Good Reads meta-data is 383 pages, rated a measly 3.7 by 2515 litizens.
Genre: Libel, krimi
Verdict: How did it get published!
Paris, February 1980. Roland Barthes (1915–1980) noted obscurantist, died in a street accident. But was it an accident? Did he die then or later? Indeed, what is death?
Why were Bulgarians there on the zebra crossing? Where is the notebook that Barthes always carried with him as he read the signs? (But evidently not the one in front of him which said ‘Ne march pas.’) What are the six functions of language? Why are several witness short of fingers? Is Michel Foucault (1926 -1984) completely nuts? Why do those two over there always carry umbrellas? Did the Gulf War occur? Such a lot of questions, it must be a seminar.
The President of the Republic himself assigns the investigation of this accidental death to Commissar Jacques Bayard! A traffic accident! ‘Moi, one of the most experienced detectives since Maigret, saddled with a street accident,’ thinks Bayard. Sacré bleu!
Bayard soon finds that he has landed on Mars. As a representative of the repressive state apparatus in his crumpled Bon Marché polyester suit, driving a clapped-out deux chevaux, bearing chronic shoulder pain from a stab wound inflicted on him by a doped-up junkie, smoking cheap cigarettes, no intellectual will speak to him. They all delight in reviling him in polysyllabic words while proclaiming their humanity.
In addition to Foucault (who is completely nuts) he meets Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), Louis Althussier (1918-1990), Phillippe Soller (1936-) , Julia Kristeva (1941-), Bernard-Henri Lévy (1948-), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), and their acolytes. Bayard cracks a tooth clenching his jaw while trying to get one of these useless clowns to answer a simple question. He resists the temptation to slap them around. Though his self-control weakens when he remembers the good old days in Algeria when a slap was the start of an interrogation in a basement room that could be hosed out later.
To navigate this world of extra-terrestrials Bayard press-gangs a cicerone and translator, a Phd student from the mud heap of Vincennes, Simon Herzog, and off this mismatched pair goes: First to Bologna to interview the master reader of signs, semiologist Umberto Eco (1932-2016) who can tell them nothing useful at great length. In Bologna they also cross paths with the Red Brigades, happily murdering by-standers while shouting clichés. And behind the moustaches are more Bulgarians.
Then on to Ithaca….
How Binet managed to publish this libellous and delightful book is the real mystery here. Though the great intellectuals he parodies were often so ridiculous only a PhD could take them seriously, Binet’s achievement is to make them even more absurd than they made themselves. Who would have thought that was possible. Of course the joke is on all those PhDs who incant their names with reverence. This is all the more surprising considering both the grim subject and gritty style of his previous novel ‘HHhH’ (2010).
This is most singular book I have read in ages.
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