Listening to an audiobook in French

I'm listening to an audiobook in French for the first time, Fred Vargas' Debout les morts, the novel translated into English as The Three Evangelists. My French is far from perfect, yet, to my surprise, the partial attention with which one can listen to audiobooks meshes nicely with the partial understanding imposed by the deficiency of my French. I can let the story roll by, getting the gist, without stopping to agonize over words I don't know, the way I would if reading. Already context has taught me the meaning of a few words or expressions. So I recommend audiobooks for second-language students.

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A Climate of Fear, Vargas' ninth novel featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, is high on my to-read list. And The Accordionist, an English translation of a 1997 novel about the characters known as the Three Evangelists, will appear this summer. In the meantime, here's a two-part interview I did with Fred Vargas in 2013: (http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/search/label/Fred%20Vargas%20interview)

© Peter Rozovsky 2017

Merde!

Merde is the glue that holds Fred Vargas' three evangelists together:

"Ils cherchaient. Un autre fou dans la merde."

and

"Dans la merde" demanda-t-il?"

"Précisément. ... Ennui, désillusion, écriture en solitude."

"Mais alors il est dans la merde ... Tu ne pouvais pas la dire tout de suite?"

and

"(L)es trois chercheurs de merde se retrouvèrent tassés autour d'un grand feu."

and

"Ils sont bien emmerdés les médiévistes avec ça."

Marc, Matthias and Lucien, the three "evangelists" of the novel's English title, come together because all are in merde. Too bad that merde, or rather its English equivalent, is frowned upon in American publications. But even then, shit is both far harsher in tone and far narrower in meaning than merde.

Siân Reynolds, who translated Vargas' Debout les morts into English as The Three Evangelists, told Detectives Beyond Borders last year that:

"Swearing is another potential pitfall. French colloquial speech uses a number of terms which if translated literally sound rather stronger in English (merde, je m’en fous, etc.) Given what we know about the characters, you have to save four-letter words for times when the context calls for them."

She renders merde variously as down on his luck or in a bad way, chercheurs de merde as seriously unemployed historians, and "Ils sont bien emmerdés les médiévistes avec ça" as "Not so easy either, for the poor medievalists."

The translation loses the unifying, amusing effect of the repeated merde, both meaning and sound, but what can a translator do except shrug, mutter a quiet merde!, and get on with her work?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

"Look, idiot of the trenches," or Fred Vargas' gentle humor

I've alluded from time to time to the humor that runs through Fred Vargas' work, but I'm not sure I've given any examples. So, how about this, from Seeking Whom He May Devour, about a hill-dwelling loner whom the locals believe is a werewolf and thus, in his human form, smooth all over:

"He can't have much fun up there on his own without any hair."

Or what about the novel's African co-protagonist, a foundling raised by a loving French mother who bedeviled his youth by forcing him to watch serious television documentaries about Africa? The character, nonetheless devoted to her, develops a habit of meeting any contingency with a dubious if not outright made-up piece of African folklore that inevitably makes his listeners roll their eyes and cut him off with gentle admonitions such as "The pond story is not strictly gospel, you know."

And this exchange of insults between a historian of World War I and a medieval historian in The Three Evangelists:

"What do you mean madness, you no-brain soldier?"
"Because, you no-brain worshipper of courtly love ... "

"Look, idiot of the trenches ..."

For reasons I cannot entirely explain, I find those last two lines, especially, among the most engaging I have ever read in crime fiction. They capture the gruff affection and exasperation that exists between Lucien and Marc, two of the three evangelists of the title, and extends to the third of the group, named, naturally, Matthias, and Marc's uncle and godfather, Old Vandoosler.

Three of the four Vargas novels that have appeared in English feature eccentrically endearing types, some of them down-and-outers, as protagonists or co-protagonists. Temperamentally, this relates Vargas to Daniel Pennac's Belleville novels and, more generally, to a gentle brand of French humor about loveable and not-so-loveable outcasts and waifs that can teeter on the brink of (Boudu Saved From Drowning) or tumble over the edge into sentimentality (Audrey Tautou's "cute" roles). The successful examples manage to keep humor and sentiment in play at the same time. I recommend Vargas.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007
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Fred Vargas
French crime fiction