The Second Substance

Lardeux considers how we atrophy and flourish, how we survive and decay, how we inhabit the substance of which we are made. 

By turns sensual and poetic, The Second Substance is a book of images and ideas tied together by a thin plot… has a haunting and vulnerable quality…

Rendered with a wondrous, ambient dread by translator Pablo Strauss… a beguiling, bawdy chronicle of the lives orbiting an anarchist squat… The overall effect is one of absolute atmosphere, in which the bleak, necropastoral landscape — from junkyards to derelict nuclear power plants — is as integral to the novel’s emotional heart as its vivid characters… Claims a unique corner of its own within the wide field of contemporary dystopian lit.

Channels the same sensual ennui that powered the music of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Mile End during the early 2000s, as it explores the intersections of sex, radicalism, purpose and resistance among a commune of squatters in an abandoned gas station on the city’s outskirts.

Anne Lardeux offers nourishment and bitterness … the energy of the prose stokes a flame, and the slowness of change tempers it … a novel for those who yearn, those who tire of digital cities, those returning to the body.

A paragraph

It takes careful planning to commit an act of sabotage. I’m struggling to convince myself that it’s necessary, paralyzed by thoughts of What difference will it make anyway? When we first moved into the Station, we often gathered for discussions around the kitchen table, our heads warmed by the hanging lamp. This constant back-and-forth fed our sense of what defined us as a group. It was more than just a way to know whose strengths could be counted on. It was a way to adduce first principles, since no thought formulates itself and no truth is self-evident, like a pitcher of water on a table. Our group wants to combat a certain world order, and that means confronting power and its representatives. And we must do this with our heads, and we must also do this with our bodies.

I never fit in at school. I held grudges against the others, though I liked them. Ever the good student, I got pressed into a mould and what got squeezed out took the form of a brick. So I picked it up and threw it. Far away from you. I’m sorry.

When the burnt-out light of our totem becomes too oppressive, and we’ve run out of the milk and beer of human comfort, I go to the City. One night on the north side I see people passing through a narrow gap in the chain-link fence along the railroad tracks, sliding into a small field they are working to protect. A woman at this break in the fence thanks people for coming, as if ushering them into her living room. It’s cold and looks like rain is on the way. The men have beards, thick flannel shirts, and toques; the women, well, it’s more complicated but they’ve found ways to be pretty in the cold. All gather together here after a manner, but only the ones who know each other touch.

I want to touch the skin of the ones who have stopped seeking out human contact, I want to be seen by the ones the light does not find. I want to find openings, breaks in the fence.