Claude Ollier (1922–2014)

La pièce ne se cache pas. Même si rien n’est dit sur l’époque et le lieu, même si c’est un amiral qu’on assassine, le déroulement des évènements est calqué sur ceux du 22 novembre 1963, jour de l’assassinat de Kennedy à Dallas. Mais la particularité de cette pièce est que tout est vu depuis la perspective des journalistes et dirigeants de « radio Alpha », d’abord un reporter chargé, tel un Léon Zitrone, de commenter le défilé et qui se retrouve aux premières loges. Puis d’autres journalistes, des directeurs de l’information ou de la publicité, tous ayant une compréhension différente de l’évènements et des coïncidences étranges qui émaillent ces quelques heures historiques.
Mais attention, il ne faut pas attendre de révélations quant aux commanditaires de cet assassinat d’un président. Le propos de Claude Ollier n’est pas là. Ce qui l’intéresse, c’est le direct, c’est la façon dont les médias traitent l’évènement, ce qu’il savent et ne savent pas, ce qu’ils disent et comment ils le disent. Des questions d’actualité avec la culture de l’immédiat qui caractérisent nos médias actuels et notamment les chaînes d’information en continu qui semblent ne pouvoir arrêter de fleurir. Mais cette pièce date de 1969, six ans après l’attentat de Dallas et je ne peux que rester ébahie par la clairvoyance de Claude Ollier. A l’écoute de cette pièce, je trouvais sa critique facile, ses ficelles un peu grosses (un particulier les publicités qui entrecoupent les diffusions de communiqués), mais j’ai découvert après coup que la pièce n’était pas si récente, et pourtant elle dépeint avec un beau cynisme nos canaux d’information actuels. « Tout ce qui n’est pas dans les médias n’existe pas » aime à dire une de mes collègues responsable de communication, ce qui m’a toujours indisposée. Cette pièce dit tout cela mieux que moi et est finalement un petit électrochoc pour qui n’aurait pas vu les risques d’un quatrième pouvoir (comme les Américains justement aiment à considérer les journaux) dévoyé. Mais avec du pain et des jeux, c'est bien connu, on tient le peuple.… (más)

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/71163181646/disconnection-by-claude-ollier

At one point today, Christmas Day 2013, I thought perhaps I had had a stroke some time within the last week or two. I would be reading along another four or five pages of Claude Ollier's book here and there and not know what I read or why I even did it. The words were simply hollow for me and I was thinking that they shouldn't be. Nothing could dissuade me from my thinking the text a bore and inconsequential. There was nothing to engage me and still I felt maybe I had lost something of myself due to my new and potentially quite serious condition. But then I realized this could of course not be true because these same days I have been reading the humungous memoir of Elias Canetti and enjoying every word of it. He is such a good and interesting writer. And then there is Josef Winkler who is daily tearing me up with his [b:Der Leibeigene|5647718|Der Leibeigene|Josef Winkler|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1383495541s/5647718.jpg|4315260] and its awful contents regarding a life so foreign to me but so graphically real and disturbing it makes one cringe too much. My senses must still be intact, and I can still discern relevance, it seems, in a given text presented to me. So what is my problem with this master work?

I loved the feel of the book itself, its subject matter, the author's name, the cloth-covered boards, even the title which made it even harder for me to not like the text. I tried my best to like it, I did. But it was dead, the words, and perfectly good words at that but for some reason there wasn't a sentence that rang true and good for me. On page seventy-nine we are reading the words of the nameless writer in the first person:
Returned, stopping frequently, pushing my bicycle, dead tired, very gloomy. Haven't moved since.

It was as if he had a journal and was recording his daily activities so that one day in the future he might extend the shorthand into something palatable and interesting. For over eighty pages I attempted to find my way into the sentences of Claude Ollier and could not. And the blurbs on the dust jacket suggested I would and the critics claimed I had to. But success was not in the cards for me. Finally on page eighty-one I had to give in, give up, and move on. And the page before that was the straw that broke my back. And it wasn't anything I hadn't read before. Here we have in the third person words telling the story of Martin. The sentence was the same as all the others. The problem for me was in the telling. There was no showing, and that is the critical element I need that was missing. Oh writer, do not tell me about your problem but show it to me. And I will give an example of that page now and you can tell me why I am wrong. Better yet, please don't. It doesn't matter. I have no more time allotted or available for this project after my review.

Disconcerted, Martin walks the whole way, crosses the city for the first time on a weekday morning, goes along Lorenzkirche, Karolinenstrasse, is impressed while entering the immense building where uniformed orderlies, deciphering his paper, on each floor dictate to him the correct procedure.

So why even write this? Instead of showing me something, making me feel, we have empty adjectives such as immense and uniformed and also a stupid verb the likes of impressed. Honestly, there wasn't a page I liked or even a sentence that was memorable. And that is rare even in a shitty novel. And I know, I know, this one was supposed to be good. To me, it was if this novel was of an elitist quality and for a crowd I do not belong to. Something written in a way a common man such as myself could not possibly get or understand. Perhaps a book for the most attuned and smartest among us, though I have to doubt it. Seriously. I have the same problem reading poems written by William Butler Yeats. There are references in his poems that I just do not get and his work leaves me feeling flat. I never studied the classics. I do not know the secret code that might let me in. But, in stark contrast, a writer such as W.G. Sebald writes of places and historical occurrences I know nothing about either but I feel my way through and his words are interesting. His words also mean something to me. And by my lights that is good work, that is art, high art, important art, and full, sound, and relevant to my day. Sebald refuses to waste my time. He makes me pay a price for reading him. Ollier ultimately gives me nothing so he gets no praise from me. And in return a bit of indifference to the rest of his work, and little else to make me think or feel otherwise.
… (más)