Review - Julien Gracq's A Dark Stranger ("Un Beau Ténébreux")

GRACQ, Julien (Christopher Moncrieff, trans.), A Dark Stranger, Pushkin Press, London, 2013.

Octavo; gatefold paperback; 255pp., with a monochrome portrait frontispiece. Mild wear; covers lightly rubbed and edgeworn. Near fine.

Regular readers will groan when I mention, yet again, Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat, and that criticism is justified – I have been obsessed, I admit. I have made a concerted effort recently to broaden my range of knowledge concerning literature of the 1920s and not always have these efforts been rewarded. The Green Hat is an anomaly – Arlen wrote it and then he should have just stopped. I am currently slogging my way through his follow-up effort – Young Men In Love – and the difference between the two works cannot be stressed too much, although it’s equally clear that the same person wrote them. Young Men is tediously trying; I have picked it up and put it aside again repeatedly, and this despite the fact that my copy is mostly falling apart and that I promised myself I would only move through it once to try and preserve its physical integrity. So much for promises!

During one such frustrated hiatus, a friend offered me his copy of Gracq’s A Dark Stranger, professing to have been blown away by the beautiful writing. I figured, I’d had enough of Arlen’s tortured maunderings for the time being, so I agreed to take a look at it. I wasn’t disappointed.

Gracq was an associate of André Breton and a supporter of the whole Surrealist Movement. Consequently, his writing stems from the notions of dreams and their subtle psychic influences, both in terms of plot and expression. His style is narcotic, suggestive and dense, with deep layers of implication and inference. Unlike Arlen who throws everything at the wall in order to see what sticks, Gracq moves the reader effortlessly through levels of description to arrive at understanding. The effect is breath-taking and extraordinarily beautiful (and this is just in translation; I can’t imagine what it would be like in the original French!).

I did make a mistake with this book though, and I urge you – if you choose to follow in my footsteps – to not do as I did and look up the book online for reviews, or background information. This book has a very simple premise that can be stated in a handful of words; once you know what that is it instantly extracts the mystery from the narrative in one thrust, like stabbing a balloon. If you come to the book with this information upfront, you will be effectively reading it in anticipation of the known outcome, and not following the enigma to its conclusion, which is obviously what Gracq intended. Find yourself a copy and read it cold, without a safety net; you will enjoy the Hell out of it.

With this is mind, I will continue this review all the while dodging the silver bullet at the heart of it. No spoilers, in other words.

The set-up for the story involves a bored young man - Gérard - on holiday at a French beach resort. He was captured during the Great War (or was it? Time is a bit flexible in this world - it was published in 1945 and Gérard's wartime experiences are, in fact, Gracq's own World War Two ones) and still suffers the mental scars of his incarceration, nevertheless, he is keen to enjoy his seaside break. While at the hotel – the suggestively named Hôtel des Vagues – he socialises with the other visitors, all of whom are as jaded and effete as himself. They swim by the shore, they eat at the local restaurant (“Les Retour du Pêcheurs”) and they gamble idly at the Hotel casino. The scenery and the sumptuous surrounds are beautifully described, and the lazy passage of days spent in idle activity is effectively conveyed. Our narrator divides his time between the lacklustre pursuit of the only other single woman present – the affected Christel – and making bitchy observations about the other couples present.

This jaded and dissolute affect is something that is a hallmark of most books written during the Twenties (let me be clear - this book was not written then; it was actually penned while Gracq languished in a German prison camp during World War Two and was published after he was released). We must remember that that was a time when huge social change was in the offing and most people felt directionless and without goals – much like today, really. Religion seemed pointless and empty; the Great War had demonstrated that lofty idealism could effect little of consequence in the world; and the dreams of Empire had been revealed to be tawdry and hollow. If the characters in books of this period seem listless and craving something more from life, then there’s a very real reason for it – that’s how everybody felt back then. Even Wodehouse’s rollicking comedies have elements of this notion, if you read deeply enough between the lines.

The set-up of Gracq’s book reminded me strongly of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. In that book, as well, there is a coterie of bored, affected Bright Young Things who spend their time indulging various appetites – from sex to drugs and back again – In a wild attempt to feel something – anything – that would give their lives purpose. Deny or indulge: that was the tenor of the times; a mad attempt to suck some kind of meaning from existence.

That is essentially the set-up of Gracq’s book. It is presented as a series of diary entries written by the narrator. Ostensibly, he has come to the hotel to rest and to edit a book that he has written about Rimbaud’s poetry. There is the desirably remote Christel to pursue, but she seems to be keen on the sporty Jacques (who couples his rude physicality with a pretentious lip-service knowledge of poetry), the waspish Iréne and her husband Henri (who is beginning to feel that he made a mistake in marrying her) and the Briton, Gregory. It is Gregory who introduces the catalyst into the situation, which threatens to blow it to pieces, by inviting his friends to come and stay – the mysterious Allan and his partner Dorothea.

Like Jay Gatsby in F. Scott FitzGerald’s novel, Allan is darkly magnetic with a compelling allure. He at once commands the devotion of the other guests who hang upon his every word. He gambles with ferocious abandon, plays tennis with athletic grace and presents irrefutable opinions on any topic. At a midnight picnic in the ruins of a local castle, he puts the pushy Iréne in her place, unseating her as the social dominatrix of the clique’s activities, and charms Christel away from her childish attachment to Jacques with a (completely unreciprocated) devotion.

The narrator spends his time trying to understand the chemical dynamic that motivates Allan throughout the situation, becoming somewhat unhealthily obsessed with the man himself. The social strata shift: Jacques, once the alpha male, is relegated to a junior status; Christel, once a lofty goddess of desire, is now a child with a pathetic crush; Iréne is furious and Henri is secretly delighted. Early on, Gregory disappears back to Britain but, before his departure, he writes a long note to Gérard giving him a précis of Allan’s past life and voicing a distinct uneasiness about his presence at the hotel – a fear of what might happen next that has inspired him to cut short his stay and leave.

Things roll on to an inevitable, shocking conclusion. Shocking, that is, if you haven’t researched the book first and discovered the trick of it. Do yourself a favour and read this – it is compelling and rewarding. Myself, I’m now on the lookout for anything else that Julien Gracq wrote (he only wrote four novels), and I intend to devour them whole – no picking about the edges first. I urge you to do likewise.

Four Tentacled Horrors.