Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne

by Roland Topor, Andrew Hodgson (Translator)

Dans une ville inconnue d’Europe de l’Est, un homme esseulé et exilé de Paris, qui ne comprend pas la langue locale, erre par les rues… Honteux de sa corpulence, il fait pourtant diverses rencontres féminines, qui vont le conduire à se blesser le pied gauche. De cette plaie purulente, il ne tarde pas à tirer un étrange plaisir : car dans ce pied apparaît Suzanne, son amour disparu… Ce conte noir à l’ambiance « kafkaïenne » (on pense ici au Château) bascule alors dans une histoire d’amour fou très « toporienne ».

Après Le Locataire chimérique (1964) et Joko fête son anniversaire (1969), Portrait en pied de Suzanne (1978) vient clore dans l’œuvre de Topor sa « trilogie noire » romanesque, placée sous le signe de Kafka.

Dessinateur, peintre, écrivain, dramaturge, poète, cinéaste, acteur, etc., Roland Topor (1938-1997) dessine pour Hara-Kiri, reçoit le prix de l’Humour noir dès 1961 et cofonde le mouvement Panique. Son premier roman, Le Locataire chimérique, sera adapté au cinéma par Roman Polanski ; il écrira aussi des recueils de nouvelles et des pièces de théâtre. Du film d’animation La Planète sauvage à Marquis, en passant par Palace et Téléchat, il marquera de son humour noir le cinéma et l’audiovisuel.

Genres: France, Fiction, 20th Century, Novels

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

A French illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker, known for the surreal nature of his work. He was of Polish Jewish origin and spent the early years of his life in Savoy where his family hid him from the Nazi peril.

Roland Topor wrote the novel The Tenant (Le Locataire chimérique, 1964), which was adapted to film by Roman Polanski in 1976. The Tenant is the story of a Parisian of Polish descent, who develops an obsession regarding what has happened to his apartment's previous tenant. It is a chilling exploration of alienation and identity, asking disturbing questions about how we define ourselves. The later novel Joko's Anniversary (1969), another fable about loss of identity, is a vicious satire on social conformity. Themes Topor returned to in his later novel Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne (1978).

A new presentation of The Tenant by Roland Topor was released in October 2006. The book has Topor's original novel, a new introduction by Thomas Ligotti, a selection of short stories by Topor, a representation of Topor's artwork and an essay on the famous Roman Polanski film version. There is a working possibility of having Mr. Polanski write a new foreword to this edition.

In 2018, Atlas Press published Topor's Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne, translated and introduced by Andrew Hodgson. It was the first of Topor's novels to enter English in nearly 50 years.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five months of intermittent work later, I've finished reading this delirious never-translated-to-English 82 pages from Roland Topor, leaning heavily on a dictionary, probably learning several hundreds of new words, let alone all those I've forgotten already, finally able to make it through 15 well-comprehended pages in the last two days, which for me is some kind of a record. All this because I was absolutely needed to read more Topor. He's one of the best, Dalkey or another imprint with a surrealist/absurdist interest really needs to get more of these into translation. At last count he has 8 more novels including this one, plus numerous story collections, books of drawings, plays, strange collaborations.

Topor protagonists are always running into difficulties navigating the treacherous borders of body and identity, but none perhaps in such a comprehensive as our narrator here. Alone in an unfamiliar city whose name is pronounced "Carcass", our artist-antihero finds himself constantly at war with his own overweight body and sharp swings of apparent manic-depressive nature. Paragraphs of strange action through the unreal streets alternate with passages of self-critical or misanthropic observation and philosophizing, sometimes of a rather unreliable nature (I should really have started with something more concrete, as far as translation goes -- maybe some Redonnet next). As usual, the protagonists problems manifest as a kind of absurdist horror story, as early alienation gives way to revulsion of the self and body (an ankle wound of very peculiar aspect here, I should say no more) and finally to a kind of terrible and very physically manifested haunting. Here, the title comes in, a pun: idiomatically "Full-length portrait of Suzanne" and literally something like "portrait at the foot of Suzanne" or "portrait in foot of Suzanne". Trust me, it makes complete sense halfway in.

This is so good and quintessentially Topor (as well as manageably short), that I had originally considered translating it. But that ignores what a complicated and subtle task translation really is: being able to stagger into decent understanding while tightly gripping a pocket Larousse's is one thing, but being able to appropriately convey voice and connotation (or even to figure them out in another language) is entirely another, one that must take years of reaidng. Plus, I'm out of a job, now, and really won't have time. But here, for curious posterity, is the complete text as far as I got along with it:

For twenty-three days without respite I travel the labyrinthine black lanes of the foreign city. From time to time, I stop to draw within an out-of-date agenda book whose cover is falling to bits. I am unsure of whether I am a painter, architect, or clerk, but I must be poor since I attach great importance to my work. The reasons for which I had to flee Paris are ambiguous; in all cases I carefully avoid thinking on the circumstances of my departure.

The city is called Caracas, but there is no question of its being the capital of Venezuela. The residents pronounce "Carcass" with a gloomy and disquieting intonation. My parents were born in this miserable central-European country, whose language I do not know. In fact, there is an absolute incommunicability between its speakers and myself.

The houses possess lavish baroque facades, but I am sorry to report their state of dilapidation. Ornamentation and sculptural detail disappear beneath a layer of filth. The sky, a winter sky, gives hardly any light either. I lower my eyes to peer into the gloom, knowing already that my sketches will be incorrect. Form and meaning steal away, the angles change. The stones that I work at decoding cloud like dirty water. My hand gropes blindly over the glaucous scenery.

The darkness becomes so dense, now, that the page of my agenda dissolves into the night. A thought crosses my mind: "The drawing is just as confusing as the model."

This evidence overcomes my stubbornness. It is better to give up. I resign myself to returning to the hotel.
In passing along the river, I feel very tired, all at once. Happily, there is a bench nearby. I let myself fall there with the dreadful sensation that I am a burden from which someone has just freed himself.

The river is wide, but no reflection plays in the hollows of the waves.
An unlit bridge crosses, a little further on, to the left. When I commit myself to it, in a few minutes, my heart will pound.

I live on the other side, near the last stop of the tramways. From my seventh-floor window, I observe their noisy progress. The lines arrive nearly empty, and it is a small party if someone falls. Last night, I was lucky. I had opportunity to see five such travelers.

A pebble hits me hard on the neck. Half stunned I feel someone touching me, someone trying to take my billfold. By chance, I grab a hand. My robber is only a dirty kid, a sling around the wrist. I succeed in grabbing it, and we wrestle in silence with a wild energy. The combat finishes as suddenly as it began. Swung by his sling, the hoodlum rebounds off the parapet. I hear the diminishing echo of his galoshes as he scampers the length of the quay. Reality sets in with the pain. The pebble which wounded me has nothing in common with my shifting facades. It is not fuzzy. Its characteristics are simple but precise. Its weight crushes, its edges tear, its angles pierce. It knows how to make blood spurt.

My God, I am too fat. No one loves me. I am still young, yet. But it has always been so. In school, they called me Bouboule (*Ba-Ball, essentially) and a little later Big-Belly or Bacon-Fat, or Tripe. God, how I suffered. I alone knew the wealth of purity that was concealed beneath my rolls of fat. Everyone else considered with disgust this body which they believed to be the physical representation of my moral state. Thus do zoo visitors often imagine that the animals are types of guilty humanity, condemned to be exposed in all their degradation. The monkey is a lewd man and the tiger a deceitful man, the serpent a base man and the lion a malicious man. I am a pig. Gluttonous and dirty. The spirit incapable of raising itself from the ground. Divine gravity dictates to me this law: my body resides at ground level, there must wallow my soul.
I have often made the heroic decision to cease eating. Completely. Thus the alternatives would be simple: to grow thin or to die. My worthless lode of fat would melt, the cursed stuff! I would spring up, fleetingly translucent, just as I am. Unfortunately, I am not provided with sufficient willpower. Hunger easily triumphs over my best resolutions. At the first pang, I crack. And if, somehow, I persist in resisting, all the more spectacular is my failure. I binge at the delicatessen, on bread and on cream cakes. I swell to bursting. To destroy the vile body of which I am the victim. Too bad if my innocent soul is carried along in the fall! I will regret nothing.

The gravel rasps. A sound of furtive steps. Is it the kid returning to his post? No, a silhouette emerges from the shadow. A pale young women, clothed in black, comes towards me. Who is she? It appears that she begs. She takes my hand, holds me by the sleeve. What does she want? In fact, I am suspicious. Certainly she wants money. But scarcely the price of a meal. I will not dine, then, tonight. I am willing enough to make this sacrifice. It is necessary to follow her.

I accompany her as far as her room, in a building bordering the quay. There are two chairs, a table, a small gas stove on a kitchen cupboard by the sink, but no bed. A naked bulb hangs at the end of an interminable wire. It gives a disagreeably flooding light. I take off my coat, onto the back of a chair. I am embarrassed, disappointed that the women does not conform to custom.

She lights the stove, pours oil into the pan. Now, she beats two eggs in an earthenware bowl. I see only her back, agitated by jerks. I approach gently, but she pulls back immediately.
Her gaze flees from mine. I am seized by an intense suspician: that she, too, will be inaccessible. Does she find me more repugnant under electric light? Yes, I must undoubtedly have become more seductive in the shadow of my bench. Out of spite, out of rancor, I believe, I take off my shoes. The soles are worn through. The leather is shredded like cardboard. It is necessary that I buy another pair.
The girl smiles.
She offers me a seat, sets the table. I have before me an omelette and a glass of wine.

I eat while she watches me with benevolence, standing. When I'm done, she writes a sum on a piece of paper.
What is the point of this sum? She wants to know if I have the money? I leave a bill. She shakes her head.
Why does she refuse my bill? I rise and try to embrace her. She struggles, maddened.
-- Calm yourself, I will do you no harm.
I pick up my bill, slip on my coat. She throws herself on me, searching my pockets. She chooses one piece, two pieces of small change. This meager taking completely satisfies her. Without transition, she overwhelms me with gratitude. Of course, she is mocking me. I long to slap her, but do not dare. She is capable of rousing the whole quarter, of pretending that I am sex-mad, a criminal... I prefer to flee while it is still possible. She calls me back in the stairwell to throw me my shoes.

I have committed a gross error in taking the women in black for a prostitute. The explanation is apparent to me by the middle of the bridge: my hostess rounds out the end of the month by operating a restaurant out of her rooms. An honest cook, that's all. The menu offered is hardly richer than she is. One plate a day, and yet, perhaps one plate a week, or a month...
What valor for lowly pennies!
I despised her unfairly, the heart swollen at her wounding indifference. The humor of the situation becomes apparent to me at last. It is not necessary to confuse belly with under-belly! I must stop walking to catch my breath, I'm laughing so. What a superb misunderstanding! This fat body that I was prepared to hold against her flesh, she had judged at a glance, an expert. I was missing not love but nourishment.

My good humor transforms into exaltation. Like so many other heroes, here I became an authentic adventurer. For none could pretend otherwise: I have just lived a real adventure.

[Patrick.G.P · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unnamed protagonist wanders aimlessly around Caracas, dismally looking for some kind of meaning, some kind of familiarity in his surroundings and his own thoughts. Struggling with body issues and a nagging sense of hunger, the people around him speak a language he can’t understand, and he sees himself as something different, apart from all of them. One night giving in to his stomach’s plight he ventures out into the night in search of food and finds himself with a new pair of shoes, at least a size too small, which opens a gaping wound near his Achilles heel. The unnamed protagonist is now fighting a losing struggle against his instincts, his own body, and the strange city and its inhabitants.

Roland Topor’s novel is deeply disturbing, comic, and intensely surreal. Like Kafka, he portraits the inner workings of a human being who struggles to comprehend the world around him, forever doomed to be an outsider, an alien even within the confines of his own mind. The same questions that plague Trelkovsky in Topor’s The Tenant crops up here and are equally disturbing; the ambiguous threat of nearby people, neighbors, the constant feeling of doing something wrong, the alienation and loneliness that grows to insane heights that weigh down the decisions of the protagonist. But Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne delves deeper into the bizarre and surreal than the Tenant did, the narrative takes an unexpected turn around halfway and the prose turns both bizarre and quite disturbing at times. And few authors I’ve come across has managed to question the way people articulate the conscious self, is it the mind, the heart or the feet that decides the order of things? This edition from Atlas press also features illustrations from Topor to go with the book, and they are as wonderfully bizarre as the novel itself, creating a delightful visual aspect to the strangeness of the prose.

Roland Topor’s the finest author you’ve never read and keeping with the tradition of bleak surrealism ala Kafka and Schulz he carves out his own twisted version of France where people lurk in dim nightclubs eager to exact some vague violence upon you, shadowy city streets that refuse to make themselves known and worst of all, a betrayal of your own innermost thoughts and of the body itself. An absolute masterpiece of a novel here’s hoping that Atlas press will publish more of this remarkable author in the future.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much as in The Tenant, Topor's antihero in this brief novella completely fractures from reality at a certain point. The narrator here is both body-obsessed and body-repulsed. He acutely feels his difference from those around him, and not just because he is presently visiting a country where he does not understand the language. This reminded me in some ways of Gerhard Roth's The Will to Sickness, with its similar bodily descent into a narrative territory of extreme alienation. Topor serves up his corporeal dissociation with a dose of humor, though. The absurdity isn't quite as dark as in Roth's work. What happens here is hilarious at first, but as the situation wears on and Topor's narrator falls deeper into his fantasy/identity crisis (for who can say for sure which it is), I found it less compelling than the first half of the book. Cheers to Atlas Press for getting more English translation of Topor into print and to Andrew Hodgson who ably translates and writes a splendid introduction on Topor. Also be sure to check out Nate D's initial review of this, which includes some of his own translation from the original French, providing an interesting comparison to Andrew Hodgson's work.

[Merl Fluin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man travels to a foreign city where his mind falls apart. In a nutshell, that's it.

But of course, that's not it.

It was interesting to read this in rapid succession after The Tenant. There are a lot of similarities in both the set-up and the protagonist. It's as if Topor is looking at the same picture but from a different angle in each story.

In this book, the narrative is looser and more impressionistic, with fewer external incidents and more introspection. While I was reading it I thought that I liked it slightly less than The Tenant. But when I'd finished I found that this book had a longer afterburn.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roland Topor is very much like my beloved Boris Vian, in that he's mentioned, and thought of, but still a mystery figure, especially to the English reading world. I know of Topor's work as a visual artist/illustrator, but I also read his novel 'The Tenant" which was later made into a terrific film by Roman Polanski. Topor's literature/illustrations are a combination of absurdity and physical/psychological dread. Writing-wise, he reminds me a bit of Kafka, but even more focused on being uncomfortable in social settings. There are toilet anxieties, as well as sexual fear, or the feeling of being exposed to the public. It reminds me of my dreams when I walk into a school room full of people or classmates, but I forgot to put pants on and hoping no one will notice my nudity.

"Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne" is a novella focusing on the dread or the feeling of not being worthy in a world that is harsh and borderline logical in its treatment of the oddities of humans. This fable-like narrative is about a fat man whose left foot is his lover, or perhaps what he thinks of his diseased foot as - a broken relationship with a woman. Topor is an incredible presence in 20th-century European literature and fiction. Another childhood figure who was on the run from the Nazis, and that experience, of course, is tattooed in his existence. Like Georges Perec and Serge Gainsbourg, the experience of being alienated in Occupied France is a horror show, and all three artists/writers express that dread. "Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne" is a remarkable little book.

[Nate D]

At last! I've read this in French, and reviewed with modest translations attempts here, but I'm so looking forward to re-reading a proper translation. It's really great, somewhat a body horror, completely Topor in the best ways.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The left foot of a morbidly obese man turns into the shape of his old girlfriend, Suzanne. Old love is re-kindled and explored; jealousy and unfaithfulness ensue; vengeance and retribution provide the tragic ending. Yes: one man's desire trips him up.

[Benjamin Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve really fallen in love with Roland Topors writing. He may be the first reason in my life I’ve ever had a desire to learn another language. Head To Toe Portrait Of Suzanne appears to be the 3rd novel of his that has been translated to English(the other two are “The Tenant”, and “Joko’s Anniversary”) and it’s a crime that there aren’t more. Resting somewhere between Bruno Schultz and Frank Kafka, Roland Topor seems to combine Schultz’ evocative imagery and misanthropic existential horror with Kafkas philosophical prose, body horror, and surrealist story telling to write macabre tales of vileness, revulsion, self loathing, isolation, and entrapment. This novel much like the Tenant seems to have Topors signature humor by using things that disgust us and make us uncomfortable to tickle our mortality into a desperate attempt of laughter. I don’t want to spoil anything, because this story is a quick chaotic journey, and the outlandish surprises the reader stumbles upon along the way are half of the fun. If you enjoy absurdity, body horror, and grotesque relationships between humans and their anthropomorphized desires this is going to be a nice little nugget to chew on for a night of smelling your own perspiration in the cramped confines of your cozy reading corner.

[Bram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just your everyday, run-of-the-mill love story between a man and his foot.

[Bożek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Krótka historia o skutkach nocnego gastro

[Hebdomeros · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is sawdust on the floor. A little boy is crying because he banged his forehead on the corner of a table. Someone's dead.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alone in an unknown city, a man falls in love with the supple, soft curves of his grievously injured and grotesquely infected foot.

And by way of his interior monologue, increasingly directed at his new infatuation, we come to understand the parameters of his loneliness, his fears and past relationships, and, possibly, the outlines of a past crime. Topor's protagonist is a little bit Humbert Humbert, a little Hamlet, and a touch of turn-of-the-century Satan: a disgusting, down-on-his-luck wretch with an internal pathos that elicits empathy and fascination but not trust. The fact that he seems to be keenly aware of his predicament (and his role in the performance) makes him all the more compelling:

"It's a poor kind of protagonist really who just lies around on his bed. All the same, as the main character, wherever he goes adventure is sure to follow. He is bound to the world by complex laws. The trials he must endure encroach upon him. Actors continue to appear and impose themselves. Intense activity fills his room, the site on which all these dramas play out simultaneously. But as for me, I'm quite detached from all that."

The main character's last act captures his beloved by surprise. A final betrayal by an unreliable but gut-wrenchingly honest narrator.

[Nik Maack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I like Topor more for what he's trying to do, than what he accomplishes. This book is silly. But fun, in a way. Having read The Tenant (a man slowly goes mad), I find this book to be another case of a man slowly going mad.

Topor gets compared to Kafka. He's also a body horror type of guy. Sort of. In this very slim book, a man has an unusual relationship with his own body. Sort of.

I read it quickly to find out what happens. There are few surprises, I think. Still, I'm curious enough about Topor that I have ordered more of his books. That includes a book of his plays in French, as I can't find any English translation.

I find it odd to be reading an author that I find more inspirational than interesting.

[Paul Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Atlas Press] (2009). SB. 86 Pages. Purchased from chutzpah-uk.

The unnamed, unhinged, misanthropic protagonist is awash with paranoia and neuroses.

This short, strange novel was translated by Andrew Hodgson, who contributes a superb nine page introduction.

The text’s graced by several bizarre illustrations from the author.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels like a Kafka though in my mind I picture something like a Cronenberg film.

[josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

silly, gross, nightmarish, and an annoying protagonist. thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surrealism, self-loathing, and alienation. So: good stuff.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Evan]

Beautiful

[Cailyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book a couple of years ago and instantly loved it. On the second read, however, I was really disturbed by the first half of the book. Topor
masterfully crafts the storyline that immerses you in the exponentially increasing insanity of our main character. To do so, however, means making it through the first 20-30 pages.

Following the second half is the meat of the story and what really draws you to sympathize with and ponder the condition of the mad state of our main character. Once I made it to this point of this story, I suddenly remembered why I was so quick to love this uncomfortable novella.

A great short and thought-provoking story if you’re able to make it through the disturbing commentary threaded throughout the main character’s perspective.

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fine surreal horror in only the way Roland Topor can imagine it.