Lights out song vine2/13/2024 Here the novel blossoms into a sort of insane, rococo wedding planner for a tumultuous and orgiastic banquet in the bowels of Nazi-built Tempelhof airport – all organised by Gabriel and Laxalt they will cater for bankers whose Lear jets taxi to the very gates of Tempelhof and into a double bluff. Gabriel stakes out Gerd Specht – his father's erstwhile partner – but, hilariously, the mythical nightclub turns out to be much less than envisioned. The action moves to a finely portrayed and morally complex Berlin, that shimmering borderline where totalitarian capitalism's unsteady contradictions still appear everywhere. Pierre shreds the pretentious sophistication and fake joyousness of our Michelin-starred palaces, driving them to the ultimate conclusions of hedonism with a ferocity worthy of de Sade. The social signifiers of fine wine and exclusive dining have been trumpeted with great solemnity in the last few decades of our culture, but this novel renders it all ridiculous. However, Smuts is detained in a Tokyo jail on a possible murder charge, giving Gabriel the sudden purpose to free his friend. Smuts believes Gabriel has travelled to Japan not to kill himself, but to invite him to chef in a decadent Berlin nightclub in which Gabriel's father holds a share. Amazingly, he fails to poison himself in scenes of visionary and comic brilliance. Gabriel enters a night of gangsters, a teenage girl, a vast fish tank and an octopus. It is accompanied by highly toxic blowfish, cut "so thin you could watch porn through it". Smuts's promise has been sponsored by a sinister party organiser and international playboy, Didier Laxalt, "the godfather of high-octane catering".Īnd it is wine lore that sets up this brilliant satire: Marius is a vine so precious it grows with the assistance of virgins' pheromones and transports the imbiber with visions of its Cote d'Azur slope the grape is "an ovary inseminated with dreams". An implosive neophyte chef – "the epicurian underworld pulled him into its rarest bowel" – Smuts is bound for the blessing of a Michelin star. He heads for Tokyo, where his childhood comrade – Nelson Smuts – works. Torching his rehab establishment, he flees England with a stash of cocaine and the embezzled funds from an anti-capitalist action group. Like Herman Hesse's Harry Haller, from Steppenwolf, Gabriel is liberated from the contradictions raging within by a pledge to commit suicide after one final blowout.
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