Christine Montalbetti - Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami)

French author Christine Montalbetti's struggle to convey meaning through exhausting detail is evident in her short story, Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami), which goes to significant lengths in describing the most minor and cursory details of a breakfast shared with Haruki Murakami (a noted Japanese author with whom you may be familiar). The ten-page story open and closes with a very weak joke, but the vast majority of the text is taken up with minutiae of the following sort:

I didn't know whether his impassivity was a strategy, perhaps a method of averting threats by blatantly disregarding them, or indeed whether he was continuing to eat simply out of ignorance of the danger we were in, but in either case, it was less than encouraging, and I felt he'd left us both helpless. After all, what little of the vegetal pressure was reaching him from the sides must have had the blurred quality of some lacy décor faintly hemming his vision, a vague and diaphanous edging whose strange power he could hardly appreciate. To do so, he would have had to turn his head to either side and absorb himself in at least a semi-serious contemplation of the picture windows, taking in the sinister qualities of the overly powerful, overly verdant vegetation massing behind the panes of glass. But this was obviously a concession he wouldn't permit himself, restricting his vision to roaming the limited perimeter of his place, occasionally alternating this with my face – or something, how could he help it, toward the distant entrance, just to the side of my face from his perspective, watching the other customers come into the room, or else following someone getting up behind me and making their way toward the buffet.

The story drowns in detail of this nature, rhapsodising so exhaustively on such matters as to cloud what should be the major part of the piece – a conversation between a noted Japanese author with an equally notable French writer. Montalbetti knows this of course, and she uses our expectation to toy with us, dragging out the detail until we approach the brink of frustration, dazzled into stupefaction by the endless banality. We wait for a conversation concerning, oh, literature, geography, history, politics, linguistics, whatever – but it never happens. Each time it seems as though the story is about to allow us as witnesses to these two writers' conversation, Montalbetti pulls away (or rather draws toward something irrelevant).

The story is instead taken up by the other parts of the conversation, Christine Montalbetti's parts, those tangents and digressions our minds race along and expand upon when we are in the presence of a person we admire, and even sometimes when we aren't. Montalbetti can't help but digress, the cogs and springs of her mind turning and flexing where they will, unwilling to rest too long on those parts of a narrative normally held as important or proper. There's an introverted richness to it all, a concentrated, self-focused, coherent and concerted collection of treasure – this is, we suspect, a woman we'd pass by in the street because her gaze is on either her feet or the sky – but my, if only we knew her mind. What a conversation she could have!

But could she? And if so, why isn't she now? The narrator is explicitly referred to as Christine Montalbetti, and the only other character in the story is another explicitly identified writer. Thus, we have two “real people” in the story, with all the implication than that carries with it. Something big should occur, else why was the story written at all? A conversation is only important when it's important, surely?

Montelbetti has said that one of her interests in fiction is :

...all the possible microscopic sagas residing in the perception of a moment, and which themselves concern everything surrounding us: the insects passing by, to whom I readily attribute monologues, or the various objects, which I like to bring to life...

That is to say that throwaway detail becomes primary detail, and what should be the major focus of the story – a major French author conversing with a major Japanese author – becomes instead the periphery, the barely noticed window-dressing.

The talent here on display is obvious. Montalbetti is a fine writer, and as an exercise in frustration, this is a fine piece. Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami) is designed as a tease, and functions quite well in this capacity. The anticipation of what should occur creates impatience with what is occurring. Montalbetti suggests here that perhaps those insignificant details should be seen as significant instead, should hold equal importance with the conversation we are expecting. This is her piece, which means the onus is on Montalbetti to convince us of her position, and not merely to present it. In this, she is less successful. The excruciating detail of her story is very well-written, and the back and forth of breakfast and Montalbetti's own immediate history is interesting, but the individual pieces are as compelling as the conversation we aren't able to witness. Montalbetti needs to convince the reader that her digressions are an equally or more valuable part of what is occurring than the conversation, but this doesn't happen. Take this section of a paragraph near the end of the story:

...the fumes rising from his omelet, sausages, and slice of toast, which constituted serious rivals. These food odours cut across the other smells almost at right angles, hitting them where it hurt; they pierced them with their powerful arrows, given extra momentum by the heat, breaking up their molecules with tremendous force, silencing them in the air. Off-balance, dumb-founded, the majority of the weaker scents let themselves be absorbed, fading between us under the pressure of the merciless food smell, which acted like a pressurized water gun dispersing all competitors beneath my helpless nostrils.

Well-written, yes, but ultimately soulless and without warmth or humanity. As written, Montalbetti is unable to persuade us that the details are as important as the conversation, which leaves a sour taste in the mouth as the piece drags on and on. And it does start to drag; with each page turn that reveals more text and not the end, frustration mounts. When the end finally occurs, the punch-line to the (weak) joke is provided, and the stupefying detail is justified to an extent, but it isn't enough.

In the end, literature of frustration is an interesting subject that provides an author with a provocative addition to their palette, but a lot of it comes down to games and trickery. Unfortunately, this is the case with Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami).

Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami) by Christine Montalbetti is a short story from the Dalkey Archive Press' anthology, Best European Fiction 2010

Author	Christine Montalbetti
Title	Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami)
Translator	Ursula Meany Scott
Nationality	French
Publisher	Dalkey Archive Press
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Fishpond (AU)

See Also

Other stories from the Dalkey Archive Press' anthology, Best European Fiction 2010, include:
---Belgium: Toussaint, Jean-Phillipe - Zidane's Melancholy
---Bosnian: Štiks, Igor - At the Sarajevo Market
---Bulgarian: Gospodinov, Georgi - And All Turned Moon
---Croatian: Ušumović, Neven – Vereš
---Danish: Aidt, Naja Marie - Bulbjerg
---Estonian: Viiding, Elo - Foreign Women
---Hungarian: Konrád, György - Jeremiah's Terrible Tale
---Icelandic: Bragi, Steinar - The Sky Over Thingvellir
---Italian: Mozzi, Guilio - Carlo Doesn't Know How to Read

Index of titles by The Dalkey Archive Press under review

Index of short stories under review

Links

Links kindly provided by The Dalkey Archive Press' anthology, Best European Fiction 2010

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