A Monkey in Winter is a novel about coping with life. The story is this: a man checks in to an off-season guesthouse on the French north coast. It is run by a sexagenarian ex-alcoholic and his wife. The young man is in a sort of crisis about his daughter, who attends a boarding school in the town. He comes to the hotel and immediately starts searching for alcohol. It is not long before he pleads to the innkeeper to share a glass with him, an offer that he ultimately cannot refuse.
Reading this book in its original French represents for me an attempt to resuscitate the French language skills I once had. In a way it is sort of existential: my knowledge of French has enabled me access to an otherwise closed world. The book itself is also existential, in a sense (although the author would have disliked that description): central to the book is an anecdote about monkeys hibernating during winter, a motif that seems an apt description of both protagonists. It also got me to thinking about alcohol use, which is another grand theme of the book. Major literary depictions of alcohol abuse include Venedikt Erofeev‘s Moscow Station, Charles R. Jackson‘s the Lost Weekend, Joseph Roth‘s La leggenda del santo bevitore and unforgettably, Malcolm Lowry‘s Under the Volcano.
The writer, Antoine Blondin was recommended me by my former English teacher (who is a wonderful man, a French-speaking Tunisian who emigrated to Sweden in the late 50s). He praised Blondin’s prose as being particularly pretty, but – hélas! – only appreciable to those with sufficient understanding of the language. Ever since my teacher mentioned the name Blondin in passing have I wanted to dig my proverbial teeth in his writing. Now having done just that, even with my limited but serviceable grasp of French, I can see what he means. This is the writing style of a language equilibrist. I am impressed by his diction and composition. A lot of it goes over my head, no doubt. I’m not sure this book is the best choice for a first try, but it seems to be Blondin’s most well-known work, and it was even turned into a motion picture with Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo in 1962.
Reading about the author I came across the expression “anar de droite” which seems to be an appellation in French culture for a type of right-wing anarchist, which Antoine Blondin sometimes is associated with. This book didn’t strike me as being right-wing, or as anarchist either, for that matter. Maybe the standards for these things are different in the French-speaking world?
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Kinship of all Species 