George
“My Indian name is He Who Has No Ambition!” –remark overheard on a tour boat in Germany
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Friendless, hopelessly bored, unable or unmotivated to find any sort of romantic attachment, he remains in a monotonous purgatory–the perfect idle soul to climb upon a teeter-totter in the devil’s playground. If this were film noir, Jacques would be the sort of dim-witted schlepp who’d be enticed by the femme fatale into bumping off her husband for the insurance money. If this were a western, he’d be coaxed into the role of lookout man for the heist of horses or a bag of gold. But since this is an adaptation of a French satire about the price of fame in bourgeois society, Jacques is tempted by the ultimate intellectual crime: he plagiarizes, selling his soul for fame and fortune.
Though George–based on the novel Le mort saisit le vif, by the prolific French writer Henri Troyat, who’s perhaps best known for his nonfiction–is an effective cautionary tale about achieving fame by illicit means, it also functions more universally as a parable about the perils and traps inherent in fame however it’s achieved. For Jacques, attaining success doesn’t entail developing further as a writer but repeating his earlier success. Anything that isn’t written in “his own” authorial voice is summarily dismissed. The accolades he receives become a sort of prison: he’s only allowed to be the person he’s perceived to be–and in his sad case, that person was never him to begin with. At the beginning and end of the play Jacques says, “I fear my name.” The first time he says it, we don’t know why. The second time, the reasons are all too clear.
