Yann Moix: Orléans (2019)

Yann Moix is hardly a stranger to controversy: to give four examples, he lost a court case for calling extreme right-wing writer and politician Renaud Camus 'anti-Semitic'; he's said that he could never fancy a woman over fifty; he's said that Michael Jackson wasn't a paedophile but a child himself; and now (just a short time after after the publication of this book) his brother Alexandre wrote a letter published in Le Parisien claiming that he was the person who was violently abused by Yann, and that it wasn't their parents who violently treated and humiliated Yann, as this book describes.* I note that several people (not all of whom have even read the book) on Amazon reviews have lashed out against it, it seems to me, because, among other things, they call Yann Moix narcissistic. I can find nothing narcissistic in this book.

In this month's Le Grand entretien in Lire with Yann Moix, Claire Chazal says that some of the excessive violence described as being meted out to him by his parents (who seem out to destroy him mentally if not quite physically), and asks him what is true in the book. Moix says, rather cryptically, that 'exactness' is more important than 'the truth', and goes on to say that he may have mistaken one of the years in the book for the year before! And anyway, calling the book 'a novel' acts as a 'tiny filter between reality and the author, who can protect himself behind this word'. So that's all right then: we can treat the work how we please and ignore what is truth and what is fiction? The best way, for a number of reasons, is to treat the book is as a work of fiction.

The novel is divided into two equal parts: 'Dedans' and 'Dehors', the first of which deals with the savage and mindless treatment of the first person narrator by his parents, who pick on any opportunity to attack him; the second part explains activities outside the home (mainly at school). Both parts of the novel are divided into a number of sections corresponding to each year the narrator went to school, from maternelle to terminale.

At no time in either section is there a mention of a brother, and I don't believe the names of the parents are ever mentioned. But in the first part, the slightest error the narrator makes, the punishment is harsh: his incontinence, his listening to music under the bedclothes late into the night, coming home smelling of smoke, even his obsession with André Gide is seen as negative because he was a pédé: the punishment is violent and often humiliating.

In the second part there is still humiliation for Moix, particularly on the part of girls, who make fun of him, torment him, even mentally torture this testosterone-fuelled (but painfully shy) young creature. But Moix comes to love literature through Gide, then Francis Ponge, Sartre, and there are many more writers to come. In fact, he states, intellectual enlightenment can be as rewarding as the sex act.

Yann Moix is a much reviled personality, but that notwithstanding, Orléans is an extremely well written book and should not been condemned for reasons unrelated to its contents.

*Since writing this, new information has emerged about Yann Moix's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial thirty years ago, specifically concerning cartoons he drew, as well as writings. He appeared on On n'est pas couché yesterday and vociferously condemned the person he was as opposed to the person he is now. Somehow, I think he's probably dug himself more and more into the ground.