geofroggatt's review
3.0
In my mission to read as much taboo and transgressive fiction as I can, I stumbled upon this book and I have been avoiding it ever since. After seeing the length, I decided to get this one over with and just bite the bullet and read it. This book, to me, is about the reader being trapped in a deranged mind and trying to decipher a story from his stream of consciousness. Part of the twisted charm of this book is the simple cover and title, and as disgusting and transgressive as it is, people pick it up and read it all the same. Including me. What does that say about people? What does that say about me? This book in itself makes us question the nature of taboo and transgressive fiction and what stories can and should be told. Why do we tell stories like this? Why do we read them? It reinforces the power of words and how we can use and abuse them, how words are more than just words and they hold weight and can change the world in a tangible way. From the first sentence, it would be easy to mistake this book for a cheap attempt at shock through obscenity, but there’s something more here. The stream of consciousness and rambling narrative hides something beneath the obscenity and crass darkness. We follow a man who claims to fuck babies. At first it seems literal, until we slowly come to find that the man is deranged and may not exist in reality and sanity the way that people do. Is this literal? What is real and what is not? This book is not what you think it is… or is it? Are we inside the mind of a deranged man exorcising his guilty intrusive thoughts, or are we piecing together the psyche of a monstrous sexual predator? It almost doesn’t matter. I think this book functions as something more than what the narrative means. This is a reminder of the power of words and literature, how choosing your words carefully can create beautiful or monstrous things. Most of all, I think this book is a grim reminder that monstrous and horrific things cannot be decorated, glamorized, or beautified beyond what they truly are. Great and terrible things are still terrible. The foreword and afterword are necessary to read and understand this story, and I appreciate how it bookended the strange experience of reading this book. While this was an interesting look into an obscene mind, I admit I don’t think most readers would appreciate what this novel is trying to do, and that’s okay too.
Elizabeth Hall interviewed the author and I found his words to be intriguing:
“It wasn’t an idea. It was an image. An image in my head. A vexing image. An image that was just suddenly there. Without reminding me of anyone or anything. Without eliciting any feeling in me. That’s what was vexing. A challenge. And then suddenly the sentence was there. As a response to the image? As an escape? As self-defense? I don’t know. “I fuck babies.” And then there was the decision to attempt to extract something like a story from this terrible sentence.”
Elizabeth Hall interviewed the author and I found his words to be intriguing:
“It wasn’t an idea. It was an image. An image in my head. A vexing image. An image that was just suddenly there. Without reminding me of anyone or anything. Without eliciting any feeling in me. That’s what was vexing. A challenge. And then suddenly the sentence was there. As a response to the image? As an escape? As self-defense? I don’t know. “I fuck babies.” And then there was the decision to attempt to extract something like a story from this terrible sentence.”
sanx's review
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
roach's review
challenging
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
O I don't think that [...] I'm a word that anyone should put in his mouth. Would want to put in his mouth. That anyone ever put in his mouth. That anyone spit out in order to slip on it later.
What a strange, strange text this one is.
This weird book with the aggressively vulgar title by award-winning Swiss author and journalist Urs Allemann is a strange literary experiment that's hard to take in, hard to rate, hard to talk about, and all of that kind of feeds right into the point of it.
This book isn't truly about the repulsive titular activity. Rather it's about a narrator trying and failing to imagine said thing which works as an exercise on the power of the written word without real-life actions. It reads to me like an exploration of what language can do to us through a single word. The title is such an abhorrent concept that nothing else is needed to disturb the reader or make them cringe. It's so awful that we don't even want to acknowledge, let alone imagine it. And neither does the narrator, really. He goes on rambling about how he is sentenced to follow the title and spins up an incoherent story in a desperate attempt to convince the reader that what he's saying is true. But he fails miserably because he can't actually fill it with sense or purpose.
The narrator's disgusting ramblings might start out shocking and difficult to read, but become more and more ridiculous as you read on. I had full on belly-laughs while reading some of this because the narrator tries so hard to be vulgar while barely being able to string his insanity together into a coherent story. Urs Allemann creates a literary character that's trying to be relevant but chooses a shortsighted strategy. The narrator's story isn't real. It's all lies. And the reader just watches the narrator stumble through his own language.
The author created a story about storytelling in which we watch the narrator character fail to create something from the awful lie he chose. Where we watch him fail to follow through with his own thought experiment and use the power that the abhorrent titular word has over us to any substantial effect.
Why is the narrator ruminating on this specific subject for so long? Why is he trying to convince the reader all of this nonsense is actually going on when it's clear it's just his limited imagination? Does the narrator want attention? Does the narrator think that a story needs to be shocking to have an effect on the reader?
I think the narrator is trying to prove to himself that he's even capable of intellectually handling such a horrible subject. He's trying to gain power over this word that has a power over him. The fact that the title of this book is so abhorrent and repulsive to virtually everyone shows how much power this written word has over us and the narrator is trying to conquer it. To win over it and use it as a tool, the way words are supposed to work for us. And he continually fails at that.
The way his disconnected ramblings point at how writers and readers process text is pretty clever. At one point the narrator talks about how a stabbed baby would bleed, but stabbed paper, blank or written on, does not. Paper doesn't bleed, no matter the pain. Because what's on the paper isn't real and we, as writers and readers, create its meaning. And yet it can make us feel intensely uncomfortable. It's an allegory for how there is a difference between the act and the word, even if it makes us feel similarly. An allegory for how an idea can be repulsive even if it isn't really happening and how our mind processes those ideas. And that's the whole crux that Allemann's text explores through this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, and Child abuse
Moderate: Violence and Vomit
mt_everett's review
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pedophilia, Gore, and Body horror
sunnybopeep's review
3.0
Just an experimental text about a man who is enslaved to a sentence and an idea. It was ok. Prob reads better in German.
eireannea's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
meganmilks's review
5.0
"Question. Where would I be if I were to raise up my eyelid. Would there be babies. Would there be creels. Would there be the garret. Would there be fucking. Would there be writing. Would there by money. Would there be work. Would there be a garden. Would there be a dog. Would I have been born. Would Linda be pregnant. Would everyone be from somewhere. Would there be books. Would there be newspapers. Would there be a Saturday. ... Would there be a Sunday. Would there be a walk. Would there be politics. ... If I raised up my eyelid would the other one behind it be lowered. The backup eyelid. The primordial eyelid...
"Sometimes entertain the thought that I'm crazy. A beautiful word. Suck it dry. Throw it away. Abandon that thought. Prefer to just keep saying my sentence. I fuck babies. I fuck babies. Inflate the sentence. Try to make it burst."
--Urs Allemann, Babyfucker (Trans. Peter Smith)
See the Babyfucker Blog Project over at http://lesfigues.blogspot.com/.
Elizabeth Hall's introductory essay is particularly good -- an excerpt:
"When I found Babyfucker—or rather when it found me—I was still actively grappling with the significance, perhaps even “meaning,” of the wild, roving ache I felt on a daily basis as a result of the dissolution of my family. Of course, during these months, I wrote next to nothing. (It was unfortunate that I was enrolled in an MFA program for creative writing.) As an avid reader, I was also horrified to discover that no book could hold my attention: they all felt so trivial. Every book, except Babyfucker. Since my pain was still too ripe, I could not dismiss it as “just a book” or “some pervert’s riff.” I was immediately intrigued by the beauty, the hypnotic elegance, of Allemann’s prose. It's true: the thing I found most interesting, initially, was not that Babyfucker served as a potent reminder of the “power of literature,” but rather, that “monstrosity can’t be beautified away by skillful prose pirouettes” (Allemann). That is—no amount of gloss or spin can sublate the horror of a monstrous act.""
"Sometimes entertain the thought that I'm crazy. A beautiful word. Suck it dry. Throw it away. Abandon that thought. Prefer to just keep saying my sentence. I fuck babies. I fuck babies. Inflate the sentence. Try to make it burst."
--Urs Allemann, Babyfucker (Trans. Peter Smith)
See the Babyfucker Blog Project over at http://lesfigues.blogspot.com/.
Elizabeth Hall's introductory essay is particularly good -- an excerpt:
"When I found Babyfucker—or rather when it found me—I was still actively grappling with the significance, perhaps even “meaning,” of the wild, roving ache I felt on a daily basis as a result of the dissolution of my family. Of course, during these months, I wrote next to nothing. (It was unfortunate that I was enrolled in an MFA program for creative writing.) As an avid reader, I was also horrified to discover that no book could hold my attention: they all felt so trivial. Every book, except Babyfucker. Since my pain was still too ripe, I could not dismiss it as “just a book” or “some pervert’s riff.” I was immediately intrigued by the beauty, the hypnotic elegance, of Allemann’s prose. It's true: the thing I found most interesting, initially, was not that Babyfucker served as a potent reminder of the “power of literature,” but rather, that “monstrosity can’t be beautified away by skillful prose pirouettes” (Allemann). That is—no amount of gloss or spin can sublate the horror of a monstrous act.""