Retirement, what retirement ? At 75, Erik Orsenna smiles behind his white mustache, he who combines the missions (ambassador of the Institut Pasteur, president of an international association for the future of the great rivers: in this capacity, he will intervene at the UN on the next World Water Day, etc.) and literary projects. “That’s what my publishers tell me, we could make a subsidiary just with your projects”, laughs the French Academician in this Germanopratine afternoon. But for now, Eric Arnoult, alias Orsenna, is here to talk aboutstory of an ogrethe book that makes the whole of Paris rustle, the scathing portrait of a certain Vincent Bolloré.
Admittedly, the former cultural adviser to François Mitterrand, author of the tasty Great love (1993), never mentions Vivendi’s Breton boss by name in his tale à la Voltaire, but each page designates him, each anecdote assigns him. He who was a publisher with Jean-Pierre Ramsay, defender of the single book price with Jack Lang, creator with Jacques Attali of the electronic book, ambassador of public reading, here begins his umpteenth fight for the book, which is, in his eyes , “reflection, freedom and the possible, the only real way to make citizens, especially in these times of fake news and dyssocial networks”. Exclusive meeting.
L’Express: Why did you choose the form of the tale, a nod to Voltaire’s Candide, to paint the portrait of the one you call “the Ogre”?
Erik Orsenna: I would never have had the idea of writing this book if this “Ogre” had not wanted, apart from everything else, to seize Hachette and launch Zemmour… So, how to tell this dangerous story? A Tribune ? Everyone will have forgotten her the next day. Try a 400 pages “à la Zola”? I preferred the tale, which is a weapon, a mixture of allegory and precision, asking to be very concentrated and implacable – I reworked it ten times as for Great love.
I wanted acupuncture, to prick in the right place, following the immense example of Voltaire, with Candid Or Micromegasor Swift (Gulliver’s Travels). I am the miserable child of this 18th century, this century that is both very political and very literary. And to do this, I used my triple hat, economist, lawyer and writer.
A triple hat to which we can add that of the Breton?
Yes of course, it helped me. But I also knew the uncle of “l’Ogre”, the great resistant Gwenn-Aël, member with Blondin, Marceau, Jean d’Ormesson… of the jury of the Nimier prize that I received for Life like in Lausanne. I was really born on that day in 1977, at age 30, when they told me: “You are one of us, we know you are on the left, but you write on the right.” It’s better than the other way around (laughs). Hence this question: how can one be the nephew of a companion of the Liberation and reduce France to servitude? My conviction as a jurist – twenty years as a Council of State – is that power must be stopped by other powers. You cannot own the press and publishing when you are a kind of interventionist billionaire endowed with a very complete and very assumed reactionary and ideological vision – Bernard Arnault does not intervene, any more than Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière .
From the beginning of the book, you write that you are under the protection of the best lawyer in Paris. Are you afraid of something?
I know I’m attacking a very bad guy, helped by the Rottweilers in his response cell. They will be there, it is their job and their livelihood. I expect anything, and I will respond. As soon as I learned, in January 2022, that Bolloré was going to buy Hachette, I announced that, sadly, I was forced to leave the group. I published my last book with Fayard, The Earth is thirsty, because I had been working there for two and a half years with a great team. And I would like to greet the new boss, Isabelle Saporta. She will be a great editor. I proposed this text to Antoine Gallimard, he said yes right away, he is leading the same fight, knowing full well that culture can only live in diversity.
But there are so many publishing houses and books published in France that diversity doesn’t seem to be in such danger…
Numbers never guaranteed diversity. No regime has brought together more unanimous crowds than dictatorships.
You never mention the name of “the Ogre”, is it for reasons of legal protection?
Not particularly, no. I’m not quoting him, because it’s him, but it could be someone else. Take the ex-boss of Veolia, he will never forgive me for what I said about him in Challenges when he wanted to swallow Suez: “Obesity is never an ambition, it’s a symptom.” Even if it is not fashionable, I am a social democrat, I like entrepreneurs, because they are the ones who, with their companions, create wealth. Besides, I’m a sailor and I have a crew spirit. And the company is the crew. But those who, through financial shenanigans, make themselves masters of a society, are only cuckoo clocks. Or “business” men, it’s the same.
But wasn’t Vincent Bolloré an entrepreneur?
Indeed, and I pay tribute to him. He started by relaunching the very fine family paper business, which he saved with his production of plastic films, and I also salute in him the visionary who is launching into electric vehicles. But its drift quickly began with the takeover of the Delmas-Vieljeux shipping company, and the African disputes, the attempted takeover of Bouygues, the will to power in the press and in publishing with Vivendi and Hachette…
Why Hatchet? There, I go from admiration to combat. Again, money is the best of servants, and the worst of masters. The European Commission wants to hear me on the subject, I told them: “Let’s wait for the release of my book, I’ll come after.” The fact remains that the takeover will certainly take place and that diversity will be in danger. When there are so many newspapers and the huge machine of Hachette with its flagship houses like Fayard or Grasset united in one hand, the absence of checks and balances must always worry a society that wants to be democratic. Remember, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Have you ever met him?
Yes, of course, for my book On the paper road. Great respect, at that time. This is why I speak at a given moment of “deviation”. I have nothing against billionaires, but why impose a vision of the world, which puts itself at the service of the worst evil called Zemmour. Giving him half an hour every night is clearly a political project.
On the other hand, you paint a glowing portrait of Jean-Luc Lagardère. And you narrate the great moment that was his funeral on March 20, 2003.
Yes, Airbus, Matra, Hachette… The man was a creator, an entrepreneur. At his funeral, everyone saluted this destiny. But the raptors were there too, the “business” bankers, you know, those who sell by apartment rather than accompanying a company, and who receive millions of euros for this shameful cut. Here, we could play mini-La Fontaine and go from tale to fable that we would call “the creator, the thief and the rentier”.
You imply that you are going to publish a dictionary in love with flattery and you also mention a book on first ladies…
Yes, you can’t imagine the number of niceties I heard when I was at the Élysée or to enter the French Academy… I am constantly adding to this dictionary, where I also tell how I flattered myself. As for the first ladies I am talking about, they are the first ladies of certain African countries, and their eldest sons. There too, I encountered raptors, especially in the field of raw materials. But my most immediate book is the result of a collaboration with Salgado, the Brazilian photographer, and I’m also thinking of doing a book on mathematics with Cédric Villani.
Wouldn’t you be a little “ogre” too?
Yes, the books are always an autobiography (laughs). But, and this is why I never wanted to be Minister of Culture – one can be useful otherwise – I don’t like power. The submission of the other bores me. So yes, I am an ogre, but who does not bite and who, on the contrary, lets himself be devoured with happiness and gratitude.
story of an ogre, by Erik Orsenna. Gallimard, 178 pages, €18.50. (in bookstores February 16).