Albertine Sarrazin - 'L'Astragal'

Walking through City Lights in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I told myself: "don't over-do it." For one, new books require $$$. For two, I'd already purchased about a half dozen books at other bookstores and space was limited in my backpack. But being at the ground zero of Beat literature, I knew I had to purchase something here. My plan was to buy a book published by City Lights itself (which I did). But I didn't expect to find French writer Albertine Sarrazin's 1965 auto-biographical novel L'Astragal.

"The sky had lifted at least thirty feet." So the book begins, with our anti-heroine Anne escaping from prison, breaking her ankle (the astragal of the title) as she leaps from the prison wall. Sarrazin writes poetically. "The shock must have cracked the pavement" and she equates every passing second to that of a century in agony. The healing process lasts nearly the entire first half of the novel: "where the explosions in my toes are less frequent," and later: "my leg frozen into a painful rigidity."

Hopelessness and hope, fog, suffering, distrust, neglect. Waiting. Sleep that doesn't come. Restlessness and restiveness. Emerging themes and the ones that Patti Smith, who wrote the introduction for the 2013 edition of this translation, found so evocative to give her her own strength, boldness, and identity, wandering through the Greenwich Village in late 60s New York City. Smith's praise: "A female Genet? She is herself. She possesses a unique highbrow poet-detective deadpan style."

Coffee. Smoking. Drinking. Mascara. Anne's life on the lam. Our anti-heroine is almost glamorous. But she is still a criminal. Why are we so attracted to her? "When it comes to drinking, I'm always for it." She's troubled, this Anne, this Albertine (this Smith, this reader). We must remember: she's not to be idolized anyway. Not in the way most heroes are. But she can be in the way that the faults we see in her are the ones we see in ourselves. You don't have to smoke or drink or wear mascara to relate to her feelings about neglect, distrust, or hopelessness.

After escaping from prison, Anne encounters Julien, who instructs her to wait in the woods overnight, until he can come back with a vehicle to take her to safety and to treat her ankle. She feels connected to Julien immediately, and later she realizes why: they've both lived a life on the inside.

"There are certain signs imperceptible to people who haven't done time: a way of talking without moving the lips while the eyes, to throw you off, express indifference or the opposite thing; the cigarette held in the crook of the palm, the waiting for night to act or just to talk, after the uneasy silence of the day."

Being a post World War II novel, there's necessarily the influence of existentialism, in this case, rooted in fugitive paranoia. Anne is a criminal. When she's free, she's paranoid. "My new freedom imprisons me and paralyzes me." The only life a prisoner can know is as a prisoner, even being outside the four walls, which to her, is an illusion of freedom."But night runs into day, every hour has the same color, the pale color of danger." Even window-shopping isn't without that pale color of danger. At least in prison, you aren't on the run. "My freedom weighs on me: I would like to live: in a prison where you would know when to open and close the door, a little more, for a little longer time..."

After purchasing this book on a whim, I find out the movie is premiering at the Chicago International Film Festival. Stars = aligned, I suppose. The movie portrayed Anne (Albertine in the cinematic case) as weaker than I felt she was in the book. She was still sardonic, but she seemed more submissive to Julien rather than as an equal. Yes, she was jealous in the book, and angry that he made her wait for him (hours, days, months), but when the book ends, when she is finally caught by the police, she smiles: "Julien will see us go by, he'll understand that I'll be a little late and that it's not my fault."

While there may have been a few missteps on screen, ultimately the film still captured what Sarrazin writes in one of the final pages: "I discover the pain of love. A pain in my stomach or the pain in my leg I can put aside and move away from; but here there is no possible drug or dodge, the pain twists and shivers my whole body, it is myself."

The story of my serendipitous finding this novel and this film, illustrates what I find so important in bookstores and record stores. With music, yes, I can use Spotify to find (almost) anything I want to listen to and perhaps to even find new music. But the element of chance is so much more heightened at a record store. There's so much history and perfect circumstances that enter into the cosmic elements that make sure you find that perfect or even not-so-perfect record.

Likewise in a bookstore. I never would have ever found this book (or this movie) if I didn't go down the exact cramped aisle I did on my way toward the stairs to the Beat section, and had never seen the bookstore employee's recommendation of this book, selling it mostly for the fact that Patti Smith wrote the intro. Honestly, that's what sold me too. If it's good enough for Patti, it's good enough for me.

Would I have bought this book if not for Smith's intro? Doubtful. But the fact that a movie was made about this book 50 years later proves that there will be some correction to the canon of European literature. So that when future-me's, white males who when in high school or early on in college are looking for exciting world literature, where Kafka, Camus, and Beckett have ruled the canon for so long, perhaps Sarrazin can attain the attention she deserves.

As for me, already owning a predilection for French literature of this era, buying this book was a no-brainer: this book found me. Much like Mazarine Pingeot's First Novel found me at Myopic a few years ago. Or Italo Calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler at Armadillo's Pillow. Bookstores provide something that Internet algorithms and even recommendations from friends can't do. They let us find what we didn't even know what we were looking for.

And isn't that, overall, the objective of all good literature?