Tricks is a book of first encounters: twenty-five hook-ups from 1978, from spring through fall. In his introduction, Roland Barthes calls a trick “the encounter which takes place only once: more than cruising, less than love: an intensity, which passes without regret” (x). The encounter may actually recur; some of these tricks may become more than tricks, but at the time of meeting, that’s what they are: someone to go to bed with. But it’s not strictly about sex: I think Barthes’s point that it’s about “intensity” is right on: there’s so much openness and sweetness in this book, an openness to experience and an openness to connection and an openness to other people. Barthes goes on to say that the trick becomes “the metaphor for many adventures which are not sexual; the encounter of a glance, a gaze, an idea, an image, ephemeral and forceful association, which consents to dissolve so lightly, a faithless benevolence: a way of not getting stuck in desire, though without evading it; all in all, a kind of wisdom,” which I think is absolutely lovely—both the thing itself and how Barthes puts it (ibid.).
But let me back up: The Sextine Chapel, which I wrote about here, had an epigraph from Roland Barthes that was from Barthes’s preface to a book called Tricks, which I hadn’t heard of before. The epigraph made me curious: and so one book lead me to another, as they do. Where The Sextine Chapel is third-person narration and utterly heterosexual, Tricks is first person and homosexual. It gives glimpses of a time and several places: gay Paris, gay New York, gay San Francisco, gay Cote d’Azur, all before AIDS. There is plenty of sex, but it isn’t there to be a subject of prurient interest: in his author’s note, Camus writes about wanting to make sex part of the literary conversation, as sex is a part of life. He’s bothered by people who scold about so-called immorality, and notes: “It is precisely a moral rage that is inspired in me by those who persist in repressing sex.” (xii) So that’s a piece of it. And in addition to showing a cultural moment, and sex as a part of life, the book also shows moments in individual lives: strangers’ apartments, conversations in nightclubs, wordless sex with someone whose name is never learned.
Each chapter is an encounter in its entirety: a name, a date, a meeting, a seduction, sex, a parting; each has a paragraph-long coda that says whether the narrator saw this partner again or not. It’s sometimes funny, as meetings can be: the narrator meets a guy at a club, the guy says something and the narrator doesn’t hear him properly, thinks he’s suggesting sitting on the back of a bench that actually isn’t stable enough to sit on, says “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” and only later realizes the guy was actually asking him to come dance with him. Or there’s a running joke about the trouble Americans have pronouncing “Reynaud” – one guy says “Rano,” others say “Wono,” and the narrator sometimes pretends he’s called “Bruno,” that being easier to say. The sex itself is sometimes good, sometimes bad, sweet and playful at its best; encounters are punctuated by laughter and smiles. Tricks may or may not have much in common, socially or intellectually or occupationally, with the narrator: one corporate lawyer notes that he doesn’t have any books around, because they “wear [him] out”; another guy asks “if a framed text by Gilbert and George was some kind of diploma” (8, 86).
Meanwhile, the book itself is smartly constructed: the writing of Tricks becomes a presence in the tricks themselves, cleverly and pleasingly: while sitting at his desk trying to write the story of a trick from a few weeks ago, the narrator is interrupted by his latest trick getting dressed in front of him, pausing for kisses and undressing and more sex; that trick’s story, later on, includes drinks at an outdoor café with a view of various street performers, including an acrobat whose own acrobatic tricks keep getting interrupted (he’s always about to climb onto the roof of an empty kiosk on the sidewalk, but the presence of policemen passing by keeps stopping him).
As I mentioned in passing in my last entry, I found as I read this book that I had to force myself to slow down to really appreciate it. The style is conversational and it’s easy to move quickly along, but if I read too fast I found the tricks running together; I couldn’t keep straight who was who (possibly not helped by certain French names, e.g. Jean-Marc vs. Jean-Christophe vs. Jean-Rémy). But once I realized I needed to take my time, I quite enjoyed it.
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