Known and recognized press photographer — Release, The Unrockuptibles—, Franck Courtès earned his living very well for a long time. Until one day, overcome by nausea, unable to practice what had been his “raison d’être” for 26 years, he chose to put down his camera.
A “scuttle” that he recounted in The last Picture (JC Lattès, 2018).
After a first book which nonetheless earned him a “small success” (Authorization to practice runningJC Lattès, 2013), including a passage to There large bookstore, Franck Courtès quickly becomes devoid of illusions: literature does not make his man live. “The job of a writer is to keep a fire burning that is just waiting to go out. »
Even more: “To complete a text does not mean to be published, to be published does not mean to be read, to be read does not mean to be loved, to be loved does not mean to be successful, to be successful does not bode well. . »
After exhausting his savings, gradually selling everything he could sell, moving into a studio owned by his mother, the 55-year-old continued his long slide into poverty. All the while trying to hide his new condition under the branded clothes of his old life.
“I would give dearly not to be an artist,” writes Franck Courtès, pulling the devil by the tail, seeing his social life atrophy and cursing the “idiot’s bravery” which made him cast off — and what others take it for courage.
Without a CV and no other ambition than to write every morning, he is looking for a job. But if he sometimes “comes close” to being hired, each time it is his age that poses a problem, he explains. Greedy, naturally loving luxury, he salivates in front of the stalls of wine or charcuterie merchants, and thinks that he is like these zoo animals who have become incapable of feeding themselves in nature. With, always, this impression of being “a rich person without money”.
On the job, his sixth book, recounts without whining, with class and dignity, this fascinating descent into the hells of precariousness — far from his two children living with their mother in Montreal. Franck Courtès will notably be a laborer to remove rubble, an assembler of kit furniture, a bicycle delivery man, a waiter in a restaurant, a handyman. Often offering his services at ridiculous prices on what he calls the “Platform” – a sort of Uber for jobs. Being able to earn fifteen euros for a morning of work, “sometimes twenty with the tip”. To meditate: “There is no shortage of work for those who know how to do nothing. »
One evening when he plays illegal taxi, marauding in an area of the great Parisian suburbs in full confinement, he hits a deer. This “only vestige of beauty in these devastated places”, he says to himself, also represents a lot of meat. Taking judo to finish off the animal, transport in his small car, hanging around his apartment after dark so that the neighbors don’t notice, improvised skinning, freezer.
A mind-blowing sequence which, true or fictional, constitutes a formidable metaphor for a fascinating struggle with money, work, poverty – and literature. A book of great humanity.