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My Beautiful Bus
Poetic, comic, obsessed with minutiae, My Beautiful Bus is a welcome dose of serious frivolity at the expense of the contemporary novel. Based on an actual bus trip across France taken by Oulipo-member Jacques Jouet in the late '80s, his fictional reconstruction of the experience twenty years later focuses not so much on the scenery as on the possibilities offered an author by the eponymous vehicle and its occupants. With detours through everything from Puss in Boots to Pascal's maxims, we are introduced to each eccentric passenger as they climb aboard (one, for example, claims to have a corpse in his luggage), every character bringing us one step further into Jouet's imaginative universe: their conversations, preoccupations, reactions, and possibilities taking their places as elements of a fiction in the narrator's mind. In the final pages it becomes clear that the book itself is a sort of bus, boarded impulsively and with no fixed destination in mind, and that it has carried its readers to places they could not have imagined.
- GenresFiction
135 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Jacques Jouet
103 books7 followersJacques Jouet is a French writer and has been a participating member of the Oulipo literary project since 1983.
He is a poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and plasticine artist specializing in collages. As a member of l'Oulipo, Jouet became its focus in June 2009 when he began publicly writing a serialized novel in five days. He first became involved with Oulipo in 1978, stemming from a writing course directed by Paul Fournel, Georges Perec, and Jacques Roubaud.
His serial The Republic of Mek Ouyes was broadcasted simultaneously on radio and on the web, through the site of his publisher, P.O.L.
Jouet wrote Poèmes de métro while riding the underground trains of the Paris Métro.
He is a poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and plasticine artist specializing in collages. As a member of l'Oulipo, Jouet became its focus in June 2009 when he began publicly writing a serialized novel in five days. He first became involved with Oulipo in 1978, stemming from a writing course directed by Paul Fournel, Georges Perec, and Jacques Roubaud.
His serial The Republic of Mek Ouyes was broadcasted simultaneously on radio and on the web, through the site of his publisher, P.O.L.
Jouet wrote Poèmes de métro while riding the underground trains of the Paris Métro.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 16, 2019
Senryu Review:
Whimsical bus ride
with Pascal and Puss-in-Boots
fails to captivate
Whimsical bus ride
with Pascal and Puss-in-Boots
fails to captivate
May 25, 2013
french novelist, playwright, and poet jacques jouet was co-opted into oulipo some thirty years ago. four of his texts (five, if you count an e-book-only translation) have since made their way into english, of the more than 60 he has written. each of them is quite a bit different from the others, though they all tend to be playful affairs. my beautiful bus (mon bel autocar) is a fictionalized account of jouet's bus trip across france in the late 1980s. perhaps not as plot-driven as some of his other works, my beautiful bus instead focuses more on the characters and the possibilities that await them. though admittedly written using a constraint of some form, as with many a good oulipan, jouet chooses to forgo revealing it to the reader. like the author himself in the story, we're privy to all of the observations and private conversations that abound on public transportation (including the aberrant and unbelievable). my beautiful bus is a meandering affair of memory and invention, as well as an unexpectedly quaint escapade (despite the cadaver) not unlike the occasional quiet reverie on an otherwise crowded transport.
...no matter how it looks, we shouldn't move from the story toward morals, nor should we sneak from morals toward the story, rather, we should progress from openly self-conscious reflection toward the invented story, with provocation as its only end: a story is unique, it generally has nothing to show, nothing to represent, other than what could potentially be real.*translated from the french by eric lamb
July 6, 2013
Jouet's prose sang to me from the very first sentence. In his wonderfully crafted novella, Jouet conjures up emotions of happiness and laughter as he takes you along a journey through France aboard "My Beautiful Bus."
The characters are all so diverse, from those that travel on their journey from here to there and the locals who get on and off between villages where friends and relatives reside. The landscape passes by the windows of the meticulously maintained bus that is ready for every stretch of the journey. From the eccentric driver of the bus, Basile, to the quirky passengers, to include the author, readers will laugh out loud. Jouet will make you feel as though you're riding along watching the windows fog up inside as more and more passengers board at the various stops along the way in the early hours of the day.
I went there, to every local, along with Jouet as he reflects on the writings of other philosophical authors of days past. For the proud reader, "My Beautiful Bus" is a piece that should be displayed prominently on the shelf in the main room of the house. I was torn when I finished reading this light-hearted story, an escape that took me from the grind of day-to-day. Torn because the journey was over, but elated with happiness. Jouet is a master of wit and observation and to have it translated into English with such accuracy and emotion was for me a delicious treat.
The characters are all so diverse, from those that travel on their journey from here to there and the locals who get on and off between villages where friends and relatives reside. The landscape passes by the windows of the meticulously maintained bus that is ready for every stretch of the journey. From the eccentric driver of the bus, Basile, to the quirky passengers, to include the author, readers will laugh out loud. Jouet will make you feel as though you're riding along watching the windows fog up inside as more and more passengers board at the various stops along the way in the early hours of the day.
I went there, to every local, along with Jouet as he reflects on the writings of other philosophical authors of days past. For the proud reader, "My Beautiful Bus" is a piece that should be displayed prominently on the shelf in the main room of the house. I was torn when I finished reading this light-hearted story, an escape that took me from the grind of day-to-day. Torn because the journey was over, but elated with happiness. Jouet is a master of wit and observation and to have it translated into English with such accuracy and emotion was for me a delicious treat.
September 11, 2023
ciekawy koncept, od połowy podobało mi się najbardziej. Początek ma dość dziwny próg wejścia 😅
May 25, 2013
This book (which was originally published in French in 2003) is the third book I've read by Jouet, and my second-favorite, after Upstaged. It's, well, about a bus trip, but not really: it's about story and possibility and motion, and it's pleasingly metafictional, and I probably would have liked it more if I felt any particular attachment to Blaise Pascal or Charles Perrault or Puss in Boots. Still, pretty pleasing.
From the start, the book has a playful/serious tone: the first-person narrator opens by wondering, "among the legible world's variety of propositions, or more specifically among those candidates under the category of road signs, which legible suggestion deserves to be called the most counter-logical and disarming" (11). (His examples: how "deer crossing" signs appear in places where you hardly ever see deer; how the bases of "no dumping" signs are often festooned with piles of trash.) It's funny, but it's also reflective of a concern with things and signs in the semiotic sense: the items in the pile of trash include bits of "printed material, which no longer signify by themselves, a sort of illiterate provocation aimed at overly abstract or arbitrary prohibitions" (12). There's also something here about expectations: we see a "deer crossing" sign and are disappointed if there are no deer—this resonates with a few scenes later in the book, conversations about travel and expectations/reality/disappointment.
Jouet, of course, is a member of Oulipo, a group that works by means of literary constraint, and the idea of constraints, in story and in life, comes up numerous times in this book. "A closer look will reveal that the narrative is, in fact, rigorously following logical paths that it is unaware of, or that the current page is hiding," the narrator says at one point (14). A central character, Basile, is the silent driver of the bus of the title: a man whose work-life is a series of constraints: places to be at certain times, tasks to complete before the bus can move, a set order of stops, a set route. (At one point, Basile rebels against all this order, driving where he wants to go, at which point the narrative also turns bewildering, disordered: the bus is in a desert; the bus is in a forest; the bus has no windowpanes; the bus is at the edge of the savanna.) Then there is freedom within the frame of a constraint: the narrator talks about a bus trip on which "only the points of departure and arrival were explicitly set, the stops in between being determined by the caprices of exhaust pipes, but nevertheless subject to my rule of no trains, no taxis, no hitchhiking, and no car rentals" (25).
Not that the book is all metafictional play and literary abstraction: I am, as you may have noticed, a sucker for good descriptive passages, and I appreciated ones like this:
Or this: I'm also a sucker for writing with lists, like:
I liked the way this book is narrow and expansive at once: there's the narrator, and Basile the bus driver, and his wife Odile, and Hans, who's a young German tourist who says he's got a corpse in his luggage, and the focus is pretty much centered on them and the bus: but there's also the dynamics of schoolkids on the bus, and the dynamics of passengers on buses in general, and the stories Hans tells Odile, and a great conversation they have where she talks about the romance of travel, all the things she would see if she went to exotic places, and he keeps undercutting her words with descriptions of squalor or banality. There are also the stories Odile tells, including the story of when Basile became silent. And then there are the surreal bits, the bus-in-a-savanna/traveling impossibly bits, which I wasn't so crazy about, but still, I'm glad I read this.
From the start, the book has a playful/serious tone: the first-person narrator opens by wondering, "among the legible world's variety of propositions, or more specifically among those candidates under the category of road signs, which legible suggestion deserves to be called the most counter-logical and disarming" (11). (His examples: how "deer crossing" signs appear in places where you hardly ever see deer; how the bases of "no dumping" signs are often festooned with piles of trash.) It's funny, but it's also reflective of a concern with things and signs in the semiotic sense: the items in the pile of trash include bits of "printed material, which no longer signify by themselves, a sort of illiterate provocation aimed at overly abstract or arbitrary prohibitions" (12). There's also something here about expectations: we see a "deer crossing" sign and are disappointed if there are no deer—this resonates with a few scenes later in the book, conversations about travel and expectations/reality/disappointment.
Jouet, of course, is a member of Oulipo, a group that works by means of literary constraint, and the idea of constraints, in story and in life, comes up numerous times in this book. "A closer look will reveal that the narrative is, in fact, rigorously following logical paths that it is unaware of, or that the current page is hiding," the narrator says at one point (14). A central character, Basile, is the silent driver of the bus of the title: a man whose work-life is a series of constraints: places to be at certain times, tasks to complete before the bus can move, a set order of stops, a set route. (At one point, Basile rebels against all this order, driving where he wants to go, at which point the narrative also turns bewildering, disordered: the bus is in a desert; the bus is in a forest; the bus has no windowpanes; the bus is at the edge of the savanna.) Then there is freedom within the frame of a constraint: the narrator talks about a bus trip on which "only the points of departure and arrival were explicitly set, the stops in between being determined by the caprices of exhaust pipes, but nevertheless subject to my rule of no trains, no taxis, no hitchhiking, and no car rentals" (25).
Not that the book is all metafictional play and literary abstraction: I am, as you may have noticed, a sucker for good descriptive passages, and I appreciated ones like this:
It's the icy part of the route when winter insists on it, the part where you feel sick in the morning on an empty stomach, and the part where the sun makes glorious halos two months out of the year at a precise time of the day, piercing through the fog and the trembling leaves. (30)
Or this: I'm also a sucker for writing with lists, like:
On the left, a cold plowed field, wheat grass, russet grain, the gold glint of thatched roofs and varied states of the vineyards, a bridge or terraces being built, a water tower that wasn't there the year before, political campaign posters. Plowed fields again, subdued wheat, their husks flattened to the ground by thunderstorms, the combine harvesters occupying the entire width of the road, and the round bales like jelly rolls, products of the advent of new machines invented to conserve straw and hay. The items on Basile's agenda: the uninhabited thatched roofs, a few larks, endless rows of structures belonging to a breeder of cooped and enclosed quails, four-furrow ploughs turning over their claws from one end of the field to the other. (55-56)
I liked the way this book is narrow and expansive at once: there's the narrator, and Basile the bus driver, and his wife Odile, and Hans, who's a young German tourist who says he's got a corpse in his luggage, and the focus is pretty much centered on them and the bus: but there's also the dynamics of schoolkids on the bus, and the dynamics of passengers on buses in general, and the stories Hans tells Odile, and a great conversation they have where she talks about the romance of travel, all the things she would see if she went to exotic places, and he keeps undercutting her words with descriptions of squalor or banality. There are also the stories Odile tells, including the story of when Basile became silent. And then there are the surreal bits, the bus-in-a-savanna/traveling impossibly bits, which I wasn't so crazy about, but still, I'm glad I read this.
November 29, 2015
My beautiful wife brought this book back from a work thing overseas because she knows I love Dalkeys. How nice is that? I hadn't heard of Jacques Jouet so I didn't know he was an OuLiPo member. Not sure how he fits into the oeuvre of OiLiPo but this little book is pretty special. Seems to me it's about an author letting his characters dictate their own route within a work (which, of course, is impossible). The bus has a route, and a driver and stops to make and repeat - but it's not on rails. It can go anywhere. So the author takes an observer's role in the back of the bus (where the delinquents frequent) and watches as his characters intersect with fairy-tale, lose their motivations, forge unlikely connections, and wander lost and confused. Not sure about all the Puss in Boots stuff though. That had me beat.
July 31, 2013
A quickie read in the bathtub and outside in my yard. in a way "My Beautiful Bus" reminds me of Boris Vian's "Autumn in Peking" but without his wit. This is a very nice book about a bus trip that really doesn't go anywhere. You get various eccentric characters or situations and then it just rides. A more literary version of "Magical Mystery Tour." But for sure if you are into Raymond Queneau, you should pick up this book, but I don't think it is good as that writer - at least this specific book.
March 20, 2013
“A trip is a launching pad.”
& this book is a bus. A magical mystery tour. A play between fictions & fables & personal history; as in:
“A traveler is a transparency. He has no past that compromises you, and no future to get in your way. He’s sometimes full of banal stories that become impressive if he knows how to deliver them right, playing a role in them himself.”
& also pertinent to buses and the internet:
“every public space sparks within its user a reflex of privatization.”
Spread out. Make yourself at home in the story. & enjoy the ride.
& this book is a bus. A magical mystery tour. A play between fictions & fables & personal history; as in:
“A traveler is a transparency. He has no past that compromises you, and no future to get in your way. He’s sometimes full of banal stories that become impressive if he knows how to deliver them right, playing a role in them himself.”
& also pertinent to buses and the internet:
“every public space sparks within its user a reflex of privatization.”
Spread out. Make yourself at home in the story. & enjoy the ride.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews