Palafox

by Eric Chevillard

Genres: Literary Fiction; Visionary & Metaphysical

Synopsis

Eric Chevillard’s visionary play of word and thought has been compared to the work of Beckett, Michaux, and Pinget, yet the universe he spins is utterly his own. Palafox (Editions de Minuit, 1990), Chevillard’s third novel of eleven, explores the ecosystem of an unclassifiable yet enchanting protean creature, Palafox. A team of experts armed with degrees of higher learning is determined to label, train, baptize, and realize the elusive creature, while Palafox effortlessly and wordlessly defies them all.

Release date: November 1, 2010

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 136

Sample

Pop open an egg, or, actually, what should one call the delicate operation by which one removes an egg’s superior (or allegedly so) quarter, via a teaspoon’s well-placed tap? Does one behead, uncork, uncap, unhood an egg? Our three guests have no idea, dismissing the question with waves of their hands, impressive indeed from a technical standpoint, their shared gesture, economical and precise, ‘masterful’ never having found an object to which it more appropriately applied. Each compliments the other in turn while, not one to haggle, Palafox splits his shell with one fell peck. It hadn’t been his ambition to hatch, no, not yet, he merely wanted to annex the adjoining space. The day comes, though, when one can no longer grow in one’s egg. Palafox was running out of room. Around the table, by contrast, they maneuvered through more comfortable confines, each too far from the other to land a fork accidentally in an eye, bottles serving as buffers too. The war was mentioned, then the conversation turned to a looming marriage, and then to eggs when Palafox burst out and in. Nonetheless, while extending an arm, Maureen could have easily and unambiguously gouged out her father’s eye or that of her future husband...