I decided to read a book by Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize for 2022. Getting Lost, a diary from 1988 to 1990, shows Ernaux’s obsession with a married Soviet diplomat in Paris.
I confess I’m baffled by Ernaux’s obsession with this guy. Ernaux calls him “S” and he shows up at her door drunk most of the time. During sex, S talks about Stalin. S is younger than Ernaux–who is 48 at the beginning of this affair–so there’s a Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin vibe.
“11:45 P.M. He came and stayed five hours. It had been a long time since I’d experienced such perfection, and since we’d been so attuned to each other. Made love, four times, in different ways. (Bedroom, anal sex after many long and slow caresses—downstairs, sofa, missionary very tender too–bedroom, so moving: ‘I’m going to put my sperm on your belly’–the sofa, doggy style, so perfectly in tune.) An infinite need for the other’s body, his presence.” (p. 109)
And Annie Ernaux can be unintentionally funny. “I realized that I’d lost a contact lens,” Ernaux writes. “I found it on his penis.” (p. 33)
Even after a long sex session, Ernaux immediately starts fantasizing about their next encounter. From the minimal facts Ernaux reveals about her lover, he seems like a creep. Not a lot of long conversations between these two: it’s “Let’s Get It On” time whenever they’re together.
Getting Lost is a far cry from one of Deb’s romance novels. It’s almost clinical in the description of the sexual encounters.
The picture I get from reading Annie Ernaux’s diary of these years shows a woman trying to deal with the aging process by engaging in a relationship with a dubious fellow (he could be K.G.B. but Ernaux doesn’t seem to mind) like a compulsive cougar on the prowl.
Annie Ernaux refers to her son, her ex-husband, and her writing career. But, Getting Lost mostly centers around Ernaux getting lost with her Soviet sex toy. GRADE: C
I’m usually disappointed with the Nobel Prize winners . Especially ones I’ve never heard of before. This sounds boring as hell to me.
Steve, I’m with you on the Nobel Prize winners for Literature. I was hoping for more from Annie Ernaux but GETTING LOST lost me.
I’ve gotta say, George, that this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea. I checked my library when she won the Nobel and they had almost nothing of hers. Now they have quite a bit, including this one, but I think I’ll pass.
Michael, I just rolled the dice with Annie Ernaux and came up with snake eyes.
Hard pass! Reading those brief snippets was totally cringe, as the teens say. I felt embarrassed for her. As you note, I’ll be sticking with romance novels.
Deb, there was a lot of sex in GETTING LOST but nothing that I would consider romance.
I’ve known more than a few intelligent, successful women who had a lifelong blindspot when it came to empty, sub-adolescent, obsessive affairs with garbage men. Some of them even nosedove their careers and lives over this and were weirdly defiant about it. While I’ve also met men who wasted far too much time and energy on hollow sexual affairs they were never precious about it. They seemed very much like Ernaux’s piece of rotten meat and it always struck me as tragic that women, who have to struggle so much more in life than men, especially when building careers, fall for this shit.
Byron, I feel the same way. Empty sex, shallow relationships, and a lot of pain and suffering. Sad.
Ick! I wondered about her when I saw she had won the Nobel, but like so many other winners, definitely not for me.
The motto for this blog should be: “George Kelley – He reads this crap so youn don’t have to.”
😉
Jeff, thank you for that motto. But, in reality I’m always trying to read Good Books to recommend to the readers of this blog. I’m sad when I have to report on books like GETTING LOST.
It sounds like she has a sex addiction and a self-loathing that a guy like this satisfies.
The first comment so far that I agree with. (Not that I think the lack of appreciation for this kind of tell-all is in any way Wrong or even misguided.)
Patti, I had the same notion that sex addiction might be at work here.
I would further suggest that she might well have a certain masochism (as opposed to self-loathing in a broader sense) as well as upper-hand as a “bottom”) that wasn’t being serviced by her earlier lovers (I presume plural). Ah, well. One does wonder if her other work drove the Nobel (and, as always, an award is only as good as the recipients of that award…aside from monetary concerns).
I suspect also that it’s hard to write a phrase about finding one’s lost contact lend on one’s swain’s penis without realizing the humor. Wonder also how good a translation Alison Strayer did (or could do, given the source material). There is a certain school of not only but also not least intellection French women who Dare you to be shocked by their sexual memoirs.
Or, intellectual French women. “Intellection: French Women” is my favorite J.G. Ballard/Josephine Saxton collaborative vignette.
Todd, I’m sure I have a copy of “Intellection: French Women” around here somewhere.
Todd, I’m in agreement with much of what you say. But I was getting lost in Annie Ernaux’s world by the end of her book. It was not a Good Feeling.
Memoirs always have the opportunity to take us where we might not be willing to go (and then there are those, such as Miles Davis’s as told to memoir, which are apparently frequently tissues of lies…I recall a member of the Dizzy Gillespie RHYTHMSTICK orchestra touring version, asleep on a passenger jet on an overnight flight, who was awakened as were many others when Gillespie, reading the Davis book rather than trying to sleep in his seat, sang out at midflight “You lying m—f—!”…I self/Gillespie-censor for the children’s sake (and considering Gillespie’s rather genial outlook, consider what might drive him to such voluble rage).
I think I might find it more interesting than most of the assembled here, but would also tend to think, “Well, Good For You, as far as that goes. Hope things didn’t go too badly for his apparent wife…but, y’know, urban intellectual French stereotypes about about affairs {with Walt Kelly, of all people and among others, ready to chime in about how things are a bit Different in the hinterlands).”
Todd, Neil Gunslinger wrote: “Memoirs have been disgorged by virtually everyone who has ever had cancer, been anorexic, battled depression, lost weight. By anyone who has ever taught an underprivileged child, adopted an underprivileged child or been an underprivileged child. By anyone who was raised in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s, not to mention the ’50s, ’40s or ’30s. Owned a dog. Run a marathon. Found religion. Held a job… Sorry to be so harsh, but this flood just has to be stopped. We don’t have that many trees left.”