Frédéric Beigbeder, writer and literary critic, dandy with long hair, no longer recognizes himself in our time. His most recent book, Confessions of a Slightly Overwhelmed Heterosexualpaints a disenchanted and very personal state of Western society swept away by a wind of self-censorship which panics the author of 99 francs (Grasset, 2000). In particular, he vilifies political correctness, which would prevent any freedom of thought.
From the first chapter of the book, Beigbeder begins with a particular event that occurred in 2018 which would have been the trigger for taking up the pen. “I experienced a violent intrusion into my home during the night, while my children were sleeping upstairs,” he said in an interview with The duty. My house was covered in insults painted in bright red and neon pink by strangers with acrylic, which is very difficult to remove. »
One of the inscriptions, “Here lives a rapist”, is a stain. We then wonder about his bad associations, including those with the pedophile writer Gabriel Matzneff or with the former television presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, accused of rape.
“I’ve never done anything illegal or attacked anyone, but I may read some awful things, sometimes written by bastards.” Yes, there are monsters who have spawned good books. The job of a literary critic is to read a book, not to judge an author. »
From troublemaker to victim
Without wishing to minimize the suffering of women, Beigbeder goes so far as to call himself a victim and does not understand the persecution he is being subjected to. He also devotes a passage to several experiences lived during childhood. Beaten at the age of seven by a sadistic priest, he also had the misfortune to cross paths with an exhibitionist who showed him his sex. “I wrote books in the 2000s that already reported gender-based violence and sexual assault 15 years before the #MeToo movement,” he replies.
What do we blame him for then? “To be what I am! he retorts. “White, male, born bourgeois in the 1960s, but I didn’t choose it, neither my social condition nor my skin color. Still, I’m the perfect target, because attacking the straight white male over 50 has become completely acceptable, and yet it’s quadruple racist. »
If we are to believe Beigbeder, it is also his positions that are disturbing. For example, he is one of the personalities – alongside the far-right figure Éric Zemmour – to have signed the petition of “343 bastards” published in the monthly talker to denounce the penalization of the clients of prostitutes. “I have a spirit of contradiction which can annoy many, I agree. In a democracy, speaking your mind should not be physically risky. »
In the author’s line of sight, the new virtue leagues led by what he calls radical feminists. He wants proof of this in his last meeting with his readers on April 21, at the Mollat bookstore in Bordeaux. It took place under police escort before being interrupted by activists. “It’s the result of an attempt at censorship,” says the writer.
“I fight against the cancel culture,” he says. What is happening is very serious. At the beginning, these are small censorships: prohibit the works of an artist, a film, a painting. And then it becomes tyranny. As Colette wrote, there must be something pure and something impure in books. Books should explore Evil. »
I’ve never done anything illegal or attacked anyone, but I may read some awful things, sometimes written by bastards. Yes, there are monsters who have spawned good books. The job of a literary critic is to read a book, not to judge an author.
Woke era
The writer does not want sanitized literature, even for authors who have a bad life. He believes in his freedom of thought against a “noisy minority of wokes” who, according to him, try to monopolize the floor. “We are witnessing something new. I have the feeling that there is a lack of transmission, of culture. It is clear that the time is much less free and more violent than I thought. »
He notably accuses social networks, set up as people’s courts making the presumption of guilt the “new arbitrary and instantaneous court of justice”. A tad provocative, it deals with subjects on which it is no longer fashionable to laugh.
“We are faced with uneducated and illiterate people in their twenties who don’t know what art is. You have to repeat the basics to them, that art is not there to save the world, but to describe it as it is. »
The phenomenon of well-meaning would affect the whole of the Western world, he believes, taking the case of Denys Arcand, who today could not make a film like The Decline of the American Empirea 1986 masterpiece in which the director stages a joyful marivaudage of disillusioned academics with very little politically correct. “Not only because he wouldn’t find financing, but because he wouldn’t find actors who would agree to play him. »
In this vindictive and grating essay, with an often playful and shameless tone, the former troublemaker of Parisian letters does not only pose as a victim by defending the heterosexual male who has become old-fashioned. He holds up a mirror about his own condition. “I’m caught between two worlds: the world before didn’t suit me, the one after doesn’t understand me,” he acknowledges.
To hell with the Beigbeder of the 1990s. There he became nostalgic, taking stock of his former decadence and coke addictions. “I may have become reactionary in certain areas. I have a conservative side. But this book is not reaction, it is simply the book of a writer who seeks meaning in what it is to be a man today. What is virility today? »
dad is right
Farewell, then, to the coke lines, the Parisian nightclubs and the highly alcoholic social evenings until the early morning, the former hedonistic and libertarian sex-obsessed advertiser converted into a successful writer is a repentant who now enjoys a life tidy family home in the heart of the French Basque Country.
“I assume who I was. I have evolved since my first books. Cocaine might be fun at 20, but when you’re approaching 60, it’s not only ridiculous, but very dangerous. I’m past the age of this bullshit. »
His book-confession returns to this new life of a good father who swears to have given up on his past delusions, more attracted by a certain conformism and a return to Catholic roots. “I undertake a form of quest in which existential questions arise here and there. What have I done with my life? »
The author recounts without filter, his spiritual retreat in a monastery or his testosterone internship in a military barracks accompanied by members of an infantry regiment. The quietened man claims to see less and less interest in the hubbub of this beginning of XXIe century bombastic with morality that imprisons all levity.
“I was a young jerk, and now I’m an old jerk. The few woke extremists who are going to insult me like old jerks will probably be right. But I don’t advocate war. »