Bernard Quiriny
A Guide to Famous Stabbings

It was while reading Bartleby & Co., by the Spaniard Enrique Vila-Matas, that Pierre Gould found his calling. This astonishing book took the form of numbered sections that the narrator, a lowly bookkeeper, conceived as footnotes to an imaginary text. They all concerned a single subject: Bartlebys, named after Bartleby the Scrivener, who spent his time doing nothing in an office he never left. Bartlebys, as the narrator saw it, were writers “attracted toward nothingness” who never managed to set a single line down on paper or who, having done so, gave up writing in the end. Thus Vila-Matas invited readers on a sort of stroll “through the labyrinth of the No, down the roads of the most disquieting and attractive tendency of contemporary literature”: that of inquiring into what writing was, and “prowling about its impossibility.”
    After a few pages of acclimation (Gould liked to finish books, not start them; what he needed was that all-encompassing book, the dream of demiurges and philosophers that rendered all further reading pointless, since everything had already been written in it)—after a few pages, then, Gould was hooked by the Spanish writer’s game. He came across names well-known (Walser, Rimbaud, Keats, Salinger) and less so (Bobi Bazlen, Gregorio Martínez Sierra, Enrique Banchs); he was surprised by the attitudes of these authors without bodies of work, or with aborted ones; admired their obstinacy in refusing to consort with writing despite their obvious talents. In his eleventh footnote, Enrique Vila-Matas’s narrator mentioned a collection like his own: Literary Eclipses, by the Frenchman Robert Derain, a volume entirely devoted to writers unique in having written one book and one alone before renouncing literature forever. “All the authors in this book are inventions,” the narrator adds, “just as the stories attributed to these Bartlebys were in fact written by Derain himself.”
    Gould re-read this passage several times, wondering if Derain and his book really existed, or whether they too were inventions. That Vila-Matas spoke of them so casually and seemed to think so little of the fact a Frenchman had had his idea before he did made the latter hypothesis more likely. At any rate, Gould found the idea behind Derain’s Eclipses more interesting than that of Vila-Matas, whose selection criteria were looser. After all, his Bartlebys could have had the respectable beginnings of a career before giving up, whereas Derain’s eclipsees had had the willpower to quit after the heady exaltation of a first attempt. The former might well have confirmed the promise of a first book; the second, with superb hauteur, had not even conceded this much to literature.
    Whether Derain had really existed or not, Gould was sorry the Spaniard hadn’t said more about him—a few allusions, here and there, but never, alas, any details. To write a single book, then renounce literature: the idea began to take hold of him. He knew quite well he would never be rid of it.

    Gould did a little research. He found nothing on any Robert Derain, and no book was listed under the title Literary Eclipses. It was clear that the French man of letters was an invention of Enrique Vila-Matas. If the bibliophile in Gould felt upset, the writer in him saw the doors this discovery opened straightaway. Gould had always dreamed of a literary destiny but lacked the courage of his own ambitions; lazy and defeatist, he had resigned himself to stifling his pride with cynicism and taking solace, amidst ominous flashes of arrogance, in the idea that he had everything it took to be a writer except the patience to really write. The irreality of Robert Derain gave him a chance to enter literature through mischief rather than work, and to top off his success with an ironic thumbing of his nose, turning it into a triumph.
    Gould would write one book, and one alone: then, having proven his aptitude for literature, he’d turn his back on it forever, thereby becoming an eclipsee, a character in Robert Derain’s imaginary collection. Since it didn’t exist, no one could challenge his conceit that he was one of its heroes. In a single book, Gould would do more than others did in ten, or a hundred: he would enter literature through two doors at once, flooring it before forsaking it, like a king dismissing a beloved courtesan. To inoculate himself against the poison that literature, using all its wiles, would undoubtedly attempt to infect him with—that of the body of work, which all Bartlebys dreaded—he’d write his own renunciation into the book, sabotaging his future career with the contrarian rage of a truly great writer.
    Thus his writing debut would also be his literary demise, as befit a true eclipsee. While pondering this paradox, he decided to devote his book to death, the better to pave the way for his own. His train of thought took him back toward an idea for a book that he’d had a few years earlier, which of course had gone nowhere: A Guide to Famous Stabbings. It was to be a catalogue of famous people who had only this in common: each had been the victim of an assassination, or assassination attempt, by knife. He couldn’t remember how he’d come up with this absurd idea, but he saw that it suited his needs perfectly: the Guide would be his first book and, in order for it also to be the last, he’d gladly get himself stabbed. The setup was in place.
    Gould devoted the next few weeks to research. In homage to Vila-Matas’s Bartleby & Co., he decided to imitate its numbered sections, and present them the same way: first and last name of the stabbee, date and circumstances of the assassination, or assassination attempt. Expecting he would wax poetic, he also rejected any idea of order, chronological or alphabetical. Once his material had been assembled, he’d dive right in, abandoning his pose as an absolute Bartleby to slip into his new skin as an eclipsee.

On December 30, 1999, George Harrison was stabbed by a mentally disturbed individual in his house at Henley-on-Thames. After getting past the security system, the attacker found himself face to face with the singer outside his bedroom: a desperate struggle ensued, during which Harrison received several knife wounds. His wife, Olivia, put his assailant out of commission by clubbing him with a bronze lamp stand.

    The first step was difficult. Gould knew the transformation was irreversible: with the first word he set down, his status as a full and utter Bartleby went up in smoke. Drawing a drop of wine obliged him to drink the entire cask. He braced himself and reached the end of the first entry in his Guide to Famous Stabbings. The next one was easier.

On the night of October 5th, 2002, Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë was stabbed by a mentally disturbed individual in a salon of the Hôtel de Ville. Wounded in the stomach, he fell to the floor while one of his advisors tackled his aggressor. He was taken by firemen to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, where he had an operation.

On the night of February 13, 1820, the Duke of Berry was stabbed by a saddler upon leaving the Paris Opera. He died a few hours later. Son of the Count of Artois and the nephew to King Louis XVIII, he was considered the last of the Bourbons. His killer, who had sought to end the line, was arrested and guillotined; to his misfortune, the duke’s wife was pregnant and gave birth to the Duke of Bordeaux, the future Count of Chambord, who carried on the dynasty.

On November 3, 1977, American bassist Mario Mantese was stabbed in the heart on leaving an evening gala in London. He lost a great deal of blood and was clinically dead for several minutes. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where he underwent open-heart surgery and remained in a coma for five weeks. During this time, he made a kind of trip to the hereafter that he would later recount in a book entitled Visions of Death.

    The twenty-sixth entry was of note for being closely tied to literature, even if, on the face of things, Visions of Death fell into a minor genre thereof. Gould wondered if it wouldn’t be wise to proceed with thematic groupings, privileging literary stabbees. Among others, they would include:

On July 3, 1991, translator Ettore Capriolo was stabbed several times in his apartment in Milan. His attacker, who identified himself as Iranian, had initially tried to make him reveal the address of writer Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses Capriolo had translated. On July 12, 1991, Professor Hitoshi Igarashi, an Islamic Studies specialist and translator of The Satanic Verses, was stabbed to death on the campus of Tsukuba University in Tokyo.

On October 14, 1994, the writer Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed in the carotid artery in a Cairo street. His attackers blamed him for not renouncing his novel Children of the Alley, published in 1959, despite its condemnation by certain religious authorities.

On May 30, 1593, writer Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern near Cambridge after a disagreement over settling the bill. However, it appears that considerations of a political nature governed the murder. In As You Like It, William Shakespeare puts in Touchstone’s mouth the following allusion to the fate of his elder: “When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.”

    However, Gould decided to respect his entries’ original disorder, and forged ahead. He soon reached his 100th entry.

On June 24, 1894, Sadi Carnot, President of the Republic, was stabbed in Lyon by an Italian anarchist. He died a few hours later. The murderer was taking vengeance for the execution of Auguste Vaillant. He was arrested and guillotined on August 15th of the same year.

On May 2, 1997, Philippe Douste-Blazy was stabbed in Opinel, a store on Rue de la Grotte in Lourdes. His attacker was arrested a few minutes later in a nearby café: a notorious mentally disturbed individual, he had already tried to set himself on fire in front of the Hôtel de Ville and had made an earlier attempt on the life of M. Douste-Blazy within its halls.

On April 30, 1993, during the quarterfinals of a tournament in Hamburg (Germany), tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by an East German mentally disturbed individual in front of six thousand spectators. Seriously wounded, she was immediately taken to the hospital; the incident interrupted her career for several years to come. Her attacker explained that he had acted as a fan of Steffi Graf, her main rival.

On February 12, 1976, American actor Sal Mineo was stabbed in the heart in a Los Angeles street. Policemen found twenty-one dollars in his coat and concluded that theft was not the motive for the murder. After a lengthy investigation, police succeeded in unmasking a twenty-one-year-old delinquent, turned in by his own wife.

On September 10, 2003, Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anna Lindh was stabbed by a stranger in a department store in downtown Stockholm. Her attacker wounded her in the arms, stomach, and chest, then escaped. Taken immediately to Karolinska Hospital, Anna Lindh succumbed to her injuries.

On August 1, 1589, King Henri III was stabbed in Saint-Cloud while on his commode by Dominican monk Jacques Clément. He managed to pull the knife from his body and wound his attacker before La Guesle and Bellegarde threw Clément out the window. The King succumbed to his injuries the next morning, but not before summoning Henri de Navarre to his side and forcing the assembled lords to swear fealty to him.

On September 6, 2002, South African ice hockey player Craig Fulton was stabbed by a stranger in his own house. With the help of his partner, herself an ice hockey player, he was able to overcome his attacker and call the police. He lost consciousness en route to Mary Hospital in Pretoria.

    Gould wrote 300 entries in this fashion. When he was done, he put the final touch on his book by issuing himself a passport to posterity: the final entry in A Guide to Famous Stabbings would be a declaration of his own death and, consequently, earn him his place in Robert Derain’s Literary Eclipses.

One month to the day after the publication of this book, I was stabbed to death by a stranger on the doorstep of my building. This tragic death—so like a suicide, in that it arose from provocation—fulfills my resolution to renounce literature completely after this first book. I am henceforth an eclipsee, a member of the imaginary congregation assembled by Robert Derain in his book Literary Eclipses. My only book has made me a literary hero.

    These were the last words he would ever write: his writing career was coming to an end, eclipse stretched out its arms to him. By arranging his physical demise, he’d insured his literary one as well; his vow of chastity would be kept till the end, his one book would never be followed by another.

    A Guide to Famous Stabbings was printed at its author’s expense and hand-delivered to several bookstores. He knew it wouldn’t sell, but this didn’t matter to him at all: the important part was that a murderer should read the 301st notice and fulfill the prophecy, thus propelling Gould into the ranks of Derain’s eclipsees and assuring his literary fame. Now he had only to wait serenely for the ordained date while carefully avoiding any writing whatsoever. To take his mind off things and resist temptation, he fantasized that Derain’s inventor, Enrique Vila-Matas, on learning of Gould’s extraordinary fate, decided to update his Bartleby & Co. by adding a section that would begin as follows:
    85b) It was while reading this book that Pierre Gould found his calling: to become a writer not in order to produce a body of work but in fact to refuse to do so. Fascinated by the absurd attitude of characters described by Robert Derain in Literary Eclipses, he decided to become one of them and wrote A Guide to Famous Stabbings, which remains his only work.

    The eve of the murder arrived. Anxious, Gould tried to lose himself in banal tasks: he paid a few bills, sorted through his mail, re-read his will. The night was difficult: he couldn’t fall asleep and wandered like a zombie through the cold house, waiting for sunrise. When day broke, he donned his most dignified outfit and, after a frugal breakfast, went down to the doorstep of his building. He waited bravely, head held high, for a swift knife to send him to the world beyond, and into Derain’s Eclipses. He was ready.
    No one came to assassinate him, of course. Assuming that A Guide to Famous Stabbings had found any readers, none of them had had the courage to help its author carry out his project. Gould kept hoping until dusk, thinking that the murderer might prefer to make his move at nightfall. Minutes, hours went by. At long last, the sun disappeared completely, snuffed out by the darkness of a night without stars. The street emptied; the clocks struck eleven, then midnight. It had now been a month and a day since the Guide had been published, and Gould was still alive: the 301st entry was false. It ran the risk of discrediting the entire book, while he ran the risk of failing to resist writing another. And thereby jeopardizing his accession to the ranks of eclipsees.
    He succumbed to panic, considered stabbing himself in the stomach, then abandoned the idea, noting that it would have betrayed the book. He had to resign himself to the fact that his project was a failure. Distraught, Gould went back indoors. Tears sprang to his eyes as, with the laggard step of the defeated, he climbed the stairs. For the second night in a row, he couldn’t sleep. Full of bitterness and wrath, he sat down at his desk and took up the manuscript of the Guide. Had he failed? He’d save his honor by finishing off the disaster himself, highlighting his defeat with the self-destructive violence of a truly bad loser. He took up his pen and, with the serenity of a man readying himself to leap into the unknown, achieved the impossible: he began to write again, let literature walk all over him, added a 302nd entry to his book.

A month and a day after the publication of this book, writers Enrique Vila- Matas and Robert Derain were stabbed by me at their respective homes. Haunted by the failure of a literary project for which they were the primary inspiration (see the preceding entry), I hold them partly responsible for my crushing defeat and am willing to accept the consequences. Before taking action, I compose this final entry, knowing that I thus put to a definitive end my ambition to become an eclipsee. I add that I shall not hesitate for a second to execute my plans, insofar as Robert Derain does not exist and Enrique Vila-Matas has nothing to fear from an assassination attempt perpetrated by a fictional character, the pathetic hero of the book known as A Guide to Famous Stabbings.

Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin

[Read an interview with Bernard Quiriny, in English or French.]