A Sun for the Dying

Down And Out In Paris And Marseilles

Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000) was born in Marseilles to immigrant parents, giving him the life of an outsider. In the 1990's Izzo wrote a series of noir novels, known as the Marseilles Trilogy, which made him famous. His final book, "A Sun for the Dying" tells the story of a homeless, down and out man in his 40s, Rico. For three years, Rico has lived on the streets of Paris. When his only friend, a homeless man named Titi, freezes to death at a metro stop, Rico leaves Paris and journeys to Marseilles in the south of France. The story is harsh, violent, graphic and moving as it speaks of love, loneliness, and loss.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book takes the reader from Rico's life on the streets of Paris through a brutal beating he suffers from two pimps in Avignon. This part is narrated in the third person with an occasional reference to an "I" who comments on some aspect of the story he recounts. The second part of the book begins about a year after the first part. Rico has survived his beating and found his way to Marseilles. This portion of the story is told in the first person by the same narrator who speaks in part 1: an adolescent boy named Abdou, 13-15 years of age, who has smuggled himself into Marseilles from Algiers. Rico befriends Abdou. Part 1 tells what Abdou has understood from Rico about Rico's life. Part 2 is Rico's life in Marseilles as Abdou sees it.

Throughout the book, scenes from Rico's life on the streets are interspersed with flashbacks of his past life. The flashbacks center on Rico's search for love and his relationships with women. Rico wants to return, homeless and broken in heart, to Marseilles because as a young 20 year old fresh from military service he had fallen in love with Lea. He never forgot the beauties of their affair on the shore of Marseilles. Rico broke off with Lea and married a woman, Sophie, and the couple had a boy, Julien. Rico was modestly successful as a travelling salesman. When Sophie leaves Rico for another man, Rico is crushed. He begins drinking heavily, loses his job, has affairs with two women, Julie and Malika, before landing inexorably on the street homeless and alone. In Avignon, during the journey to Marseilles, Rico has his last live relationship with a woman, a young prostitute from Bosnia named Mirjana. The relationship is intense on both sides and ends with Rico's beating from the pimps.

With its violent and lurid character, the book is cast in the form of a spiritual journey as well as a quest by Rico for the memories of his lost loves -- melded together in Lea, Sophie and Mirjana. There are three authors, Kerouac, Saint-John Perse, and Homer, whose works help frame the journey.

The most important influence on the book is Kerouac. After Rico's friend Titi dies early in the story, Rico remembers how Titi compared their journey in life to those of the beats that Jack Kerouac described in "On the Road" and "The Dharma Bums". Kerouac's spiritual quest pervades Rico's own sad journey. Rico travels with the flamboyant and criminal Dede, possibly a reminder of Dean Moriarty, Sal Paradise's travelling companion in "On the Road."

As for the second author, Mirjana, the prostitute with whom Rico has a relationship, carries among her few possessions a book of poems by the French poet Saint-John Perse. Little known to Americans, Perse was a diplomat as well as a poet who was forced to flee Vichy France during the 1940's. Perse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960. His evocative, difficult poems of the hope of a better life for people inspire Rico briefly and give Mirjana the strength to live.

The third important author on the journey is Homer. Near the end of the book, when Rico befriends Abdou, the pair briefly discuss Homer's Odyessy with its parallels to their own wandering lives and searches for love. These books and many of the French song lyrics that appear in the novel do a great deal to set the books themes of searching, love, loss, and memory.

The novel is harsh and raw, reminding me in places of Charles Bukowski. The book spoke to me of the universal character of suffering and of the common elements of the human condition. For all the desperation of Rico's life, a small sense of hope comes through based upon the power of love. Rico's final understanding of his life and his search may not be the same as the adolescent narrator's understanding. This, Izzo's final book, is absorbing, disturbing, beautifully written and bittersweet.

Robin Friedman