Au-dessus l’odyssée

Au-dessus l’odyssée – Atrabile’s most loyal readers are familiar with Jason, a Norwegian author whose cult book Wait… we published over twenty years ago. Since then, Jason has continued to publish titles, with Atrabile or other publishers, digging his furrow with a beautiful constancy, without worrying about fashions.

In the twenty or so stories that make up Au-dessus l’odyssée,worlds meet, turn upside down and mix in crazy and improbable hybrids: Spock takes himself for Foujita, the Prisoner visits Kafka, the works of Joyce and Tarantino merge, Moses faces Alain Delon, Sartre takes himself for Travolta, and we cross again, in no particular order, Perec (as a private detective), Athos, Frida Kahlo, Van Gogh, Sinatra, Lemmy, Zappa, Bukowski, in universes that look in turn to Dostoyevsky, Ed Wood or EC Comics.

With an exemplary economy of means, an obvious sense of narration and ellipsis, and a cold and deadpan humor, Jason – who seems to know all the workings of fiction – dismantles, mixes, turns around and diverts all these references, has a lot of fun, and so do we. Wonderful!