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'I live death at every moment. I get the feeling I came into this world with death on the brain . . . In our family, ever since the remotest antiquity, we have kept up the custom of passing away so many times, it has become hereditary.'-- Maurice Roche
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Maurice Roche was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, in 1924, and worked variously as a journalist, composer, critic, and race-car driver before turning to writing with a critical study of Monteverdi. He was the author of eight of the most challenging novels ever written, even for a period that saw more than its share of them. His writings belong to the tradition of Sterne, Rabelais, Jarry, Queneau and Jules Romains. The novels are composed of almost random fragments and short sequences, aphorisms, paroxysmal phrases and absurd black melodramatic interventions. Roche's amused obsession with death and dying made some readers feel distinctly uncomfortable. He died in 1997.
Compact, his first novel, as well as his first book to appear in English, was published in 1966, and has since come to be considered a classic of post-New Novel fiction. Composed—as if a musical score—of six intertwining narratives (each distinguished by its own voice, tense, and typeface), Compact has lost none of its remarkable freshness or groundbreaking innovation. It was first published in Philippe Sollers'"Tel Quel" series. In a preface, Sollers praises its liberty of form, its grim humour, its amused indifference to what are usually considered serious matters: disease, pain, loneliness and death itself. Yet Roche never belonged to the "Tel Quel" group or the creators of the nouveau roman. He remained an exception, almost an outsider, unclassifiable.
Compact is the story of a blind man living in a city of his own imagining. Confined to his deathbed, he engages in mental walks through the world's capitals. These sightless excursions explode in a plethora of musical arrangements, sexual encounters, and mysterious funeral rites. Meanwhile, a Japanese collector and his transvestite assistant watch over the blind man in exchange—upon the latter's death—for his magnificent tattooed skin. As a further ordeal, the protagonist finds himself prey to the whims of a sadistic French girl in the next apartment.
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from 'An Evening with Maurice Roche', 1983
Mark Polizzotti/The Sienese Shredder #3
Jean-Luc Giribone: You said something I find very interesting, which is, “It’s not that I’m trying to be a formalist, but that, when I want to tell a story, I ask myself what form best corresponds to that story.” That’s a very seductive formula.
Maurice Roche: It’s the opposite. First I come up with the form, and then I ask myself what story I’m going to stuff in it. That might sound strange, but that’s how it works.
Mark Polizzotti: But in that case, can you explain how it isn’t formalist?
MR: It’s not formalist because I’m inventing a form for, let’s say, artistic reasons. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard—I think that’s where it comes from—but I’ve composed a lot of music. When you compose music, the first thing you think of is form. You have a fugue to write, for instance, so you start with a form. The form is pre-established. It’s your starting-point. Of course, form alone isn’t enough: you have to do something with it. But I’ve never worried about that—once I’ve settled on a form, it always leads me somewhere. For instance, my idea for Compact was that there would be several intertwined plot lines, which together would form another plot. Every plot line would have its own pronoun, tense, etc. And once that was set, the ideas for a story, an adventure—because if you read closely, the story of Compact is very banal, it’s basically a crime novel. And the whole plot attached itself to that. That’s not formalism. Or if it is, then everything is formalism.
Another thing: in order to write, I need a first sentence. For Compact, it was: “You shall be made sleepless even as you are left sightless.” That came to me as soon as I’d chosen the second person future as my startingpoint. (And just as an aside, I’d like to point out that when I wrote Compact, in the 1950s, Butor’s Modification, the second-person narrative, hadn’t come out yet.) That was the key sentence, and it traced the path for the rest of the book—all I had to do was follow it. Now, to follow it, you still have to write. And not write junk or something false. I can write a bad line as much as the next fellow, but there’s not a single word in Compact that isn’t essential. I cut a lot out, a lot that maybe wasn’t bad, but that didn’t fit. On top of which, as you read through the book the form changes. Your form becomes deformed. Things happen along the way—it’s not written by a computer, after all. If you get to page 20, for instance, and you learn that a friend has died or your mother is in the hospital, believe me, the sentence you were writing is left hanging, and if you come back to it later it’s going to move off in a different direction. So one way of looking at it is like improvisation on a canvas, or like a jazz improvisation. You never know exactly where it’s going to take you.
Jean-Louis Bouttes: So what kinds of things are on this canvas? Images?
MR: The canvas naturally starts with a sentence. I surprised someone one day who asked me why I write, and I said I write so that I can learn to write. And it’s true, we’ll never master this goddamned language! When I see colleagues of mine using it poorly, it bothers me.
JLG: That’s just it, you talk about language, but you’re really talking about the French language in particular.
MR: Of course I am, it’s my language! And I’m very attached to it. That said, let’s be clear: I think every language is beautiful, and the proof is that I use them in my writing. But when I use them it’s usually to show that no one knows them, or knows them well, and that ultimately we’re all deaf. The French look at other languages as foreign, but you know that French is made up of a whole host of languages. There are a ton of words from English, Arabic, and so on. That’s what makes a language rich. I’m very happy when I’m in the bus and I hear people speaking Arabic, or Portuguese, or Vietnamese, or English, or Swedish—I think that’s great. And it’s strange, because when I incorporate a phrase of English or German in my texts, people take me to task for it. And those same people spend their days surrounded by every language in the world—without hearing a thing. It’s very beautiful, all those languages, they sound wonderful. The extreme limit is Finnegans Wake, which you can’t even translate.
(the entirety)
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---You shall be made sleepless even as you are left sightless. While you’re penetrating the darkness, you’ll penetrate into the night, getting in deeper and deeper, your already failing memory growing proportionately weaker as—at the end of a long lethargy—you become conscious of your condition. (How will you tell day from night?)
---You’ll be there, on a bed—in a room, of course. With eyes wide open you’ll scrutinize this dark desert → and will the expanding space allow you to go so far out that you can never return to your senses?
---Within your skull you’ll haunt Mnemopolis, a lonesome and obscure city. No streets no canals no paving being done in the area (the circumvolutions of your brain), but only traces that you’ll try to catch hold of: these will be shreds of memories (or hallucinations?) and sonorous debris that somehow reach you from without and most of the time evoke absolutely nothing; so many objects or fragments that patiently—and not without hesitation—you’ll want to string together, give them meaning by connecting them—
in hopes once more of coming across that fissure where the sun has penetrated you with its shadow and forgetfulness has insinuated itself, infiltrated ( and since when?), wakefulness invading your sleep, until your mind is submerged;
so you can sneak into this hole in your dazzled memory, first in search of a name (which?) whose sinuosities you’d marry . . . in order to become one in body with the calligraphy
-------then finally grow drowsy in this word . . . and sleep—rest in peace—sleep as far gone as possible.
---But you will not sleep.
---Using your elbows and forearms—will you feel those cracks in your articulations, and will you hear them as you hear the creaking mattress?—you’ll painfully (straining to twist yourself around) sit up; throwing your legs out from under the covers, you’ll simultaneously attempt a rotation toward the right, at the end of which you should be sitting on the edge of the bed. But despite your efforts, you won’t succeed.
After a second try, then a third—having lightly rocked back and forth—you’ll fall backward
and will stay half-stretched out, resting on your elbows, your hands clutching the covers, your legs slightly bent, panting . . .
---Without moving a muscle, chin jammed against your chest, you’ll slowly catch your breath: your respiration, quickened at first, will become regular.
---Your look will be desert. An entire past inexpressible at present. You’ll wait for this absence with gaping, empty eyes . . . (how will you know if someone if anyone in this room which gets larger and larger . . . ? will it frighten you to be alone?)
---You’ll slowly
before letting your neck fall back on the damp pillow. The frozen contact of the pillowcase will make you shiver. You’ll touch your face, slowly you’ll feel it (a presence!); and that object (which?) that—stretching out your arm—you’ll displace on the bedside table to your right, while leaving the nocturnal landscape unchanged.
You’ll curl up . . .
![]()
Buy Maurice Roche's 'Compact' (Dalkey Archive Press)
Mark Polizzotti's 'Memento Maurice'
'Maurice Roche: Paradigm Lost and Found' by Susan Suleiman
Maurice Roche's 'Compact' CD
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p.s. Hey. Until I see you guys again tomorrow, Maurice Roche will provide you with a very interesting local time today if you're in the mood. I recommended that you be (in that mood). See you tomorrow!
'I live death at every moment. I get the feeling I came into this world with death on the brain . . . In our family, ever since the remotest antiquity, we have kept up the custom of passing away so many times, it has become hereditary.'-- Maurice Roche
____________
Maurice Roche was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, in 1924, and worked variously as a journalist, composer, critic, and race-car driver before turning to writing with a critical study of Monteverdi. He was the author of eight of the most challenging novels ever written, even for a period that saw more than its share of them. His writings belong to the tradition of Sterne, Rabelais, Jarry, Queneau and Jules Romains. The novels are composed of almost random fragments and short sequences, aphorisms, paroxysmal phrases and absurd black melodramatic interventions. Roche's amused obsession with death and dying made some readers feel distinctly uncomfortable. He died in 1997.
Compact, his first novel, as well as his first book to appear in English, was published in 1966, and has since come to be considered a classic of post-New Novel fiction. Composed—as if a musical score—of six intertwining narratives (each distinguished by its own voice, tense, and typeface), Compact has lost none of its remarkable freshness or groundbreaking innovation. It was first published in Philippe Sollers'"Tel Quel" series. In a preface, Sollers praises its liberty of form, its grim humour, its amused indifference to what are usually considered serious matters: disease, pain, loneliness and death itself. Yet Roche never belonged to the "Tel Quel" group or the creators of the nouveau roman. He remained an exception, almost an outsider, unclassifiable.
Compact is the story of a blind man living in a city of his own imagining. Confined to his deathbed, he engages in mental walks through the world's capitals. These sightless excursions explode in a plethora of musical arrangements, sexual encounters, and mysterious funeral rites. Meanwhile, a Japanese collector and his transvestite assistant watch over the blind man in exchange—upon the latter's death—for his magnificent tattooed skin. As a further ordeal, the protagonist finds himself prey to the whims of a sadistic French girl in the next apartment.
________________
from 'An Evening with Maurice Roche', 1983
Mark Polizzotti/The Sienese Shredder #3
Jean-Luc Giribone: You said something I find very interesting, which is, “It’s not that I’m trying to be a formalist, but that, when I want to tell a story, I ask myself what form best corresponds to that story.” That’s a very seductive formula.
Maurice Roche: It’s the opposite. First I come up with the form, and then I ask myself what story I’m going to stuff in it. That might sound strange, but that’s how it works.
Mark Polizzotti: But in that case, can you explain how it isn’t formalist?
MR: It’s not formalist because I’m inventing a form for, let’s say, artistic reasons. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard—I think that’s where it comes from—but I’ve composed a lot of music. When you compose music, the first thing you think of is form. You have a fugue to write, for instance, so you start with a form. The form is pre-established. It’s your starting-point. Of course, form alone isn’t enough: you have to do something with it. But I’ve never worried about that—once I’ve settled on a form, it always leads me somewhere. For instance, my idea for Compact was that there would be several intertwined plot lines, which together would form another plot. Every plot line would have its own pronoun, tense, etc. And once that was set, the ideas for a story, an adventure—because if you read closely, the story of Compact is very banal, it’s basically a crime novel. And the whole plot attached itself to that. That’s not formalism. Or if it is, then everything is formalism.
Another thing: in order to write, I need a first sentence. For Compact, it was: “You shall be made sleepless even as you are left sightless.” That came to me as soon as I’d chosen the second person future as my startingpoint. (And just as an aside, I’d like to point out that when I wrote Compact, in the 1950s, Butor’s Modification, the second-person narrative, hadn’t come out yet.) That was the key sentence, and it traced the path for the rest of the book—all I had to do was follow it. Now, to follow it, you still have to write. And not write junk or something false. I can write a bad line as much as the next fellow, but there’s not a single word in Compact that isn’t essential. I cut a lot out, a lot that maybe wasn’t bad, but that didn’t fit. On top of which, as you read through the book the form changes. Your form becomes deformed. Things happen along the way—it’s not written by a computer, after all. If you get to page 20, for instance, and you learn that a friend has died or your mother is in the hospital, believe me, the sentence you were writing is left hanging, and if you come back to it later it’s going to move off in a different direction. So one way of looking at it is like improvisation on a canvas, or like a jazz improvisation. You never know exactly where it’s going to take you.
Jean-Louis Bouttes: So what kinds of things are on this canvas? Images?
MR: The canvas naturally starts with a sentence. I surprised someone one day who asked me why I write, and I said I write so that I can learn to write. And it’s true, we’ll never master this goddamned language! When I see colleagues of mine using it poorly, it bothers me.
JLG: That’s just it, you talk about language, but you’re really talking about the French language in particular.
MR: Of course I am, it’s my language! And I’m very attached to it. That said, let’s be clear: I think every language is beautiful, and the proof is that I use them in my writing. But when I use them it’s usually to show that no one knows them, or knows them well, and that ultimately we’re all deaf. The French look at other languages as foreign, but you know that French is made up of a whole host of languages. There are a ton of words from English, Arabic, and so on. That’s what makes a language rich. I’m very happy when I’m in the bus and I hear people speaking Arabic, or Portuguese, or Vietnamese, or English, or Swedish—I think that’s great. And it’s strange, because when I incorporate a phrase of English or German in my texts, people take me to task for it. And those same people spend their days surrounded by every language in the world—without hearing a thing. It’s very beautiful, all those languages, they sound wonderful. The extreme limit is Finnegans Wake, which you can’t even translate.
(the entirety)
from'Compact'
---You shall be made sleepless even as you are left sightless. While you’re penetrating the darkness, you’ll penetrate into the night, getting in deeper and deeper, your already failing memory growing proportionately weaker as—at the end of a long lethargy—you become conscious of your condition. (How will you tell day from night?)
---You’ll be there, on a bed—in a room, of course. With eyes wide open you’ll scrutinize this dark desert → and will the expanding space allow you to go so far out that you can never return to your senses?
---Within your skull you’ll haunt Mnemopolis, a lonesome and obscure city. No streets no canals no paving being done in the area (the circumvolutions of your brain), but only traces that you’ll try to catch hold of: these will be shreds of memories (or hallucinations?) and sonorous debris that somehow reach you from without and most of the time evoke absolutely nothing; so many objects or fragments that patiently—and not without hesitation—you’ll want to string together, give them meaning by connecting them—
in hopes once more of coming across that fissure where the sun has penetrated you with its shadow and forgetfulness has insinuated itself, infiltrated ( and since when?), wakefulness invading your sleep, until your mind is submerged;
so you can sneak into this hole in your dazzled memory, first in search of a name (which?) whose sinuosities you’d marry . . . in order to become one in body with the calligraphy
-------then finally grow drowsy in this word . . . and sleep—rest in peace—sleep as far gone as possible.
---But you will not sleep.
---Using your elbows and forearms—will you feel those cracks in your articulations, and will you hear them as you hear the creaking mattress?—you’ll painfully (straining to twist yourself around) sit up; throwing your legs out from under the covers, you’ll simultaneously attempt a rotation toward the right, at the end of which you should be sitting on the edge of the bed. But despite your efforts, you won’t succeed.
After a second try, then a third—having lightly rocked back and forth—you’ll fall backward
and will stay half-stretched out, resting on your elbows, your hands clutching the covers, your legs slightly bent, panting . . .
---Without moving a muscle, chin jammed against your chest, you’ll slowly catch your breath: your respiration, quickened at first, will become regular.
---Your look will be desert. An entire past inexpressible at present. You’ll wait for this absence with gaping, empty eyes . . . (how will you know if someone if anyone in this room which gets larger and larger . . . ? will it frighten you to be alone?)
---You’ll slowly
turn your head
to the left
to the right
before letting your neck fall back on the damp pillow. The frozen contact of the pillowcase will make you shiver. You’ll touch your face, slowly you’ll feel it (a presence!); and that object (which?) that—stretching out your arm—you’ll displace on the bedside table to your right, while leaving the nocturnal landscape unchanged.
You’ll curl up . . .
. . . in the foetal (fatal?) position . . .
_______________
Buy Maurice Roche's 'Compact' (Dalkey Archive Press)
Mark Polizzotti's 'Memento Maurice'
'Maurice Roche: Paradigm Lost and Found' by Susan Suleiman
Maurice Roche's 'Compact' CD
----*
p.s. Hey. Until I see you guys again tomorrow, Maurice Roche will provide you with a very interesting local time today if you're in the mood. I recommended that you be (in that mood). See you tomorrow!