New low for Nobel

Getting Lost
By
Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022, thus verifying that the Nobel Committee has sunk to new levels of politicization and stupidity, as if awarding the prize to Bob Dylan and Gao Xingjian had not been enough. (In fairness, it’s possible that Gao’s work was rendered more banal due to poor translation.)
Getting Lost was published in French in 2001, and translated into English in 2022. As with most of Ernaux’s work, it’s autobiographical, and follows closely her journal from 1988 to 1990. It chronicles her affair, at the age of 48, with a 35-year-old employee of the Russian Embassy in Paris. “S”, as he is designated, may or may not be attached to the KGB, but it’s clear that he’s not very high in the hierarchy. He’s tall, slender, blond, has green eyes, and is handsome; this is about all that he has going for him, aside from skin as soft as a woman’s. Even Ernaux admits that he’s shallow, an intellectual lightweight, drinks to excess, and is in general crude. He’s obsessed with Western material goods and brands, such as Pierre Cardin suits and Mercedes Benz cars. He’s a self-admitted admirer of Stalin, and is dubious about Gorbachev’s perestroika. Ernaux ignores all this, concentrating instead on his superficial qualities, and the indefatigability of his lovemaking, which almost matches her own appetite. His performance is impressive, especially when one takes into account that he’s married, and appears to regularly service his dumpy, flat-chested wife.
Typically, S and Ernaux spend three to five hours during each session, and they each climax three or four times; they try every position in the Kama Sutra, and invent a few new ones, including copulating upside down. (Hint: It requires an armchair.) Ernaux’s every orifice is penetrated, and she details all the ways that she fellates S, including pouring champagne on his penis.
The first half of the book spends about twenty per cent of its time describing the fever of their lovemaking. The other eighty per cent consists of variations on “When will he call? He hasn’t called in ten days! When will I see him? I weep as I write this. I can’t sleep. I haven’t seen him in three weeks! I am in great pain from cystitis. Why does he never tell me he loves me? Am I just a piece of ass? I want to die.”
This becomes tiresome rather quickly, but fortunately the refrain changes during the second half of the book. Descriptions of lovemaking are less frequent, and now the text is dominated by some variation on, “He doesn’t desire me any more, because I’m older. Or maybe he has another mistress! He hasn’t called in three weeks. I should end this affair, but I just want to see him one more time. I weep as I write this. I can’t sleep. My cystitis is so painful! I have to end this suffering. I want to die.”
In her journal, Ernaux occasionally refers to her one abortion, the death of her mother, and a number of previous lovers. The lovers are also referenced by their initials, and one gets the distinct impression that her objective is to work her way through the alphabet. Unless one has read all her previous works, these references are absolutely meaningless.
This particular affair ends when the Berlin Wall falls, and S is recalled to Moscow. Ernaux never hears from him again. Despite her pleading, he has refused to give her any memento, so she does not have even a picture of him. Six months later, at the end of the book, she attempts to seduce a younger French writer, but she’s rebuffed.
Erotic literature by women is not a totally unknown genre in France; Anne Declos wrote The Story of O in 1954, and there have been others. Some are interesting both in a prurient and a literary way, and all of them are shocking to North America’s prudish sensibilities; certainly, the French are to be commended for embracing the literature of love without embarrassment. However, this particular work is so tedious, so narcissistic, so self-pitying that the reader wants to swear off sex altogether.
The other aspect of Ernaux’s work is her slavish admiration of anything Soviet; she’s a member of the French Communist intelligentsia which utterly shuts its eyes to the flaws of Russian Communism, and gobbles up any drivel that the propaganda machine spews out.
My prescription for Annie Ernaux would have been to spend a year in a Russian gulag prison. After twelve hours of back-breaking labour in freezing temperatures, she could have enjoyed four or five hours of self-criticism, where she would be encouraged to recount all her failures in building socialism in front of the other prisoners, and would be given a sound beating for good measure. After a dinner of thin cabbage soup, she would be allowed four hours of sleep in a dirty cell with a dozen others, and then, in the morning, she could start the routine all over again.
I am confident that after a year of this, when she returned to her comfortable house on the outskirts of Paris, she would have been cured of her enchantment with Communism. Her prodigious sexual appetite might have also diminished from the effects of starvation, freezing, and beatings; but, perhaps not. If not, she should be congratulated! But I do believe that her values would have shifted enough so that she would not feel quite so sorry for herself because her married lover did not visit her every week.

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