Vernon Subutex 1--A Novel

September 2, 2019
The first book of a trilogy, Despentes’s Man Booker–shortlisted novel about a former record shop owner is a searing social satire and biting portrait of contemporary France. The titular Vernon Subutex was the owner of a record shop called Revolver in the 1980s, when he became an indelible part of the burgeoning music scene of the times, befriending rock stars, groupies, and fanatics. Now in his 40s, unemployed and broke, Vernon is left reeling after “the chain of catastrophes,” a series of deaths of his friends from the scene. Most notable is that of Alexandre Beach, a mega-famous pop singer who, despite his stratospheric fame, never left his old friends behind. And unbeknownst to him, Vernon, who owns the last recordings of Alexandre Beach, has become a target of all kinds of attention: from Alex’s exes, from a fan-slash-writer working on a definitive biography, and from a film financier with a personal vendetta. Vernon couch hops from one unstable living situation to the next, unaware of the forces after him, and in the process readers are introduced to a cast of tangential members of Vernon’s social group and generation at large. Despentes’s timely novel is both arch and political without being too obvious that it’s either. This is a rollicking, brilliant send-up of masculinity, politics, and rock ’n’ roll.

September 1, 2019
French punk rockers get old. There's a lot of Gen X history here, some aging French pop culture, and a general feeling of hysteria at living in a dystopian time. Let's start from the top. Despentes (Pretty Things, 2018, etc.) is a French writer, filmmaker, etc. who is most famous for her debut novel, Baise-Moi (1992), which she adapted and directed into the controversial cult film. Like her characters, the author seems to have aged but not grown, which isn't all that troublesome at a time when Danny Boyle has fashioned Irvine Welsh's profane swindlers from Trainspotting (1993) into a sequel. This is literally a portrait gallery of French punk rockers passing middle age, most of them badly. The central figure is the titular 50-ish Vernon Subutex, who can pretty much be summed up by "used to own a record store." (Thanks, High Fidelity.) Much like a TV series (Surprise! There's already a French series based on this book), this is a soap-operatic portrait of a variety of burnouts rather than an actual narrative. With Vernon as the central figure and the death of famous rock star Alex Bleach as the semi-uniting event, Despentes drops in on the lives of a dozen or so desperate people who don't know how to fill the holes in their own lives. Vernon is simple: He's broke and couch-hopping at the best of times. Most notable is Xavier Fardin, nominally a screenwriter but mostly a psycho who makes Welsh's Begbie look like a lapdog by comparison. We also visit Vernon's weird ex, Sylvie; Laurent, a successful but obsessive filmmaker; ex-porn star Pamela, who is still competing with her dead rival; and Lydia Bazooka, a journalist who doesn't know it's too soon to start a biography of Alex. The writing here is evocative of any number of transgressive writers, including Welsh and Kathy Acker, but while the characters are tangible, the lack of a narrative keeps the book from feeling satisfying. A caustic portrait of the blank generation facing middle age.

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