Even without having opened it, Patrick Sénécal’s new opus could horrify some readers. Because it is a brick of 631 tightly packed pages which is launched into the popular literary tide. But have no fear, since it is not a question of an abstruse essay with tortured turns of phrase, but rather of the breathless and light rhythm, but not devoid of social criticism, to which the author has accustomed us.
The page in question, therefore, tells us in detail the progress of a social psychology “experiment” carried out by two researchers and financed by a MAGA-style patron. The idea: put 12 volunteers from contrasting backgrounds in isolation, supposed to play castaways on a desert island, and forced to gradually designate those who will have to leave the adventure, until the group formed into a trio, the basis of a new society. Everything is filmed and analyzed by psychologists, who hope that the experience will advance knowledge of the human psyche. Yes, this all sounds like a reality TV concept – which does not fail to irritate its instigator, convinced of the scientific relevance of the thing.
The profile of the guinea pigs sent to the isolated island? A moralizing priest, a depressed policewoman, a monotonous doctor in a wheelchair, a divorced lawyer, a failed and naive actor, an immigrant agronomist in love with Quebec, a philosophy teacher with troubled principles, a former fisherman with inflexible rigor, a young student woke to the bone, an engineer addicted to cannabis, an egocentric writer and an elder with a troubled past. Everyone imagines spending a quiet week at the princess’s expense, but, inevitably, everything will go off the rails.
Bloody caricatures
Apart from the premise which we guess is bloody, Civilized is sprinkled with humorous injections, distilled according to the narration, the attitudes or the words of the characters, to result in a tragi-comic novel where grimaces of disgust, shivers of suspense and bursts of laughter follow one another, or burst out simultaneously. In short, we find the flavor of the Malphas series, with the broad-stroke caricatures of these 12 laboratory rats and their supervisors. Each participant thus takes on a role of social representation, but to the power of a thousand, to the point of becoming laughable: the monuncle is champion of monunclitude, the woke turns out spectacularly wokeetc.
Added to this gallery of antics are the interventions of the narrator, who takes great pleasure in breaking down the fourth wall with a sledgehammer, letting the skeleton of the story and its literary mechanisms shine through.
Example: “Despite these explanations, we still hear some of you taking offense: revealing this scene at the end is narrative dishonesty! Absolutely not. It is pirouette narrative, yes. Manipulation of information, without a shadow of a doubt. If this scandalizes or annoys any of you, we are sorry. »
Be careful, between the chapters of grotesque scenes and dialogues there are obviously some atrociously sharp pages. Sporadic, but concentrated to increase the effect tenfold, they hit the mark by covering long passages of sustained tension. As we suspected, heads will roll.
Nothing is gratuitous, since this “experience” in full slippage exposes disturbing social mechanisms and dictates to us, in subtext and beyond the caricature, disturbing failings of human psychology. In short, put Squid Game, Survivor and Milgram’s experiment in a blender, add some blood, a slice of black humor and you will have an idea of the recipe for these so-called Civilized.
Civilized
To read
631 pages