Report on Myself

One of the most interesting memoirs I have ever read. Bouillier captures our minds' unconscious interpretation of the world as literature, our lives as the plot by using Homer's Odyssey as an allegory for his own experiences. Yet, this memoir is very accessible, not convoluted or puffed up as it could have been. A good read for the deep or casual reader, it is sure to make you think.

Gregoire Bouillier's REPORT ON MYSELF provides the harrowing back-story to his highly original and amusing THE MYSTERY GUEST. REPORT opens with an eye-brow raising account of his being conceived when his parents invited an second man to their bed. Gregoire's coloring (dark) suggests that the Algerian intern at the hospital where his mother worked (the invitee) is his real father. This fact is but one clue Bouillier has to work with in his life-long struggle to establish his identity and place in the world. For another dozen pages Bouillier lets his readers believe they are in for a rather outré tale of a wild and unconventional life lived beyond the boundaries, something along the lines of Sterne's TRISTAM SHANDY. But the darker side of his life's story soon emerges. His mother repeatedly threatens suicide, his parents separate for significant periods of time, he is sexually molested by his older brother, and he succumbs to numerous fits of blinding aggression that are clearly more than attention-seeking episodes of acting out behavior. As an adult he experiences a period of homelessness . The intimate relations he attempts as an adult are primarily with damaged and narcissistic women specializing in meting out contempt. Bouillier does not wallow in his miseries or beg the reader's pity. Neither does he anesthetize himself to their profundity. He is quick to read meaning into events, coincidences, details, and names that would pass most "normal" people unnoticed. The reader is tempted to think Bouillier is being led on by the kind of infantile magical thinking that many powerless and traumatized people take solace in. But his observations are striking and his interpretations cannily believable. Making no reference to God, Bouillier seems to be immersed in a coherent if inexplicable reality that few of us ever get to (or allow ourselves) to see. Bouillier does not see himself as caught in a spiritual struggle, yet it would not be hard to posit that there is a Higher Power who watches over him or that he has experienced many miracles in his life. As he recounts of his time living on the streets and in the doorways of Paris, "I remember a sentence that I tirelessly scrawled on everything I came across, like a talisman I would put up everywhere: `The way was lost along the road; well, then there is a road'" (p. 97). And elsewhere he writes, "Events don't end by themselves as I thought they did but prolong themselves through their consequences, which in turn become events, and so on" (p. 120). What Bouillier has given his readers is French existentialism at its most personal--scary, and inexplicably hopeful.

The author moved to Paris at age five. Gregoire's parents met each other in 1956 at a party. They married a year or so later. Olivier is Gregoire's older brother. Gregoire's father spent three years in military service in Algeria. His mother joined his father there. In his school years Gregoire is reported to be restless, unruly, and undisciplined. He tells of his mother, his brother, his father, his friends, and his adventures on the way to becoming an adult. The result is droll. The touch here is light and the quality of the writing is joyous.

This book opens with the line "I had a happy childhood." To the reader this quickly becomes questionable, unless you think a bohemian (at least sexually) childhood with a suicidal mother, a gay brother who escapes to the US, friends who disappear with no notice, etc. constitute a happy childhood. But how this childhood can be described as "happy" is part of the puzzle of the book. The primary clue to this puzzle is given in the structure of the book. The sequence of events is neither chronological nor topical in the usual sense. Rather images provide the structuring - "golf" as a game of the rich that is suddenly offered and as suddenly removed is connected to a harrowing drive to the "Gulf" of Mexico. Golf-gulf then connects two women in his life. The story flows with puns, incongruities and coincidents that provide something resembling meaning to his life. The author makes his madcap existence a playful read not a complaint or lament. The voice of the narrator is always "spot-on" even when more than a bit mad. Details are chosen with great care, each furthering the stories - nothing irrelevant. My own complaint - while I appreciated the technical brilliance of the work, I never came to care about the protagonist. I was able to put the book down and forget about it. Whether to blame this on the author or on myself, I do not know.

This little jewel of a book is translated from the French by Bruce Benderson, no easy task because it is shot through with lavishly layered language. Some passages, even in translation, are absolutely breathtaking. The author sees every event in his life as metaphor. He alternates between chronology and thematic narration. His story is wild, hilarious, and profound. You will probably not want to read this one on the plane. Save it for a rainy evening in front of the fire, or take turns reading it aloud with your lover : )