Page 8 - Lamplight Magazine (1)

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O n the p olitic al signifi canc e and p o w er of T he End
of Ed d y, I don’t think I c ould add t o wha t has been said
in the tw o year s sinc e its English tr ansla tion. Ye t it is
curious t o me tha t wha t is a t best an aver ag ely wr itt en
book has dr a wn almost no criticism.
I n the fir st p ar agr ap h Édouard Louis issues
himself a lit er ary manda t e: ‘sufferin g is a ll-c onsuming : it
someho w ge t s rid of any t hing tha t doesn’t fit in to it s
THE END s y s tem.’ Is it an imp ossible task ? From Ed dy alone, it’s
unclear. To crea t e his Lit er a ture of Violenc e, Louis
OF EDDY: disp enses with eleganc e, me tap hor and almost every -
thing else. He has a horror of every thing tha t
c omp lica t es or c louds the even ts of his book. H is
writing is sp ecific, blun t, simp le. Violenc e in our w orld,
esp ecially homop hobic violenc e, is no t c omp le x or
sub tle. It’s the blun t st one of the stup id and evil. A nd
so Louis disp enses with c omp le xity and sub tle ty. He
rejects the imagined w orlds and char act er s of fi ction.
He writ es aut obio gr ap hically, no t alleg orically : he say s
writing fic tion w ould make him ashamed. To say it w as
‘ nec essary ’ t o writ e this w ay t o e xpress these horrific
even ts w ould belittle Louis. It is clear t o anyone tha t
the book migh t have been wr itt en a hundred o ther
w ay s. B ut no, he c hose this mode bec ause any o ther
w ould have felt insinc ere, c o w ardly and lacked the
revolutionary feeling he desired.
S o suffering is the sinkhole a t the c en tre of this
novel, sucking every thing do wn in t o oblivion tha t isn’t
itself. Ye t there are momen ts when some thing escap es.
A line desc ribing the c ardboard he a ttached t o his bike
t o imita t e the sound of a mo t orcycle: a little scr ap of
childhood p leasure. B ut wha t he has already said is:
‘From my child hood I ha ve no ha ppy m emories .’ T hen,
again, a t the end of the third chap t er, a hurried c ollag e
of Louis ’s a ffection for Hallenc ourt: ‘ t he pea ce ful
THE ‘LITERATURE silence of t he sma ll s tre e ts , th e old lad y wh o ga ve us
s w e e t s’, e t c . I n the end violenc e w on’t c onsume
OF VIOLENCE’ everything. T he st eady voic e with its measured f ury
AND IT S POLITIC S gives w ay, evap or a t es momen tarily. T his adds, r a ther

than de tr acts, as perhap s Louis feared. Hallenc ourt –
By Jack Meadows
un til no w a blac k cr a t er of misery and violenc e –
re turns t o itself, and w e find it t o be c omp osed of
‘apple t re es ’, ‘wa rm m il k fresh from the fa rm’ and an
‘explosion of au tum nal colour s ’ . T ha t a p lac e migh t be
bo th this calm, indifferen t chamber of beauty, and the
host of a violenc e which floods it, is a more horrify ing
re flection I think .

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