Zinnen die ik wilde onderstrepen, een ontroerende verteller, een even schraal als prachtig vroeg-twintigste-eeuws Parijs, op een heel onnadrukkelijke manier heel bijzonder proza.

"I had the disagreeable feeling that just as I was leaving the table, people were getting ready to sit down."

Bove and Jean Rhys would have made a darling and insufferable couple

This is everything I love in literature. A first person narration with short chapters, and a self-pitying introspective character who fails to recognise his own limitations but sees them, bright and vibrant, in everyone else. And best of all, a book where the sadness resonates with one's own personal experiences. With that in mind, I think it helps to be a man when reading this.

Victor Baton is a poor man, a veteran of the First World War with wounds to show for it. He tells us of his experiences with five people (his potential friends, you might say) and details how each encounter began and ended. He lives in a dank hotel and dreams of finding love and friendship. He is full of bitterness and self-pity but also manages to possess a delusional sense of superiority regarding his own traits and worth. He is, for want of a better term, a socially anxious incel who believes that he is owed something from the world. He wanders the streets, hoping to make friends, but then betrays these friendships without ever acknowledging his guilt or complicity in their destruction. He makes a friend in Henri Billard, for example, but immediately tries to persuade Henri's mistress to leave him in favour of Victor. When this leads to nothing, he somehow concludes that he is the victim, while Henri, in his mind, is a swindler, a knave, an unworthy man who is being rewarded for his unpleasantness while he, Victor, is caring and nice and honourable. He repeats this behavior with several other characters, behaves inappropriately but continues to believe that he is the one being hard done-by. He is not a likeable character. And yet I adored him. Most men under the age of thirty will. Most men who remember being under the age of thirty will. He is so many young men, in so many different eras. In many ways, it's slightly depressing to think so little has changed in a hundred years.

The book reminded me of so many other books: 'The Catcher in the Rye' and 'No Longer Human.' But mostly, it reminded me of 'The Sundays of Jean Desert.' The only difference being that while the protagonist in that book is aware of his place in the world, accepts it with a cool, almost profound indifference, Victor is confused, lonely and heartbreakingly sad. He is what so many men are at that young age. When I read the words: 'but a woman only has to look at me for me to find her attractive.' I couldn't help but smile and think:. 'Yep, we've all been there, mate.' And I loved how Victor fantasised about the slightest potential future at every available opportunity. He would see a girl and imagine their life together. He would meet a strange, suicidal man and envision a future where they would be best friends with a sincere bond.

He is pathetic. He is beautiful. I loved him. I loved this.

Lesebericht

Victor Baton ist in den Zwanzigern und Kriegsinvalide und er ist ein einsamer Mann. Nichts wünscht er sich sehnlicher als einen Kameraden, einen Freund. Er möchte jemanden der ihn akzeptiert und den er akzeptieren kann. Jemand der Freud und Leid mit ihm teilt.

Leider neigt Baton dazu seine Zuneigung zu schnell zu verschenken. Er lernt jemanden kennen indem er bspw. jemandem Feuer gibt oder ähnliches. Man kommt daraufhin ggf. ins Gespräch und Victor legt soviel in die Worte und Gesten des Anderen obwohl dieser vielleicht nur höflich sein möchte. Wenn sich das Gegenüber dann nicht meldet - obwohl dies nicht mal vereinbart worden ist - wird er ärgerlich und grübelt lange darüber nach. In seinem Kopf geht er immer wieder die Details der Begegnung durch. Er denkt darüber nach was er richtig oder falsch gemacht hat. Er fragt sich warum er dem oder der Anderen nicht gefallen hat - optisch und/oder charakterlich.

Victor kann eigentlich nur enttäuscht werden. Er sieht in scheinbar jedem einen möglichen Freund und hat sofort Vertrauen. Das ist ja grundsätzlich nicht verkehrt aber ein wenig mehr gesunder Menschenverstand täte ihm gut. Kurzum kann er nur enttäuscht werden. Dies scheint er manchmal fast zu erwarten und zu zelebrieren. Trotzdem rappelt er sich immer wieder auf und gibt nicht auf diesen einen Freund zu finden, mit dem er sein Leben teilen kann.

Schade das er nicht verstanden hat, das sich Freundschaft nicht erzwingen lässt und nur weil er jemandem Feuer gibt, ist sein Gegenüber nicht automatisch zu irgendwas verpflichtet. Victor tut einem manchmal leid, weil man ihm einen Freund gönnt. Niemand sollte einsam und alleine durch das Leben gehen, aber er steht sich oft nur selbst im Weg und macht es damit nicht unbedingt einfacher.

Bove hat einen eindringlichen Schreibstil, der jedoch nicht erdrückend oder gar verstimmend wirkt. Obwohl die Geschichte doch traurig ist, ist sie ein Appell an die Freundschaft und das Leben - zumindest für mich. Mitunter entdeckt man auch positive Elemente. Es sind oft die Details die Bove so deutlich hervorzuheben vermag.

Am Ende bleibt die Frage was mir das Buch gebracht hat. Mir hat es gezeigt, dass es jeden treffen kann. Jeder kann einsam sein - jeder auf seine Weise. Lesenswert ja, jedoch vielleicht nicht wenn man für melancholische Literatur nicht offen ist.

Pristine French modernism here, the flâneur passed through the lens of post-war paranoia. Left me tittering like a fool throughout, though it's suffused too with a profound loneliness as this bumbling character careers his way through a Paris with little to offer the unobtrusive. Jacket notes say it's a deep injustice that Bove has slid into a kind of obscurity; on the basis of this—and the urge it gives me to go out and fine more—I can only agree.

man has me ready to jump off the Seine myself... fuckin depressing

The warm blanket of self-pity

This book surged up the lyrics of a couple of songs I remember from student’s days - Circle– but also Friend is a four letter word.

What to think about Emmanuel Bove’s anti-hero, monsieur Victor Bâton? He surely is in a miserable place- lonely, poor, living in a tiny, damp, cold room in Paris, a war invalid with a paltry pension, not having a single friend to turn to. Initially, it feels only natural to follow his yearning and search for company, a friend, even love with sympathy.

However, as much as the reader might be willing and able to commiserate and empathize with him, Victor Bâton doesn’t make such precisely easy. To put it euphemistically, he is not very likeable...

While Bâton is professing his own modesty and humbleness, he is pretty demanding and fickle, veering from ludicrous overblown self-humiliation to repulsive haughtiness, ill-treating who shows some concern with his plight. His ideal friends must meet extremely high standards and cover him with flowers and generosity – and for sure not be too happy themselves. In his relations with the ordinary mortals he meets instead, these standards of course don’t apply to himself. He rejoices in the misfortune of others. At least he is reliable in his unreliability. Sure, he encounters animosity, disdain and even aversion. There are quite a few names to categorize him, none of them flattering. Deadbeat. Scoundrel. Sponge. Loafer. But things being as they are, what can a man like him, a man without qualities but full of contrasts and quirks, signify for other people? He rightly notes that his behaviour and presence grates others:

In that house full of working people, I was the madman that, deep down, everyone wanted to be. I was the one who went without food, the cinema, warm clothes, to be free. I was the one who, without meaning to, daily reminded people of their wretched state.

As soon as he finds what he is ostensibly looking for - kindness, generosity, a job offer, love – he runs away. Out of fear? Or are there other motives, something in his personality which make him prefer his little warm blanket of self-pity to the honest concern of real human beings? While he seems naive, his mistrust of others is that profound that he prefers to wallow in his misery, as if happiness, joy or good fortune would dissolve his identity:

Instead of pulling myself together, I tried to prolong my misery. I withdrew into myself, making myself more insignificant and wretched than I really am. In that way I found some comfort in my sorrows.

Nonetheless, this is not a depressing book. The tone of it is so light and almost cheerful Bâton’s pointy observations and self-reflections often put a smile on my face. Bove holds a mirror, showing the all too human flaw of the oversensitivity of the ego which so often goes together with uncaring or callous treatment of others. In that respect, it makes sense that Victor Bâton is frequently looking in the mirror – even if he is unconscious his own narcissism.


Emmanuel Bove (1898-1945), né Bobovnikoff) has been put on the same line as Dostoevsky and Proust and was admired by Beckett, Rilke, Soupault, and Gide. If it wasn’t for GR, I presumably would have never heard about him. ‘My friends’ was his debut and apparently Rilke was so enthusiast about it he wanted to meet Bove (in the beginning, before taking on a more deadpan tone, Bâton’s Parisians street impressions and wanderings echo [b:The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge|93405|The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge|Rainer Maria Rilke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348925210l/93405._SX50_.jpg|314321]). Even if My friends is considered his masterpiece and Bove’s tone and terse style suit the story and the idiosyncratic personality of Victor Bâton wonderfully, [b:Le Pressentiment|12130598|Le Pressentiment|Emmanuel Bove|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328393872l/12130598._SY75_.jpg|6872249] (the first novel I read by Emmanuel Bove) resonated more with me – possibly because it was easier to relate to that other forlorn anti-hero Charles Bernestau.

How could a book about a sad and lonely unemployed handicapped ex-soldier living in poverty in a slum be funny? It's impossible. The main character is tragic, his situation is far too bleak to laugh at, yet I smiled and laughed over and over. I think Emmanuel Bove is a magician.