Idiocy - by Pierre Guyotat (Paperback)

About the Book

"An audacious, unabashedly transgressive memoir about two acts of escape by the author: breaking from his family to seek a freer life in Paris and then, later, deserting the French military during the Algerian War. Pierre Guyotat was one of the most radical and uncompromising writers of the twentieth century, a literary successor to the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, and Jean Genet, and whose visceral fictions and extreme linguistic experimentation have earned him cult status in France and abroad. Idiocy is his searing memoir of coming of age between 1958 and 1962, when he discovered his burgeoning sexuality as well as his aptitude for rebellion - first against his father, whom he escaped to become a writer in Paris, then against the French military authorities as a conscript in the Algerian War. With unflinching honesty, Guyotat recounts the atrocities he witnessed firsthand during the war, as well as his own harrowing experience of being arrested for ostensibly inciting desertion and imprisoned in a hole in the ground for three months. Guyotat wields his prose like a scalpel, merciless in his excavation of the sensations and textures of human brutality - yet also generous and moving in his depictions of comradery and friendship. Winner of the 2018 Prix Medicis, this bracing, hallucinatory narrative is both an incisive condemnation of violence and colonialism, and an invaluable key to the oeuvre of a writer hailed by Edmund White as "one of the few geniuses of our day.""--

Book Synopsis

An audacious, unabashedly transgressive memoir about two acts of escape by the author: breaking from his family to seek a freer life in Paris and then, later, deserting the French military during the Algerian War.

Pierre Guyotat was one of the most radical and uncompromising writers of the twentieth century, a literary successor to Sade, Bataille, and Genet whose visceral fictions and bold experiments with language have earned him cult status in France and abroad. Idiocy is his searing memoir of coming of age between 1958 and 1962, when he discovered his burgeoning sexuality and aptitude for rebellion--first against his father, whom he escaped to become a writer in Paris, then against the French military authorities as a conscript in the Algerian War.

Guyotat recounts the atrocities he witnessed first-hand in Algeria, as well as his own harrowing experience of being arrested for inciting desertion and imprisoned in a hole in the ground for three months. Guyotat wields his language like a scalpel, merciless in his exploration of human brutality in all its horrible, granular detail. Yet his generous depictions of camaraderie and friendship are just as unflinching.

The winner of the 2018 Prix Médicis, Idiocy is an incisive condemnation of violence and colonialism, and a bracing, hallucinatory late masterpiece from a writer hailed by Edmund White as "one of the few geniuses of our day."

Review Quotes

"Pierre Guyotat is the prince of prose." --Alain Badiou

"Guyotat renders the pornographic violence of colonialism with unflinching honesty. His writing is gorgeous, brutally poetic without pretense or over-aestheticization. 'Insects scuttle between my fingers like words that escape me.' I didn't just read Idiocy, I was captured by it. It is a book that throws off your blinders, that changes you." --Dodie Bellamy

"Idiocy, as a work of memoir, maintains an uncanny sobriety throughout its reportage, indulgent in its poetical description . . . As a medium intended to survey war and warmongering, Idiocy becomes more than a simple pulling back of the curtain of atrocity; it would, instead, pull down the whole damned rigging, lights, cameras, and all." --Blake Butler

"[Guyotat is] anti-authoritarian, pushing the French language to its limits of meaning, and fascinated by the filth of fighting, illness, and recovery. . . An ugly, terrifying memoir of childhood, war, and violation, rendered into nightmarish English." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Pierre Guyotat (1940-2020) was a French writer. In 1960, he was conscripted into the Algerian War, the inhumanity of which would become a recurring theme throughout his oeuvre. He is the author of Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers, Eden, Eden, Eden, which was banned in France upon its publication in 1970, and Coma, which won the 2006 Prix Décembre. In 2018, he was awarded the Prix Femina spécial for lifetime achievement.

Peter Behrman de Sinéty grew up in Maine and lives in Paris. He was lecteur d'anglais at the École Normale Supérieure, where he has taught since 2011. His translations include Éric Chevillard's QWERTY Invectives and Maël Renouard's Fragments of an Infinite Memory.