On Dance as a Method of Becoming-Bird

 Anorexic Ballerina by Mexxkid 

deviantart.com 

What, ultimately, is dance, if not a method of becoming-bird; that is to say, a way in which the human being learns how to experience the incredible sensation of taking flight? This is why the connection between the ballerina and the swan is more than a delightful metaphor and why ballet is more than merely a form of entertainment. 

Spectators are right to be amazed by what they see on the stage, but if they press on beyond their astonishment at what young bodies can do, they'll discover that within classical dance is a profound experimental and ascetic practice, or what Amélie Nothomb describes as a fearsome ideal - one capable of ravaging the flesh and acting upon the mind like a drug.

Nothomb is right to understand ballet as a becoming-bird of the human being (although mistaken to think of this in the molar terms of species transformation). She's right also to stress the elements of violence and delirium, discipline and madness. Which is why it's not entirely outrageous to describe ballet training as a form of child abuse, involving psychological terror and physical maltreatment; a regime in which injuries are routinely ignored, eating disorders discreetly encouraged, and young dancers placed under constant pressure to push themselves beyond their own limits in order to develop wings.

As Nietzsche says, if you would teach young girls to fly in defiance of the spirit of gravity, you must first hollow out their bones and remove all obstacles to their becoming-bird: it is better to live in freedom with nothing to eat, than un-free and over-stuffed. 

However - crucially - Nietzsche also counsels taking things slowly: She who wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and to walk and to run and climb ... and for these things you need strong legs and a healthy body. You can be thinspired, but anorexia is not the answer and there's no virtue in physical deprivation (no salvation through starvation). 

Aly Buttons: On Her Lumpiness and Loveliness

Photo by Nina Lin (2011)

Not all young women can be stick thin like fashion models. But this doesn't mean that they can't be beautiful. 

This is a realization that alternative fashion and lolita lifestyle blogger Aly Buttons (aka Miss Lumpy) happily arrived at following a period during which, like many girls, she hated and starved her body in an attempt to conform to an ideal shape.     

The post in which she writes about this - about how her self-loathing gave way to self-acceptance - is open and honest, even if it's not entirely convincing (one suspects, for example, that she'd still like to drop a dress size if possible) and even if there are some things that one might find troubling as a feminist (her obvious need for male validation and boyfriend approval). 

    

Still, I don't want to be harsh or judgemental here; particularly with reference to this latter point. Perhaps we all need to see ourselves reflected in the adoring eyes of a lover and not just in our bedroom mirrors or as selfies on the screens of our i-Phones before we can truly feel beautiful and desirable. 

Maybe the fact that we're never absolutely self-contained or completely independent - that we need one another - is what makes us human. And this includes needing others to compliment us on our looks (our faces, our hair, our smiles, our make-up, our bodies, our clothes, our shoes, etc).

And so, Miss Lumpy, let me reassure you that there is no form of beauty more poignant than that which you model so wonderfully. The complex sweetness of your features - including the lily-white complexion and well-defined contours of your mouth - eclipse the most perfectly assembled of conventional faces. You have transformed your life into a work of art and a miracle of heroic survival. 

Yours is a beauty born of resistance to "so many physical and mental corsets, so many constraints, crushing denials, absurd restrictions, dogmas, heartbreaks, such sadism and asphyxiation, such conspiracies of silence and humiliation", that it signals a daring revolt into style. And for this, I admire you hugely - lumps and all.
           

Note: quotation from Amélie Nothomb, Fear and Trembling, trans. Adriana Hunter (Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 66.

Link: http://www.herlumpiness.com/2010/06/lumpy-gets-personal.html

Stupeur et tremblements

Cover of the Faber and Faber English 

paperback edition (2004)

In some ways, Amélie Nothomb's Stupeur et tremblements (1999), can be regarded as a fictional supplement to Roland Barthes's L'Empire des Signs (published thirty years earlier) and ought not to be thought of simply as an autobiographical novel.

For like the latter, Nothomb's book is an attempt to isolate a certain number of features and from out of these delineate with great delicacy and ingenuity a system called 'Japan'. It succeeds because she wisely avoids any banal sociological analysis of Japanese corporate life, just as - despite autobiographical elements - she avoids offering a simple recreation of her own past. 

Central to her little comedy of manners is the question of etiquette. Amélie-san longs not so much for intimacy with Fubuki, but informality. For informal relations are so much more desirable to a modern, occidental sensibility than the strictly coded ones that exist within the Japanese work place. 

For to be informal, even at the risk of seeming impolite, is to be true according to the logic of Western morality which rests upon what Barthes terms a mythology of the person; we believe ourselves and others to be composed of a false, public exterior and of a personal, authentic interior which it is our duty to know.

And so it is that, after a certain period of time, we naturally assume we have the right to be ourselves in the company of others; further, we also think we have the right to know them as they really are, stripped of any social status or superficial difference on which they might pride themselves. For is it not taught that all souls are equal in the sight of God.

That we could believe other and behave differently is something that Amélie-san has to learn. But whether she does learn this is debatable, for her attachment to a democracy of souls seems extremely strong. Thus, at the end of her time working for the Yukimoto Corporation, she bids farewell and shakes the hands only of those colleagues who have acknowledged what she regards as her essential humanity.

For this reason, one can't help but wonder about the nature of the great happiness that Fubuki's letter brings at the end of the novel; does Amélie-san feel that it signals some kind of final victory and vindication?

I would like to think not, but there is something profoundly disturbing and even ugly about the character of Amélie-san: like a soul-devouring monster, she's obsessed with discovering the truth of poor Miss Mori and, via what Barthes calls the willed simplicity of Western manners, she seems determined to declare her affability, her honesty, and her authenticity whatever the consequences for herself and those around her.

Ultimately, and ironically, she's the bully in the office place! For her friendship is something that cannot be refused and her pity is a type of poison. 

The Post of Proper Names

Recently, at a party, I overheard what seemed an undeniably bitchy but nonetheless interesting remark: when told by a young Australian woman, who happens to be married to quite a famous Catalan designer, that they intended to name their unborn baby girl Bacardi, the hostess gave a superior little snort and declared that they were condemning the child to a future that would involve stripping and low-paid bar work.

It reminded me that many people still strongly believe that names are of crucial significance; that they not only determine an individual destiny, but also reveal the essential character of the person to whom they belong. 

I'm pretty sure that both women I mention above - the expectant mother and the hostess - subscribed to this same line of thought, which, of course, can be traced back to the ancient Athenian philosopher Cratylus; he being the most famous exponent of this popular form of linguistic naturalness.

The mother-to-be, for example, is doubtless convinced that by giving the child such an unusual name she is securing for her an exceptional future, in which the horizon of possibility will remain wide open. Like Plectrude's mother, Lucette, this woman thinks that to assign a child a common first name is the same as wanting to give them a mediocre world of grey skies and low-ceilings in which to grow up.

The acid-tongued party hostess would surely agree, in part at least. For the only real difference between the women is over what the name Bacardi implies and here there are clearly social and cultural factors involved and it is not simply a question of onomastics.  

In Praise of the Swan Princess

Like Zarathustra, I have always been a fan of girls who choose to devote themselves to the harsh discipline of classical dance: how could I be an enemy of the blessed feet and fair ankles of ballerinas?

And, like Zarathustra, I have always loathed the Spirit of Gravity; that which weighs life down and stops us learning how to fly like birds and love ourselves with a degree of supersensual coldness that the all-contented know nothing of as they hurriedly gobble-up and digest anything that is placed before them like swine.

Honour should be given only to those who are fastidious in their tastes and have learned how to say No to a soft existence of lard-arsed laziness, spreading everywhere, but leading nowhere. As Plectrude comes to realise: "Putting one's health on the line meant nothing at all as long as one could know the incredible sensation of taking flight." Ultimately, nothing tastes as good as playing Odette feels.