A FORCE OF MADNESS
by Douglas Messerli
Murray Pomerance Edith Valmaine (Ottawa, Canada: Oberon Press, 2010).
Reading
Murray Pomerance’s fiction, I always feel like I’m entering another era, an older
time when storytelling was more magical and unpredictable than today’s often
realist-bound tales of social and psychological turmoil, redemption, and
escape. His 2010 fiction, Edith Valmaine,
for example, reminds me intensely of something that Elizabeth Bowen might have
written, such as
The House in Paris or even Eva
Trout, wherein you follow characters who, revealing themselves as
inexplicable being, do not really know where they are going; and their tales,
instead of being impeccably plotted and detailed, literally stumble around the
edges of their life, much like they feel they are doing in their own fictional
existences. The characters of this Pomerance fiction, at least, almost bounce
off one another, creating a different kind of dialogue than that which occurs
in Bowen’s work, but is just as witty and, most importantly, totally
unpredictable.

Although he is studying aesthetics and
philosophy, he cannot even coherently follow the logic of a simple sentence. He
is, what Cole Porter might describe, “all at sea,” utterly confused in a world
of subtle gossip, deep romance, and hidden afternoon assignations. And Marcel,
like Bowen’s Eva Trout, is unable to make the simplest of connections.
In order to move his story forward from
the whorls and whirls of Marcel’s Sargasso Sea-like imagination, Pomerance
forces the reader to serve as the intelligent other of Marcel’s pointless
attempts at dialogue, a man who can hardly finish a complete sentence. It
works, as any good reader will willingly attempt to explain what the handsome
young man’s problems are.
And numerous figures are utterly
attracted to him, including a kind of boulevard intellect and mock-aesthete,
Valmaine, who frequents the young man’s bars, embracing him as a friend,
presumably seeing much more in the young man than the man himself comprehends.
In a strange way, Marcel is a bit like Kosinki’s anti-hero, Chance: the less he
coherently expresses, the more others perceive him as a deep thinker.
The
young student is amazed by Valmaine’s knowledge of the world, and enjoys his
company, in particular because Valmaine often treats the poverty-stricken youth
to drinks and dinner.
Valmaine seems to have everything the
young man might seek, a lovely apartment, money, and—most importantly—an
absolutely beautiful wife, although Marcel has seen her only briefly, wrapped
in a netted hat, on the street.
The only problem for Valmaine, who absolutely
adores his wife, is that she is a sex-fiend, preying on every man to whom
Valmaine might introduce her.
Although Valmaine attempts to deal with
the facts peaceably, even Marcel recognizes the he is totally disturbed by her
sexual excesses, and is a man who is continually on “the edge,” ready to
leave her at any instance.
We know, almost from the outset of this
delicious fiction, what has to happen. The completely innocent Marcel, who
seemingly has never sexually experienced a woman’s love, must inevitably fall
in love with Edith. After one visit to his friend, where he encounters the
wife, he is swept away, as lovers might describe themselves, in her
charms—although, at first, attempting to escape this siren’s embrace. Yet the
two eventually do have an affair, Valmaine catching them in the act of the
floor of his apartment.
So, the worldly reader might ask, doesn’t
this happen every day in Paris, the city of adulterous love? Surely not to the
confused Marcel, who goes into a deep feverous sleep for weeks, kept alive only
by the constant visits of his school friends, D’Argot and Lamanderie, apparently
rather wealthy young things who bring him charcuterie
(in D’Argot’s case) and endless sweets, in Lamanderie’s. Lamanderie, in
particular, is powerfully attracted to Marcel, watching him sleep, for long
hours, with what even Marcel recognizes, is a kind of loving regard that speaks
of some inexplicable dream world. Marcel presumes he simply wants to sketch
him, without realizing, obviously, that his school chum is desperately in love
with the stricken boy.
Even after a younger schoolboy, Praslin—who
everybody describes as having “no girl”—shows up and demands Marcel join him in
a wild motorcycle ride, where Marcel is forced to cling on to the young man’s
thighs, and, incidentally, becomes almost irrationally excited in the voyage,
the excited student does not quite comprehend. Praslin has taken him to a
heaven and back, and to a kind of magical world, where the itinerant child has lived
for a brief period of time; yet Marcel does not recognize that his joys might
be involved with a sexual male/male relationship. He is so clueless, that even
the young Praslin has to admit that he, himself, is a total innocent,
presumably by even imagining the Marcel might come out of the shell into which
he has burrowed himself.
Pomerance tells this story with such a
studious objectivity that the reader might have thought she or he was imagining
all these things. After all, the Paris the author presents us itself is so wondrous and impossible to pin
down that we realize anything is bound to happen.
When the now completely demoralized
Marcel, suddenly refusing to even attempt to read the books we now know he will
never comprehend, determines to return to the Valmaine apartment, he realizes
it is not to reencounter Edith, but to be embraced in the now lost love and
friendship of her husband, a kind of lover/father figure who might finally
offer him what he has been seeking, or, at least, release him from his own
stupidity and guilt.
Alas, it is all too late. Despite the
fact that Valmaine does indeed embrace him, causing an almost mystical
revelation for the poor Marcel, as they return for a cognac on the Paris
streets, the police chase the elderly man down, and reveal to the clueless boy
that Valmaine has cut up his wife and thrown her into the river. Even here,
Marcel cannot believe what he has previously fantasized.
It is now clear, that Marcel’s life is
also at an end. Although he now proudly declares Valmaine to be a friend, he
has missed out in any possible relationship he might have enjoyed. He is
doomed, a bit like Jean des Esseintes, to sit out his life with nothing but the
artificial possibilities of what existence might mean. He has missed all the
opportunities he was offered for love. If he has betrayed others, he has, most
of all, betrayed himself.
Through Pomerance’s beautiful fiction,
Paris has never been more alive and dead. In order to be “gay,” (as in “gay
Paree”) you have first to love life, a fact our poor, searching hero has never
comprehended. The “force of madness” which he now ascribes to the Paris police
force, is, in fact, what he has himself become.
Los Angeles,
October 12, 2017