how Marie Robert won over thirty-somethings – L’Express

2009, she is 24 years old and things are not going well, she stops her doctoral thesis (“From the Gospels to the Tractatus, history of literary and philosophical transmission”), she breaks up with her lover, the son of the writer Dan Frank, and puts an end to her course “Magic and religions” at the psychology institute of Paris V, where she made these apprentice psychologists think “about the need for stories in our lives”. An advertisement for a position in a private school outside of the Montessori contract in Bailly, to which she applied with a heavy foot, and there, double love at first sight: one with the director’s son, Alexandre d’Esclaibes, today the father of his little James, 13 months old, the other to teach French, philosophy, at middle school then at high school; leading her kids through hiccuping school journeys at the heart of the texts, triumphing with them over aridity to grasp their lessons, transports her, she says she never tires of discovering in their faces the light of the first philosophical emotions.

Up at 5:45 a.m., the professor gets into the habit of publishing on Instagram a text dedicated to her profession – gratitude, wonder and benevolent meditation, her favorite triptych. And this little account of nothing at all is read, waited for. First seed. Five years later, the revelation hits the shelves of Ikea. 2014, a nightmare day, 200 euros spent on good-smelling candles while she was looking for furniture for her school, she gets angry, and now, furious at having given in to useless purchases, “the conatus of Spinoza, desire is the essence of man. This key precept of desire as a life drive soothes him, “I realize that each crisis situation has its answer in the great book of philosophy, I tell myself that it would be relevant to take advantage of it.” Second seed.

The following weekend, still no Ikea bookcase in the trunk, but a cooking session in the country house of her brother, Guillaume Robert, publisher at Flammarion – that’s good news – she read him her first text, Spinoza at Ikea . He, eleven years his senior, has just broken down the feel-good house with the Leave us alone by Fabrice Midal, a book designed with the literary agent, Susanna Lea. He sent Marie’s chapter to the great American best-selling architect, thinking two things. Firstly, “it had to work, I couldn’t lose money on my house with my sister”. Second, “I noticed the boulevard”. The boulevard ? All general public philosophy books are today written by men (Charles Pépin, Frédéric Lenoir etc.), in “existential development”, as he describes the vein, no women. Eureka.

The first book, a Flammarion-Versilio co-edition (the house of Susanna Lea) is titled Kant you don’t know what to do anymore, in English, it’s practical, it gives: “When you Kant figures it out”, all thought out and written in a translatable version – Ikea exists everywhere -, and therefore everything is immediately lucrative because it is sold in fifteen versions at the stranger. The book is made up of twelve digestible chapters, a nice walk where we discover that Aristotle helps to recover from a hangover, Nietzsche to accelerate the tempo of a jog, and Pascal to cut the chains all info, with for each author a summary of his work and his key concepts. A hit in bookstores, signings in New York (where Susanna lends her apartment), leaving the tireless Marie Robert, who fuels spirulina and running in the Bailly woods, continues at high intensity.

Newsletter, podcasts, Instagram, its tangy pastilles prance around. Easy, positive thoughts, nourished by the popularization of a great author. A magnificent recipe, as it is good to console oneself for having bought trinkets by thinking that one will have accomplished nothing worse than allowing one’s “conatus” to occur, the same when one would have wanted to strangle one’s children at Disneyland by consoling itself with the thought of the autonomy of the child dear to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Or “sentimental philosophy”, according to the second definition of his brother publisher. Its audience, overwhelmingly female, many in their thirties and a quarter in their fifties, appreciates the good morning wishes of “Philosophy is sexy”, its wishes with abstruse poetics, such as “I wish you a day of heroism with a salty taste” , “I wish you an ocean day”, or sometimes downright cryptic: “I wish you a day of needles, screwdrivers and electric whisks” or “I wish you to open your cell mail”, all with black and white photos. Her brother believes that she is not “yet successful enough”, commercially and fraternally convinced that the author could sell much more. This is because, in our sad days, offering simple precepts, ennobled by their references, to the quest for meaning of a generation who will have only known philosophy in the final year of final year, is flourishing, or textbooks of positive thinking, steeped in the injunction to self-conversion, have become tired. “A boulevard” then.

She lends herself to it with enthusiasm, she says it herself, “I always want to comfort”, she cannot say where it comes from, she has never done psychoanalysis, she mentions her microphone -family unit, his parents and his adored brother, “we experience ourselves as a refuge”. Against what ? What adversity? She ignores him, extending this “twin” bond with her brother with whom she shares her vacations, soon a weekend in Barcelona, ​​and “Christmas of course.” They sometimes sleep in the same room, often during their first signing tours so as not to cut too much into promotional budgets.

It’s him who confides it, he’s almost surprised, he’s “adored” it since its birth, carried it around when he was little to his first book fairs. As in Colmar, Marie Robert was then thirteen years old, Guillaume Robert, 24 years old and he introduced her to Susy Morgenstern, the legendary author of the École des Loisirs. Two years ago, they saw her together again and the octogenarian with rose-colored glasses urged the young woman to have a baby. A month later, Marie is pregnant with James.

For the moment, Madame “Philosophy is sexy” is not making a living from her editorial success, but her popularity, and her straightforward messages, are attracting the companies who buy her work. Small video capsules for the clothing brand Sézane, a conference around joy at Veuve-Clicquot, the reason for being at Monoprix, will follow Bouygues construction, BPCE, Urssaf and even CAF, where she hosts workshops. workshops on emotions. At the same time, with her partner, she set up four bilingual Montessori schools, two in Paris, one in Clichy, and the last in Marseille, where she spends half the week. Private schools, 550 euros per month of tuition in Marseille, 800 euros in Clichy, and 1000 in Paris, no canteen at this rate, children bring lunch boxes. Marie Robert is writing her next book, around comfort. Its Google calendar is organized by color according to activities. Neither Kant nor Spinoza taught him this, but it is useful.