My Friends

by Emmanuel Bove, Janet Louth (Translator)

Overview

Bove's tale of a World War I veteran living in postwar Paris, searching for friendship and warmth, is an ironic, entertaining masterpiece by one of France's favorite authors.

My Friends is Emmanuel Bove’s first and most famous book, and it begins simply, though unusually, enough: “When I wake up, my mouth is open. My teeth are furry: it would be better to brush them in the evening, but I am never brave enough.” Victor Baton is speaking, and he is a classic little man, of no talent or distinction or importance and with no illusions that he has any of those things, either; in fact, if he is exceptional, it is that life’s most basic transactions seem to confound him more than they do the rest of us. All Victor wants is to be loved, all he wants is a friend, and as he strays through the streets of Paris in search of love or friendship or some fleeting connection, we laugh both at Victor’s meekness and at his odd pride, but we feel with him, too. Victor is after all a kind of everyman, the indomitable knight of human fragility. And, in spite of everything, he, or at least his creator, is some kind of genius, investing the back streets and rented rooms of the city and the unsorted moments of daily life with a weird and unforgettable clarity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681373133
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	05/07/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Emmanuel Bove (1898–1945) was a French journalist and novelist. He had been publishing popular novels under the pseudonym Jean Vallois for several years when Colette helped him publish My Friends under his own name. He continued publishing successful novels until World War II, at which time he was forced into exile in Algeria. He died of heart failure soon after returning to Paris from exile. 
 
Janet Louth has translated several books by Emmanuel Bove, including My Friends, Armand, and A Man Who Knows. She lives in Manchester, England.

Table of Contents

	First	7
	Lucie Dunois	23
	Henri Billard	31
	Neveu the Bargeman	75
	Monsieur Lacaze	93
	Blanche	133
	Last	145

Editorial Reviews

Slim, dismal, hilarious.” —Sheila Heti, Bookforum

“Bove is the Proust of the other end of the bourgeoisie.” —Keith Botsford

“An ironic, beautifully understated and entertaining early existentialist novel.... Contemporary readers will find Bove’s world, of postwar Paris, fascinating and entertaining, and his skill in rendering it impressive.” —Kirkus Reviews 
 
“[Bove’s] first novel is as buoyant as fresh bread. It is also sad, funny and engagingly written in short, sober sentences which seem to flow with the ease of everyday talk. Beneath this appearance, to be sure, lies the art which conceals art, for Emmanuel Bove’s style is thriftily pared down and his choice of detail cleverly persuasive. The surprise is not in learning that his books appealed in their time to Colette, Rainer Maria Rilke and Samuel Beckett, but rather that they should have sunk since then into near oblivion.” —Julia O’Faolain, Los Angeles Times 

From the Publisher

This wistful, sad little French novel from the 1920s is here translated into English for the first time. Bove, who died in 1945, has regularly been admired by other writers but never by a wide audience. His melancholy clown, Baton, is a damaged veteran of the Great War, living from hand to mouth in the dank rooming houses, filthy soup kitchens, grubby cafes and drab streets of the Paris no tourist knows. He longs only for a friend whom he can love, and who will love him; but in a sequence of accidental encountersgenerally with gross, coarse, unfeeling peoplehis life is briefly jarred but never significantly altered. A man of exquisite sensibilities, hoping that one day, against all odds, something splendid will happen, Baton finds the doors remain shut against him. If Marcel Marceau's eternally yearning little man could remove his mask and find a voice, he might look and sound like this one. (March 20)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Three years after World War I, Victor Baton is a crippled veteran wandering the streets of Paris, disoriented and alone. In his rented room, he envies and suspects his neighbors and dreams of wealth, friends, and good times he will never have. He is a hapless observer of his own lot whose delusions and foolish behavior defeat his attempts at love and friendship. When a wealthy manufacturer takes pity on him and offers him a job, Baton betrays him by pursuing his young daughter. First published in France in 1923, this is a portrait of a frightened and pitiful man unable to adapt to the strange world of normalcy. Bove's influence on other French Writers (Colette, Rilke, Gide) has led to a recent rediscovery of his work, largely out of print since his death in 1945. For large fiction collections. Leonard Kniffel, Detroit P.L.

Library Journal