ON THE CEILING

Both logic and conventional romantic and family relations are blithely subverted in this droll 1997 fable by Chevillard, the popular French author whose earlier novel, The Crab Nebula (1998), has also appeared in English translation. The hero (for surely he is one) is an engaging young man who, initially hoping to correct his posture, wears an upside-down chair on his head, in so doing finding a “world” infinitely preferably to our mundane “rightside-up” one. He thus attracts others’ attention and confuses their expectations to an extent that necessitates an even further remove from what some people might call reality. Ezra Pound, who urged artists to “make it new,” might have detected a rare (and rarefied) kindred spirit in the waggish—and alarmingly inventive—M. Chevillard.