After a long absence to write back. This time of the literature. Léo Malet wrote in 1948 "Life is a crap," noir novel that will become a milestone in the genre of film noir as well as reference material. The plot is simple, but on closer inspection serves as a support to the psychology that underlies it. The protagonist is an anarchist and trade unionist who robs banks, smokes and drinks and kills for no reason, brutally. But it is nice or even "soft" and so. What drives him to kill and rob is not so much the desire or the ideal politico-sociological, psychological as a distortion. A stolen intimacy, a childhood injury. There is the very beginning, from the start a sense of loss and inferiority towards the other, and filled bypassed by the "sex" of the gun, an extension of his fears and his unconscious. There is a surreal love story and yet understood, as a whole novel full of noir and surreal at the same time. A love that does not translate into a passion, but wanting alluded, nor tenderness. It is not the coldness that shines, but indifference. Léo Mallet deftly manages to balance the various elements that characterize the novel, so much so that every gesture of the protagonist is finally lived through, but remains as a wound, if anything as mild scratches. The atmosphere is dark and shadowy overwhelming. Behind the surreal story of Jean there is life. That is not sconvogle. So ably described the real becomes surreal, and yet it all seems rather true. The phrase "life is a disgusting," which gives the title to the novel, is repeated several times just to bring the reader to real life. Detective plots (mechanical aspects in this sense) are not here and, say, thank goodness. A man can kill boredom, indifference, ideology, sports, for psychological problems. For loneliness, inferiority complexes. The atmosphere in this noir smoky and alcoholic after the impending war, you kill a little for all these reasons and no one in particular. Clouds of smoke, sweet smell of blood, gunpowder, rum, Gloria, psychoanalyst who "unveils" the troubled mind of the surreal madness that leads Jean to constitute, revolvers in hand, to the police. Everything can be taken for granted, already seen in the cinema. But it is the first noir history and did worship. Because behind the plot is something that beats and knows of life and "life is a crap." At the bottom. For one reason or another. We all (including suck), we lack only a revolver.
