I recently recorded an interview for my new podcast; we were talking about books where, as the guest put it, the author is not on the reader’s side.1 And we both agreed this gloves-off approach was usually a good thing, especially in the face of a whole lot of fiction in which everyone involved expects and demands that the reader’s hand will be held, ensuring 1) an unconfusing path through a plot in which it’s never unclear what’s happening, and 2) the comfort that the author will not subject you to the cruel complexities of actual life, in which people are not who they should be or appear to be, or in which the bad guys inexplicably do good things, or vice versa.
So maybe a little burst of synchronicity occurred right after that interview, when I unexpectedly came across Kevin Lambert’s Querelle of Roberval, which I didn’t even know had been translated2—and which, as it turns out, is definitely not interested in holding the reader’s hand, or in providing any sense of comfort about what’s taking place.
I knew nothing about the novel, except that its main character is named after one of Jean Genet’s protagonists. So although that meant I was probably in for some petty criminality and/or salacious goings-on, that was only a guess. I also still don’t know much about Lambert; I’d seen, thanks to some French Canadian literati on Mastodon, a few blurbs about the author causing a stir, maybe even offending all and sundry, with his work in general—but it was always a case of bookmarking an article or review and never getting around to reading it. Hence, I grabbed the book and dove in: the best way, probably, of figuring out whether the author feels compelled to get you through a tale unsupervised or with guardrails in place.
And here, too, I was especially thankful that there was no preface, no expert’s or translator’s introduction to the novel that would have told us why we should be appreciative of the project or how it fit in with contemporary life in Quebec, or explained how we should read it or feel (or be prepared to feel) about it. No heads-up whatsoever.3 Any discussion of the book, in fact—and hence my wondering why I should try to say anything about it at all, when I feel like I can’t give any details without spoiling the whole thing—would have meant taking all the air out of Lambert’s unsensational brutality: a no-holds-barred toppling of idols of all varieties that must take place only because the world, or rather, the way humans have structured and cultivated it, is itself often confoundingly brutal. And whether it’s the heartlessness of the masters or the oppressed, whether nurtured or not, there isn’t a character in the book who doesn’t carry at least a bit of that brutality inside. Even loyalty to a good cause, and to one’s comrades, will slide, maybe unquestioningly or unconsciously, into embracing it, once that loyalty locks in on its aims. The question—not stated here directly, but which I’m left asking in the book’s wake—becomes, then, whether it’s possible to live with each other, to be good even to your closest friends and family, and not to fall prey to the temptation of barbarity.
Again, I’m speaking in generalities, but were I to provide that missing preface or intro or better overall review, I would’ve had to go straight into that preparatory handholding you might tune into the podcast to hear about. Had I been subjected via a foreword to such easing-in, it’s not that I necessarily would’ve been disappointed; only, perhaps, less brilliantly blindsided by many a development. And blindsided more generally by what I’ll call Lambert’s fearlessness as an author: unafraid to have his audiences howl in indignation, not only at what book-banners would target—there’s a lot of explicit sex and a lot of anti-establishment sentiment throughout—but maybe more significantly at the fact that Lambert’s going to fail you if you’re expecting to feel unambiguously good about even the most likable character. Or to walk away thinking you still understand who they are or what motivates them, or knew X or Y would never do anyone a dirty turn or abandon themselves to vicious deeds or even thoughts.
It’s this, and not the porn and violence, that may be what’s really ruffled readers’ feathers: Lambert doesn’t let you leave comforted. He offers you no belief that the story or the world is or could be neatly wrapped up and done with, or even tidied up by something we like to believe exists and goes by the name of justice. Because I think I can say there isn’t any justice available in Querelle, and Lambert’s brought that fact home like no other author I can think of. If there’s any belief in the concept, it has to go hand in hand here with hope—and once hope has been lost, the novel seems to say, all bets are off, and there’s nothing anywhere else to believe in. Ditch the idea of justice, and the hope on which it depends, and we’re left with nothing more than vengeance to fall back on—and then in Querelle’s world, at least, we’re even painfully unsure there was originally anything that merited any form of retribution in the first place. Whether or not vengeance itself allows for the existence of justice or even reason, or requires (or doesn’t) something to believe in, is never asked outright, and Lambert never resorts to pondering such grand words, lest he slide into the universe of Upton Sinclair. It’s with the unapologetically everyday, and the way it can slip into atrocity, that Lambert gets us into his grip. And so we need no helpful chaperone here—only the author’s unflinching presentation, and readers brave enough to dwell with the discomfort it may provoke.4 Or in other words, writing and a story completely worth their salt.
Look for my Plain Reading interview with Ben Dueholm to be released on December 13.
Kevin Lambert, Quenelle of Roberval, translated by Donald Winkler (Windsor, Ontario: Biblioasis, 2022).
Coincidentally enough, this topic—whether or not to read the intro—will come up in yet another interview I recently recorded. December’s going to be ripe with big reading questions on the show!
When I say brave enough to dwell with it, I in no way want to indicate that the novel is something to be slogged through; indeed, I couldn’t put the book down.