The Novelist as DJ: Vernon Subutex and The Music of Our Times

This article offers an analysis and evaluation of the role of music in Vernon Subutex. It argues that while music – principally rock, punk and their derivatives – is an important aspect of Despentes's earlier work (and indeed of her whole world-view), with Vernon Subutex it plays a major transformative role in the author's narrative art. Cinematographic and collage techniques are also at work in Despentes's novelistic strategies, but it is significantly through music that Vernon Subutex attains its formal complexity and its gravitas. Beginning with a review of the musical "presence" in Despentes's earlier novels, and an analysis of the bridging role of Bye Bye Blondie and Apocalypse Bébé, the article examines the music in Vernon Subutex both as a symbolic representation of the French Zeitgeist at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, and, through the performance of the novelist as DJ, as a structuring and compositional device.