When he published, in 2007, "99 francs", the novel inspired by his flamboyant advertising life with Young and Rubicam, and which revealed it to the general public, Frédéric Beigbeder immediately signaled that he was writing this book with the aim to get fired. The charge was such that it did not fail to happen.
This time, it's the opposite. After improvising, at the end of a festive night in a new Parisian establishment called "Le Medellin", an awkward and annoying chronicle during the morning of France Inter sacred a few hours earlier "Morning the most listened to in France", the Mediatically terrible child of this in-between two centuries, found himself at the door.
So he wrote this book (which continues the saga "Octave Parango", his character of 99 francs) without title on the cover, replaced by a hilarious emoticon, because he got fired. The result is a two-stage rocket. The first does not rehash this worn-out question of whether to laugh at everything. But more relevantly: should we laugh necessarily, dictatorially, of what happens? Are we the puppets of laughter? Over the course of an efficient, electric style, there is something to think about.
Raw Beigbeder
The second floor stirs a deep melancholy, close, in previous centuries, to these black and sparkling birds that were the Lautréamont, the Baudelaires and another clan of the "Haschichins". It evokes paradises, admittedly artificial, lost, displayed as an art of living which sought a sense of time passing.
Even stronger, Beigbeder, a child from the upper class, does not seem to lie when he encourages the uncontrolled elements of a demonstration of yellow vests to set fire to them.
This tale of a futile veteran is from the raw, naked Beigbeder, mentally ready to be thrown at the stake as well. Except that he has a parade: this talent to write, to rush into the enclosures of despair, which will not stop saving him.
EDITOR'S NOTE: 4/5
Frédéric Beigbeder, Grasset Publishing, 320 pages, 20.90 euros.
