It is not given to all writers to become characters from novel. Nicolas d’Estienne d’Orves was the star of the last literary school year, reinvented in the guise of Antonin de Quincy d’Avricourt in the excellent Bad pretty, From his partner, Emma Becker. The erotic scenes, where the vigor of the man with red pants was brought to the clouds, aroused in turn fun, mockery and envy. Six months later, what does the main interested party think? In his ground floor of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he receives us under a stunned wild boar head, he still smiles: “It was exciting to live! A few piss-colds were shocked, there were grotesque and disproportionate reactions. Two or three people had legitimized to take the book-the others draped in false dignities. Am very modest in life, but I have not been at all in this story.
Is celebrating your half-century the ideal moment to renew yourself? Carried by the couple “joyful and fruitful” which he forms with Emma Becker, he is in the midst of metamorphosis. So far, this earthy member of the Club des Cent was renowned for his passion for andouillette and other offal. We imagined it seated in breweries, gaining fat until the middle of the afternoon. In the basement of his home, he shows us the exercise bike on which, every morning, he has been having an hour of intensive pedaling for two months. We saw in him an Oscar Wilde troop reincarnation, we discover a cyclist as rigorous as Bernard Hinault. In parallel to this sporting practice, he decided to publish under his acronym “neo” the series of seven pounds on the seven capital sins he is preparing. The first volume, The island of pride, very inspired by Scapegoat, From Daphné du Maurier, speaks of two writers who exchange their identities. We find there the singular way of neo, mixing an Aristo Franchouillard spirit rather retro with a sense of narration worthy of the best current series.
Where would he be, he who refuses to choose between the Swing of Paul Morand and the suspense of Stephen King? “I like above all the romantic. There is this very French syndrome to put people in hutch. Daphne du Maurier, it is popular novel but it is very well written, intelligent and deep. For me, there is no leading literature on one side and on the other that of station. There are good and bad books. Books that we take and that we no longer let you go. XIXth – The Count of Monte-Cristo, It is the absolute novel, even in its faults. But I am concerned with form, balance, meaning. And I try to maintain an elegant distance from the book itself-I don’t like overwriting, I disappear behind my intrigue. Morand is my favorite writer, he is an extraordinary stylist, but the imagination and the long form are not his strong. All things considered, I would place myself more in the inheritance of Marcel Aymé or Simenon. I want to tell stories like them. “
“I will always defend Yann Moix”
Basically, isn’t it Jacques Laurent (Prix Goncourt in 1971 for The stupidity) which is the closest? “He was able to do The quiet bodies, A work of real formalist, but also tests, political pamphlets or remarkably damn bestsellers like Caroline Chérie Or First name: Clotilde. It was the new Alexandre Dumas, alas it is a little forgotten these days … “Loving the cinema in black and white and” the quirky eras “, does Neo feel modern or vintage?” Oh I have the ass between two chairs! There is nothing worse than being fashionable. I am vintage in what I am, in the name I wear, I am stamped by a biotope, a heritage. But I am also from my time – attracts contrasts and paradoxes. My first book was published in 2001. What is difficult is to be there, to find publishers with whom we want to embark on projects, when we see what pleases … The sales figures have dropped a lot since my beginnings. There was then one television per household. In the evening, people had a book on their bedside table; Now they have an iPad. But I do not discourage myself, I advance. “
Throughout the conversation, he teaches us that he has known David Foenkinos since 1995: “We were at the Sorbonne together! We do not see each other all the time but he is a good comrade. I still remember the day he had presented me a band of people from Sciences Po, younger than us, among whom there was Florian Zeller. We are all a generation to have started at the same time, have disappeared.
Before that, a college student then a high school student, neo was educated in Juilly, the austere boarding school where the fountain, Philippe Noiret, Jacques Mesrine or Michel Polnareff studied. He was at the same time as Laurent de Gourcuff, the current Baron of the Parisian nights. Is there suffered from the spleen of the pension that Beigbeder speaks about his father in his latest book, A single man ? “I lived there a painful year then four great years. I got there as I was then: a little boy who had grown surrounded by adults. Every Sunday, my mother put in my bag four or five pounds for the week. And every night, in my dormitory of eight students, I listened to classic tapes in my Walkman. friends, with whom I did a lot of theater. Hot House, At the Avignon Festival in 1993? “
“The idea that there is a petuma in the White House …”
In the past, Néo has published two very fun books on bad taste, one of his tropisms. He is asked if he has good recent discoveries in this area: “What is happening at the moment in the United States is beyond understanding. Without doing politics at all, I am amazed by the Trump-Vance-Musk trio: the three of them have the names of cheap deodorants! Seen from the angle of bad taste, it’s amazing-for the rest, it fucks the tokens. Always.
As he takes us to the door, we question this surprising man about his current sites. Both small of the resistant honored d’Estienne d’Orves and being entitled to Lucien Rebatet, fascinated by the most disturbing figures of collaboration, he replies that he is preparing for Plon a Dictionary in love with cursed. He will not be able to make an entry on himself: to listen to it and read it, he seems to cross at the moment the most blessed period of his life.
The island of pride,, By Nicolas d’Estienne d’Orves. Albin Michel, 308 p., € 21.90.
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