In Rick Moody’s “Albertine Notes,” he uses a variety of literary tropes to create a story where the reader becomes just as lost as those taking Albertine. (Did anyone else notice that? I thought it was a beautiful syntactic move.)
When I began to read this novella, I was struck by the oddity of the title – the name/word “Albertine” isn’t one heard very often. I tried searching for meaning, and I found a few interesting references (through Wikipedia) that seem connected, at least, to the ideas of power, rule, and sex and prostitution:
Albertine Sarrazin, a French female prostitute, and the Statuto Albertino, a law passed by King Charles that gave the King absolute power over the ruled, and the military forces. (There was also this song which I found semi-relevant, with the violent imagery and lyrics about faith.)
These may only be coincidences, but I was struck by the relation to the Statuto Albertino – it reminded me of the belief that fundamentalist Christians may have about God, that God is absolute and controls everything – that every event, thus, is happening as part of God’s will. It also reminded me of Cortez in the novella, who seems to be the ruling dealer of New York City and also who uses the military.
What is interesting about “The Albertine Notes” is the way that time works kairiotically but in a backwards and forwards way at the same time, I feel. There is the constant attempt to reach back to a past that has been obliterated, much like the past that the “born-again” relinquish. Except in Kevin’s world, the past holds a holiness – and, layering on top of that, a conscious person who is sober can look back onto the past and know the future that succeeds it. While on Albertine, the user feels the past event and only that moment, singularly. Realistically, in a present, out-of-time moment that is almost a way of subverting time, not unlike those who adopt a fundamentalist mindset. This is interesting (and super complicated) because it inserts the apocalyptic event into the middle of the timeframe, with everything being measured in reference to that event. However, the future still holds a relative waiting-out for something else to occur, though in this (“Godless”?) apocalypse what that event exactly will be is unsure.
