The Chronicles of Michel du Jabot

The Chronicles of Michel du Jabot is Eckhard Gerdes's 733-page novel, written over roughly ten years between 2008 and 2018, much of it by hand. Begun before his wife Persis's death and finished after, Gerdes has called it "a 733-page exhalation." Michel du Jabot is a Frenchman in quest of an absent father, and the book is the document of that quest told in language allowed to do what language does when no one is editing it to behave.

Yuriy Tarnawsky, in his introduction, frames the book this way: Eckhard Gerdes in his massive, whale tale kind of a book, The Chronicles of Michel du Jabot — he is not after seducing a reader or two with a suspenseful story into purchasing his book but to exercise the writer in himself, delight at his ability to use language. Gerdes is because he writes.

Alain Arias-Misson placed the novel in the line that ends with Finnegans Wake: Whatever you do, don't even look into Eckhard Gerdes' book, The Chronicles of Michel du Jabot, because you'll never get out of it again. It will take generations of English professors to sort it out. Hilarious semantic sport. Yes, this, not Finnegans Wake, is the novel to end the novel.