…the land of the hollow earth was closer than the Nazis thought…
This article is based on this dutch article of Martijn Benders
But for the details about that, you’ll need to read my upcoming book. Let me first continue discussing how the concealment of cigarette sponsorship by Houellebecq marked the beginning of a new era. While the Gauloise was essentially a working-class cigarette, the much heavier Gitane had to become the true artist’s cigarette. I have tried to smoke them; they were utterly un-smokable and the fact that Serge Gainsbourg smoked five packs a day can be confidently labeled a biological miracle.
Oh, mon amour
Comme la vague irrésolue
Je vais, je vais et je viens
Entre tes reins
Love and smoke screens; they are the best of friends. They are so thickly intertwined that it continually surprises me that the politician-celebrities who circulate so notoriously within their own fame on channels they pay for receive so much attention. (About thirty years ago, we still had dull bureaucrats, alongside musicians as show-offs, but a merger was inevitable.) Je Veux l’Amour! I want the Wall of Smoke!
Interestingly, the Gauloises and the Gitane were born at exactly the same time, in 1910, four years before the start of World War I. The Gitane originally had three versions: Gitanes Caporal ordinaire, Gitanes Vizir et Gitanes Maryland.
The red, like lipstick, like Amanita Muscaria: the Gitane, the true artist’s cigarette, and originally even in a Vizir-like variant. Why that beautiful red package went out of fashion is something we may never discover. Apparently, even the art world needed to be forced into tax-blue reliability.
And the Maryland? It was canary yellow because the paper of the cigarette was made from corn cobs from that part of the USA and also tobacco from Maryland.
All of that was pushed aside by the artist’s blue, the blue that the now world-famous politicians also wrap themselves in. Blue is reliable, red is unreliable.
The Gitane herself fell out of fashion. Love is simply too heavy for our lighthearted era.
The smoke screens themselves became transparent. Infatuation, a rather peculiar coughing fit of the heart, was exchanged for recognizable appointments.
It is undeniable that Houellebecq is a recognizable writer. He smokes Gauloises and not Gitanes. And the sponsorship of that habit vanished under the table. While Camus and Sartre loudly smoked both Gauloises and Gitanes (exclusivity hadn’t been invented back then), our leprechaun from far-off Réunion, who is actually named Michel Thomas and has taken on the name of his strict grandmother as a nickname, limits himself to the working-class cigarette, the Gauloise. And not even the real Gauloise, the red one, no, my heavens, he smokes the tax-blue Gauloises Blondes, the lightest and lowest tier of French cigarettes.
And then he writes a prolonged Marlboro series of exciting novels that the press unjustly sells as depressing and cynical.
Take Serotonin for example. Isn’t it extremely optimistic to let such a bureaucrat under the influence of serotonin spout all sorts of tough sexist talk?
You can’t possibly find that a depressing proposition, can you? As I know those antidepressants, they quickly deaden almost all sexuality. Yet with Houellebecq, the skinny pleasure of intoxication crows as never before in the endless writer’s dream that he oh-so-recognizably represents postmodernism.
Gauloises Blondes, my heavens. And Marlboro, that’s also a completely un-smokable disgusting cigarette. I haven’t smoked for about four years now, but when I did smoke, I had three brands: Camel, the Red Gauloise, and that Barclays which you could halve the filter tip, turning the cigarette unmistakably sweet as love itself.
For the Gitane, even I lacked the lungs.
No, Houellebecq, Brusselmans, Quentin Tarantino: are they really not great masters of depressing cynicism? I protest against this overly banal distortion. Céline, yes, there you see the full sadness of nihilism, and he is not a continuation of Houellebecq’s work, not even in a liquid sense.
But Céline also smoked Gauloise cigarettes. However, as far as I know, during World War I, it only came in a single heavy light blue variant. He was a cavalryman, a rider in the 12th Cuirassier Regiment. He was shot from his horse during a reconnaissance mission in 1914 and was wounded and evacuated. The mythical bullet rains from his debut novel were magically cynical precursors to his later embittered worldview when he began to cozy up to the Nazis in the hope of a revival of the Gaullist-fascist dream, whose winged helmet can still be admired on the packages as an old dream that lacked the power to overturn everyday supermarket fascism.
The pickaxes of the roosters
Search for the morning,
When Soledád Montóya
Descends over dark rocks.
This is how the only poem I could find in databases containing the word Gitane begins, and it is, of course, by Federico Garcia Lorca, the poet who was murdered by fascists. I post it here mainly to show you that not only ChatGPT knows the word ‘delve,’ although I am equally not impressed with this translation by Hendrik de Vries.