”The intellectuals! Here we have a precious sort of citizens the lack of which our country cannot complain. Thanks God we have enough of them!” Caragiale cried out ironically. Lucian Bagiu is focusing his attention toward intellectual problems, more precisely toward the academic world with its imperfections just right to banter. Keeping a close eye on the well established tradition of the campus fiction of the English literature (Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge) the young Transylvanian academic (an assistant lecturer to the Romanian language and literature Department of the Alba Iulia University) applies perfectly a postmodern recipe.

The readers from anywhere and everywhere must be warned: “Bestiary” is not a novel in the ordinary meaning; you will not find the traditional epic development nor plot, structure or outcome. On the other hand we witness an experimental novel; we step inside the secret recipe of writing a text that is deconstructing itself continuously. The writer unfolds ostentatiously panoply of rhetorical, composition and stylistic methods that bear a programmatic stamp of eclecticism. He takes to all sorts of postmodern “farces”: breaking up of the form, discontinuity, spraying/relativity/approximation of the narrative perspective, self-referring, meta-textual reflexive, inter-textual. The result is a parody pastime, a subtle practice of refined irony strewn with many bookish references that do not attack the reader but attracts him as an accomplice.

Hence as ingredients for the “salad” there are the characters: the assistant lecturer Paul Tristan, the venerable septuagenarian full professor, the head of the Department and a few other distinguished guild colleagues whom we shall name as speciae aeternitas: the bachelor, the bohemian poet, the feminist wren/garden warbler and bonus the professor’s granddaughter Isolda also known as Iza, which is foredoomed to Tristan, of course (is there any other way?). Well, moreover we season with some instances of the narrative communication, some disguised as characters. Watch out: things are not exactly what they seem to be! We speak about the eye-witness narrator (Ew, a beautiful English university lecturer), an alleged author, Elby, which pokes his nose/interferes and starts talking to the readers, regardless of the readers` wish or not to communicate, and even David Lodge himself. Salt and pepper cannot miss; they take the shape of an international symposium organized in Vienna. The head of the Department retires to a monastery, however not before commissioning Tristan to attend instead of him. I will let you find out by yourself how the mayonnaise thickens or curdles or how our book changes its appearance with every read chapter.

After he kept on playing with the narrative perspectives, the author inserts at random also a cinematographic script, turns into diary pages with gothic echo. He does not spare us neither with epistolary genre, the facts ask for this, meanwhile the deeds turned into an esoteric freemason air. And the humor is the uniting agent. Regardless of style or technique, the irony and the comical situations are charming, you split with laughter, mark my words! This is an adequate manner to undermine the sometimes fruitless or anachronistic foundations of the essential-elitist academic world.

(Irina Filipache , 16 apr 2008, in TimeOut Bucuresti)



A Suicidal Don

I had found a fragment of Lucian Bâgiu`s novel (Bestiary. Oriental Salad with Imaginary and Self-Conceited Academics, Cartea Românească Publishing House, 2008) in a journal edited in Focşani, long before the entire novel was published. I immediately voted confidence in it as being one of the few authentic campus novels of Romania. It is even more authentic than Andrei Bodiu`s Bulevardul eroilor (The Heroes` Boulevard). I was not wrong to a certain extent.
The fragment pointed out the courage of exposure, the presence of a subtle irony sometimes transformed into a satire. “I see”, I told myself, “look, there is something of David Lodge`s caustic art of writing…, a keener one...”. After the moment I read the entire volume I came to realize that the author is highly aware of his model: Lodge and Lodge again. It was neither Martin Wesler`s nostalgic and obscure outlook, nor the graphic atmosphere which Javier Marias created in Todas las almas (All Souls). The problem is that even Lodge himself becomes obsolete at a certain moment. Being tired of Linguistics and Old Slavonic, the narrator pines for teaching a course on Narratology - that is actually employed in his novel. The result is the narrative digression: methods, tactics, set-ups and techniques. Self-fiction, meta-fiction, para-fiction, self-referring, etc. As I was saying, it is applied narrative, but in an exhaustive manner. At a certain moment, the plot and the characters do not even matter, and all that matters is the diegetic arrangement. Everything is crowned by pouring prose into scenario: off-voices, musical background, interior shots, directives for filming, and stage management, etc. Say no more, if I were the Minister of Education, I would appoint Lucian Bâgiu coordinator of all narrative and creative writing courses in the whole country. Despite the academic autonomy!
The approach is an inductive one: it starts from a small provincial university that is willing to sacrifice everything with a view to diminishing its expenses and attending conferences in Europe. The characters are outlined very well, and they are engaged in a “bite and run away” game. The fun is frequently outrageous, and breaks out from registering of gestures, spasmodic tics and ridiculous conflicts, sometimes pushed up to the court. It is a world of (pseudo-)specialists that is academically hide-bound and convinced that it is the hub of the universe. The writer is a great master in building up scenes with relishing dialogue, and verging on the absurd. One could say he is Ion Ghica’s, Tudor Muşatescu’s or Eugen Ionescu’s great-grandson. Yet, he is not satisfied with such illustrious predecessors. He claims fir Ion Budai-Deleanu, the master of explanations and subtext re-writing, too. This is how Bagiu acts as well. He displays his knowledge down page because he is not sure if the text is self-sufficient itself.

In the department there is a debate upon the march of the Students` League against domestic violence perpetrated by men against women. Tristan, one of the narrators, is seized and given in marriage to Isolda, full professor’s granddaughter with suave name. As I was saying, Bâgiu amuses himself terribly well by playing some sort of paintball game with both ancient, pre-modern and modern Romanian literature, as well as the contemporary English writers. Another haunting idea is represented by James Cook’s exotic expeditions. The still-frames are delicious in bantering formalisms: “in that medieval hall posture, I, with my lips suspended above the stretched hand, bowed in a purely minstrel gesture”.
The narrator multiplies himself on the line of a schizophrenic postmodernism. The waiter hisses us from the infra-text: “pssst! It is me!”; then NOA, the Anonymous Omniscient Narrator appears, and the Eye-Witness breaks in on the dialogue, too. The Eye-Witness is suspect of being Lodge himself. The chronotope is also broken, split, and multiplied. Genette is taken by his collar in the infra-text and so on, and so on….
What else do we find out after successive refocalizations? Tristan gets a daughter named Sânziana. She obviously becomes Pepelea’s friend. A Băsescu type president flanked by a captain named Neaşsu (of Campulung?) alights at Writers’ Villa in Neptun. There is also a Viennese symposium where Tristan (the one that expiates the collective guilt, “male goat”) is accompanied by Eva, a sexy and also over-learned student in the History of the Romanian Language. The head of the department retires into a monastery and coordinates his co-workers by emails written in the ecclesiastical language that is full of clichés. We have also an account of a travel distinct of the one written by Golescu. All that remains to be proved is the fact that Neacşu`s Letter from 1521 is the handicraft of “a foreign secret agent working for the Hungarians” and the Romanian language is older than French.
As one can see, the prose writer rather leaps over the male of the mare. He overlaps characters, conditions and historical happenings without any inconvenience. His wish for pamphlet is too obvious and the comicalness of language and context are sometimes too rigid. It is a too cultural approach. Yet, since I am familiar with his previous writings, I notice a shifting from fairy-tales and fairy scenes ironically dealt towards contemporary (political and academic) realism. I do not know to what extent Lucian Bagiu will be able to imbue his mind with succulent life, but he has already proven that he is a remarkable satirist. And another thing: one might notice the subtlety of his biting remarks that is a sign of an elegant nature. As Lodge`s compatriots would say: “he is so unstreet!”.

(Felix Nicolau, in Revista Luceafarul, nr. 36, 29 octombrie 2008)


Lucian Bâgiu, the master of deconstruction


Lucian Bâgiu rises our attention again through his latest novel, Bestiar. Salată orientală cu universitari închipuiţi (published by Cartea Românească, 2008), which has been announced by his previous books, all of them having in common features such as confession, epistolary style, the mixture of narrative voices, fragmentation, delirious vision, irony and paraphrase.
Bestiarul could be seen as a confession-novel as well, expressing ironically the uncomfortable experience of a young university assistant, an experience which is characterized by a stunning realism and irony of an amazed auctorial-voice in front of daily routine. Consequently, the reader is familiarized with the ridiculous of different scenes in which university members are directly involved; in this respect, there is the example of a professor’s in ordinary trial at which the young university assistant is a witness: “That very particular moment, I wish I had been anywhere else in this whole universe, apart from the third line of the court. Even the thought of the exam to get permanency in teaching appeared to me as a blessed Mekka, while the seminars specific to my dull discipline seemed indisputably the ideal option of the Planet.” (page 17)
There is to be noticed the dramatic existence of the young assistant who feels miserable in the middle of an academic world, but tries hardly to cope with it. From a narrative point of view, this is the moment when self-irony makes its presence, as the author highly rules the language subtleties and feels its artistic potential. The writer’s sarcasm, which is more than obvious, is not limited only to a few university figures, but also to institutions, the relationships between town hall and rector’s office “were just perfect.” (page 27)
The position of some university teachers, the relativity of getting the title as an assistant in ordinary (that depends most of the time on other people than himself), as well as the distant relationships inside the Literature Department, all these aspects, which are presented with a genuine humor and fine irony, create the impression of a film vision rapidly connecting real life parts. The so-called events are all defined by a precariousness which is acutely felt by the young teacher. “If I think better, this feeling of precariousness has been overwhelming in the last two years, since I have found myself accidentally as a member of the Department.” (page 29)
Ignoring the text’s transitivity, we must emphasize that we deal with a meant to be difficult and ambiguous novel, which is consequently hard to understand, read and follow. Still this level of the text represents the real challenge for the reader. Lucian Bâgiu is not the first who criticizes the university system, but he does it in an extremely original and brave way. What he really achieves is this important combination of epic styles and narrative formulas, standing him out of the previous canons.
Drawing upon the story of some conceited university teachers belonging to a Transylvanian city, the author materializes a narrative experience, appealing to a few narrators, as well as involving the reader directly, to whom he addresses repeatedly by the means of the footnotes. The mentioned footnotes have a major part, on the one hand, they seem to clarify the circumstances of certain situations and, on the other hand, they deform the information. The three narrators’ interventions are realized through a continuous crescendo, they permanently suspecting and correcting each other. This postmodernist game is dominated by inter-textual, paraphrase, name coincidences, comical language and funny situations. Behind the text, the writer provokes the reader, seduces him, confuses him, showing him exclusively what he intends to. This is not his main purpose as all is ridiculed, all the rules are denied and disregarded.
There are moments in the text when the characters themselves offer supplementary details in the footnotes, thus apparently the text seems to struggle for its own coherence, still this is not the case. There is the possibility for the author to amuse himself by his textual adventure, anticipating the reader’s reactions and confusion. Lucian Bâgiu suggests a new type of partnership between writer and reader, characterized by derision. Furthermore, the reader is absolutely confused and involved in a pseudo-dialogue (in fact, there is a monologue), for example in the following footnote: “It would have been possible for me to clarify the curiosity of the reader, still I won’t do it.” (page 105) The acid irony is often combined with the playful character of the writing, such as NOA (The Omniscient Anonymous Narrator) who confuses the reader again, focusing the attention on a wrong direction.
The academic world is criticized and a general view on it is not a very encouraging one, as in the following fragment: “After hearing the endless discussion between mum and dad, Sânziana understood there weren’t major differences between kindergarten and university, as in both cases, girls and boys teased and tripped each other. Sânziana was, by far, a precocious child.” (page 83) Sânziana is Tristan’s and Isolda’s daughter (Tristan is the protagonist of the novel, the 34 years old young university teacher), a character who appears in an other book, Sânziana în lumea poveştilor, by the same author.
The novel in discussion has a very realistic character, thus the travel by car in Transylvania is a good opportunity for the author to emphasize the Romanian realities and flows. All these descriptions which have a journalistic note give the text a realistic character and create the complex image of a society which lacks stability because of its permanent change. Some of the main characters seem to be real while the other send the reader’s thoughts towards some fictional texts. To sum up, the novel has all the features which characterize a postmodern literary experiment: diary, epistolary style, essay, film script, reportage, but also the diversity of the narrative techniques. The author’s uniqueness also consists in major change concerning the relation between the reader-the text-the author, the meta-textual associations, the humor and the freshness of the writing style.
In one word, this “salad”, in the preparation of which the author carefully took into account the very particular ingredient it necessitated, is an original one. It’s worthy tasting it!

(Monica Grosu, in ProSaeculum, nr. 8 (52), decembrie 2008)