A celebrated French bestseller, this novel in verse that captures the
mundane and the beautiful, the blood and sweat, of working on the
factory floor in the processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany.
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 humor that sit in poignant contrast with the blood
and sweat of the factory floor. On the Line is a poet's ode to manual
labor, and to the human spirit that makes it bearable.
