The following is from Noémi Lefebvre’s Speak/Stop. Lefebvre was born in 1964 in Caen, and now lives in Lyon, France. She is the author of four novels, all of which have garnered intense critical success: her debut novel Blue Self-Portrait (2009), L’etat des sentiment a l’age adulte (2012), L’enfance politique (2015), and Poetics of Work (2018).
—May I begin?
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—Yes. But do remember we are delicate
—That’s why you can’t address us in just any tone
—You have to choose the right tone
—Your tone isn’t always the toniest
—Nor in the best taste, either
—We’re quite familiar with the customs in wealthy circles where there’s a fine line when it comes to good taste
—For we like the arts and we do have taste
—At least a kind of taste
—We have taste but aren’t so sure of it
—We aren’t at that level of ease that allows easy circulation among easier circles
—But we aspire to be
—We hold on, despite ourselves, to a dream of advancement
—Although this dream looks far from dreamy
—It’s a dream prescribed
—In other words, an ideology
—Ideologies make lousy dreams
—But we can’t snap out of it, even so
—Because we too need to dream
—Although we haven’t the means
—We’re like the Verdurins, only associating with the finer old farts
—Though with less lofty airs
—We compare ourselves to the Verdurins, which is ridiculous
—What right have we, indeed
—Few are they who can invoke the Verdurins without being ridiculous
—In any case, we can’t
—The Verdurins are not our friends
—They’re references
—For we do have those
—We reference the Verdurins in order to show that we’ve read Proust, which is debatable
—We have read Proust but we’re not sure
—Who has really read Proust
—Besides a few Proustians
—We are no Proustians
—Despite not being anti-Proustian
—We like Proust a lot, but do we know him?
—It sounds like we’re saying we know Proust, which is pretentious
—We’re also claiming to know the Verdurins, which is impossible
—And yet we’ve heard of them, through Proust who knew them well, whom we barely know, but whom we have read
—As well as we might
—With the resources to hand
—And other books too
—Which are part of literature
—At least we hope they are
—For we enjoy literature
—And enjoy enjoying it
—Indeed we aspire to a degree of culture
—Which we also enjoy
—For we do have some
—We have culture but we’re not sure of it because we lack ease
—We don’t have the ease of cultivated circles
—We are cultivated but not naturally
—We look the part but it isn’t sustainable
—And we’ve no wish to be ridiculous
—In fact, we’re always a bit iffy
—Which is why we’d rather not define the fine line when it comes to good taste
—We talked about it last night and agreed in the end we’d rather not embarrass ourselves
—We couldn’t pretend to know
—Pretension to ridicule would be quite over the top
—As the Verdurins would say
—Whom we don’t know
—Because we’re middle-class
—Or upper-middle-class, actually
—Top of the crop, really
—Although
—We remain at risk of a banana-skin dive
—One single error of taste, and bam-splat
—Bam-splat could be an expression the Verdurins use
—We wouldn’t be surprised
—The risk is the Verdurin who comes charging back
—Fear of ridicule may be ridiculous, but it’s a precaution in these uncertain times
—That’s why we can’t ask too much of that fine line in good taste
—For who are we, etc
—And we’ve decided to make do with a decent tone
—We like decent people
—Even though we’ve learned, if not to love at least to respect, or rather to put up with less than decent people, we prefer decent ones
—We know that decent people can take an odious tone, and not very decent people may sometimes take a fine tone, but we would rather no one, not even a decent one, take an odious tone with us
—Yesterday your tone was not of a standard we can accept from you
—We can endure an odious tone from rather in-decent, even borderline well-off people, but we will not take that tone from you
—Someone who’s well-off may take a fine line in poor taste which we will grin-and-bear, even though not very decent, but not someone like you
—As you’re not one of the well-off
—Although you used to be, at one time
—You were even richer than many wealthy people
—You used to roll up in a beamer, once
—And developed some indulgent tastes
—You used to slice tomatoes with a tomato-slicer
—You served your fish on fish-shaped fish plates
—You tonged your snails with snail tongs
—And your sugar with sugar tongs
—You had a tumble dryer so as never to have the hassle of clothes pins ever again
—You never budgeted
—You lived way beyond our means
—You had a dyson maxi and a mini dachshund
—You ignored us
—We were happy for you
—Then you got divorced, and we were sorry
—You lost a good deal of purchasing power
—You were smoking again, too
—You slept in the woods at one point
—Not unlike an animal
—With fur
—And your nails long and spikey like claws
—And untamed hair
—Living in the wild, you left behind your cultural affluence
—But we were delighted
—And delighted too, since you came charging back the way you naturally do
—How you decently do
—We talked about it among ourselves and we recognized your decent nature
—And that’s what we should say first, before you take the floor: you’re a decent person
—Very decent, even
—We talked about it that evening and we concluded that it was indeed your in-decent tone that had, let’s say, upset us, in someone who is, essentially, decent
—Very decent, even
—We were unanimously upset by it
—We cannot grin-and-bear anything and everything
in any tone at all from someone as decent as you
—We are, indeed, as we’ve said, delicate creatures
—We have neuroses
—Among other things
—We have some skeletons in the closets back home
—We’re haunted by dark memories
—We make our way as best we can amid ideology’s hellish clamor
—We live in fear of our pathologies
—We do our utmost to look normal
—We dread hospitalization
—We have developed adaptation strategies but they’re not a hundred percent effective
—Say eighty per cent.
—Or sixty, it depends
—We gotta be honest, dammit. We haven’t the foggiest how much
—You could say we’re somewhat prone to flying off the handle
—Have to admit
—We’ve been reduced to tears more than once
—And one was reduced into them too
—Over a fallen horse
—Or a moribund fish
—We swiftly become attached to kittens and farm hens
—We go gooey like over tiny babies
—We were unable to bear the innocence of the hens
—Which had done nothing to us
—Which we were eating for no good reason
—For we loved them
—We tend to love babies as if they were tiny chicks
—We’re too sensitive
—No idea why
—The sense eludes us
—For a long time we made no sense
—More than once we surprised ourselves practically heading for the hills
—It was a demented delirium of verdure
—A meadows madness
—For many years we practiced that verdant art which is toxic to the mind
—Our infamous indisposition to mental health was not appreciated in the well-off circles to which we aspired
—And which gave us a wide berth
—We still harbor the bitter memory
—Although it takes us back so many years
—Water has flowed under bridges
—These days we’re back to doing it by the book
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Excerpted from Speak/Stop by Noémi Lefebvre translated by Sophie Lewis. Reprinted with the permission of Transit Books. Copyright © 2024 by Sophie Lewis.
