Nada publishes this month, the first time ever Jean-Patrick Manchette's 1972 tour de force supercool noir novel is available in English. Thank you, New York Review Books!
"Nada is a remarkable book. At the time of its publication, there was nothing like it outside of Manchette's work; novels and politics kept separate bedrooms...Manchette essentially launched an industry of left-wing thrillers."
The above quote is from Luc Sante's Introduction in this NYRB edition. And let me tell you, Nada makes for one thrilling read - full throttle, nonstop action and sharply drawn characters, most notably the ragtag bunch of Leftest terrorists forming the Nada gang.
Although, like many artists, writers and intellectuals back in 1960s France, Jean-Patrick Manchette joined Communist youth organizations, he was not at all a supporter of terrorists. Luc Sante includes an entry from Manchette's diary: "Politically, they are a public hazard, a true catastrophe for the revolutionary movement. The collapse of leftism into terrorism is the collapse of the revolution into spectacle."
One of the most spectacular, newsworthy schemes back in those Paris years was kidnapping a high-ranking official - precisely the plan of the Nada gang. But that's all I'll say about plot since I wouldn't want to spoil a reader's experience of turning the pages to find out what happens next. Rather, here's a snip about key members of the Nada gang and several other highlights that makes this Manchette cinema-like tale sizzle and pop:
Épaulard - Fifty-year-old with a long history - member of the French Resistance, Algerian National Liberation Front, FTP combatant, hired killer. Nowadays, Épaulard is a man alone, a study in existential alienation and absurdity right off the pages of Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus or André Malraux.
Buenaventura - Revolution and Marxism are in his Spanish blood (his father died in 1937 defending the Barcelona Commune), so much so he's a professional revolutionary. Manchette frequently refers to him simply as the Catalan, a thirty-something hombre who thrives on violence.
Fabio Testi playing Buenaventura in the film based on the novel looks like a cross between Clint Eastwood and Julio Cortázar
Cash - Attractive, athletic, youthful gal who wants in on the action. She lets the Nada gang use the farmhouse where she's living at the moment. Why would she take such a risk? As she says: "Boring, easy tasks are not my thing. I don't know what my style is. I'm nothing but a little whore." Cash has a head full of popular culture, telling Épaulard he looks like Roger Vailland and "I'm a character like the young bourgeois girl in Playing with Fire." Cash might not be exactly a Marxist but she sure hates those dirty capitalists. In many ways, most notably in her expert handling and firing a submachine gun, Cash is a precursor of hyper-violent killer, Aimée Joubert, Manchette's main character in his novel Fatale.
Treuffais - Twenty-five year old philosophy teacher and intellectual who writes up the Nada manifesto, the type of revolutionary disinclined to support violent action unless all the consequences are reviewed and understood in detail. If this sounds like he might be too heady, you're probably spot-on. The kind of guy who, when he slams his car door shut in a fit of anger, usually gets his fingers caught in the window.
Politics - Once the politicians get wind of the kidnapping and then a bit of unexpected inside information, not only is there a storm raised about an entire string of Leftists and radicals, but those very politicians and public agencies quickly are at each other's throats. And, it almost goes without saying, the State will take this terrorist incident to cast guilt on all those repulsive undesirables. "And while we're at it nab as many operatives of the Grabeliau faction as possible, including SAC dissidents. We could even accuse them of being in cahoots with the kidnappers, so discrediting everybody in one fell swoop."
Media - As expected, the kidnapping also revved up newspapers and television - Le Monde: "The style is disgusting and the childishness of certain statements of an archaic and unalloyed anarchism might raise a smile in other circumstances. In the present situation, however, they inspire disquiet, a deep anxiety in face of the nihilism embraced, seemingly with delight, bu this Nada group, which chose such an apt name for itself but which, in its text as in its actions, expresses itself in an utterly unjustifiable way."
Slick and Shiny - in vintage Jean-Patrick Manchette style, objects, particularly cars and guns, are given a special call-out: Renault 15, 2CV, Citroën DS21, Stern submachine gun, Colt Cobra, .22 LR bullets. It's as if in our modern world, the snotty, misshapen sack of shit, piss, blood, bones and guts that makes up a human can't compete with the unchanging beauty and elegance of our surrounding brand-name products.
High Culture, Pop Culture - Jean-Patrick Manchette's signature nod to literature and the arts: "he looked like a brigand in a neorealist version of Carmen; Le Canard Enchainè will have a field day; a sign that says: "Be Like Everyone - Read Frane-Soir"; he tried to read Jonathan Latimer's The Dead Don't Care; reading The Greening of America. Hey, these men and women of Paris might want to destroy one another, but each and every one is hip to what's happening all around them.
Nada Gang - Events surrounding this motley anarcho-terrorist squad quickly take on a kind of grandeur until we have a sense we are witnessing the stuff of Greek tragedy. However, you will have to pick up a copy of Nada and judge the veracity of this statement for yourself.
Coda - It gives me great joy to be the first on Goodreads to share a review of Nada written in English. Jean-Patrick Manchette is one of my favorites. I've posted reviews on the five other novels of his that have been translated into English.
Jean-Patrick Manchette, 1942-1995
"Épaulard sat up in bed. He grimaced. His nighttime efforts had earned him aching muscles. He delved into the pockets of his pants, which were lying on the floor, and found cigarettes and matches. He smoked in the gray half-light. He could not visualize the future. He did not believe that the ransom would be paid or that he would be rich the following week. He did not even see himself living that long." - Jean-Patrick Manchette, Nada
Comments
Post a Comment