Can you call a book a novel if you only list your own experiences of recent years in chronological order? The French bestselling author Emmanuel Carrère (63) did it, but he couldn’t avoid getting into serious trouble as a writer.
Recently I read this new ‘novel’, Yoga, recently released in the Netherlands in a well-readable translation by Floor Borsboom. Carrère is an excellent writer, I knew from a previous book, The opponent, a chronicle of a startling true crime: a man murders his wife, his two children and his parents. Yoga is in no way comparable to that book. It is mainly autobiographical and is largely about meditating and going mad – in that order.
Carrère lured me into his book with the promise that he would give an eyewitness account of a ten-day stay in a strict retreat. Ten days of silence, eating frugally, meditating, sleeping and then silence again. How does a man keep it up and why does he do it to himself? I’m always curious about that, also because you never get a completely satisfactory answer.
Ultimately not Carrère either. He clearly describes the finer points of subtle inhalation and exhalation and observing the inflow into the nostrils (“You can meditate on your nostrils for two hours without getting bored”), but he is vague about his motives and the final ‘result ‘—perhaps a pernicious word in Zen Buddhist circles.
He assures us that he had been a happy man for ten years, freed from past depression, when he entered that retreat in 2015. He had “no marital, domestic” problems, he only went into retreat to suppress his “dominant, tyrannical ego”. Would it work? The reader does not find out either, because after three days he breaks off the retreat, because a friend was killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
There goes my book, many other writers would have thought, but Carrère swallowed for a moment and continued diligently. Now with a description of his stay in a mental institution, several years after the failed retreat. He was suddenly very depressed and suicidal again and turned out to be suffering from bipolar disorder that had to be treated with electroshock all his life.
I would have liked to have read more about the four months in that institution, but after fifty unsurprising pages Carrère believes it. As a reader, I was left with all kinds of questions, such as: how come all that meditating hadn’t provided insight into his real problem, that bipolar disorder? And why did the disorder only become apparent now? In short, there were strange gaps in this ‘novel’.
An article in The New York Times from 2020 and an interview with Carrère in Fidelity last Saturday gave me more clarity. Carrère admits that he hid from the reader the true cause of his depression – a post-adultery marital crisis. His ex-wife did not allow him to write about it. “It is true that there is a gap in the book because of that. I had to wriggle in all sorts of corners to get out of there.” He therefore calls his book “imperfect.”
Too bad this wasn’t on the cover.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021
Can you call a book a novel if you only list your own experiences of recent years in chronological order? The French bestselling author Emmanuel Carrère (63) did it, but he couldn’t avoid getting into serious trouble as a writer.
Recently I read this new ‘novel’, Yoga, recently released in the Netherlands in a well-readable translation by Floor Borsboom. Carrère is an excellent writer, I knew from a previous book, The opponent, a chronicle of a startling true crime: a man murders his wife, his two children and his parents. Yoga is in no way comparable to that book. It is mainly autobiographical and is largely about meditating and going mad – in that order.
Carrère lured me into his book with the promise that he would give an eyewitness account of a ten-day stay in a strict retreat. Ten days of silence, eating frugally, meditating, sleeping and then silence again. How does a man keep it up and why does he do it to himself? I’m always curious about that, also because you never get a completely satisfactory answer.
Ultimately not Carrère either. He clearly describes the finer points of subtle inhalation and exhalation and observing the inflow into the nostrils (“You can meditate on your nostrils for two hours without getting bored”), but he is vague about his motives and the final ‘result ‘—perhaps a pernicious word in Zen Buddhist circles.
He assures us that he had been a happy man for ten years, freed from past depression, when he entered that retreat in 2015. He had “no marital, domestic” problems, he only went into retreat to suppress his “dominant, tyrannical ego”. Would it work? The reader does not find out either, because after three days he breaks off the retreat, because a friend was killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
There goes my book, many other writers would have thought, but Carrère swallowed for a moment and continued diligently. Now with a description of his stay in a mental institution, several years after the failed retreat. He was suddenly very depressed and suicidal again and turned out to be suffering from bipolar disorder that had to be treated with electroshock all his life.
I would have liked to have read more about the four months in that institution, but after fifty unsurprising pages Carrère believes it. As a reader, I was left with all kinds of questions, such as: how come all that meditating hadn’t provided insight into his real problem, that bipolar disorder? And why did the disorder only become apparent now? In short, there were strange gaps in this ‘novel’.
An article in The New York Times from 2020 and an interview with Carrère in Fidelity last Saturday gave me more clarity. Carrère admits that he hid from the reader the true cause of his depression – a post-adultery marital crisis. His ex-wife did not allow him to write about it. “It is true that there is a gap in the book because of that. I had to wriggle in all sorts of corners to get out of there.” He therefore calls his book “imperfect.”
Too bad this wasn’t on the cover.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021
Can you call a book a novel if you only list your own experiences of recent years in chronological order? The French bestselling author Emmanuel Carrère (63) did it, but he couldn’t avoid getting into serious trouble as a writer.
Recently I read this new ‘novel’, Yoga, recently released in the Netherlands in a well-readable translation by Floor Borsboom. Carrère is an excellent writer, I knew from a previous book, The opponent, a chronicle of a startling true crime: a man murders his wife, his two children and his parents. Yoga is in no way comparable to that book. It is mainly autobiographical and is largely about meditating and going mad – in that order.
Carrère lured me into his book with the promise that he would give an eyewitness account of a ten-day stay in a strict retreat. Ten days of silence, eating frugally, meditating, sleeping and then silence again. How does a man keep it up and why does he do it to himself? I’m always curious about that, also because you never get a completely satisfactory answer.
Ultimately not Carrère either. He clearly describes the finer points of subtle inhalation and exhalation and observing the inflow into the nostrils (“You can meditate on your nostrils for two hours without getting bored”), but he is vague about his motives and the final ‘result ‘—perhaps a pernicious word in Zen Buddhist circles.
He assures us that he had been a happy man for ten years, freed from past depression, when he entered that retreat in 2015. He had “no marital, domestic” problems, he only went into retreat to suppress his “dominant, tyrannical ego”. Would it work? The reader does not find out either, because after three days he breaks off the retreat, because a friend was killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
There goes my book, many other writers would have thought, but Carrère swallowed for a moment and continued diligently. Now with a description of his stay in a mental institution, several years after the failed retreat. He was suddenly very depressed and suicidal again and turned out to be suffering from bipolar disorder that had to be treated with electroshock all his life.
I would have liked to have read more about the four months in that institution, but after fifty unsurprising pages Carrère believes it. As a reader, I was left with all kinds of questions, such as: how come all that meditating hadn’t provided insight into his real problem, that bipolar disorder? And why did the disorder only become apparent now? In short, there were strange gaps in this ‘novel’.
An article in The New York Times from 2020 and an interview with Carrère in Fidelity last Saturday gave me more clarity. Carrère admits that he hid from the reader the true cause of his depression – a post-adultery marital crisis. His ex-wife did not allow him to write about it. “It is true that there is a gap in the book because of that. I had to wriggle in all sorts of corners to get out of there.” He therefore calls his book “imperfect.”
Too bad this wasn’t on the cover.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021
Can you call a book a novel if you only list your own experiences of recent years in chronological order? The French bestselling author Emmanuel Carrère (63) did it, but he couldn’t avoid getting into serious trouble as a writer.
Recently I read this new ‘novel’, Yoga, recently released in the Netherlands in a well-readable translation by Floor Borsboom. Carrère is an excellent writer, I knew from a previous book, The opponent, a chronicle of a startling true crime: a man murders his wife, his two children and his parents. Yoga is in no way comparable to that book. It is mainly autobiographical and is largely about meditating and going mad – in that order.
Carrère lured me into his book with the promise that he would give an eyewitness account of a ten-day stay in a strict retreat. Ten days of silence, eating frugally, meditating, sleeping and then silence again. How does a man keep it up and why does he do it to himself? I’m always curious about that, also because you never get a completely satisfactory answer.
Ultimately not Carrère either. He clearly describes the finer points of subtle inhalation and exhalation and observing the inflow into the nostrils (“You can meditate on your nostrils for two hours without getting bored”), but he is vague about his motives and the final ‘result ‘—perhaps a pernicious word in Zen Buddhist circles.
He assures us that he had been a happy man for ten years, freed from past depression, when he entered that retreat in 2015. He had “no marital, domestic” problems, he only went into retreat to suppress his “dominant, tyrannical ego”. Would it work? The reader does not find out either, because after three days he breaks off the retreat, because a friend was killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
There goes my book, many other writers would have thought, but Carrère swallowed for a moment and continued diligently. Now with a description of his stay in a mental institution, several years after the failed retreat. He was suddenly very depressed and suicidal again and turned out to be suffering from bipolar disorder that had to be treated with electroshock all his life.
I would have liked to have read more about the four months in that institution, but after fifty unsurprising pages Carrère believes it. As a reader, I was left with all kinds of questions, such as: how come all that meditating hadn’t provided insight into his real problem, that bipolar disorder? And why did the disorder only become apparent now? In short, there were strange gaps in this ‘novel’.
An article in The New York Times from 2020 and an interview with Carrère in Fidelity last Saturday gave me more clarity. Carrère admits that he hid from the reader the true cause of his depression – a post-adultery marital crisis. His ex-wife did not allow him to write about it. “It is true that there is a gap in the book because of that. I had to wriggle in all sorts of corners to get out of there.” He therefore calls his book “imperfect.”
Too bad this wasn’t on the cover.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021