/lit/ - Literature

This man was irresistible to women; what's your excuse?

>Originally published in France in 1931, Le Feu Follet tells the story of the last days of Alain Leroy, a bourgeois veteran of the first world war. Emerging from a stint in rehab “cured” of a heroin addiction, he struggles to find meaning, despite reconnecting with friends, then takes his own life. The book was inspired by the death of Drieu’s friend, the surrealist poet Jacques Rigaut, who likewise killed himself in 1929. It also foreshadows the author’s own suicide in 1945, the day after a warrant was issued for his arrest for collaborating with the Nazis as the editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française. “The measures against the Jews didn’t bother him,” Clive James notes in Cultural Amnesia.
>Devoid of the descriptions of altered states and redemption arc typical of addiction narratives, The Fire Within is more about existential angst. Indeed, Leroy’s drug use seems more driven by ennui than anything else. His room at the sanatorium in Versailles is an apt metaphor for his internal state: “The door and the window opened onto nothing. The mirror opened only onto himself.”
>Filled with aphoristic musings, the book homes in on the question of meaning many artists grapple with in the wake of war. Leroy repeatedly remarks that he can’t feel anything, either physically or emotionally. “A revolver is solid, it’s made of steel,” he concludes. “It’s an object. To touch an object at last.”
>This disaffected lack of agency is embodied in Leroy’s sexual impotence. The book opens in a hotel, with him in bed with Lydia, an American benefactress, after a failed attempt to perform. “The two cigarettes flared,” Drieu writes. “The ceremony was over, they would have to talk.” Given that he’s unemployed — “doing nothing’s a profession, after all” — Leroy is financially dependent on the women in his life, a parasitic pattern that predates his addiction. “I take drugs because I’m a lousy lay,” he confesses (although the opiates surely can’t be doing him any favours here either).
>When Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s The Fire Within first appeared in English in 1965, translated by Richard Howard, The New York Times called it “the kind of bad novel that could only happen in France”. In a new introduction to this republished edition, Will Self deems it an existential novel on par with Sartre’s Nausea and Camus’s The Fall. So which is it — a forgotten masterpiece, or something that just fell out of print in English?
https://www.ft.com/content/7cf9f796-9335-4ea2-b12d-86023d4828c4
So which is it? I watched the movie and ngl, I'm leaning towards bad novel.

>Books for this feel?
https://tikhanovlibrary.substack.com/p/gilles-chapter-xii
^relevant book and chapter
>“Kid, I don't know you, I don't know her, and I don't know your era. So if you want me to talk nonsense...”
>“I’m not asking if I have a right to marry for money...”
>“There’s no question that you are marrying for money.”
>“How?”
>“Neither you nor she are oblivious.”
>“Yes, she is.”
>“Much less so than you think. Her money is one of her charms; a woman in love is not inclined to neglect any of her charms.”
>“If it’s her only charm?”
>“No. Your words say otherwise.”
>“Yes, but then, if I value her, will I have the strength to sacrifice her life for my life?”
>“Of course. And good for her. She'll suffer, but she'll have her adventure. It's up to her to fight back. You're not a wet nurse.”
>“I don't think she's right for a man like me.”
>“Go tell her that, she won't believe you. When you play with fire, you get burned.”
>“I'm more aware than she is: I can save her from a mistake that will ruin her life.”
>“Does this sea take care of safeguarding this cliff?”
>“I’m too Christian to make such an easy assimilation of man to nature”
>“If you hesitate with this woman, you won't hesitate with the next. There are many people who must suffer for you.”
>“Yes.”
>“You're having fun right now. But let her pretend to escape, and you'll throw yourself back at her.”
>“It’s true.”
>“I'm all for you having that kind of marriage. It will save you from the mediocrity of upstarts. If you can, you should put some distance between yourself and men. You're like me, a bit of an ascetic in spirit, but not in life. You have to take the wolf's share. I did it my way, you do yours. I've done some pretty nasty things in my time to earn a living.”
...
>“Well then?”
>“Marry her! that'll teach you. Here's a swift and profound opportunity to fiTears came to Gilles' eyes.
...
>“My dear old father. And you, don't you doubt me?”
>“Hell no. I didn't want to sire a little saint.”
>“But I am going to sully myself.”
>“You will clean up afterwards.”
>“Aren't some actions irreparable?”
>“It’s a question of strength. You will see which is stronger, you or the world?” Find out your real relationship with the modern world. Go right ahead... After all, you may not be my son, my brother or my friend at all, and you may do just fine.”
...
>The old man looked at Gilles, shaking his head.
>“Scruples are ugly. It's what disfigures the criminal.”

>something for "Muh prose" posters
>something for tradcath posters
>something for reactionary posters
>something for posters who like french literature but hate france
>something for khazar gf posters

You're honestly missing out

Anyone else reading this guy? I'm reading Gilles and it's very well written.