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| Drawing Roland Topor |
Upon its release in Plon in 1954, the crime goes unnoticed. Beforehand, he had been refused by Gallimard, who judged the work too lyrical, too bushy. Since February 2008, we can rediscover the romance and unbridled unclassifiable editions of The Last Drop.
"As usual, I I saw great progress in the ice corridor. I stayed a few seconds looking at my reflection. I would gladly have believed a stranger lurking there for hours, an enemy, certainly, who had just appeared to surprise me, face me without saying anything, just wondering accounts. I looked at him insistently. I saw those eyes that seemed to search despite the certainty that there could be no solution, these features sliced raw in the flesh, the color of ash that stuck to the skin, then the air without any flicker of hope find support. I accepted. I found myself worrying more a stranger, I was afraid to be alone in this mask, only vis-à-vis the anguish when by chance I pressed the surprise in other mirrors. "
In Jacques Sternberg, character names sounds like an original curse. Habner it is called or Havn, it is used to a firm unknown or anonymous unemployed recently sacked, the narrator is hopelessly caught up in a society that fear, a victim of its own weight daily, his invariable torpor. Forced to cold and precise analysis of world as it stands, with its machinery and inert disconcerting Havne realizes he is incarcerated in a sort of open-air prison, cold and devoid of loopholes.
Each parcel of its environment confronts a universe which fathom scathing look.
The office where he just completed his last day of work, with its paperwork foul, his insipid lot of letters from colleagues and detestable, preserves the remains of a schedule just as dull his attic and furniture nailed floor, the stairwells immutable buildings that line borrowed their uniform facades and the streets desperately parallel overlapping in an intersection of all nonsense. Unable to find a role in its layout, a place in his device, Havne to flee at any cost. But how to extricate himself from a prison with no emergency exit, where each square meter is only a reflection of his own captivity? By breaking the mirrors that return the illusion of a possible line of flight and, ultimately confuse offering a shocking reflection of reality? Counteracting the organization metronomic city? In rebelling against the absurdity that seems symptomatic govern?
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| Roland Topor |
The city in Sternberg seems to exist only to confirm the impotence of his character to exist by itself. Asphyxiated, the mind starts to blow up the inertia of the set to see new opportunities to escape. A poster advertising becomes the gateway to a dimension where an infinity of galvanizing events occurs in a fraction of a second. The sale of a newspaper run by a kid shouting loudly at the foot of the tower wake up on her hope of a resurrection in the press.
Faced with a crisis of identity, Havne considering a crime that would trigger a outlet in the infernal machinery.
Unfortunately, the most insolent harm can not be distinguished from the mass of his fellows. When it breaks a crystal vase and is asked to pay is double the price he decides to pay in order to enjoy the ineffable pleasure to shatter into a thousand pieces another witness to his condition demeaning . The two vases unfortunate engulfed half of his monthly income and the gesture of revolt, which would have given him a moment at least the illusion of assertiveness, condemns finally become aware of the misery of his situation in the Gear treacherous society. If
petty theft is not enough to attract attention, most sordid crimes also did not allow access to snippets of the evening edition stating the facts different from the previous day. In The Insider, the words chanted at once the insurrection of his character and his inability to escape the nightmarish quagmire in which the evil bog down inexorably. In vain they seek to exorcise the inconsistency that captured the urban landscape since the city center, interactive par excellence, is deserted by its inhabitants. With slot machines without interest, its windows quake, cinemas dilapidated, she recalls now a cemetery where the money has lost its raison d'etre.
Depopulated, deprived of its power, the city is so light on his paradox in a fireworks show done by a bomb ghostly, with each feat has the effect of a damp squib.
Under these conditions, the crime remains the most glaring perseverance.
- Read: The Hit Jacques Sternberg (1954) proposed a new edition in 2008 by the last drop (preface by Jean-Baptiste Baronian )
