Gonzo Meets the Nouvelle Vague: A Review of Ivan Boris’ My Week Without Gerard (2021, Morbid Books)
My Week Without Gerard is first and foremost a glorious love story. At the center of the novel is Lester Langway, a journalist from another time: think Hunter S. Thompson, if the King of Gonzo had ever starred in a Nouvelle Vague film. Langway is in Paris to track down Gérard Derenne, a textbook French intellectual rockstar who has disappeared from the public eye, in the hopes of landing an interview. Little does Langway know, the path to finding Derenne is filled with dubious sexual encounters, hallucinogenic drugs, leggy beauties with lithium-dulled stares, and Satanic rituals. Furthermore, Gérard Derenne’s loyal adherents are ready to shield him from outsiders at any cost. Langway stumbles from one lead to the next, finding himself pushed to his psychological and physical limits.
Upon his arrival in Paris, Langway first meets with Jacques Dutronc, a professor and associate of Derenne. Lovers of the French music scene will take a pause, recalling the famous chanteur of the same name. Indeed, there are numerous name drops of French artists and intellectuals throughout the book. It is a bit jarring at first, but they ultimately serve to remind us of the stagnancy that has infected the cultural sphere which Langway inhabits—that is, they have become familiar names devoid of their cultural signifiers. Indeed, when Langway takes a side turn to a mental health facility for assistant-turned-distressed lover Anais, he finds himself face-to-face with Wilhelm Reich, the famed psychoanalyst who subjected his patients to orgone radiation treatments in insulated Faraday cages. Langway has no reaction to this, as if he doesn’t know who Reich is (was?) or at the very least, the doctor’s presence doesn’t register with him as something bizarre. At this point in the novel, the reader is left wondering: what year is this? At what point did our split from reality occur? Are we incapable of moving forward, culturally-speaking, or are we forever caught in this temporal loop where everything is the same, slowly but surely getting worse and worse? The most astute of readers might believe this is not some parallel world they’re glimpsing but rather our own, one where names and words have been stripped of their original meaning. We are left with nothing but to wander in search of ghosts…
The developing romance between Langway and his waif-like assistant Anais consumes much of the book's second half. However, My Week Without Gerard is not just a love story between two people: it is a love story about an era when it felt like there was more at stake to creating art, when artistic transgressions were rewarded and not punished. In that sense, it is also a story about mourning: “[Langway] wished he could have witnessed the New Wave of cinema wash through Europe, and been around when an outsider like Belmondo’s characters could at least afford a seedy hotel room. He cursed being alive now, when culture was dead, and journalism no longer paid a living wage.”
Langway is the perfect hero to lead us on this phantasmagoric journey of spiritual degradation: vulgar and resentful of those who embrace this contrived and insincere world. And why shouldn’t he be? The only options left are for him to abandon any sense of wonder and take part in this masquerade, or to renounce it as unapologetically as possible. And renounce it he does. One of the more revealing moments in the novel takes place at the Hotel Blavatsky, named after the Russian spiritualist and co-founder of the Theosophical Society. Langway is there to pursue a possible lead in his increasingly manic hunt for Derenne. However, the only thing he finds there is a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals who are desperate for any semblance of spiritual enlightenment, and Langway, meanwhile, is in the middle of a bad mushroom trip. He bursts out obscenities like “Titty fuck!” at the sight of a busty young teenager reading one of Derenne’s book by the pool, and becomes more and more deranged the deeper they progress into the hotel. It turns out that they have mistaken him for someone with actual connections to Derenne and scream “Aren’t you interested in helping us find the next World Teacher?” as he desperately flees the scene. Everyone is more or less feeling their way through the dark, and no play-acting will steady them enough to create something truly profound.
Thoughts on Derenne and his worth as a philosopher are mixed. His “Derenne Femmes” are said to rival the late Muammar Gaddafi’s Amazonian guard, and those who had intellectual disagreements with him are reluctant to speak of their previous interactions, as if he has eyes and ears everywhere. There is a sense of omnipotence about Derenne, but one can’t help but feel as if it’s all a smoke screen. Indeed, as one local tells Langway: “[Derenne] isn’t somebody I think about often. Like most Parisians, I consciously avoid him. An artist friend of mine had a project a few years ago where he would sell magazines and newspapers exactly as they were, except with Gérard’s articles–and all mentions of him–cut out. They were surprisingly popular. And come to think of it, prophetic, don’t you think?” Likewise, Langway’s editor at Down N Out! claims to have never heard of Derenne before when he’s being pitched a story on the Femmes; Langway counters by declaring “He’s like Žižek crossed with Zidane”. However the more Langway learns about Derenne, the more of an empty vessel he becomes: we are left with impressions of a once-great philosopher, or perhaps he was never that great at all. So what is an “intellectual rockstar”, anyway? Is it merely performance art? Or do they serve a purpose to society? Langway himself finds it increasingly difficult to answer that question.
The ending will both delight and enrage the reader, for it leaves them with even more questions and no clear answers. But the reader should remember that writers owe them nothing, especially pseudonymous ones.
Reviewed by Kate Tsurkan