Book Report #3

I just finished a really bloody, creepy detective novel. It wouldn't have made me quite so nervous if it didn't take place in our neighborhood.

Written in the late-1970s, Babel-ville follows a schizophrenic serial killer as he tries to eliminate the members of an all-female, neo-Saint-Simonian sect operating in Belleville. As is usual for this kind of book, the plot - the mystery - is actually the least interesting aspect, while the psychological side is fascinating. You start out feeling bad for the killer, seeing as how he's just trying to find his "missing" wife, but by the end you mostly just feel revulsion. I'm actually glad I couldn't understand a lot of the more graphic vocabulary, although my imagination probably made up for it.

What I did enjoy were Bialot's descriptions of Belleville in the 1970s, the snapshots into the lives of its residents (not unlike our own), and the unabashed, parodic treatment of the kinds of culture clashes a place like Belleville inspires. The impassioned interactions between the story's detective protagonists and the immigrants/descendants of immigrants they meet during their investigation may have been dramatized for literary purposes, but the ignorance and fear coming from both sides feels authentic enough.

The book's title draws attention to Belleville's multi-linguistic, multicultural demographics. I can't find anything on the etymology of the portmanteau "Babel-Ville," but it's clear that the neighborhood's inhabitants have embraced the notion.

Now if only France would follow. Just after finishing Babel-ville, I read a great article in the NYT about French conservatives' inability to cope with the fact that most French-speakers don't live in France, don't subscribe to French nationalist mythologies about a glorious past stretching back to Rome, don't practice Catholicism, and don't appreciate being told what to wear (but that's another issue for another time). Bad news for French conservatives: the article ultimately reinforces the possibility that Belleville's demographics, while not "typical" of Paris past-and-present, are increasingly typical of the city's future.