Holiday in a Coma & Love Lasts Three Years: two novels by Frédéric Beigbeder
One night in a Parisian nightclub and the aftermath of a marriage provide the stories for these two novels by Frederic Beigbeder, award-winning author of ‘Windows on the World’.In ‘Holiday in a Coma’, Marc Marronnier, a shallow, superficial, rich Parisian who works as an advertising executive, is invited by his old friend to the opening of a new nightclub called The Shitter (a satirical take on the famous Paris nightclub Les Bains Douche). Taking place over a single unforgettable night, the novel documents everything from the pit-bull bouncer on the door, to the drugs, cocktails and wannabes who frequent the club, and Marc’s attempts to seduce a catwalk model – any one will do. A catalogue of degeneracy, drugs, sex and decibels, ‘Holiday in a Coma’ is written with a fury and passion that reflect the author's own relationship with a world and he both loves and loathes.In ‘Love Lasts Three Years’, Marc Marronnier has just been divorced and – shallow opportunist that he is – has decided to write a book about it. He has a theory that love lasts no more than three years, and here – recounting the highs and lows of his marriage and taking us through brash nightclubs, vainglorious offices and soulless designer apartments – he brings to bear the theoretical and the empirical to prove his point. Both frightening and funny, the book reads like a diary: sometimes tender and real, sometimes fantastical and cruel, peppered with Beigbeder’s acerbic one-liners and trademark wit.
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FRÉDÉRIC BEIGBEDER
HOLIDAY IN A COMA and LOVE LASTS THREE YEARS
Two Novels
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY FRANK WYNNE
Contents
Title PageHoliday In A ComaDedicationEpigraph7.00 P.M. 8.00 P.M.9.00 P.M.10.00 P.M.11.00 P.M.12.00 A.M.1.00 A.M.2.00 A.M. Interval3.00 A.M.4.00 A.M.5.00 A.M.6.00 A.M.7.00 A.M.Love Lasts Three YearsDedicationEpigraphChapter I: Connected VesselsChapter I: Endless LoveChapter II: The Gay DivorcéChapter III: On The BeachChapter IV: The Saddest Human Being I Ever MetChapter V: Best Before DateChapter VI: The End Of The RoadChapter VII: Some Tips For Surviving HeartbreakChapter VIII: For Those Who Missed The BeginningChapter IX: Rain Over CopacabanaChapter X: Palais De Justice, ParisChapter XI: The Human Man At ThirtyChapter XII: Lost IllusionsChapter XIII: Flirting With DisasterChapter XIV: Provisional ResurrectionChapter XV: The Wailing WallChapter XVI: Would You Like To Be My Harem?Chapter XVII: The Horns Of A DilemmaChapter XVIII: Highs And LowsChapter XIX: Flee Happiness Lest It Run AwayChapter XX: Things Fall ApartChapter XXI: Question MarksChapter XXII: ReunionChapter XXIII: LeaveChapter XXIV: The Beauty Of BeginningsChapter XXV: Thank You, WolfgangChapter XXVI: Hot Sex ChapterChapter XXVII: Letters (I)Chapter XXVIII: The Depths Of DespairChapter XXIX: The South Bitch DietChapter XXX: Letters (Ii)Chapter XXXI: L’amantChapter XXXII: DunnoChapter XXXIII: The Impossible DecrystallisationChapter XXXIV: The Theory Of Eternal ReturnChapter XXXV: Tender Is The NightChapter XXXVI: FreelanceChapter XXXVII: The Romantic CynicChapter XXXVIII: Letters (Iii)Chapter XXXIX: Still FallingChapter XL: Conversation In A PalaceChapter XLI: ConjecturesChapter XLII: The Cunning PlanChapter XLIII: A Cheap TrickChapter XLIV: Letters (Iv)Chapter XLV: SoChapter II: Three Years Later In FormenteraChapter I: D-Day –7Chapter II: D-Day –6Chapter III: D-Day –5Chapter IV: D-Day –4Chapter V: D-Day –3Chapter VI: D-Day –2Chapter VII: D-Day –1Chapter VIII: D-DayAlso By Frédéric BeigbederCopyrightAbout the Publisher
For Diane Β.,I fell,Head over heels.
Let’s dance
The last dance
Tonight
Yes it’s my last chance
For romance
Tonight.
Donna Summer, ‘Last Dance’
Casablanca Records
Second novels are written in a secondary frame of mind.
Me
He combs his hair, puts on or takes off his jacket or his scarf as one might toss a flower into a grave which is still open’
Jean-Jacques Schuhl
Rose Poussière
Marc Marronnier is twenty-seven years old, he has a beautiful apartment, a cool job and still he doesn’t kill himself. Go figure.
His doorbell rings. Marc Marronnier loves a lot of things: the photos in the American edition of Harper’s Bazaar, Irish whiskey straight up, the avenue Vélasquez, a song (‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys), chocolate éclairs, a book (les Deux Veuves by Dominique Noguez) and belated ejaculation. Doorbells ringing is not one of those things.
‘Monsieur Marronnier?’ asks a bell-boy in a motorcycle helmet.
‘In the flesh.’
‘This is for you.’
The bell-boy in the motorcycle helmet (he looks like ‘Spirou and the Golden Bowl’) hands him an envelope approximately three feet square, jiggling impatiently as though he urgently needs a piss. Marc takes the envelope and gives him a ten-franc piece to disappear out of his life. Marc Marronnier doesn’t need a bell-boy in a motorcycle helmet in his life.
Inside the envelope, he is utterly unsurprised to discover the following:
A NIGHT IN SHIT
* * * * * * * * *
Grand Opening Night
Place de la Madeleine
Paris
He is, however, pretty surprised to find, stapled to the invitation:
See you tonight, you old queerJoss DumoulinDJ
JOSS DUMOULIN? Marc was sure he was living in permanent exile in Japan. Or dead.
But dead men don’t host club nights.
And so Marc Marronnier brushes his fingers through his hair, a gesture that indicates a certain inner contentment. It has to be said, he’s been waiting a long time for ‘a night in Shit’. Every day for the past year he’s walked past the construction site for the new club, ‘the biggest nightclub in Paris’. And every time he passes, he thinks, on opening night, there are going to be a truckload of honeys.
Marc Marronnier aims to please. This is probably why he wears glasses. When they’re perched on his nose, his colleagues think he looks like William Hurt, only uglier. (NB His myopia dates from his secondary school days at Louis-le-Grand, his scoliosis from his days studying at Sciences Po.)
It’s official: Marc Marronnier is going to have sexual relations tonight, whatever happens. He may even do the deed with more than one person, who knows? He has packed six condoms, for he is an ambitious young man.
Marc Marronnier senses he is going to die, in forty years or so. When he’s quite finished getting on our nerves.
Society scoundrel, armchair rebel, photo-opportunity mercenary, disgraceful bourgeois, his life consists of listening to messages on his answering machine and leaving them on other answering machines. All the while watching thirty channels simultaneously using picture-in-picture on cable TV. He sometimes forgets to eat for several days.
