By Damien Aubel, for Transfuge, January 2024
Lebanon Blues
Is it the winter temperatures that paralyze my analytical faculties on the day I write this review? Be that as it may, apart from the debilitating repetitive use of the adjective “wonderful,” and a few synonyms (“beautiful,” “enchanting”), it seems that language has deserted me. Also, what judgment, however eloquently composed, could be made without causing an unpleasant discord with the delicate, sensitive, and ironic elegance of tone, or without painfully contrasting with the sharp insights, in a word, without betraying the beauty, the wonder, the enchantment (there, I go again), the inimitable style of the late Lebanese master?
I think we can agree that this is a bit of poor appraisal. Let me try to do more justice to this wonderful, etc. book. Let me shake the cold off, and warm up on this polar day, let me leave my worktable, and try to find a suitable place for this novel in my bookshelf. Shall I place it next to another masterpiece like “The Egyptian Cigarettes” by Waguih Ghali? Should it be neighbors with “Awaiting for Daybreak” by Milton Hatoum? Or should I perhaps bring it closer to my literary favorites, and let it fraternize with Gustave or Marcel? Or wouldn’t it also fit well with Fabrice or Julien? Indecisive, I go back to my seat. None of these suggestions fully exhausts, by comparison, the charm and qualities of the book; but all are legitimate.
For from this Lebanese life that spans decades, familiar echoes arise. Childhood, youth, and the rendering – a striking feature of Jabbour Douaihy’s art – of a carefully selected sensitive detail, both characteristic, and evocative; the fervent, almost unhealthy enthusiasm for literature; the strange ballet of love with a young woman, in the presence of her twin, an innocently perverse game, bubbling with hormones and creative enthusiasm, where Eros inspires the hero with unrestrained lyricism; the father, the mother, the aunt, and the comical or poignant movements of this small family constellation; the civil war and the geopolitics of urban demarcations; university and the heroic-comical affiliations with a small group of Trotskyists; followed by the life of a writer without the writing, yet with all the outward signs of Literature: elegance, seduction, life in a hotel (a homage, perhaps, to Cossery?); and then marriage, a summit of humor, wounded and tragic, in a book already so humorous…
“Wonderful,” and all of that, yes, I persist and sign. For, under the appearance of a chronicle of events, a powerful secret exerts its influence, like a spell. This world of facades (discourses, poses, existential “cloaks”) hides a terrifying truth, of a metaphysical nature – call it Evil, emptiness, madness, death – which digs a “black hole” in the life of the protagonist. It is the way in which he dances around it, approaches it, moves away from it, revels in it, that is mesmerizing. To the point where no words can be found other than “wonderful.”