Je voulais lire Manchette depuis longtemps, sa réputation n'étant plus à faire. Je l'ai découvert à travers deux romans : celui qui donne son titre à cette note et la position du tireur couché, lu l'année passée.Pour le petit bleu..., voici le pitch :Gerfault est un cadre. Il bosse dans une boite sérieuse, technique, roule en mercedes, a un appartement à Paris, des idées de gauche molle, une femme jolie bossant dans la culture, deux petites filles. De nos jours, on dirait que c'est un bobo. Il n'a pas d'iPhone, mais ça n'a rien d'étonnant, nous sommes dans les années 70 : il compense avec du matériel Hifi haut de gamme (un fantasme de l'époque, si je me souviens de mes lectures d'autres romans de l'époque). Un jour, alors qu'il est vacances, Gerfaut se fait agresser par deux types qu'il ne connait ni d'Eve ni d'Adam, qui tentent de le tuer.Commence une course-poursuite à travers toute la France, notre cadre dynamique se découvrant des trésors d'énergie et de courage pour ce qui est d'échapper à la mort...Manchette écrit dans un style sec et très énergique, souvent familier. Il est très bon dans les scènes d'action et de suspense, alternant les points de vue et opérant à des montages très proches du cinéma, dont on sent l'influence très nette. Ses personnages parlent de jazz, de cinéma, citant des titres contemporains. Le récit est ancré dans son époque, il précise la marque des voitures, des flingues, des chaines Hi-fi, des marques de whisky, les personnages rencontrés montrent toute une sociologie de la France de 1976 : concierge, bucheron immigré portugais, petit retraité, ancien gauchiste activiste rangé des affaires. J'ai eu l'impression de plonger au temps des pattes d'eph' et de voir l'affreuse déco orange et marron de l'appartement de Gerfaut.Le point vraiment intéressant de ce roman, et de l'autre (la position du tireur couché) tient au statut du héros : le héros de Manchette est un type pas très sympathique, balloté par les évènements, sans véritable initiative autre que celle dictée par l'instinct de survit. Un personnage rongé par le néant et retournant au néant à la fin du livre. C'est sur lui que l'ironie acide de l'auteur s'exerce avec le plus de férocité...Bref, une lecture intéressante, amusante, pas indispensable sinon pour ceux qui voudraient se payer une petite plongée dans la France de Giscard (mais si, vous savez, le vieux qui écrit des romans, là.)
"Before him on the table was an ITT protable radio receiver with a long, inclined antenna. A desert plate did service as an ashtray. Gerfaut held a Gitane filter. The radio was playing jazz, a Johnny Guarnieri piano solo, part of a program from France Musique. Not long after her first visit, Alphonsine had sent Gerfaut a money order to cover a month’s salary. He had immediately gone and bought the radio, the pants, Gitane filters, and a plastic miniature chess set which was now on the bedroom floor with its pieces set up in the final position of a Vasyukov-Polugayewski match at the USSR championships of 1965 (White resigned after the thirty-second move).“Georges!” said Alphonsine as she broke the seal on a bottle of Isle Of Jura whisky. “What a horrible first name!”“Everybody can’t be called Alphonsine..." This rolls into the station as a dull little drama of the self-conscious bourgeoisie, where possessions and brand names actually matter enough to be noted in the exposition... A bland setup, certainly, considering what will be the rest of the ride. At a certain point a vicious undertow takes hold of the main character, and we're in a life and death struggle for the rest of the novel. (We get the feeling too that the early chapters may be a reach for the translator, whereas the direct scenes later on are simpler to convey ...)Once this takes off, Manchette is able to hold a kind of dual tension, balancing the existential anxiety of the lead character with the impetus of the suspense elements that keep the pace driving to the end of the book. Everything that was grounded in the everyday begins to shear apart, and we get a kind of Simenon-meets-Chester-Himes hybrid ... "… On the radio Johnny Guarnieri was superseded by a warm masculine voice retailing structuralist and leftist rubbish, then Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray began to play.“Wardell Gray—not this tenor, the other one,” said Gerfaut, pointing uselessly at the receiver, “was found shot dead in a vacant lot. And Albert Ayler’s body was fished out of the East River... Things like that exist! They really happen!”“When I was nineteen,” said Alphonsine absently, “I married a surgeon. He was crazily in love with me, the moron. It was only a civil marriage. We were divorced after five years, and I took him for every penny I could get. What do you mean, ‘Things like that exist’? …”
Do You like book Three To Kill (2002)?
So awesome! A tight, smart, and brutal noir, Three to Kill tells you right away who’s going to eat dirt (even the heavy’s dog is quickly marked for death), so Manchette can have you focus on the how and why. A more or less typical revenge plot - a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time becomes hunted, then hunter – is the foundation of a more interesting psychological study. The author considers how a relatively normal person could live an action movie cliché – become a “man of action” who can survive multiple assassination attempts by two seasoned hit men and then hunt down person who hired them. The solution of course, is, he’s stopped being a normal person. When we meet him, our protagonist is in a rut. Disillusioned but not quite sure by what, he uses a botched hit as an excuse to step outside of his life, family, and society in general. He starts his life over in the wilderness until one of the killers (and with him society) eventually finds him. As I was reading I couldn’t help but be reminded of writing from J.G. Ballard and Slavoj Zizek. Manchette strips the main character of all his normal signifiers and expectations, giving him a freedom to act. But there is also another theme that explores how much of our personalities and even the tools of our rebellion are products of the system and environment we find ourselves in. Upon returning from almost a year out in the wilderness, and having dispatched the man who ordered the hit on him (and the justification for his life on the run), our protagonist has no other option but to resume his former life.
—Richard
Un "noir" come si deve. Essenziale, diretto. John Coltrane suonava spesso un pezzo chiamato "Impressions": partiva come un treno lanciato a folle velocit� e non ti lasciava andare fino alla fine, ti sentivi appiattire contro la sedia e lo stomaco ti si contraeva per la rapidit� con cui venivi portato avanti. "Piccolo Blues" mi ha dato le stesse sensazioni, e poi Manchette si premura di mettere in continuazione dei "dischi" virtuali come colonna sonora in sottofondo. Mi � decisamente piaciuto.
—robxyz
E adesso, nell'ovile, aspetta.Gli avvenimenti degli ultimi giorni, arrivando dopo un'infanzia agevole e una prima giovinezza segnata da un'ascesa sociale piuttosto ben riuscita, l'avevano più o meno convinto di essere indistruttibile. Ma nella situazione tanto improbabile in cui si era venuto a trovare a forza di sviluppi così avventurosi, gli sembrava già ragionevole ed esaltante meravigliarsi di essere ancora vivo.Troppo essenziale? Troppo francese? Non lo so, però questo romanzo di Manchette non mi ha lasciato granché. Dopo un primo capitolo molto invitante la storia ha preso una piega un po' strana, ai limiti dell'assurdo. Un uomo braccato, senza saperne il motivo, da due sicari che tentano di ucciderlo molla moglie e figli in vacanza e sparisce per mesi invece di andare alla polizia? E non parliamo di un super eroe, ma di un semplice quadro aziendale; nella sua fuga ha anche il tempo di farsi un'amante... Mi dispiace, mi aspettavo qualcosa di più......
—Mari
