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The Necrophiliac
The Necrophiliac
The Necrophiliac
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The Necrophiliac

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

For more than three decades, Lucien — one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel — has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world.  Remarkably, the astounding protagonist of Gabrielle Wittkop’s lyrical 1972 novella, The Necrophiliac, has never appeared in English until now.  

This new translation introduces readers to a masterpiece of French literature, striking not only for its astonishing subject matter but for the poetic beauty of the late author’s subtle, intricate writing.  

Like the best writings of Edgar Allan Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop’s prose goes far beyond mere gothic horror to explore the melancholy in the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with an unprecedented intimacy.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherECW Press
Release dateMay 1, 2011
ISBN9781554909742
The Necrophiliac

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Rating: 3.868421105263158 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Repulsed, entranced, sick to my stomach, caressed, and more, all at the same time. I can't think of another book that has messed with my brain and my other insides more. I was thoroughly disgusted and couldn't put it down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Genuinely grotesque. I limped, cringing, to the last page - entranced by the morbid, spidery language, but unable to enjoy any of it.Can't think of a book which made me feel more sick to my stomach, so naturally it gets extra stars for that.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Disturbing, but undeniably in possession at times of gorgeous prose.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was ok. Everyone said it was sick and disgusting but it wasn’t that bad. Idk what all the fuss was about.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Book is incomplete. Only 57 pages when it should be ~91
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a graphic book which made me wince a couple of times, and it's so well written that it nearly turned my head. Whenever an author manages to push something out there which - especially considering the title of this novella - makes the reader, to some level, understand the main character where the content - necrophilia - is so stigmatised on so many levels - including the fact that corpses are exhumed and sexualised on many a level - and this is done on so few pages, I'm really in awe of the author.

    The contents, then? As I said, it's graphic, but one is shown the world of a person who works with antiques and also lusts for dead bodies and the world of the dead.

    Read this. Challenge yourself!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Was I ironic - behaving with the sort of irony that's nothing more than a bad coat of the shameful poor? Did I forget - to forget is to omit from feeling again, it's a folly of the soul and the body - did I then forget that I fall in love each time? What an exquisite and yet thoroughly shocking read! Written as a series of journal entries in a confessional style, the reader is exposed to the mindset, the lust and the overpowering obsessive drive of a necrophiliac called Lucien. Lucien is a member of society - he runs the antiques store bequeathed to him by his father - and is a lover of the dead, regardless of sex or age. He is an individual who experiences an unusual level of enthusiasm at the prospect of visiting the catacombs of Naples, a vacation of sorts from his usual nocturnal cemetery activities in Paris. A cautious individual driven by a compulsion that he knows society cringes from and revolts against. Wittkop writes to shock the reader. She hits the reader with graphic details right off the bat on page 1. Read that page and you will either quickly shut the book and walk away or you will venture further with a combined 'sinking gut' feeling caused by a combination of morbid fascination and trepidation of anticipated horrors to come. It would be very easy for some readers to just dismiss this book as a disgusting display of morbid exhibitionism but to do so would be to dismiss the exquisite prose it is written in: Their fine powder odour is that of the bombyx. It seems to come from the heart of the earth, from the empire where the musky larvae trudge between the roots, where blades of mica gleam like frozen silver, there where the blood of future chrysanthemums wells up, among the dusty peat, the sulphureous mire. The smell of the dead is that of the return to the cosmos, that of the sublime alchemy. For nothing is as flawless as a corpse, and it becomes more and more so as time passes, until the final purity of this large ivory doll with its mute smile and its perpetually spread legs that is in each one of us. To dismiss this book would be to dismiss the well presented character self examination where Lucien's obsession shows striking parallels to what we characterize as normal displays of love and the associated tenderness for a living being. This novella is billed as being a cult classic in France in the 40 years since its original publication and I can see why. I am glad it wasn't a full length novel because I don't think I could have made my way to the end of it..... my whole body physically cringed numerous times while reading this and I don't think I could have handled much more, although I am at a loss as to what 'more' Wittkop could have brought to the story. A good part of me doesn't want to envision what might have been added. One thing for sure, this book will get you out of your comfort zone.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A short book about a necrophiliac, told in confessional diary form, that narrates a year in the love life of a man who desires only the dead. It is brilliantly done: alternately sweet, nauseating and blackly comic. The closest parallel is of course Lolita but the narrator here is less self-pitying and more empathetic towards his lovers. The relationships between the necrophiliac and his corpses are at the centre of the novel: he quarrels with them, worships them, reconciles with them and tries desperately to stave off their inevitable decay. The impossibility of that task of course dooms his every affair - but it doesn't stop the necrophiliac trying again and again. This is a book that raises questions about the contingency of desire (the narrator's first sexual encounter with the dead is at once moving and disgusting), the transience of love and importance of emotions that only flow one way. It is well worth reading. But probably not in public.

    1 person found this helpful

Book preview

The Necrophiliac - Gabrielle Wittkop

Copyright © Editions Gallimard, 2005

Translation Copyright © Don Bapst, 2011

Published by ECW Press

2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

416.694.3348 / info@ecwpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing In Publication

Wittkop, Gabrielle, 1920–2002

The necrophiliac / Gabrielle Wittkop ; translated by Don Bapst.

Translation of: Le nécrophile.

isbn 978-1-55022-943-1

i. Bapst, Don ii. Title.

pq2683.i82n413 2011 843’.914 c2010-906687-1

Developing editor: Michael Holmes / a misFit book

Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan

Typesetting: Rachel Ironstone

Production: Troy Cunningham

This book has been supported by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, as part of the translation grant program.

To the memory of C.D., who fell into death like Narcissus into his own image.

October 12, 19...

The grey eyelashes of this little girl cast a grey shadow against her cheek. She has the sly, ironic smile of those who know a lot. Two uncurled locks frame her face, descending to the hem of her blouse, which has been pulled up under her armpits to reveal a stomach of the same bluish white seen in certain Chinese porcelain. The mound of Venus, very flat, very smooth, shines slightly in the lamplight; it seems to be covered in a film of sweat.

I spread the thighs to study the vulva, thin as a scar, the transparent lips a pale mauve. But I still have to wait a few hours; for the moment, the whole body is still a bit stiff, a bit clenched, until the heat of the room softens it like wax. This little girl is worth the trouble. It’s truly a very beautiful dead girl.

October 13, 19...

Yesterday evening, the little girl played a mean trick on me. I should have been more careful of her with that smile of hers. While I was sliding into that flesh so cold, so soft, so deliciously tight, found only in the dead, the child abruptly opened an eye, translucent like that of an octopus, and with a terrifying gurgling, she threw up a black stream of mysterious liquid on me. Open in a Gorgon mask, her mouth didn’t stop vomiting this juice until its odour filled the room. All this rather spoiled my pleasure. I’m accustomed to better manners, for the dead are tidy. They have already released their excrement in leaving life as one disposes of an ignominious burden. Also, their bellies resound with the hard, hollow sound of drums. Their fine powerful odour is that of the bombyx. It seems to come from the heart of the earth, from the empire where the musky larvae trudge between the roots, where blades of mica gleam like frozen silver, there where the blood of future chrysanthemums wells up, among the dusty peat, the sulphureous mire. The smell of the dead is that of the return to the cosmos, that of the sublime alchemy. For nothing is as flawless as a corpse, and it becomes more and more so as time passes, until the final purity of this large ivory doll with its mute smile and its perpetually spread legs that is in each one of us.

I had to spend more than two hours cleaning the bed and washing the little girl. This child, who vomits such putrid ink, truly has the nature of the octopus. For the moment she seems to have disgorged all of her venoms, spread out wisely over the sheets. Her false smile. Her little hands with the little nails. A blue fly that came from I don’t know where constantly lands and lands again on her thigh. This little girl quickly stopped pleasing me. She’s not one of the dead from whom I have any grief in separating myself, the way one deplores having to leave a friend. She certainly had a mean character, I would swear to it. From time to time, she emits a deep gurgling

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