Les Mangeurs d’étoiles

“Star-eaters,” the nickname given to South American Indigenous peoples who consumed hallucinogenic plants, is applied by Gary to those who pursue a dream: here, the irresistible rise and fall of Al Mayo, a Cujon Indian who becomes dictator of a Caribbean republic, in search of a pact with the devil. A modern transposition of Goethe’s Faust in which the United States plays the role of Mephistopheles.

Gary was particularly well placed to write it: the novel’s geographical setting was supplied to him when he was appointed French consul general in Los Angeles in 1961. Sent on a temporary assignment, he spent three months running the French embassy in La Paz, Bolivia — there had been no ambassador for six months, and “this vacancy displeased the dictator of the moment” (Myriam Anissimov, Romain Gary le caméléon, Denoël, 2004, p. 284). He absorbed this South American atmosphere, which gave rise to two short stories, “Les oiseaux vont mourir au Pérou” and “La plus vieille histoire du monde.” It also became the setting of this novel, which he initially titled Le Mangeur d’étoiles, still listing it under that title among his works in the first chapter of Pour Sganarelle (1965).

The title forms the first part of La Comédie américaine, completed in 1969 by Adieu Gary Cooper: both had first been published in English, under the titles The Talent Scout in 1961 and The Ski Bum in 1965. As with Lady L. three years earlier, the French translation was made by Jean Rosenthal with the author’s collaboration.

When the novel was published in London in 1961, it was presented as a translation by a certain John Markham Beach, who was also said to have translated La Promesse de l’aube (Promise at Dawn) into English. One more pseudonym to Gary’s credit!

A fine copy.