Amelie Nothomb: The Perpetual Introspective Outsider

Under the most excellent title Le Clézio, le backlash, Adrian Tahourdin writes an article in the Times Literary Supplement on the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literatute. In it he refers to the dissenting voices being heard in France regarding this year’s winner. He refers to an article Frédéric-Yves Jeannet wrote in Le Monde, where the latter states that Le Clezio writes about fine sentiments and noble causes, but that these sentiments do not necessarily make for good literature. He goes on to suggest that Amélie Nothomb would have been a more worthy recipient of the prize.
While not wishing to deride the work of the worthy monsieur Le Clezio (especially as I have not read any of his books, it shames me to admit), I have to agree.
Discovering the writing of Amelie Nothomb is a rare pleasure and an unexpected joy. She is provocative, playful, funny, profound and strange – in short, all that one can hope for in a serious author.

She is suitably exotic, born in Kobe, Japan, to Belgian diplomat parents and has lived in China, New York, Bangladesh, Burma, England and Laos. She speaks Japanese and has worked there as a translator for a large corporation. Because of this, one surmises, she feels at home everywhere and nowhere. She is the outsider who never ceases to try to understand how she fits, or does not fit, into the world around her. She is a precocious talent and writes what can only be described as autobiographical fiction. It would be easy to see this as arrogance or hubris, but she explores the world through her experience, and in so doing, makes the world more understandable, more explicable and bearable for us.
Though her books are intensely personal, the themes are universal. She is, (dare one say) after all Belgian, which is French enough to be an extentialist who has only the self with which to interpret life. There is something Ionesco-esque (to coin a phrase) about her work, and she is absurdist enough to sometimes write herself into her own books. That takes some self confidence, and some balls, and some skill to pull off without becoming either precious or gimmicky. She is none of those things.

“Contrary to what one might believe, my attitude towards others had nothing to do with vanity. It was purely logical. All roads led to me: it wasn’t my fault, or my decision. It was a given, a fact of life. What did I need friends for? They had no role to play in my existence. I was the centre of the world: there was nothing they could do to make me more central.”
(Loving Sabotage, p.38 - 39)


There is some difficulty in reading books in translation. Invariably you are left with the lingering feeling that you are missing something important, that some nuance, some shade, some gesture, elludes you. Reading for long enough brings a cure. You make peace with it and also learn to understand that great writing translates well. It is a universal, of sorts, perhaps like genius. You have to learn this through Dostoevsky and Kundera and Grass and Boll and Hrabal and Puig and Zola and on and on.

“Language is less practical than it is aesthetic. If, seeking to speak of a rose, one had no word at one’s disposal, if each time one had to say: ‘the thing that opens in the spring and smells nice’, the thing in question would be much less beautiful. And when the word is a luxury word, namely a name, its task is the revelation of beauty.”
(Sulphuric Acid, p.38)

Nothomb very often writes young characters, young girls, and sees the world through their eyes. In an interview she once admitted that after she turned 25 nothing interesting happened that she wants to write about.
With such introspective writing there is a danger that it would pale, that it would become dull and uninteresting, like a bare acquaintance recounting their whole day to you in every detail, but, as with the universal, she holds your attention. Her imagination, her life, the world through her eyes, even though they be young, is fresh and interesting, funny and filled with the discovery of the absurdity of the world, our bodies, our existence.
It is almost as if her words are better than she is.

Being that personal, having survived a bout with anorexia at seventeen, she writes about food:

‘You see! There’s nothing in the world more disgusting than dried figs.’
They swooned with a shared disgust that took them to seventh heaven. For a long time they detailed the repugnant aspects of this desiccated fruit, uttering cries of pleasure.
‘I swear I’m never going to eat them ever again,’ Roselyne said solemnly.
‘Even under torture?’
‘Even under torture!’
‘And if someone stuffs them into your mouth by force?’
‘I swear I’ll throw up!’ the child declared, in the voice of a young bride.
That night elevated their friendship to the level of a mystery cult.’
(The Book of Proper Names, p.48 - 49)

To date she has published 16 books, and written a play and song lyrics. She has been translated into 30 languages and routinely makes the best-seller lists in France.

We can only hope that one day she will indeed be a Nobel Lauriate. Her talent is undeniable, her genius hard to deny.