Sunday Morning! “Chéri” and “La Fin de Chéri” by Colette

I have an idea about how one should go about writing a story. As I mentioned previously, one of the first things I did upon arriving in New York City last June was to get to writing a novel that had been percolating in my brain for a few years. I didn’t really know very much about writing fiction; I’ve never taken one of those workshops, although I have read thousands of novels over the years. And I think my method worked. An old friend, who writes graphic novels, said my novel made him very angry; he was invested in the characters and didn’t want anything bad to happen to them, and then it did… He stewed about it for a week about it, however, and decided the ending was the right one. Not exactly the happiest one, but the one that made the most sense.

Okay, so, I think I wrote a story.

I might never write another one- seriously!- but here’s how I think you do it:

1. Create a character who fascinates and frustrates you enough that you really want to know what they would do in a difficult situation, or any type of situation. Don’t worry about making them “likeable”- the compelling characters are the ones we remember longer.
2. And then, just hang out with them for a long time- a very long time- making little notes about this imaginary accomplice you’ve created- until you come up with a really knotty situation to put them in. And then, just drop them into the ocean and see if they swim their way out.
3. Finally, just tell the truth, however weird or disturbing it might be. Do they live or die? Do they go insane and wind up in asylum? Do they live happily ever after? If the character is sufficiently compelling, they will tell you how their story unfolds. You just take notes and don’t lie about it. Even if it makes you angry!

This seems to be how Colette wrote her masterpiece novellas: Chéri and The End of Chéri: she had these two characters in mind: Fred, although everyone calls him “Chéri,” who is basically a vain and beautiful boy, an amoral gigolo from a good family, who is involved in a seemingly emotionless relationship with a much older courtesan, Léa; she has basically raised him without either of them being any the wiser. (The recent film “Licorice Pizza” strikes me as a watered-down version of this scenario.) He is as cruel and amoral as most beautiful people can be, but so is she. And, at some point, the two of them will have to separate and sort through their feelings for each other. He’s in his mid twenties, while she is nearing fifty, and he is expected to marry. At least, he expects himself to do so. The issue is Chéri and Léa are probably unknowingly the great loves of each other’s lives.

The young actress Colette.

Colette, or Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, had tried writing short vignettes about the strange couple before in various journals before committing them to a novella. She was no stranger to socially suspect relationships herself. Her marriage with the abusive writer “Willy”- Henry Gauthier-Villars- made her into a successful writer, albeit under his name, a photographer, and then a notorious lesbian. Her second marriage would end partly due to her affair with her 16 year old stepson. This occurred four years after Chéri was published, and one gossip held that she was putting into practice what she’d already committed to fiction. She always called herself a wild and unskilled writer, and this totally false claim has persisted in spite of her total mastery of form and style.

What startled me about Chéri is that the novella really didn’t seem to work for me at all, and then suddenly it did. For at least half of the story, which I read during our bus ride from NYC to D.C., I could have cared less about these pleasure-obsessed French wastrels and their social engagements and this beautiful boy who, honestly, seemingly has all the emotional intelligence of a mollusk.

But, then… I don’t know, there was something about Colette’s pitch-perfect sentences, which are crammed full of sensual details- there must be a color description in every paragraph!- that had a hypnotic effect on me. And I started picking up on all the casual cruelty behind the libertinism and luxury in which these characters are submerged. They’re dreaming their lives away, just as surely as any of Proust’s characters, and yet, time is still passing for them. And they hate it. The dream is reaching its end and they’ve overslept. They’re getting older, and enjoying all the sensual pleasures one can is not a long-term plan. They know they have to part and Chéri makes an attempt at respectable marriage to a beautiful young woman who just bores him stiff. In the meantime, Lea gets older and their love fades. Like Narcissus, he’s left with nothing more than his own reflection in a pool of water.

It seems to be the end, but alas, La Fin de Chéri appeared six years later. it has to be the cruelest sequel ever written. Colette has taken her compelling character and sent him off to the Great War, and now returned him to Paris a shell of his former self. His wife has, not so secretly, taken other lovers; the great love of his life, Léa, has gotten old and obese, something that obsessed Colette; now, everyone treats Chéri as a rather dull and amiable senior citizen- at age 30. All he can really hope for is to live alone and convalesce, and then that’s not even enough. He’s left with a handful of dust. Things end badly for him. It made me angry. But, here’s the thing: they really could not have otherwise. It’s painful and cruel, and probably it’s the most realistic outcome. As Colette herself said, it wasn’t as if Chéri was going to become an industrialist!

Alas, your characters are going to do what they’re going to you. It’s just up to you to write the police report.

And so, what are YOU reading, writing, watching, playing, pondering, or aging out of this weekend?