Did Clement Cadou exist?

January 2, 2007 8:33 PM

In Enrique Vila-Matas novel Bartleby & co. everyone seems to be real. He talks about Duchamp, for example, and about B. Traven, the mysterious author of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But he also talks about Clément Cadou, a supposed painter who only painted furniture and dubbed them "self-portraits" and whose epitaph was about himself, as a piece of furniture. Is Cadou real?

If I try to Google Cadou or look for him in Google Book search, all i get is references to Vila-Matas.

Cadou was supposedly a would-be writer who, after meeting the writer Witold Gombrowicz, decided that he (Cadou) was no more than a piece of furniture and thereafter painted only furniture and referred to himself as furniture in his epitaph. Is Cadou real? Or, is he an invention of Vila-Matas?

Thanks.

posted by vacapinta to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

I can't read Spanish (and the Google translation doesn't help much) but this blog entry seems to be talking about Clement Cadou as if he were a real person (from what little I can piece together)... See what you think.
posted by amyms at 8:54 PM on January 2, 2007

Response by poster: Yes, thanks. That blog entry does seem to believe Cadou is a real person but, unfortunately, all the information seems to be from the Vila-Matas book! So, I dont know if that blogwriter has been deluded by Vila-Matas or not.
posted by vacapinta at 9:34 PM on January 2, 2007

Oh darn... lol... I was hoping I had found an answer for you, to earn my keep (I'm one of your gift membership recipients)... I'll continue digging around for Clement Cadou info, because my searches were really intriguing... Will report back if I find anything more.
posted by amyms at 10:07 PM on January 2, 2007

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. If he were real, he would have been written about somewhere, and a Google Books search turns up nothing but your novel. (A fair number of Cadous, but no other Clements.) It's quite common for a novel to mingle historical and invented characters (see E. L. Doctorow).
posted by languagehat at 9:47 AM on January 3, 2007

I just checked the Library of Congress subject headings, and Clement Cadou doesn't seem to have a heading. This doesn't mean he's not real, only that he's not been cataloged for some reason or another.

I was hoping to get you something definative, but sorry. It looks like he may be fictional.
posted by teleri025 at 9:52 AM on January 3, 2007

Response by poster: Thank you everybody. I suppose it is harder to prove someone is fictional rather than real. In the context of the book, Cadou is presented as real-seeming. Vila-Matas goes into a number of details and even presents an anecdote involving the very real Gombrowicz and Cadou.

This both makes the book less interesting in one sense. More interesting in another. Thanks again!
posted by vacapinta at 9:58 AM on January 3, 2007