An ode to mad love, awarded the Prix de Flore in 1999.
Published in 1999 and awarded that year’s Prix de Flore, Nicolas Pages marks a departure from the Sadean preoccupations of Guillaume Dustan’s first three novels; it is, in essence, a love story. Inspired by a failed romance with the Swiss artist-writer Nicolas Pages and collaging texts that Dustan initially produced for a wide variety of other occasions (magazine articles, short stories, project notes, shopping lists, and more), the “auto-/bio-/porno-graphic” prose of Nicolas Pages is by turns trashy and encyclopedic, corporeal and philosophical. Here Dustan inaugurates a “gay literature” that is no longer painful or shameful, but epicurean and cheerful without ever lapsing into idealism. A vibrant plea for gay rights and a tapestried text that is more than the sum of its many styles, Nicolas Pages is a call to explore the body, sexuality, and writing in all their variety; it is a hymn to life, humanity, pleasure, and desire.
"Nicolas Pages demonstrates how desire can manifest itself in physical and linguistic structures: run-on sentences, shopping lists, poetry, the body. […] Nicolas Pages is about the structureless structure to which we all belong: the body." —Allison Armijo, The Gay & Lesbian Review
Guillaume Dustan (1965–2005) worked as an administrative judge in France before turning to writing full-time. He is the author of eight books, including the award-winning novel Nicolas Pages. He was posthumously awarded the Prix Sade in 2013.
An ode to mad love, awarded the Prix de Flore in 1999.
Published in 1999 and awarded that year’s Prix de Flore, Nicolas Pages marks a departure from the Sadean preoccupations of Guillaume Dustan’s first three novels; it is, in essence, a love story. Inspired by a failed romance with the Swiss artist-writer Nicolas Pages and collaging texts that Dustan initially produced for a wide variety of other occasions (magazine articles, short stories, project notes, shopping lists, and more), the “auto-/bio-/porno-graphic” prose of Nicolas Pages is by turns trashy and encyclopedic, corporeal and philosophical. Here Dustan inaugurates a “gay literature” that is no longer painful or shameful, but epicurean and cheerful without ever lapsing into idealism. A vibrant plea for gay rights and a tapestried text that is more than the sum of its many styles, Nicolas Pages is a call to explore the body, sexuality, and writing in all their variety; it is a hymn to life, humanity, pleasure, and desire.
Reviews
"Nicolas Pages demonstrates how desire can manifest itself in physical and linguistic structures: run-on sentences, shopping lists, poetry, the body. […] Nicolas Pages is about the structureless structure to which we all belong: the body." —Allison Armijo, The Gay & Lesbian Review
Author
Guillaume Dustan (1965–2005) worked as an administrative judge in France before turning to writing full-time. He is the author of eight books, including the award-winning novel Nicolas Pages. He was posthumously awarded the Prix Sade in 2013.
