The Suspended Vocation – Pierre Klossowski
The Suspended Vocation by Pierre Klossowski / Translated by Jeremy M. Davies and Anna Fitzgerald, with an introduction by Brian Evenson / slim paperback / ISBN 9781734838206
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“Seventy years after it was written, Pierre Klossowski’s first novel, The Suspended Vocation, has finally found its way into English, providing the occasion to reassess his subterranean, but nevertheless profound, influence on post-war fiction and philosophy.”–from “Pierre Klossowski, Brilliant Brother of Balthus” by Ryan Ruby in the NYR
Made available in English for the very first time by NY based Small Press, Pierre Klossowski’s debut novel, The Suspended Vocation, fictionalizes and satirizes the great erotic artist, philosopher, and iconoclast’s brief, wartime flirtation with the priesthood, portraying the Church as a haven for conspiracy, idolatry, perversion, and even atheism.
Written in the form of a disapproving monograph on an anonymous, confessional novel (itself titled The Suspended Vocation), it is the story of the hapless Jérôme, whose lust for holiness leads him astray in a cloistered world full of ideological and physical temptations.
Sometimes a knowing critique of “religious fiction,” sometimes a wicked self-parody of Klossowski’s own lifelong obsessions, and sometimes a sacerdotal spy novel, The Suspended Vocation is one of the strangest and most audacious debuts in twentieth-century literature.
