The Gasp

The novel was published directly in English and would not be translated and published in France until four years later, under the title Charge d’âme. It is written in a very slang-heavy English. Gary explained that he had chosen to write it this way “to escape […] the cult of language […] English, by the admission of English-speaking writers themselves, is ill-suited to conceptual exercises, to the thousand and one indulgences of the Self; it resists abstraction, hair-splitting and quibbling. Moreover, my vocabulary in English is more limited, so I will be infinitely less tempted to explore the possibilities of language than those of my imagination, of History, of adventure, of movement, of life” (Pour Sganarelle, p. 138).

A fine copy, in excellent condition.