Hervé Le Corre

Oh, povero Lautreamont con i tuoi voli nei flutti dell'oceano del male, ma sempre elevati nel loro canto... ora, oggi, ripiegato nelle trame di un noir... dov'è la tua corona? dov'è la tua eccellenza?

La bontà del male: ossimoro diabolico!

La poesia non è atta alla vita... la poesia, i tuoi canti di Maldoror, restano elevati (celestiali) solo sulla carta dove sono nati.

Alcuni brani:

"Baudelaire?" fa la voce di Isidore, soffocata dentro a una manica. "Quel dilettante." (pagina 129)

(pagina 223)
Ossia, l'emozione che nasce dalla trasformazione...

A partire da quando, da quale limite, si abdica alla propria condizione di uomo? Che prospettive eccitanti! Ecco un post scriptum ai Canti che il conte di Lautreamont non rinnegherebbe affatto!
(pagina 452)
La domanda posta in maniera errata conduce ad una risposta altrettanto errata: serve abbassare (abbattere?) il trono sul quale viene posta la condizione di uomo.

Ed infine, Lautreamont:
Avrei voluto essere figlio di una femmina di squalo, la cui fame è sinonimo di tempesta, e di una tigre, la cui crudeltà è nota: non sarei stato così cattivo!" (pagina 416)


… (meer)

Searching for a book by a french crime writer in my local library, certainly restricts the choice, as most of the crime/thriller novels seem to be translations of American or English authors. The library is not very big, but there are four or five shelves given over to "policiers". I was pleased however to find something by Hervé le Corre who is a genuine french crime writer with a number of books in the genre published under his name. He was born in Bordeaux in South West France and Derniers Retranchements is a collection of ten short stories which all have a provincial town feel about them. You do not need a street plan of Paris to be able to follow the action.

I do not know if Le Corre's usual style is to write in the first person, but he uses this point of view for the majority of these stories, which vary in length from a few pages to a couple which are of novella length. He takes the point of view of the criminal and many of the protagonists are ordinary people who are pushed or fall into criminal activity due to circumstances. There are no professional criminals and the police if they appear at all take secondary roles. Typically the protagonists are people forced out of work, or those in reduced circumstances who must do menial tasks. Le Corre has sympathy for these unfortunate souls who not only have to deal with difficulties in making ends meet, but also have to deal with family and/or partnership issues as well.

In "Se taire" a parent discovers that his adolescent son has been involved in a horrendous crime which involved the the torture of an elderly woman. He attempts to confront the older men involved, to try and understand how his son got involved, but only succeeds in alerting the police which leads to problems in his own family. In L'arrestation qui vient a factory worker becomes involved in a plan to occupy his place of work which leads to locking in the managers, who are planning redundancies. A chance word alerts him to the fact that one of these managers may have had an affair with his wife. He leaves the factory to discover the truth and violence inevitably follows. "Dernier jour" is quite different from the other stories in that it takes place in the countryside where two elderly people are struggling to survive after some unnamed catastrophe has stricken the world. Two young people arrive at their house only too pleased to commit the barbarous acts that are needed to survive. The other stories are shorter, but again are concerned with the circumstances of people pushed to commit acts that seem the only way to resolve impossible situations.

I enjoyed these stories that mostly have the qualities of a real 'slice of life' feel to them, they are almost like extended reports of criminal activities that you might read in the local paper. Le Corre manages to humanise the situation without losing the gritty feel of his stories. I will be interested to read one of his full length novels and so four stars.… (meer)