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mechanical object, dominated by Rebecca, subject to its rider's control
through a precisely described manipulation of gears and levers, and
alive as a mythical presence: the cylinders exploding between Rebecca's
thighs constitute the heartbeat of a bull-monster whose power bears her
headlong from the France of her pedagogue husband across the Rhine
to the castle of the enchanter prince, the erotic artist who releases the
powers inherent in the mad ride.
In a style which fuses a plastic imaginative power to an almost
pedantic mechanical exactitude, Mandiargues achieves an impressive
sensuous evocation of riding the motorcycle. He holds us close to its
vibrant existence as both machine and beast, establishes its necessary
relationship
to
the moment of sensuality-rehearsed with the memory
of past moments-toward which Rebecca rides, the moment in virtue
of which rider and mount exist, when Daniel, on the terrace of
his
castle, beside the machine fallen silent, will pull the zipper of her
motorcycle suit-her sleek, fur-lined black "hide," beneath which she
wears nothing---.,and she will step forth naked and submissive. But the
nearly intolerable sensual rhythm of the motorcycle finally creates
another destiny: Rebecca's soaring annihilation against the obscenely
gay face of a painted Bacchus who advertises beer on the tailgate of a
truck, the destruction of pleasure in a travesty of its excess.
It is, finally, the moment, in its atemporal sensuous fullness, its
ritual self-celebration, that most matters to Mandiargues. And this
in
part accounts for one's feeling that
The M'Otorcycle
is not
his
best
production. Its existence within the temporal dimension, Rebecca's
constant shuffling of past, present and future journeys and pleasures,
is somewhat artificial and occasionally tedious. The instantaneous
nature of the short story, its insistent movement toward a terminal
moment, is more perfectly suited to his manner and his concerns. Still,
The Motorcycle
is a highly entertaining and attractive performance;
and since its qualities have largely been preserved in Richard Howard's
extremely accurate--if not always sufficiently elegant-translation/ it re–
mains a good way to begin a reading of Mandiargues, which seems to me
a pleasure worth cultivating.
Unlike Mandiargues, who has only gradually conquered a public,
J.
M. G. Le Clezio arrived in 1963, at the age of twenty-three, as a
sort of literary bonus baby. The publication of his first novel,
Le
Proces–
verbal,
constituted the major French literary "event" of recent years.
1 It is worth noting that one of Mandiargues' longest tales-and a very
good
one--Le Lis de mer,
was translated a few years ago, by Mr. Howard, under
the title
The Girl Beneath ·the Lion
