Spotlight on … Robert Pinget The Inquisitory (1962)

‘In his playful and candid book-length interview with Madeleine Renouard (Robert Pinget à la letter, 1993), the author of The Inquisitory (1962) and Monsieur Songe (1982) distinguishes his writing from Alain Robbe-Grillet’s. Pinget (1919-1997) claims that, whereas Robbe-Grillet emphasizes the eye, he privileges the ear. The quip suggests a useful way of approaching a substantial, joyfully prolific, yet meticulously unified oeuvre; and it also points to the delicate problems facing the translator of Pinget’s delightfully idiosyncratic prose based on puns, consonance, assonance, masterfully applied colloquial syntax, and numerous other “musical” qualities. Fortunately, quite a few of Pinget’s novels have been expertly translated during the past three decades, notably by Barbara Wright. First and foremost, they are pleasurable to read, even more so aloud.

‘By “ear,” Pinget thus means much more than the phonetically droll words that crop up in his writing, like the olibrius (“odd or bizarre fellow”) used to describe the retired old writer who is growing senile and living with his maid at a sea resort “near Agapa” in Monsieur Songe; or the terms impétrer (a rare legal and ecclesiastical term for “solicit”) and alopécie (“alopecia”) which, in Between Fantoine and Agapa, appear on a billboard as Interdiction d’impétrer l’alopécie (“Soliciting Alopecia Prohibited”). By the way, this billboard humorously announces one of the author’s anxieties; he was growing bald when this book was written. Pinget later avowed that “a reflex of self-analysis” and “a form of veiled confession” was embodied in his writer-characters. Simultaneously, he often emphasized the preponderance of imagination in his literary work, of his rigorous remove from realism and straightforward self-chronicle.

‘Of course, Pinget also subverted conventional storytelling techniques in a manner similar to that associated, often too narrowly and ahistorically, with the novelists standing in front of the offices of the Éditions de Minuit in a famous photograph: Pinget, Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, Samuel Beckett, Claude Mauriac, Claude Ollier, and the instigator of this publicity stunt, the publisher Jérôme Lindon. Pinget’s sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes more whimsical assault on narrative logic represents one break from the trappings of the traditional novel. Yet the key term “contradiction” must be kept at hand whenever Pinget’s fiction is “theorized”— a term and a critical activity for which he possessed little patience. Pinget at once relishes and abhors irrationality; he doubts that there can be ultimate meaning or essence, yet he seeks them, at times rejects them, then seeks them again.

‘His mentor was Cervantes, who instructed him in the art of telling a story that is essentially about how the story is being put together and told (or written). This narrative circularity can best be studied in The Inquisitory, Pinget’s longest novel and, for this author inclined to brevity, terse concision, and oblique understatement, the weighty outcome of a bet with Lindon that he could write a five-hundred-page novel in six months. The book is composed in such a way that the reader sits in on an interrogation of a servant who is a probable witness to a crime. The questions of the invisible interrogator enable the reader to imagine, through the servant’s replies, the setting, the other characters, and various stories associated with them. But all this information is delivered as a mass of confusing and contradictory realist detail; the details and descriptions are not worked into any plot whatsoever. This is the point. The reader must sift through the facts and assertions, as if he were the writer constructing the novel. What emerges from the reader’s imaginative and creative toiling is a vast Human Comedy that Balzac himself would have appreciated.’ — John Taylor, Context

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Further

The Robert Pinget Official Website
Robert Pinget @ Les Editions de Minuit
Robert Pinget’s books in English @ Red Dust
‘The Inquisitory’ @ Oulipo’s Virtual Headquarters
‘Pinget seen by Beckett, Beckett according to Pinget’
‘Robert Pinget: The Novel as Quest’
On Pinget’s ‘Passacaglia’ @ Vertigo
RP’s obituary @ The New York Times
Robert Pinget @ goodreads
Buy ‘The Inquisitory’ @ Dalkey Archive

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Media

Robert Pinget à propos de L’inquisitoire

Samuel Beckett par Robert Pinget

Robert Pinget présente son livre Quelqu’un

Robert Pinget à propos de Baga

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Pinget Queer
by David Ruffel

I first attempt to understand how Pinget’s work is positioned in the homosexual history of modern literature. This history rests on a transgressive dynamic. In Never Say I, Michael Lucey has shown that if “saying everything” is the motto of modern literature, and if this often signifies “saying homosexuality,” different transgressions, techniques of hiding, and literary strategies are nonetheless to be found in the generation of Proust, Colette, and Gide; that of Guyotat, Wittig, and Duvert; and that of Hervé Guibert and Guillaume Dustan. Without being strictly linear, this literary history approximately follows the changes that have occurred in peoples’ general outlook. A turning point occurs in the 1980s, when, in the wake of gay and lesbian movements, many writers affirmed their sexuality and turned it into material for their work, expressed in the first person. The reappearance of the autobiographical genre is thus linked to the affirmation of minorities.

Robert Pinget belongs to a world before “coming out.” He never spoke publicly or in interviews about his sexuality, even after the 1980s. This discretion is not unusual in an author of his generation: it can also be found in Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. It is characterized by the evacuation of the figure of the author, a search for impersonality, a refusal of all assigned identity, and the wish to make oneself imperceptible in terms of the apparatus that scientific knowledge brings to bear on sexuality. Proclaiming one’s homosexuality was inconceivable for them, while for the writers of succeeding generations it seemed that the inherent risks of “coming out” were less than those of the “closet.” Robert Pinget’s silence also comes from more personal motives, notably his religious education, his discretion, and his nonmilitant outlook. His silence went so far as to forbid the critics and the academics with whom he mixed to mention the subject of his sexuality in their publications or in private.

This concern with effacement, however, is in tension with the reality of the books that clearly display their sexuality. Each one is, of course, different: sexuality is unsurprisingly explicit and transgressive in the big novels of the 1960s and 1970s, while it is discreet (but never absent) in the last notebooks of Monsieur Songe and in Théo ou le temps neuf (1991). In none of them, however, is it openly declared, and the term “homosexuality” is never uttered or proclaimed by those who practice it. Instead, it is systematically made the object of rumors, images, and fragmentary scenes and is never the product of a fully formed narrative. It is alone among the other narrative elements in being expressed mainly through the oblique nature of fiction and the transvestism of double characters. While homosexuality is thus not in this sense encoded in Pinget’s work, neither is it openly shown. It reveals itself, hiding all the while, and is no sooner suggested than it melts away. It then becomes imperceptible for the inattentive or uninterested reader. At this point, the silence that critics have maintained on this part of the work in fact shows the success of the latter, since the main literary question in Pinget’s work was the reconciliation of the desire to confess with the desire to conceal. It drew upon the art common to gay writers who produced their texts in a regime of imposed secrecy, that is, the art of “saying without saying.” From this point of view, Robert Pinget’s work is a fascinating document that gives us an insight into a key period. His work takes homosexuality as its primary yet hidden subject and is written in the extreme tension that occurs between concealment and affirmation. It is thus a work that signifies the end of an era, located between the past and the future. Moreover, it would appear that Pinget was fully aware of this fact, exploring it in the novel that is also his masterpiece, the longest and best known of his books, L’Inquisitoire (1962).

The book opens with the famous injunction, “Yes or no answer.” This is both a self-addressed injunction to creation on Pinget’s part and, on the level of the novel’s story, an order to which the servant of the Château de Broy must respond over the book’s 500 pages, in the course of a tense interrogation. It is not, however, the sexuality of this servant that interests his interrogators: the servant is not to be seen as the author’s double. Investigating the death of a secretary, the interrogators discover the existence of a Mafia world, with a whole series of trafficking (of drugs, paintings, antiques, and prostitutes) that involves important individuals, the young boys of the area, and a world of interlopers, both local and foreign, who become more and more numerous as the novel progresses. Among the crimes that they suspect, there is one that figures as their real obsession. Their questions posed to the servant invariably return to the topic of the sexuality of the owners of the château and that of their friends. They thus want to know the tone of the evening parties organized in the château; the reason why some dignitaries do not bring their wives along; details of a painting representing “men stark naked,” “ten or twelve of them in a room with a swimming-pool having a bathe or a rest and so on and the guests always used to have a laugh in front of it looking at the details I felt ashamed of them”; the nature of the relations linking “Mademoiselle Sylvie” and “Mademoiselle Babette,” who is “always smoking cigars it’s funny for a woman”; and the fact that during a big party at the château, Morgione, who had arrived with “Boubou,” left with “Fifi,” and whether the servant found “it normal this kind of reversal.”

L’Inquisitoire is thus, as Tony Duvert has written, “the laughable and unsubstantiated story of some old queers with their orgies and their millions,” a “miserable secret,” and an “empty trunk,” which shows the nullity of its plot and the author’s lack of interest in it. This reading would see homosexuality as a trap, obscuring the real subject that lies elsewhere, in the mysteries of writing, of the soul, and of desire. Evidently I do not agree with him in this. Homosexuality is indeed the laughable secret of L’Inquisitoire, but to the extent that it is always, as Eve Sedgwick has shown, “at once marginal and central, [. . .] the open secret” in a heterosexual society. The subject of L’Inquisitoire is none other than heterosexual society, of which it presents a brilliant parody. Moreover, a large part of his work can be read in this manner. Solitary figures, strangers, writers, masters, and all those who live on the margins of the village communities featured in his novels are all systematically suspected of homosexuality. It is never called by this name, due to a mixture of archaism, popular prudishness, and religious feeling, a fact that makes the situation all the more comic. As well as homophobia, we can find racism, witchcraft, poisoning, and, of course, pedophilia. Le Libera (1968) is the carnivalesque representation of this “homosexual panic” that sweeps through an entire community, seized by mad suspicions arising from the fact that such and such an individual “is one” (this comes up in the book about every three pages) and by accusations of crimes committed against children. These accusations are leveled, fairly or otherwise, at fathers, the female schoolteacher, the owners of the château, and finally R.P., the “Révérend Père” or Robert Pinget, himself.

(continued)

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Book

Robert Pinget The Inquisitory
Dalkey Archive

‘A stylistic masterpiece, The Inquisitory consists entirely of questions and answers directed at solving an unspecified crime. The man being questioned throughout is an old servant at a château in Agapa (Pinget’s version of Yoknapatawpha County and the setting for several of his novels), where he may have unwittingly been witness to murder, sexual orgies, tax fraud, and drug deals. But the servant never responds directly to any of the inquisitor’s questions, instead challenging him and creating a web of half-truths, vague references, and glaring inconsistencies amid meticulous details about the château itself and an excess of information about the plethora of characters in the surrounding area.

‘As the interrogation progresses, the reader is pulled into this puzzle, trying to figure out what crime is being investigated and why exactly this seemingly witless servant is being questioned.’ — Dalkey Archive

‘Pinget’s very avant-garde novel of the absurd incorporates the full French novelistic tradition. Like Proust, he has a curé who dabbles in the etymology of place names; like Balzac, he avidly traces the fortunes of little provincial shops through all their vicissitudes of gossip.’ — The New Yorker

‘Pinget has succeeded in creating a character fit to rank with Joyce’s Bloom; for all his illiterate speech habits, the nameless one is a poet and a philosopher, meditating aloud on the nature of memory, truth and happiness.’ — The New York Times

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Excerpt

Yes or no answer

Yes or no yes or no for all I know about it you know, I mean I was only in service to them a man of all work you might say and what I can say about it, anyway I don’t know anything people don’t confide in a servant, my work is all right my work then but how could I have foreseen, every day the same daily round no I mean to say you’d better ask my gentlemen not me there must be some mistake, when I think that after ten years of loyal services he never said a word to me worse than dog, you pack up and go you wash your hands of it let other people get on with it after all I mean to say, man of all work yes but who never knew a thing it’s enough to turn you sour isn’t it, my gentlemen didn’t care so long as I did my work, at the start I was sure it couldn’t go on like that let’s at least try to have a little chat from time to time but in the end you get used to it you get used to it and that’s how I’ve been for the last ten years so don’t come asking, a dog you understand and yet they chat to him there was one they used to take with him on their trips, my gentlemen took him with them on their trips

It’s not about the dog it’s about him, when did he leave

It must be about ten months ago, yes ten months ago from now or next month about ten months I’d say at half past six on a Monday, I was coming out of my room and going past his and what do I see the door open everything upside down drawers and cupboards all open, I went in and looked around nothing left where the suitcases were on the basin nothing left, I went downstairs and what did I see the front door wide open, I went into the kitchen nothing not a word a note, I went back upstairs knocked at my gentlemen’s door and told them he’d gone they wouldn’t believe me, they slipped on their dressing-gowns and came to see for themselves that right through the house he’d left nothing of his behind, but he’d taken nothing gone off with his personal belongings and that’s just what they did say straightaway, but what I must say that is that they did say straightaway, but what I must say is that they didn’t say anything special they never seemed specially upset about it, they almost seemed to find it natural and that I mean to say that gave me a big of a turn after all ten years of loyal service I mean ten years

Was he in service there too

In service I wouldn’t say he was in service, not a servant but on the whole it came to the same thing, a secretary who did everything fixed everything made all the arrangements for traveling invitations orders bills friends all those little chores, to start with I thought he was someone like me who does what he can to earn his living, I tried I tried to talk to him find out the why and wherefore something about him but not for long not for long I soon had to admit it’s no good, the cold type if you see what I mean, secretary yes everyone had to pass through him he did the work of a dozen people at least but no talking, I used to wonder what on earth can he do his day off on Tuesdays when he never came out of his room, what on earth can he do never a soul to visit him not one friend I never knew of a single one, I’d like to have known just have a chat but nothing doing and in the end you get used to it you get used to it, but there were things he must have known because people who shut themselves up like that on Tuesdays they don’t need a chat that’s what I always told myself, they know enough already perhaps they’re tired and that’s why I just put up with it I thought oh leave him be and it’s understandable, and yet when you think of it he might have noticed I didn’t know what to do with myself on Wednesdays my day off, he might have noticed and said the odd word to me now and again, no always busy in a hurry you’d think he did it on purpose I mean anyone who didn’t know, never looking at anyone coming and going yes on purpose and that’s something I don’t understand instead of taking advantage of a minute’s break between two appointments, not even a smile who couldn’t stand even the sight of a fly in the house I was the one who had to chase after them, just to show you how it all went a bit too far

Did he stay with your gentlemen the days they entertained

Did he stay with my gentlemen how can I know if he stayed, you mean with my gentlemen and their guests I’ve no idea, when my work was finished I used to go out or up to my room because when they had company there was no question of my waiting on them and I didn’t complain I’m not curious by nature, they could have entertained the Pope I wouldn’t have known, when my work was finished I used to go out or up to my room noise doesn’t bother me I’m deaf as a post you know that as well as I do, these notes with your questions on, well and then the noise no I used to sleep or I’d go out they could have entertained anyone, what I do know is that he saw everything I’d see him on the phone, I’d see him run and give orders to the other servant they had plenty to do all day getting everything ready I’d do what I had to do and then I’d go out or off to bed, if I’d had to wait on them in the evenings as well I’d never have gone to bed, it was nearly every evening or every other evening if it was one of their good weeks, when I say god I’m not thinking of myself it made no difference to me but of them running all over the place not to mention getting ready for their tips, because that well that was quite a business and preparations would start a week in advance and it wasn’t just two people going away sometimes it was ten or twelve, and the whole mob would meet first at our place you can guess the work, I’m not talking about mine it made no difference to me once I’d finished I’d go out or off to bed

You say there was another servant

Better if I hadn’t mentioned him, not interesting and no more chatty than the others never a word from him either, we should have got on together after all working for the same folk eating together always run off our feet together, but no nothing it was as much as he could do not to tread on my corns and even if he had and knocked me about I think I’d rather have had that than the silence it’s true, I wasn’t made for a graveyard like that as a young man I was full of life didn’t have to ask me twice to tell a good story I knew some I knew some, but now I can hardly remember any so you see the others didn’t do me much good, the flunkey I used to call him the flunkey and that put him against me he’d keep his lips pursed in a vicious circle, for two pins I’d have had a word with my gentlemen but knowing them it wasn’t worth it they’d have sent me packing, besides they preferred the other chap always fussing round them he’s the one you ought to interrogate but where is he now, it’s no wonder if he hasn’t joined the other one a couple of blighters like that could be up to anything they ought to get on together, they got on well enough anyway nattering in corners and how could the flunkey have stayed on without someone to chat to, you need a make-up like mine to make-do with things as they were

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p.s. Hey. ** JM, Oh, gosh, thanks! Hope your stuff is tip-top. ** Alex, Hey, Alex! Wonderful to see you! I’m reasonably well and semi-warm, good enough. Take care, and come back pronto. Love, me. ** Tosh Berman, Thank you kindly, Mr. Berman. I hope you had a toasty Xmas. ** David Ehrenstein, Learning that Santa is polyamorous gives my Xmas additional pizazz retroactively, thank you. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, I’m going to check it out. His book. So many of the best things get roundly rejected at their outset. Was LPS tempted by the prospect of an electrician’s life? Man, that is some holiday you’re having. Thanks, my Xmas was quite chill and chilly too. Happy onwards and upwards! ** Derek McCormack, Hey, Derek! Wait, you’re my hero, so, if I’m yours, what happens? Doesn’t that cancel the heroism out or something? Which is good, right? A comradeship in which heroism is unnecessary? I’m sorry, I am insufficiently coffee-d at the moment. Derek, we must see each other this year! Mutual vow? Love, me. ** Thomas Moronic, Well, hi there, T! You are the epitome of a sight for sore eyes. Oh, your books being on my list was a no brainer, man. I mean, come on. I’d love to see your list. I’m good, mostly just working hard on projects and enjoying the winter and so on. Slurp about the words ‘novel number 3’, needless to say. We’re showing PGL at the ICA in later January. The 23rd, I think, and a second screening I don’t know when. A trek for you, but, if by some miracle you’ll be headed London’s way, … Mega-love to you, my friend! ** _Black_Acrylic, And the very same to you one day late! Temple Newsam Estate looks amazing. I’m going google that thing. My day was good, and I’m glad yours was even better. ** Steve Erickson, Festive yesterday to you if you celebrated its status any sense. Yeah, one would think re: the second season. ** Bill, Happy Xmas is Over, Bill! I know, right, about Lukas Haas in our films. And he might just do it too. And there’s a role in our new film that’s almost perfect for him. But I bet he doesn’t speak French. But would he have to? Hmmmm. Settle in wonderfully. ** Sypha, And the same to you a teeny bit belatedly, James! ** Okay. Back to business. Today I’m spotlighting a favorite novel by one of my favorite writers. We can’t ostensibly lose. See you tomorrow.