Comedy, a literary and theatrical genre that originated in ancient Greece, has undergone many metamorphoses and attempts at definition over time. First associated with humor and artifice, it took on a more solemn turn in the second half of the 18th century.e century, when the playwright Nivelle de la Chaussée took up its classic codes — staging of ordinary people and happy endings — to which he added the imminence of a tragedy and a moral triumph.
This tearful comedy, imitated in particular by Diderot and Beaumarchais, was soon followed by the dramatic comedy, popularized by Alfred de Musset, where the light tonality is erased by a solemn morality.
In Comedyhis first novel, the writer and professor of philosophy Franz Schürch plays with all these different meanings, mutations and functions attributed to the genre to offer a self-reflective and offbeat story, both serious and joyful, harmless and ideological, which thinks itself more than it reads.
Comedy is not the only concept that the author triturates, circumvents and deconstructs. He also reverses the terms of autofiction, deploying a procession of characters – most of whom are inspired by his closest friends – in fictitious and highly intimate situations in which are revealed, implicitly, the evolution, the thought, the the insecurities, obsessions, celebrations and bereavements of the one who writes them.
Amorous decay
The novel recounts the amorous decay of Roche — the author’s best friend —, his quest for meaning in a reality where love no longer has a target and where the heart is only measured by the too hasty rhythm of vain beats that lead him too quickly to death. While the bond that unites his couple is unraveling, he witnesses, from a distance, the new and perfectly rhythmic love between his friend Nicolas Roi and a mysterious girl who prefers to remain anonymous.
As he gets lost in his thoughts, his memories and his concern for the right word, his steps follow a similar path, meandering through the twists and turns of the Villeray district, in Montreal, in search of landmarks that age, gentrify, disappear or resist the predictable and poetic sequence of the seasons.
The distancing in which Franz Schürch works reveals a remarkable exercise in thought, but is not always to the point. There is something theatrical about this language that struggles to anchor itself in the narrative, getting lost in a range of descriptions, terminological disputes and disembodied discussions, separating the reader, like a fourth concrete wall, from the investment.
These narrative processes break the fluidity of the reading, but manage to surprise, reflecting the motives of the work and the author, leaving to immerse reflections on living together and the scarcity of ideals in a world where conversations are n only too rarely go beyond the boundaries of everyday life and tangibility.