The Review of Contemporary Fiction
The Passion of Martin Fissel-Brandt by Christian GaillyJoseph Dewey
Christian Gailly. The Passion of Martin Fissel-Brandt. Trans. Melanie Kemp. Intro. Brian Evenson. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2002. 128 pp. Paper: $14.95.
A deep anxiety hangs about the shattered narrative line of French minimaliste Christian Gailly’s slender new offering, an uneasiness as readers are coaxed through the fragments of a storyline, tracking a character who too-adeptly maneuvers about a lexical landscape where coincidence upends routine, where the engine of suspense stalls, where explanation remains stubbornly ironic, where conversations edge into loaded ambiguities. What we are given is the intense scrutiny of the vehicle of language itself, a parsing of sentences to exploit the audacious presumption of design. Gailly creates a stunningly spare prose line, fragmentary sentences within brief chapters, a demanding line marvelously translated here to preserve its jazzy syncopations. Uncertainty is the problematic gift of language, Gailly argues. Indeed, as with midcareer Beckett, there are few reliable steps here. At the center of this skewed narrative lurks the uneasy possibility that the title character, an engineer for a French car company, may have murdered his wife (an accusation rendered within the narrative by Martin’s cat). Indeed, Gailly freely assaults the expectations of both the mystery genre, exploiting questions and avoiding resolution, and the romance, braiding the erotics of passion and violence. After (accidentally) finding a letter that is (coincidentally) addressed to the apartment where he would meet his ex-lover, Martin impulsively transfers to follow that ex-lover to Asia, where he is inexplicably enmeshed in local political upheavals. Maybe. Given the outrageous twists of a mock-plot that may indeed be entirely the conjurings of a bored automobile engineer, we are intrigued rather by the vehicle of its delivery, a harshly melodious prose that reads like the hard, steady improv lines of Charlie Parker sound. This edition, supplemented by an informed introduction by Brian Evenson, is the first of Gailly’s nine novels to be translated. [Joseph Dewey]