The author of “Discourse” and “Zaï zaï zaï zaï”, Fabrice Caro, slips into the skin of a melancholic forty-something overwhelmed by family obligations. “Fort Alamo” humorously recounts the chaos of everyday life, starting with the queue at the checkout counter at a supermarket.
A storyless narrator suddenly plunged into chaos has become the trademark of Fabrice Caro, a novelist who also writes comics under the pseudonym Fabcaro. Thus in “The Speech”, since adapted for the cinema, where a sickly shy anti-hero was summoned by his family to speak in public at his sister’s wedding. These situations which could seem distressing, the author transforms them into a chain of comical consequences, developing over the course of his texts a particularly keen sense of the absurd.
The best example is undoubtedly “Zaï zaï zaï zaï”, a now cult comic strip, which has become a film and a play performed many times throughout the country. A character noticed at the supermarket checkout that he had forgotten his loyalty card at home, and this little faux pas, a priori unimportant in a mundane daily life, would lead him into a cascade of increasingly crazy scenes. .
An everyday anti-hero
A supermarket checkout is also the starting point for “Fort Alamo”, the new novel by Fabrice Caro. Cyril, his narrator, is a high school teacher, an uneventful provincial forty-year-old, in a relationship and father of two children. He is about to pay for some purchases before going home when an individual steals his place in line, before collapsing a few steps further, struck down by a stroke. Because the scene repeats itself several times during the week, with the principal he hates or the neighbors’ unbearable dog, Cyril wonders: does he have the superpower to shoot down all those who annoy him in spite of himself? ?
After an interminable time, the long line on the conveyor belt ended with a can of red beans – And besides, he likes red beans, that’s what crossed my mind. When he finished putting his groceries into his bags, while I stared at him hoping for a sign, if not of apology, at least of empathy, he paid, without even a glance at me, and walked away from the checkout, slowly pushing his shopping cart. A few meters later, he collapsed on the ground.
Archetypal characters
Fabrice Caro’s humor lies in this chaotic sequence of trivial facts, but also in his ability to observe. His book is a gallery of hilarious portraits, an almost sociological study of the French middle class, with archetypal characters – the annoying sister-in-law, the clumsy colleague, the naive neighbor, portrayed with a lot of humor but without unnecessary malice.
Another reading can be proposed of these absurd scenes where the character tries to keep his distance from the family and professional injunctions which overwhelm him. Fabrice Caro writes, as in his previous texts, about a man who wants nothing from the roles that those close to him want him to take on.
Beyond the humor, a poignant melancholy hovers over this text. Because the narrator’s mother has just disappeared, and he must take care of clearing out her house. But emptying his childhood bedroom is beyond his strength.
Each novel is a personal diary. I talk about what is happening to me in my life at the time I write. The autobiographical part of this book is this story of a child’s bedroom that needs to be emptied. I don’t wish that on anyone.
Also, this book is not only a summary of humor and this is undoubtedly what differentiates Fabrice Caro, novelist, from Fabcaro, cartoonist. The pages where Cyril speaks in secret to his mother, and his despair when he has to return to the family home, are particularly moving. “I have a sick link to childhood. I can’t get out of it, it’s crazy,” admits Fabrice Caro in the QWERTZ podcast of October 8.
Sylvie Tanette/ms
Fabrice Caro, “Fort Alamo”, ed. Gallimard, Sygne collection, October 2024.
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