A capital and its monsters

Maria Pourchet’s heroines simultaneously have huge respect for Parisianism and are, by the same token, its most pathetic propitiatory victims. Paris is both an ideal and a psychosis. In Avancer, Victoria, “born Marie-Laure, Vosges, Épinal prefecture, twenty-eight years old, is currently seeking the path of excellence in Paris” (p. 13), unsuccessfully, of course. In Rome en un jour, Marguerite had “enough responsibility to be able to buy herself suits on the Rue de Seine” (p. 82). In Feu, the challenge for Laure and Clément is to sidestep the stumbling blocks of desire in the plush bedroom of a hotel along the Quai Bourbon, on the stately Île de la Cité. Paris, city of all fantasies, of all types of domination and all thwarted dreams of grandeur. Anything goes there, because “no one is shackled to anyone” (Les impatients, p. 67) – or so it seems.
Chloé, the young actress in Western, psychologically abused by Alexis Zagner, will learn this to her cost. In Paris, one can appear and disappear at leisure but, as Maria Pourchet reminds us, always under the watchful eye of the journalists – those heroes of our times. Because Alexis, although he disappears after causing Chloé irreparable physical and mental harm, finds himself and his cruelty the subject of various online exposés that denounce coercive control, transforming what once went on behind closed doors into a matter of public interest. Maria Pourchet does not merely describe a city and its lifestyle, a period and its excesses. She turns her piercing gaze on the deviant extremist attitudes of the professors of desire and the abandonments of the deserters of passion.

Getting to grips with a fiasco

An attempt to sum up the work of Maria Pourchet is hard, if not impossible. For a start, it is to be hoped that this body of work is only just beginning. But, in the interests of brevity, it might be said that the writer seems to have adopted the plan of writing brilliantly about fiascos.
Fiasco, from the Italian word for “failure”, was brought into the French language by Stendhal. Writing about a fiasco is not exactly the same as writing about a failure. It is to write about an absolute, definitive and complete failure. The type that jeopardises what comes next, replaces it. The Stendhalian fiasco is found in Le Rouge et le Noir, when Julien Sorel is sentenced to death for aspiring to success and love. The beheading of Julien, an impassioned man, results in a funeral procession and a sudden cessation of all narrative commentary. It is also found in Lucien Lewen, when our hero tumbles ineptly from horseback just as he is intending to demonstrate his skill to a woman who has caught his eye, giving rise to an entire squadron’s cruel laughter. Like Stendhalian anti-heroes, Maria Pourchet’s characters fall, examine the precipice, either to die a premediated death (Clément in Feu), or to stand on the very brink (Victoria in Avancer). Out of curiosity and stubbornness. Or defiance. Let us hold onto that last highly romantic assumption. Sometimes, when the fall is not fatal, a fiasco can inflict a radically different outcome.
Getting to the heart of the fiasco is a romantic idea: this is what sets the pace of Maria Pourchet’s novels, particularly Feu, a novel about crippled passion and desire, a failed future. Laure and Clément love each other, at one remove from the world, which they will eventually leave, in one way or another. Their obsessions govern the temporal framework of the narrative, which is disrupted by their fantasies, impeded by their blunders, breathless at the thought of approaching the unknown, and finally halted by the fury of their passion.

Overcoming the rigours of the world by speaking

Maria Pourchet makes people talk to transform them, to hasten their metamorphosis. Victoria talks about herself in Avancer (2012) as if she is a visitor on earth, a stranger to the Parisian race, which she watches with inimitable composure and censures with side-splitting humour. Fabien confides in Lydia, his analyst, in Champion (2015), talking as a teenager confined in a Catholic boarding school, whose heart is full of guilt and grief. Paul and Marguerite are a couple whose guests, in Rome en un jour (2013), reveal their true natures at a surprise birthday party (which is a complete flop), mutually sharing their good-tempered triviality. Marie, in Toutes les femmes sauf une (2018), believes that her new-born daughter Adèle is not interested in her soliloquy as a woeful new mother. However, in this cutting account, as chilling as it is tender, of motherhood and heritage, Marie talks to her daughter in a bid to teach her how to understand and evade the folds of biased language. Overcoming the rigours of the world by the act of speaking, by renewed, even enforced dialogue, is the path taken by all Maria Pourchet’s narratives.
Maria Pourchet is a writer who could not care less about labels, etiquette, politeness, if you like, and that is just as well. She knows there is nothing inoffensive about language, particularly when dressed up in its finest attire. She knows its transports, its risks and its excesses. She portrays words and their power to effect change in Toutes les femmes sauf une, in which Marie takes revenge on the harsh words spoken by her mother and the people around her by giving her daughter Adèle a lesson in what to say and how to act, when she is only a day old and before she has even fed her. Western portrays language through actor Alexis Zagner’s obsession with mastering it, modulating his voice, and speaking in such a way as to increase his persuasiveness. The nasty and domineering language that his young mistress is forced to endure can be read as a marathon of verbal abuse which enables what has become cannibalistic narcissism to have the last word. However, surprisingly, the game that Alexis suggests to another woman, Aurore, the classic “Truth or Dare?” puts an end to his domineering masculinity. After all, isn’t truth a type of dare, a true act of daring in itself? When you tell the truth, aren’t you committing yourself to much more than a simple statement that has no impact on the world, yourself and other people? What Aurore says will cause the unexpected breach, the breakthrough that affords the possibility of encounter and epiphany.

The voice of the female narrator who has the upper hand often extends beyond the fictional work to remind the reader just who is in charge. It reflects Maria Pourchet’s unique sense of distance, which is the most valuable element of her books. This headstrong and heady voice ebbs and flows, like the waves, at will and without warning. Like all the novelists who ushered in modernity by challenging romantic illusion, these narrative intrusions strengthen the idea that anything obviously goes when writing. The female narrator always considers the irreparable in context, infuses great tragedy with playfulness, informs the readers that she has lost the plot, refuses to take sides, comments on the perversity of language in order to dismantle it more effectively… She accompanies us and captivates us, reveals the role of the id in our ego that we brush aside and that keeps coming back despite our best efforts. She describes the spirit of defiance involved in being alive, in enjoying life to the full, in embracing death, and the passion for resurrection.