“Frédéric Beigbeder of the French Academy … or almost. It’s as if it were done”, joked the author of 99 francs at the microphone of France Inter, in 2014. Eight years later, the writer pushes the provocation… until he is actually a candidate. The initiative is very serious, since the interested party caught “green fever”, in reference to the academic dress of the same color, as he had fun with L’Express recently. The critic of Figaro Magazine is seeking chair 19 of the French Academy, replacing lyricist and screenwriter Jean-Loup Dabadie, who died in 2020. The election will take place this Thursday, November 3 and promises to be one of the most disputed in recent years. Because facing the author of Love lasts three years, stands a very serious competitor: the novelist Benoît Duteurtre, three times winner of prizes on the proposal of the Immortals. A sign that does not deceive.
It has been several months since Beigbeder took it into his head to become Immortal, which perhaps echoes his fear of death, recounted in An endless life (Grasset), his novel published in 2018. In early 2022, he met Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, “the perpetual secretary” at the Academy, to discuss his chances and the best time to apply. The writer has drawn two major lessons from this: the November 3 election is ideal and he has every chance in the long term. The moment seems, on the one hand, particularly favorable because the next ballot is deemed favorable to a French writer, a profile which has not won since 2021 among women with Chantal Thomas and since 2019 among men, with Daniel Rondeau : of the last three laureates, two are academics – Pascal Ory and Antoine Compagnon – and the third, the Hispano-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature 2010, struggles to dispel doubts about his future attendance in session. However, some of the academicians remain attached to the category of novelists remaining the most represented.
Above all, Frédéric Beigbeder has an asset that has not escaped Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, very invested in the external influence of the house: its notoriety. Since the death of Jean d’Ormesson at the end of 2017, the French Academy has lacked ambassadors to the general public. With his media surface, the literary critic could shine the green coat out of his usual microcosm. two of his novels, 99 francs and Love lasts three years, have also sold more than 500,000 copies, a feat that few academics can claim. Another element in his favor: unlike Frédéric Mitterrand, Pascal Bruckner, Luc Ferry or Franz-Olivier Giesbert, four known candidates who have been blackballed in recent years, Beigbeder is not perceived as infatuated or arrogant, often crippling character traits with the highly susceptible academic electorate. On the contrary, an academician describes – under the seal of anonymity, the internal rules prohibiting to speak about postulants before the ballot – the novelist as “humanly exquisite, with all the social codes which characterize good company”.
Fayotage in Le Figaro
His visits – a tradition of Immortals interviewing candidates who hold their interest – have been said to be much appreciated. It’s because the ex-enfant terrible from the left bank of Paris, president of the very trendy Caca’s Club (the book which looks back on his adventures was prefaced by the academician Marc Lambron), an informal association that organizes parties in Saint -Germain-des-Prés between 1984 and 1994, has this gift of bourgeois conversation: he knows how to talk about himself with an amused detachment, to chat on great generic themes and to highlight his interlocutor without sycophancy too openly. His review of the reception speech under the Coupole by François Sureau (Gallimard), published on July 8 in the Figaro Magazine, yet did not bother with too many subtleties. Frédéric Beigbeder lay there on half a page, discussing “the speeches of reception” which “are used to distract the social evenings”. That of Sureau “has the merit of allowing us to flatter an academician without bowing down to a pest”, he celebrated. We learned that that day, the lawyer and writer “shone” and “transformed a chore” into a “manifesto for freedom of expression”. Historian Michel Zink’s response was described as “cheerful and tender”. “The Academy is the last stable place, in France, of free discussion in a held language. The Academy does not age, it evolves”, he concluded, in this column in the form of a cover letter.
However, few academics imagine Beigbeder elected on November 3. “He will be beaten at least once”, predicts an Immortal, yet favorable to his entry. The elections under the Dome respond to a precise grammar and one of its rules is that candidates who are not unanimous on their profile are not elected at the first attempt, in order to test their motivation. But Frédéric Beigbeder, despite his qualities, retains resolute adversaries, found in two different categories of academicians. His dandy manners struggle on the one hand to convince some of the academics, attached to a certain classicism. The most right-wing Immortals also blame him for his antics. His presence on the cover of The Obs, on June 15, under the title “My farewell to coke”, was very badly perceived. “I like Frédéric, but internationally, people wouldn’t understand why we elected someone like that… He’s not the image of the ideal father, if you see what I’m saying. mean”, explains an academician.
The previous Cocteau
In the past, the French Academy has already elected an ex-drug user: in 1955, the poet Jean Cocteau dons the green habit, whereas he published, twenty-five years earlier, Opium, an account of one of his rehabs. But the substance from the poppy leaf has a less sulphurous image than cocaine: it is a solitary drug, when the white powder has the reputation of being consumed in a festive environment, a practice which arouses dismayed pouts from several Immortals. Frédéric Beigbeder seems to have decided to assume this provocative aspect of his CV and to be ready to suffer a first failure, as he confided to L’Express, in July, in his humorous style. “I would never want to be part of a club that would accept having me as a member,” he answered a question about his future candidacy, quoting Groucho Marx.
Above all, Frédéric Beigbeder has to face an important adversary in the person of Benoît Duteurtre, also a writer. This “match” consists of a real opposition of styles. Socialite flamboyance against discretion, Paris against the provinces, the general public against circles of connoisseurs, the world of cinema against that of the music hall. France Inter versus France Musique, too. If the employee of Figarowho is also a former presenter of Circle, a film review program on Canal +, was for a long time a star columnist in the morning show of France Inter, Duteurtre has since 1999 been the producer of a program on the operetta broadcast on France Musique. If one of Beigbeder’s emblematic works, A French novelrecounts his cocaine intake on the hood of a car in western Paris, that of Duteurtre – Summer 76 – recounts his adolescence in Le Havre. Not that this author published by Gallimard comes from a less privileged background: his grandfather was deputy for Seine-Maritime for thirteen years, while his great-grandfather is none other than René Coty, the last president the Fourth Republic. His writing themes have more to do with earth and rootedness: in 1987 he wrote The cowsa novel that compares the attraction for a woman and that for ruminants.
“Duteurtre leads a skilful and obstinate campaign”, describes an Immortal. The interested party has been gravitating around the French Academy for several years. He is, for example, musical advisor to the Singer-Polignac foundation, specializing in artistic patronage, in which sit… four academicians, including Hélène Carrère d’Encausse. Three times awarded by the Immortals, he was already a candidate in 2018, for the chair of Michel Déon. Despite the presence of Pascal Bruckner, he gathered 11 votes in the first round, a promising total when we know that in recent years, 13 or 14 votes are often enough to be elected. Attention, however: in the third round, 13 crosses had been registered by the academicians, the sign that they did not wish the victory of any of the candidates. As such, the context is rather favorable to Duteurtre: the last ballot, last May, has already resulted in the absence of a winner, due to the opposition of a small group to Franz-Olivier Giesbert. This time, the pressure will be strong for there to be an elected official: failing that, potential candidates could become discouraged, judging that these Immortals are decidedly too hard of a tooth.
Two friends from Houellebecq
The native of Le Havre is also a close friend of Michel Houellebecq, a status that can only delight Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, who has long dreamed of seeing the author of Serotonin under the Cupola. But Duteurtre cannot claim this link against Beigbeder since the latter is… also a great friend of the Prix Goncourt 2010, and even the witness of his last marriage, in 2018. Other candidates are in the running – the publisher Michel Carassou, the philosopher Hedi Majri, the author Eric Dubois, the singer Eduardo Pisani, the tax expert Emmanuel Cruvelier, the plant enthusiast Jean-Yves Gerlat, the political activist Pierre Perpillou – but they generally do not have , no chance.
If Frédéric Beigbeder, 57, or Benoît Duteurtre, 62, win, their election will have a historic dimension: the winner will become the youngest of the French Academy and the first “green suit” born in the 1960s.