Hallucinating Foucault Read Online Free Page A

daughter.
    He took us to Brown’s, and there amidst the pot-planted splendor of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid he proceeded to eat like a student. We all had mushroom and Guinness pie. He ordered extra chips. She couldn’t finish her baked potato and sour cream. He changed plates and ate the lot. He took a look at the wine list, shook his head sadly, and ordered two bottles of house red. He suggested that I put some extra cream on my Tarte Tatin, called for some more without waiting for a reply and then added a little to his own ice cream and apple pie. He was clearly fearless in the face of cholesterol.
    She was transformed from the intense, abrasive graduate into a merry child. She chatted, giggled, told stories, wolfed chips, demanded news of her father’s last boyfriend, who appeared to be the same age as she was. She was even irreverent about Schiller. He drew her out, encouraged her, teased her unmercifully and begged her to let him pay for contact lenses. He asked, with a wicked grin, if I was any good in bed, urged her to have driving lessons and choosea car. He ticked her off for smoking; then smoked half of my cigarettes. He was like a passing king, arbitrary, generous, dispensing largesse.
    When we reached the cappuccinos he turned his strange grey eyes upon me and asked about Paul Michel.
    “All I’ve read is
La Maison d’Eté,
the one which carried off the Goncourt. I suppose that gives me a false impression of his work.
    My daughter tells me that it’s his most conventional novel.”
    “Yes,” I agreed, “in some ways it is. I still prefer
La Fuite,
which talks about his childhood. And, well …” I hesitated.
    “Growing up gay in rural France,” said the Bank of England, grinning. “Being homosexual isn’t a taboo subject at this table. Poor lad, it must have warped him for life. He had a touch of the James Deans though, didn’t he? A brutal butch version of homosexuality and we all end up doomed, damned and gorgeous. What’s happened to him? I know that he was locked up in an institution for a bit. Not dead of AIDS, I hope.”
    “No,” I said, “not as far as I know. He had a complete nervous breakdown of some kind in 1984. And he hasn’t written anything since.”
    Suddenly I became aware of the Germanist. Midnight had struck, the pumpkin was gone and the magic was dissolved. She was glaring at me with her lenses alight, shining with fury.
    “Then you don’t know? You’re studying his work and you don’t know what they’ve done to him?”
    “What do you mean?” I demanded, very startled.
    “He’s in the madhouse. Sainte-Anne in Paris. He’s been there nine years. They’re killing him with their drugs, day after day.”
    I stared at her.
    “Calm down darling,” said her father peacefully, looking around for the bill, “I didn’t know that he was still in there.”
    “But you aren’t writing a thesis on Paul Michel.” She was a column of accusation. I thought that she was going to hit me.
    Her father leaned over and kissed her cheek, something I would never have dared to do, and said sweetly, “You make scenes at your lover in front of the restaurant, my dear, never at the table. It’s not the done thing.”
    The Germanist melted slightly, glared at me once more, then stormed off to the loo. Her father turned back to me.
    “I didn’t know that he’d been sectioned for good and all. That’s a pity. Just being gay used to be enough to get you locked up, but I’d have thought things were more enlightened now. Might be worth investigating.”
    He helped himself to another of my cigarettes and then said, smiling, “If I were you I’d find out if the family had a hand in it. Families usually take it upon themselves to bump off their homos—dykes and gays—if they can do it with impunity.”
    I felt the need to defend myself.
    “I’m not writing about his life. I’m studying his fiction.”
    “How can you separate the two?”
    “Apart from
La Fuite
he’s not