The English edition was published by George Braziller in 1965. The text is excruciatingly dense, alternating between lengthly internal dialogue and brief external dialogues. But the setting is Brussels in the Jazz age and writers, prostitutes and poets move from club to club, from salon to bar. And when they turn on the radio that wailing "dissonant" sound emanates. I find it under-rated as a document of that beatnik era. When viewed in that light, Quintes' philosophical restlessness finds a context.
"In a hollow voice she told him fantastic stories which were never quite about love nor quite about death, an astounding mixture of confused, flashing anecdotes from which the only constant that emerged was disgust with living."His contemporary comparisons to Kafka were misleading. His character was paranoid, but Moreau was not. Time magazine panned it as "incoherent." But in 1962 his writing was praised by Raymond Queneau, and Simone de Beauvoir. But as an existentialist philosopher it makes sense that she'd understand. She understood enough to publish it in serial form.
