How the Dead Dream (Lydia Millet)

Lectures en Technicolor

How the Dead Dream. Un livre superbe de Lydia Millet, dont la lecture m’a rappelé celle du Grand Gatsby, avec, toutefois, un regard plus axé sur les conséquences écologiques du rêve américain, et du matérialisme que cela implique. Le personnage de T., qui m’est apparu au départ plutôt antipathique en raison de son rapport fétichiste à l’argent – sans parler de son absence de scrupules pour s’en procurer… – devient, graduellement, de plus en plus sympathique. À la fin du livre, on a du mal à s’en détacher. Ce qui est sûr, c’est que c’est le genre de figure romanesque qui vous habite longtemps.

“With hands in latex gloves he soothed himself by counting out rare dollar bills – the two, for instance – and old coins that were prized by collectors, including many dark and brittle rounds dating from Roman times. These he would remove from his safe in ritualized style and lay out on a sheet of newspaper spread across his desk, in strict order from least value to most.

And it was not only the ritual, not merely the repetitious and the pious act of counting that afforded him comfort. He liked to hold and see the legal tender and then bend his head and close his eyes, the metal or the paper in his hands.”

Lydia Millet. How the dead dream, Boston/New York, Mariner Books, 2009, p. 8.

“The point is, if you’re friends he shouldn’t be paying you for helping him. It’s something you do for your friends for free. Friends help each other, T.”

“I’d like to do it at no charge to Perry, said T. firmly. “I really would. Believe you me. And in a perfect world I could. But here’s the situation: I’m not the problem. I’m the middleman here. Those dollars go straight to the guys who were doing the beatings. In return, they keep their hands off your son.” (…)

He looked her in the eye, affecting an earnest concern for Ferry’s well-being. In fact the jocks in question had been easy to convince and now received a mere five a week. ”

Lydia Millet. How the dead dream, Boston/New York, Mariner Books, 2009, p. 10.

“Money was commerce and the movement of broad arms. It was how, in the great halls of trade and public service, the walls were so thick that sound could not penetrate and the foundations so strong an earthquake could barely move them. There was the honor and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within—and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums.” (…)

“Currency infused all things, from the small to the monolithic. And to be a statesman the first thing needed was not morals, public service, or the power of rhetoric; the first thing needed was money. Because finally there was always a single answer. As there was only one intelligence residing in a self, as trees grew upward toward the sun, as women lived outward and men walked in insulation to the end of their lives: when all was said and done, from place to place and country to country, forget the subtleties of right and wrong, the struggle toward affinity. In the lurch and flux, in all the variation and the same, it was only money that could set a person free. ”

Lydia Millet. How the dead dream, Boston/New York, Mariner Books, 2009, p. 13-14.

Qui n’a pas déjà rencontré ce genre de personnes? Le genre de type qui vous enrage, parce que vous savez au fond de vous-même que l’admiration qu’il suscite chez les autres n’est pas méritée, mais que c’est ce genre de comportement qui est récompensé dans une société qui prétend toujours aller de l’avant et penser à l’avenir.

Accumuler des biens. Bien paraître. Garder son sang-froid dans les situations difficiles, c’est-à-dire dans les situations qui nécessiteraient que l’on remette en question le bien-fondé de son comportement, de ses valeurs. La critique sociale qu’esquisse Lydia Millet avec le personnage de T. dans How the Dead Dream est extraordinairement juste.

“Both men and women tended to admire him, for he practiced a kindly reserve that invited affection but discouraged any more intimate advance. Men were comfortable with this, relieved by how little he asked, and women deemed him enigmatic and sought out his favors. (…)

It was T. who quietly confiscated the keys of brothers unfit to drive, who deftly staunched the flow of blood from flesh wounds caused by gleeful unrestraint; it was he who politicked behind the scenes to dissuade frivolous accusations of date rape, negotiated truces with disgruntled neighbors and bored campus police.”

Lydia Millet. How the Dead dream, Boston/New York, Mariner Books, 2009, p. 15-16.

“Surely little remained of the Puritan legacy of prudish rectitude, he thought: surely this was now a country of excess, gluttony, lust, and sloth; surely this had grown into a land where obesity reigned and even the poor moved ponderously down the Street on big thighs that rubbed fatly together. What had become of the pilgrims’ gaunt and stingy oversight?

He knew in part it was the visionary genius of enterprising men, but such entrepreneurs were only the tools of a hungry culture. For the descendants of those gray, upright pioneers had cherished cravings for beef patties with ketchup, deep-fried chicken and vats of ice cream, chemically scented and dyed all the colors of the rainbow, and billions upon billions of gallons of soda. Their thirst had never been quite slaked and so they never finished drinking; and this was the market in all its streamlined functionality – which, precisely where the supply and the demand curves crossed, had swiftly produced a nation of paralyzed giants, fallen across their couches much as soldiers on the field of battle, their arteries hard, their softened hearts failing.

The market made a fool of you by giving you what you wanted. But this did not make him resent it; it merely earned his respect. From the day you were born you were called upon to discern what to choose.”

Lydia Millet. How the dead dream, Boston/New York, Mariner Books, 2009, p. 23.

Depuis le début de la pandémie, il m’arrive très souvent de marcher dans des cimetières. Dans un cimetière, plus particulièrement. Depuis quelque temps déjà, j’ai emménagé dans un appartement dont la fenêtre donne sur une allée de pierres tombales, avec un chemin qui est éclairé la nuit par des petites lumières disposées sur le sol, comme sur une piste d’atterrissage.

Au cours de mes promenades, je regarde les stèles funéraires. Certaines datent du dix-neuvième siècle, ou sont même plus anciennes. Je m’étonne souvent de constater le soin que l’on porte à nettoyer les pierres, à tailler la végétation autour des monuments, et à déposer des fleurs en guise de geste d’affection, pour signifier aux défunts que l’on pense encore à eux.

Dans How the Dead Dream de Lydia Millet, c’est quand le personnage de T. vit son premier deuil que l’on perd le plus de vue ce qui le rendait franchement antipathique au début du roman. Le vide intérieur qu’il ressent lorsqu’il traverse cette perte le rend plus humain, et fait certainement de lui un personnage crédible, dans la subtilité du portrait psychologique que Millet propose de lui. Je ne l’ai pas trouvé attachant, à proprement parler, mais je sens que c’est un personnage auquel je penserai la prochaine fois que je rencontrerai un type insupportable.