By Jinpes Terenk
Far too often the potential held by a piece of writing acts as a smokescreen for critics; subtlety nudging them away from the practicalities of its origins. And I speak for myself as much as for all those other blind mole rats scraping about in the dirt of European culture. Having entertained thoughts on the de Roquet rooms for some time, it was only yesterday that I responded to the simplest of questions concerning its creation – how did she manage to write on the ceiling? That she was not given free use of a step ladder is no less than a certainty. And though it is perfectly possible that what small furniture she did have could have been arranged to form some sort of tower-like structure, no one has yet gone so far as to explain exactly how this may have been set up. Nor has anyone sought the good counsel of an orthopaedic surgeon to determine the total strain on the neck caused by writing a novel on a high ceiling. And whilst the answers to these questions may not be especially interesting in themselves, the fact that so many have neglected to ask them is undoubtedly significant. What is about you lot that makes you so apprehensive about the fundamentals? In your eagerness to prise out pearls, you discard the shells wherein much of the worthy content really lies.
On this basis, I feel that it is my duty to restore some order amongst the hoards of over-salivating fans that have of late begun to cling like limpets to the rock that is the de Roquet phenomenon. In doing this, I propose that we centre our approach on the implications of one particular question – why did Natalie de Roquet write on the walls? And let us begin by getting one thing straight: her motivation was not born of the desire to kick-start the literary tradition. She did not set out to break boundaries. Instead, the boundaries came to meet her; they formed themselves close around her, so that crossing them became more of a necessity than an extraordinary achievement. Let us interpret the first part of this question of ours. Why did Natalie de Roquet write?. Was she an aspiring novelist before she was trapped in the room? No. She did not even keep a diary for the first part of her life and showed no talent whatsoever in the field in literature. It is therefore not unfair to presume that she turned to writing only out of boredom; as a means through which to communicate feelings that had no ulterior outlet. Not, then, as a means of consciously attempting to revitalise the novel. Therefore it could be said that de Roquet’s three novels are in some ways no more than a remedy for boredom; creation provoked by circumstances rather than by sheer will. This is not to demean the outcome; merely to state a case that others tend to disregard.
We turn our attention now to the second part of this question. Why did Natalie de Roquet write on the walls? The answer to this will not surprise anyone. Natalie de Roquet wrote on the walls because she had no paper. It is as simple as that. Or is it? Why couldn’t she have written on the furniture? Let’s be honest with each other – faced with the walls and the furniture, which would you write on first? Right, that’s cleared that one up, with all the brisk efficiency of a magician’s broom. So far, so good. When you consider the circumstances, writing on the walls was not an especially strange thing to do, at least not for a bored woman locked in a room with a pencil and no paper.
The next thing to consider is style; the question of what she wrote. This is where some people are unable to contain their excitement. For is not her style reminiscent of so much early twentieth century modernism? Does it not prefigure Beckett, Joyce, or (more recently) the inimitable Yevgeny Nonik? Is not the structure of her sentences the result of – and I quote – ‘an innate talent for inconspicuously remoulding the chaotic currents of life’s eccentric stream’? I would argue, no. If anything, the looseness of her style is the result of ignorance; proof of her incapacity within an arena within which she had little or no previous experience. If she is seeming to write ‘whatever comes into her head’, it is only because she is doing just this. In this way she is somewhat of a ‘naïve’ artist; though it is my habit to baulk at this term, what with its somehow superior insinuations in which anyone who has not attended a particular artistic establishment is thought to be a ‘primitive’ species. No, I am not saying that de Roquet was an idiot; merely that she was not consciously seeking a style to fit her subject; but relied on the only style of which she was capable.
You will have noticed that I have given an impression of de Roquet’s prose as being spontaneous and formless: almost the opposite of those qualities for which her work is normally praised. For despite the length and grammatically challenged nature of her sentences, critics usually agree on the idea that she had a superlative ‘sense of structure’. This, they argue, can be grasped without much difficulty, as the frame of the novel can be traced simply by looking at it (reminding many of the habit some writers have of laying out their novels on a floor to get a better idea of how things pan out). Now it is true that the nature of de Roquet’s novels do indeed lend themselves to this kind of interpretation. But is it really right to conclude that the structure we see ‘so clearly’ is an exemplary one? On the contrary I am tempted to say that the most revealing thing about being able to comprehend the totality of the work is how bad the structure turns out to be, not how good. After all, with the set-up playing in her favour, should we not be expecting the very best? I talk not only of situation, but also of time. For to have completed three novels in close to twenty years is not an outstanding feat, especially when you have all the time in the world to do so. Under these circumstances, one has to wonder why critics continue to bathe the project in such warm and sweetly scented praise. Admittedly, ‘Bedroom Wall’ and ‘Bathroom Wall’ are better structured than many modern novels (the jury is out on ‘Two Ceilings’) – but they are hardly shining examples, if even glimmering. In truth, the only reason their structure receives so much attention is because – it its ineffable palpability – it does not demand too much.
The situational circumstances lead us onto another ‘de Roquet myth’ – that the novels all ‘inhabit’ their space ‘perfectly’. It is often said that each novel begins and ends within its given space; starting at the top of one wall and ending at the bottom of another. In the case of ‘Bedroom Wall’ this is, indeed, true. But what, pray, is so miraculous about it? Don’t all novels inhabit their space perfectly? I have never a book that didn’t fit within its own covers. Aha, you say – but do not book covers react to their content, where de Roquet’s content was liable to its ‘covers’ (i.e. the wall)? There are two responses to this. Firstly to point out that de Roquet did not have to write novels that fit within a single wall. For all her constrictions, there was in fact no good reason why she shouldn’t have taken up three and half walls instead of four. Secondly, to note that many ‘regular’ novelists and other professional writers are by no means in the position of allowing their content to control the covers. There are in this unhappy world such things as word limits; constrictions which are both very real and (as I will vouch for) very hard to overcome. On this basis, I struggle to squeeze any more than a drop of sympathy for de Roquet in her plight to ‘fit’ her novels into ‘specific space’. This is not least because, in one case, I do not even believe that she managed the challenge. People talk of the ‘enigmatic’ ending of ‘Bathroom Wall’. I ask – is it really an enigmatic ending, or had she actually run out of wall space? On this point, I join those critics who have called for more research to be done on the subject of those bathroom tiles that are said to have been removed from the room in the early twentieth century. Maybe the real ending to ‘Bathroom Wall’ might have been found on one of these tiles. I also lend my amused and understandably partial support to the hypothesis of Heinrich Gibbons, which suggests that the conclusion to ‘Bathroom Wall’ could have found its way onto a ‘steamy mirror’ – whereupon it vanished only hours after its creation (For more on this I direct the reader to H Gibbons, ‘Modern Stories and Steamy Mirrors’ London 2006).
We have discussed the style and circumstances – what of the actual content itself? What does de Roquet write about, and is it worth reading? Here we may do well to return to my earlier comment, reminding readers of the fact that, when all is said and done, we are looking at a product created by a ‘bored woman in a room’. And the work has many of the flaws that we would expect of such a person. How often when reading these works do I feel myself saying ‘this writer really needs to get out more’! The same applies to many (if not most) novels, admittedly, but in this case we can never deny it. De Roquet’s work is cloyingly introspective. The focus that some think ‘dedicated’ and ‘keenly studious’ is no more than the result of faintly neurotic over-thinking. Here the advantages of de Roquet’s circumstances reveal a negative façade: with so much time to write, she found herself not in the position of ‘perfecting’ a style, but of building a perfectly reasonable style into a impenetrable stronghold. For the exceptionally personal nature of this work must not be forgotten. Nor must it be turned, as some will have it, into a Finnegans-Wakesque charade in which the critic endeavours to interpret every single individual reference in order to discover the true meaning of no-one-but-the-author-knows-what. There is a limit, my friends. And it would be fair to say that when a woman spends that much time working on three novels, that limit will be regularly exceeded. In which case, what do we do? Nothing, of course. We understand what we want to understand, and then we move on.
Now is the point at which I could enter the arena of abstractions; where I could unsheathe a sharp interpretation and set about chopping up de Roquet’s words into an appetising and charmingly spicy salad of meaning. Instead of which I will return to a practicality. Sweet practicalities! We have already allowed our minds to wander over the question of how de Roquet wrote her novels; a query which surprisingly few critics have deigned to ponder in the past. More astoundingly, however, is the abandon with which that shadowy figure – Mr Claude de Roquet – has been treated. He is the villain of the piece, no doubt about it, but his role must be more complicated than it at first appears. How do we explain, for instance, his unbelievable lack of reaction to his wife’s scribbling tendencies? I’ll tell you what we say. We say that since he only appeared to his wife at night, he ‘failed to spot the writing on the wall’. So wait a moment – are we to presume that he never took a candle with him when he joined her? Or that, having had his husbandly way, he never stayed in her bed until the morning? Somehow the possibility that he managed not to see her work at all seems to me to be an extremely indistinct one. So why do we believe it? Is it because we are scared of Claude’s ascension from cartoon villain to living, breathing human being? Or of the repercussions that might follow this, bringing the faint prospect of an unimaginable controversy like, say, the idea that the whole woman-locked-up-in-a-room deal is nothing more than a myth: that the whole thing was dreamed up by Claude himself in order to give his literary creation an attractive back-story. After all, do not facts suggest that Claude was himself an aspiring artist (his crippling jealous would suggest it if nothing else)? And are there not few, if any convincing first person accounts of Natalie’s imprisonment?
It is too early in the day for me to add flesh to the bones of these late propositions. The de Roquet rooms have been open for too short a time for any critic to make significant conclusions as to their worth. But it is never too early to suggest a direction which future studies might take – and I hope that I have made myself clear as to what my thoughts on this subject may be. Meanwhile I trust that I have offered my fellow critics a warning sign or two regarding the shaky ground upon which they have a tendency of standing. Needless to say, I do this out of love, not vitriol: I would rather not have your impending public embarrassment on my conscience (and it is by no means too late to drop your hypothesis, is it now?). Having made this clear, I am left with no more to do than to end this brief study of mine, with the faint hope of returning, in good time – and with much more conclusive results. For the meantime, my prudent advice is this: lest ye desire to fall into the ravine of illusions, keep ye close to the practicalities.
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