J.H. on Childhood and Wandering in Two POL Books

The article reviews two recent publications from Éditions POL: Mathieu Lindon's "En enfance" and Jean Rolin's "Un chien mort après lui." Lindon's book explores childhood not as a nostalgic memory but as a sustained state of being, achieved through a deliberate act of writing. The narrator, referred to in the third person, recounts vivid, often scatological details of a boy's life, arguing that true reading and writing are akin to play. Rolin's work follows his obsessive global pursuit of feral dogs, from Russia to Chile, Lebanon, Mexico, Egypt, Romania, the US, and Australia. The narrative opens with a frozen image of Rolin brandishing an iron bar against a snarling dog, which triggers a chaotic journey through wastelands, abandoned parking lots, and dumps. Rolin connects the proliferation of stray dogs to collapsing social orders and draws parallels between the treatment of dogs and humans, referencing Malaparte's hunt for Jews. The review positions both books as meditations on lucidity and the refusal to age, with Lindon preserving the child within and Rolin embodying a clear-sighted Ulysses trailing a dead dog.