For the final part of this novel's first movement, our young hero, Serge Carrefax, travels to Klod?brady', a presumably Austro-Hungarian spa town, to take a cure. It's 1913, and Serge is two years older than the century. His problem is 'a blockage', 'encumbrances' in his bowel. 'Morbid matter ... Bad stuff ... black bile: mela chole,' the doctor says. 'Your illness is not a thing; it is a process. A rhythm. Toxins are secreted around body, organs become accustomed and, perverted by custom, addicted.' The deep link between spiritual state and bowel habit was well known to the ancients - viz the Aristotelian catharsis - but too often since then has been bypassed, though everybody knows in their gut of guts how real it is. What a relief then when the doctor diagnoses Serge's condition, prescribing enemas, massage and many glasses of the disgusting local water. Not that any of it works. Serge's stool is still 'solid, liquorice-black', its 'folds and creases' dotted with bits of blood. 'Jam, block, stuck,' the good doctor says. 'Instead of transformation, only repetition.'

LRB 9 September 2010 | PDF Download