Hygiene and The Assassin

When the imminent demise of the great writer Pretextat Tach became public knowledge – he was given two months to live – journalists the world over requested private interviews with the eighty-year old gentleman. To be sure, he enjoyed considerable prestige, nevertheless, it was astonishing to see them flocking to his bedside, these emissaries from dailies as renowned as (we have taken the liberty of translating their names) The Nanking Tattler and The Bangladesh Observer.  Thus two months before his death, Monsieur Tach was given the opportunity to measure the extent of his celebrity. (pg. 9)

Biographers were already hovering. Editors were arming their battalions. There were of course a number of intellectuals who wondered if the man’s prodigious success was not overrated: had Pretextat Tach been truly innovative? Had he not simply been the ingenious heir to overlooked creators? They went on to support their thesis by citing authors where esoteric names, whose works they themselves had not read, a fact which enabled them to speak about them penetratingly. (pgs. 10-11)

In Amelie Nothomb’s novel Hygiene and The Assassin, Nobel Prize winning novelist, Pretextat Tach is dying. Tach has lived in seclusion for years refusing interviews or any other means of publicizing himself or his work. With two months to live, Tach agrees to a series of interviews and his secretary weeds through the requests eliminating foreign journalists, journalists of color (Tach has begun to “express racist views”) and requests from television journalists, women’s magazines, and political magazines.

Each day a new journalist goes into Tach’s apartment for the interview and is disgusted and dismayed by the obese, bigoted, misanthrope. Each day Tach bests the reporters until the last one – Nina, the only woman to interview the author. The last half of the novel details their conversation with quick back and forth sparing. Tach confronts his past and Nina discovers something about herself as well; each of them seeking some sort of meaning. Their conversation is quick, intelligent, a dueling of the minds leaving the reader to wonder just how alike were those minds?

After reading reviews of this book, I was prepared to be completely disgusted about Tach but he really didn’t bother me all that much. He was what he was – a hater of mankind, obese, unpleasant but there was nothing about him that made me want to stop reading. I found him more amusing than disgusting. I did find the novel divided into two distinct parts – Tach’s interviews with the irst four journalists and then Tach’s interview with Nina. In the first part, I think the author made it too easy for Tach – the reporters were no match and it wasn’t as much fun for me as Tach easily outwits and defeats them sending each one packing with their tails between their legs. The interview with Nina is different, she has not only studied is twenty something novels in intimate detail, she has also meticulously, and to his surprise, thoroughly researched his life. At last Tach has met his match and the ensuing conversation is fun to read as each tries to dissect the other verbally.

Along the way, the author manages to poke fun at the pretentiousness of both authors and readers, the interplay between writing and reality, even the study of literature itself:

“I’ve always had a soft spot for dissertation topics, I find them very entertaining. Those sweet students who, to imitate a great man, write idiotic things with hyper-sophisticated titles, when the contents are the very height of banality – like a pretentious restaurant embellishing scrambled eggs with a grandiose description.” (pg. 72)

I enjoyed this book the most when Tach would drop these little nuggets into the conversation – never sure if he, himself, believed in what he was saying. In a way Tach is the ultimate unreliable narrator except he isn’t narrating at all  as Northomb’s book is consists mainly of conversation – with one of the participants thinking he is more educated, better, smarter, etc. than anyone else. The short, debut novel was written almost twenty years ago and is newly translated into English by Alison Anderson who also translated Muriel Barbery” The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  I am not quite sure what the author wants me to think about the end but I was okay with feeling a little unsure.  Even though Tach is an extremely unpleasant person, I am glad I read the book. I wanted to figure Tach out and Nina allowed that to happen.

 

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