In the Deep

I believe that destiny is the hesitation between whorehouse writing and poetry, Eviland Good. In my body almost deadened to stupidity by its growing length, I am carrying that destiny.-- from In the Deep

A hypnotic account of three days and nightsplucked from the summer of 1955, In the Deep maps the origins, development, andmeaning of Pierre Guyotat's creative vocation. To read it is to inhabit the life of an adolescentboy who is just discovering his calling to write, while also tormented by the questions leftunanswered by his Catholic upbringing. Faced with his faith's failure, he feels the need to inventanother one -- one much darker and conflicted -- which he believes will be his destiny. Inthe Deep leads us through the foundations of Guyotat's infamous "beat-sheet":the masturbatory writing practice that caused a scandal in the 1970s when he first disclosed it, andwhich -- although he has since disowned it -- remains fundamental to any understanding of Guyotat'soeuvre.

Unlike Guyotat's other works, which deploy the sustained and taxinginvention of an altogether other language -- and another reality beyond any notion of morality- --In the Deep is written in an almost classical language, borrowing its timelessrhythmic prose from Latin syntax, and riddled with interrogatives that are part of a Frenchtradition harking back to Rabelais. Nonetheless, as a contemporary De RerumNatura, at once comic and profound, this narrative explores the same issues that runthrough all of Guyotat's writing: the always precarious grounding to sex, humanity, ethics, andGod.

Pierre Guyotat (born in 1940) has been a source of French literary scandal since the 1967 publication of Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers. The French government banned his novel Eden Eden Eden from being publicized, advertised on posters, or sold to anyone under the age of 18 from the time of its publication in 1970 until 1981.