Queaneau employs that idea in a madcap parody of Pirandello's Theater of the Absurd when Icarus takes leave of Hubert Lubert’s novel and wanders 1890’s Paris, its absinthe bars, wide boulevards, and mauve parks(?)- all the while pursued by bewildered authors, an incompetent private detective, and ladies lusting after his Icarian je nais se quoi.
#THE FLIGHT OF ICARUS FREE#
This 1968 novel in the form of a play (and translated here by the unstoppably badass Queneau translator par excellence Barbara Wright) takes the conceit from such works as At Swim-Two-Birds and Mulligan Stew, that fictional characters have their own autonomous lives and existences independent from the works in which they were created, and are somewhat free to roam about the wide world on their own merry way. But isn’t all progress, if progress exists, difficult to imagine?”Īnother masterpiece from Queneau, who again and again gives proof as to why when someone asks me “Who are your favorite writers?” my response is almost always “James Joyce and Raymond Queneau.” (so there, now you know something about ME!).
Difficult to imagine, a novel without characters. The novel will perhaps not be dead, but it won’t have characters in it any more. We shall be authors in search of characters. What a fate- that of a novelist without characters! Perhaps that is how it will be for all of us, one day. In the meantime, all I can do is stare, dry-eyed, at that hard, forgotten lake which, under the hoar-frost, is haunted by the absence of a character. We shall be auth ”Ah! Icarus! Icarus! why try to elude the fate for which I had destined you? Where have you landed, in attempting to try out your wings? I await your return, whether voluntary or involuntary. ”Ah! Icarus! Icarus! why try to elude the fate for which I had destined you? Where have you landed, in attempting to try out your wings? I await your return, whether voluntary or involuntary. Hence using all the achievements of the progress, Icarus decides to learn to fly…Īs for the authors, they are just characters in the novel of another author…. Once we are free, don’t we have the same desires, the same needs? The same faculties? Don’t we have to obey the same necessities of life? Icarus is caught but he escapes once again… Following his example, other personages run away from other authors… they want to be free and they wish to be real… As the saying goes: there are times when it’s ridiculous to fight against a shadow. He has appeared in many novels under different names.
I want him to like moonlight, fairy roses, the exotic types of nostalgia, the languors of Spring, fin-de-siècle neuroses – all things that I personally abhor, but which go down well in the present-day novel.īut barely he is conceived by the author he flees the manuscript into the real world… So his creator is obliged to hire a cunning private eye to find the escapee…ĭon’t you know Morcol – the Subtle Shadowing specialist? The man who follows adulterous women and finds lost sheep. I am preparing a melancholy existence for him which could hardly displease him because he knows no other. But barely he is conceived by the author he flees the manuscript into the real world… So his creator is obliged to hire a cunning private e Icarus is supposed to be a character in a novel… I want him to like moonlight, fairy roses, the exotic types of nostalgia, the languors of Spring, fin-de-siècle neuroses – all things that I personally abhor, but which go down well in the present-day novel. Icarus is supposed to be a character in a novel… I am preparing a melancholy existence for him which could hardly displease him because he knows no other.
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