On December 13, 1948, Albert Camus He stands up in a Pleyel hall full of young audiences and declares that dialogue has given way to insults and polemics. He argues that the mechanism of perpetual argument consists of seeing the opponent as an enemy, simplifying him, and refusing to see him. “When I insult someone, I no longer know the color of their eyes, whether they smile occasionally or in what way. Almost completely blinded by the labor and grace of discussion, we no longer live among men but in a world of silhouettes. Writer and criminal lawyer Abel Quentin (Lyon, 1985) concludes that Camus was very lonely when he spoke like that in those times of excommunication and excommunication, and was trying to explain to the youth in the Paris room that there was no nuance. compromise or bargaining, but supreme courage. Words spoken amid the turmoil of the 20th century take on special significance in the 21st century, at another moment of ideological violence, where disqualification is based on the powerful powerhouses of social networks, and revocation is used to purge anyone who is thought to be. infidels. It is the dystopia of rabid identity politics and communalism wrapped in the cellophane of a so-called wake-up culture.
Quentin’s award-winning novel in France and a finalist for Goncourt, Renaudot and Femina, this visionary novel makes peace with the restorative power of fiction. In it, he chronicles the descent into hell of Jean Roscoff, a left-wing academic, divorced, and alcoholic who campaigned for SOS Racism in the ’80s. She’s trying to breathe new life by writing an homage to the obscure American poet Robert Willow, an imaginary friend of the existentialist who’s recently retired and settled in Étampes, a municipality just over an hour from Paris. Actually, the French name of the novel is Le voyant d’Étampes.
Roscoff’s downfall begins with someone accusing him of forgetting to mention Willow’s African-American in his work. He says that being black does not structure himself as an individual and therefore escapes Sartre’s authority to speak about his blackness. From then on, he is caught between flattering progressive memories of the 1980s and the rhetorical onslaught of angry, confident youths who view him as an enemy of fossils. He is immediately accused of being a fascist. Confused and distraught, she initially chooses not to defend herself, while receiving dubious support from the national right. With elegant writing and a very good narrative rhythm, Quentin evokes Houellebecq at times, if not the heavy melancholy burden of Annihilation’s author. He knows how to perfectly capture the content of the vulgarest comments in the controversial wars of the networks, and gives a fair and detailed picture of the evolution of ideas that have been considered progressive since 1968. The reported phenomenon was written by Roscoff, but the novel is not without compassion for those who at the time wanted to change the world, or even aspire to do so. It draws attention to the excesses of public debate and uses abusive and questioning collective impulses to cast a corrosive look at the impossible task of improving society.
Humor is present in the pages of The Visionary, and it sometimes stabs it like a knife. Comedy is never inevitable. The story of the anti-hero’s failures, blunders, and misfortunes is generally entertaining, as if Quentin wanted to add an escape valve to today’s successful and painful x-ray that he presents to readers. Roscoff is the kindly romantic old man who believes in a vanished humanism, even though he doesn’t understand anything that’s going on. There is generational conflict, and nothing escapes Quentin’s sharp pen, who mocks the contemporary perversions of identity that stem from the methodical deconstruction of gender and racial stereotypes, as in the undisputed reign of Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1950s; attacks irreconcilable feminism; to the completely declining university, trapped by active minorities; and ridicules the new language of youth and its destructive codes. He also jokes about the indifferent attitude in the renewed leftist family, far from his youth’s ideal of equality and fraternity. His attacks reveal freedom of spirit in the middle of a shitstorm. Great novel.