APCOM

A "novel of forgotten memories" which lands on the literary scene with the strength of a fresh breath of air, which scatters the pages and brings new life to the contemporary novel. "Déjà vu", by the 39 year old English writer Tom McCarthy, published in Italy by Isbn, is the story of an obsession, but also a manual for looking at reality, from a point of view which recalls Don Chisciotte and Hamlet, but also Francis Ponge and the legendary Thomas Pynchon. The story centers around the protagonist, "an antihero", in McCarthy's definition, who when hit by a mysterious object loses his memory. After he obtains a big compensation, the man without a name begins to experiment with déjà vu, and using the 1 million pounds he now has available, he enacts complex reconstructions of his memories, in which characters appear and everything is recreated down to the minimum detail. The research for spontaneity and fluidity of gestures, will lead the protagonist and his assistant, the Indian Naz, who's profession is "facilitator", to push himself evermore, culminating in an escalation of tension and drama on a hijacked airplane.

"I finished writing the novel, McCarthy said in an interview in Milano, in July 2001, and then I saw what happened on September 11th and thought they stole my ending". Despite the fact that it goes back to seven years ago, "Déjà vu" had trouble finding an editor, and after a first limited edition in 2004, it came out in the United States in 2006. June 1st of this year he was awarded the Believer Book Award 2007. "I am very happy about the prize", he told us. "My book is not destined to win prizes like the Pulitzer, its on the sidelines compared to the mainstream".

However the touching themes discussed by McCarthy are profound and crucial for our time and also reminds us of Don DeLillo's work , a novelist who examines the flow of information which crosses our lives. "I have definitely been influenced by DeLillo, McCarthy explained, but he is more conceptualist, and I wanted my book to be more material- not only ideas, but even more concrete things. A deeper influence, he added, comes from Francis Ponge with his observation on objects and how he describes them. But I am also influenced by Tarkovskij's cinema, which films a wall for six minutes."

The story narrated in "Dejà vu", is also the recounting of the failure of the attempt to create perfect copies of life. "The world, McCarthy explained, is always a step ahead. This is an anti-idealist, an anti-Hegelian novel. In philosophical terms there is a battle between Bataille and Hegel, with Bataille the winner. In other words there is an unpredictability of situations, things that do not make sense, something more which disorients and creates the inebriating sensation that grabs the antihero at the climax of the book.

McCarthy's novel, focuses therefore on the art of seeing, which presents itself almost like a performance of daily life. "This, according to the writer, is the essence of poetry and also of visual art". A way of acting, which offers a more profound vision of reality, and which makes art a type of "photographic negative" of reality, which one can duplicate, and reinterpret, to use the language of "Dejà vu", thousands of times. "Art survives reality, McCarthy said, art is what remains, it's the residue." The author's novel, is a residue of out of the ordinary dimensions, destined to leave a mark. When we ask him if art can save our life, the answer is unequivocal: "No, thank God no, no, no".