The Sundays of Jean Dézert
4/5
()
About this ebook
Jean de La Ville de Mirmont left behind one undisputed classic, self-published a few months before he would meet his fate on the front lines of World War I: an understated, almost humorous tale of urban solitude and alienation that outlines the mediocrity of bureaucratic existence.
Jean Dézert is an office worker employed by the ministry, who rounds out his regimented life with snippets of Eastern philosophy, strolls through the city and consumerist efforts at injecting content into his life by structuring his Sundays through a rigorous use of advertising flyers that take him from saunas to vegetarian restaurants to lectures on sexual hygiene.
In his mortal boredom, his modernist engagement with the banality of the everyday and his almost heroic resignation to mediocrity, Jean Dézert emerges as something of a French counterpart to Herman Melville’s own rebel bureaucrat, Bartleby the Scrivener—save that when it comes to being an existential rebel, Jean Dézert goes even further in his will to prefer not to. “Jean Dézert is like a brother to me,” wrote Michel Houellebecq, “because of his ability to escape despair by means of emptiness.”
Jean de La Ville de Mirmont (1886–1914) was killed by a shell explosion on the World War I battlefront. He left behind a collection of poetry that would be published posthumously, a collection of short stories and the novella for which he is remembered, The Sundays of Jean Dézert.
Related to The Sundays of Jean Dézert
Related ebooks
Long Live the Post Horn! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Golden Gandhi Statue From America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGnomon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Partial Disgrace Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Shape Bends the River So Long Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Invented Part Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWill and Testament Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5At the Blue Monkey: 33 Outlandish Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magician of Vienna Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bliss, and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVertical Motion Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summer Brother Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Against the Grain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWarning to the Crocodiles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters of William Gaddis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Garden of Seven Twilights Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn a Dark Night I Left My Silent House: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The City of the Living Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sleep of the Righteous Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Drowned Book: Picador Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death in Spring Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night Soul and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Hunger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes From Underground and The Double Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Karenina: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Nigerwife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Sundays of Jean Dézert
2 ratings0 reviews