Book review. Vernon Subutex 2: An attack of aggressive insight

The Hound in ”Game of thrones” rides through the forest in the freezing deppväder. Someone in his entourage asks why he is always in such a bad mood. His reply is matter of fact: ”Experience”. He has seen everything, and liked not what he saw. Here we have the epitome of a misanthrope.

the Narration of Virginie Despentes romantrilogi ”Vernon Subutex”, where the second part has just been published in Swedish in sylvass translation of Kristoffer Leandoer, is not unlike The Hound. Despentes narrator also has seen it all. Nothing surprising, the bustling gallery of losers embodied by amoral perception and bitter sense of humor.

before this skivhandlaren Vernon. He is now homeless because the record store konkade in the last book with eviction from the apartment as a result and your buddies and the girls he slept on the couch with the eventually rotted on the parasiterandet. Still chasing him through the Paris sociological undergrowth, because they want to get access to his recordings with the nasty rock star Alex.

Everything is corrupted: friendship, love, not to mention motherhood. One of the few women in the book who have not given up normalitetsprojektet, Mari-Enter, can only say that ”Motherhood is not what she intended: she thought that the mothers helped one another, a solidarity between the true women. But to give birth to a child, it just means that you get a ticket to the actual race. It ensures no medal.”

of capital livsstilstävling. No comfort, no, not even in nature – the sighting of the closest man comes to a forest in the urban book, namely the park, says it all: ”She walks along an artificial lake, on whose beach it is great on poultry and shrugs.”

Everyone is alienated, all confuse sex with power, and do their best to become alcoholics, haschtomtar and/or kokainister.

Still, I continue to be amazed at how the literary aggressiveness can bring such a tremendous joy of life, even hope. As a reader one becomes pissed off, excited and want to go out on the streets and messing and mess. Despentes narration is a total of osentimental; she avoids effectively to arouse the reader's såsiga compassion. Not even when Vernon has now become professional bums, you think particularly sorry for him.

is a better way to incite the reader than the care and världssamvete. Those who want to suggerera compassion of the reader is liable to aim wrong because even often slips around on the verge of self-pity. Collective manifestations of aimless empathy is suspiciously close to self-pity by proxy, and to feel sorry about himself by feeling sorry for others is no effective motståndsstrategi against a skitsamhälle. Despentes know this, just as the Michel Houellebecq that she sometimes compared with: deep political changes achieved through clear on the marknadsliberalismens manipulative mechanisms, not through the digital the regent, an individual trying to lay blame or kärleksmanifestationer where the stuffed animals piled on high.

Despentes ”little bunch of losers” gives a furiously uplifting radiance to the contemporary misery. Cynicism is the only cure for misantroper. But note that a misanthrope seldom hate all people – the target is livsstilskåta normslavar and emotional sell-outs. And that Despentes points out, perhaps in a metakommentar to his own work: ”Cynicism is mjukisens facade”.

”A furious bataljmålning of our time”. Read the review of the first part.

and the effects of the neoliberal meltdown and globalisation, more specifically, häxkitteln of nyfattigdom, unsafe working conditions, the dismantling of the safety nets, conspiracy theories, xenophobia and right-wing extremism, so it has now become even more late on the earth. In domedagstider when religion and the more secular but equally oversimplified systems take over, when the strong Jesusfigurer. Their message is of minor significance, it is the ability to uncomplicated idealisation that makes the difference.

Vernon hits, of course, in the middle of the dot in the terrified flockmänniskornas need to follow the gurus – some call him even ”Europe's shaman”. Suddenly, he has a swarm of supporters at the feet, where he sits under a tree and svamlar, wearing illröda cowboy boots. ”They wanted to make a Rimbaud of him, though he was only an old relief receivers,” writes Despentes.

" and that many of the contemporary hollow heroes will quickly go into oblivion. But Vernon Subutex trilogy will survive, because it engaged in the analysis instead of in ryggmärgskänslor. Is there anyone who is Europe's shaman, so it is Despentes.

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