I first became aware of the group after its LP The Landlord was published by iconic American underground label Siltbreeze. It’s a psychological operation gone awry, a microcosm of the world we live in made manifest through rocking sounds. Catastrophe is the subject of the book, and it is the fate of those subject to it. This is a unique group with an undeniably contemporary sound. If it is an ethical work, it offers an ethics of atrocity. Éden, Éden, Éden affects the nerves directly with the brutality of fact. Éden, Éden, Éden is a world without love, lovingly described. It attacks not only the idea of monotheistic theologies but their very structure-the grammar of faith-and with it the spiritualization of all careor desire. The book itself is an atrocity, an assault on the notion of “subjectivity” common to both the realist novel and Western psychological norms. The text is one sentence, a breathless single paragraph, articulated only with the caesuras provided by commas, colons, and backslashes. In his novel Éden, Éden, Éden Guyotat radicalizes narration by eliminating traditional distinctions between characters, between character and setting, and between scenes. His writing of the war echoes and extends these conflicting capacities, radicalizing and ultimately shattering the problems and processes of recognition and identification. In this way, he experienced the war as perpetrator, witness, and victim. For these efforts, he was jailed in solitary confinement for three months. Published in 1970, it was banned from being advertised and sold to minors. He did what he could to encourage other soldiers to desert. Guyotats second big book, Eden, Eden, Eden, was also inspired by wartime Algeria.

The atrocities he witnessed while in uniform, however, convinced him that the war was wrong. Pierre Guyotat joined the French colonial army in Algeria willingly.

Eden eden eden by pierre guyotat