Vernon Subutex 1

by Virginie Despentes Narrated by Ángel Morón

Overview

De la enfant terrible que arrasa en Francia, llega La comedia humana de nuestro tiempo, una sátira que pone de manifiesto el hundimiento de la sociedad del bienestar y la inseguridad que se extiende por Europa.

Alex Bleach, ángel caído del rock francés, ha muerto de una sobredosis en la bañera de un hotel. Toda una desgracia para sus fans, pero sobre todo para Vernon Subutex, antiguo vendedor de discos cincuentón que aún conserva el magnetismo de antaño. Bleach no era un simple amigo, era la persona que le pagaba el alquiler, y su muerte ha arrojado a Vernon a la precariedad. Sin trabajo, sin dinero, sin familia y sin techo, la vida de Vernon parece abocada a una espiral de desgracias. Solo le quedan las filmaciones que realizó el propio Bleach y que dejó en su apartamento a modo de testamento.

«He escrito Vernon Subutex tomando como punto de partida el miedo que la clase media tiene en Francia a perder su casa por falta de recursos. [...] Conseguir trabajo pasados los cincuenta años parece muy improbable, y vemos surgir una nueva forma de precariedad que afecta a gente que ha vivido socialmente integrada hasta la madurez, y que de repente ya no puede pagarse el alquiler.

»He elegido un personaje central que tenía una tienda de discos por varias razones. Primero, porque la industria del disco cristaliza sin duda el cambio de un siglo a otro [...]. Segundo, porque el rock me parecía una cultura capaz de definir cómo los sueños de una juventud se habían roto. [...]

»A través de este dispositivo era posible intentar contar cómo Francia ha acogido un liberalismo salvaje, cómo las ideas de la extrema derecha han entrado en nuestros razonamientos, adoptando la forma de un pensamiento "rebelde", y también contar cómo envejece la gente que había jurado, de joven, ser radical y rechazar la normalidad.»
Virginie Despentes

Reseñas:
«¿Recuerdan aquellas novelas de los años 90? Historias con forma de collage sobre chicos de ciudad que se drogaban, escuchaban Sony Youth... [...] Sorpresa: aquel género sospechoso ha dado una obra inolvidable veintitantos años después: Vernon Subutex»
El Mundo

«Lo que queda de una generación cuando ha envejecido y ha perdido sus banderas y sus ilusiones. Virginie Despentes es una formidable DJ, con sentido del ritmo y de las secuencias, y atrevida con las mezclas.»
Le Monde

«Claves para comprender un país, Michel Houellebecq y Virginie Despentes denuncian las taras de la sociedad francesa.»
Le Journal de Dimanche

«Magistral y fulgurante. Una obra maestra.»
L'Express

«Una comedia humana contemporánea que seguramente deleitaría al propio Balzac.»
Le Parisien

«Se entra en esta novela como quien entra en territorio comanche. Un verdadero electrocardiograma.»
Le Figaro Littéraire

«Una novela densa, nerviosa, con la apariencia de un thriller. Una excelente radiografía de la sociedad francesa contemporánea.»
Les inrocks

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Virginie Despentes' Vernon Subutex Trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read. Everything about it is contemporary, right down to the fearless woman author who doesn't think of herself as a feminist and gives an impression at least in interviews of habitually killing rapists. . . I tore through these books the minute they were published, as if they were one of those TV series everybody loves so much. These novels with their depth and detail kick TV's sorry ass."
—Nell Zink, Bustle

"With Vernon Subutex, a sprawling, scintillating panorama of contemporary Paris, [Despentes] has produced a bona fide magnum opus . . . doing for Paris what Joyce did for Dublin."
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Despentes’s most recent work, The Vernon Subutex trilogy, which began appearing in 2015, catapulted her into the high echelons of the literary establishment . . . The series is a departure from her pulp writing, a sprawling Parisian epic à la Zola, focused as much on class as on sex . . . Taken as a whole, the trilogy is a rather extraordinary act of creation and destruction, a realistic Paris evoked, transformed, and torn apart."
—Nadja Spiegelman, New York Review of Books

"Vernon Subutex 1, written by Virginie Despentes and translated from French by Frank Wynne, is the kind of match that is so great it won’t occur to readers that these two entities — author and translator — might have ever been apart. In fact, their prose is so powerful, and so perfect, that we forget we’re even reading. Opening up Vernon Subutex 1 is more like stepping inside a thrilling, pulsing party and getting instantly mesmerized by the whirling couple at the center of the crowd."
—Jennifer Croft, The Lost Angeles Review of Books

"Like HBO’s Succession, the book revolves around an ensemble of horrible people . . .[Despentes] writes wickedly about people watching their privilege evaporate in real time and reacting with the full range of human ugliness . . . What fun!"
—Molly Young, Vulture

"Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk-rock George Eliot with a keen taste for the pitiable innards of her characters: no one else has her slyly penetrating eye, her spiky sense of humor, her razor wit that cuts like wire through the accumulated crud of our age's default thought patterns. In her masterful hands,Vernon Subutex becomes a droll, hilarious, insightful record of our unfortunate times."
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

"[A] searing social satire and biting portrait of contemporary France . . . Despentes’s timely novel is both arch and political without being too obvious that it’s either. This is a rollicking, brilliant send-up of masculinity, politics, and rock ’n’ roll."
—Publishers Weekly

"Masterly . . . Despentes is often described as a 'rock and roll' Balzac . . . She also resembles, by turns, William Gibson, George Eliot and Michel Houellebecq, with a sunnier attitude."
—Chris Kraus, The Times Literary Supplement

"Cool, plentiful, and absolute genius. Virginie Despentes has a license to ill. Vernon Subutex is one of the best books of this decade."
—Alex Gilvarry, author of Eastman Was Here

"A foul-mouthed, drug-fueled, searing satire of modern France . . . this novel is not for the faint of heart. But those who love a good skewering, admire Michel Houellebecq’s writing, or wished Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) was darker and dirtier will love it."
—Kathy Sexton, Booklist

"Despentes effortlessly slips in and out of these various lives, deftly switching styles each time (one chapter is as harsh as Bukowski, another as precise as Ernaux), and in so doing creates a new Comédie humaine depicting the various social milieux of the early twenty-first century."
—Jeffrey Zuckerman, World Literature Today

"[Vernon Subutex 1 is] a fantastic and disconcerting look at the outskirts of the music industry, what happens when society changes for the worst, and the legacies artists leave behind. It's a fascinating, immersive work of fiction — and there’s more on the way."
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn

"Reads like Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia mashed with Don Quixote and set in contemporary Paris . . . the writing is energetic, delving, and occasionally lovely . . . Despentes has a sharp eye fixed on [society's] transformation, and she transcribes it acutely."
—Katharine Coldiron, The Arts Fuse

"The Vernon Subutex trilogy is about a social and financial drop, the decline of a character into a world of drugs and music, porn stars, disillusionment. A satirical vivid journey rooted in the 90s, the result is funny and tragic, a wild ride."
—largehearted boy

"Like Zola in his day, Despentes critiques the depredations of a gilded age ... Vernon Subutex is a great novel of the failures of neo-liberalism ... It has a hurried, helter-skelter charm ... In the end, Vernon Subutex seems to hold fast to the radical potential of the 1960s and 70s, even as it is alive to the irony that its middle-aged characters, through the world they built, have done so much to undermine these ways of being."
—Dorian Stuber, Three Percent

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178912492
Publisher:	Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial
Publication date:	12/02/2021
Series:	Random House
Edition description:	Unabridged
Language:	Spanish

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