On the Line: Notes from a Factory

Author(s): Joseph Ponthus

Fiction

Factory you shall never have my soul I am here And I count for so much more than you And I count so much more because of you Thanks to you Unable to find work in his field, Joseph Ponthus enlists with a temp agency and starts to pick up casual shifts in the fish processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany. Day after day he records with infinite precision the nature of work on the production line- the noise, the weariness, the dreams stolen by the repetitive nature of exhausting rituals and physical suffering. But he finds solace in a life previously lived. Shelling prawns, he dreams of Alexandre Dumas. Pushing cattle carcasses, he recalls Apollinaire. And, in the grace of the blank spaces created by his insistent return to a new line of text - mirroring his continued return to the production line - we discover the woman he loves, the happiness of a Sunday, Pok Pok the dog, the smell of the sea. In this celebrated French bestseller, translated by Stephanie Smee, Ponthus captures the mundane, the beautiful and the strange, writing with an elegance and humour that sit in poignant contrast with the blood and sweat of the factory floor. On the Line ( la ligne) is a poet's ode to manual labour, and to the human spirit that makes it bearable.

Review by Fantine;


'Hailed as revelatory in France ‘A la Ligne’ is a poet's meditation on labour based on Ponthus’ own experiences as a temp worker.

Fragmented prose echoes the machinery of the factory; sometimes fast, slow, faltering or halting but always hurtling onwards as our narrator pushes through the mental and physical exhaustion of the production line.
As his body moves his mind wanders and he begins to discover an unexpected peace and a quiet dignity in the invisible workers deemed unskilled by society, the metal monsters that dictate the pulse and the repetitive rhythms that mechanise the corporeal, be it body or beast.

Utterly compelling and profoundly moving, Ponthius writing brims with warmth and wit as he explores the exploitative and precarious microcosm of the factory.’


- Fantine, Bookseller at Collins Moonee Ponds


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781760642334
  • : Black Inc.
  • : Black Inc.
  • : 0.282
  • : January 2021
  • : 2.2 Centimeters X 13.5 Centimeters X 20.8 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Joseph Ponthus
  • : Paperback
  • : 2007
  • : 272