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Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life

Critiques and Reviews
Review of Pierre Michon
by Erika Mailman

Pierre Michon (Translated by Wyatt Alexander Mason)
The Origin of the World
Mercury House, San Francisco.



What happens when you're French, stuck in a small town, and in love with the mother of one of the students you're teaching? Of course, you begin to think of her in terms of hunting. Pierre Michon's The Origin of the World, translated by Wyatt Alexander Mason and forthcoming from Mercury House, is a lush, rain-soaked novella in which the main character is always spotting his prey in the forest, hovering elegantly on her high heels (or deerlike cloven hoofs, you decide). She is described as "this big game a thousand times lost." Set in 1961 in the fishing town of Castelnau, the story also compares the woman (who is a tobacconist) to a fish - both its scales and her ass are described as made of mother-of-pearl in juxtaposed paragraphs. To add layers to the metaphor, Michon writes about the hunting scenes in the nearby Lascaux caves, children carrying a dead fox through the woods, suspended by its paws on a pole, "wolves gorging themselves on beautiful victims dear to you," and a killed crane draped over the counter, between glasses of beer, in the hotel's restaurant. When the main character spies signs of physical abuse on the tobacconist's cheek, another hunting image arises: "Arrogance and shame fought for that face, like a piece of meat between two dogs." The careful and rich prose makes for a quick but thoughtful read. Recommendation: read during an absolute downpour, and have wine and fish for dinner.

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