Vernon Subutex I

Vernon Subutex I
Virgine Despentes

(08/08/2025)

This is good. This feels like me. Like I’m at home, back to my stylistic roots. That bar where you recognise all the music; where you bump into the old-school buddy who you actually kinda-liked. Where you can’t help but feel like everyone wants a piece of you. Such feelings are obviously silly — but I still believe that there is nothing wrong with loving yourself on occasion. I think Vernon gets that. That life is, by-the-by, often very, very hard. That as a result, it remains a moral prerogative that sometimes you need to be able to kick your feet up.

Vernon strikes me as unfailingly likeable, and I suppose, according to some theories of literature — that makes him already perfect. Vernon’s seamlessness is made all the more clear, by the fact that he lacks that disingenuous approach to one’s own insecurity, which is so clearly projected by almost all the other characters in the book. Despentes strength, like all great satirists, is her ability to occupy the space between the ears of her characters; to really hear their voices and in-doing-so, to give them life. Her approach to disingenuity as a modern-feeling is noteworthy in this sense: she’s able to identify quite clearly the difference between being merely aware of one’s own flaws (which is the just as much a precondition of insecurity, as it is a solution) and genuine acceptance of them. Vernon occupies that half-space, where the rest of society is unable, and this helps explain and given direction to his seemingly messianic journey through the streets of Paris. Such a feeling is one that all should strive to occupy — at least sometimes.

I’d recommend The Walkmen with this one.