Highly retirement ! That’s what we say to ourselves while reading Conscience clause, the new novel by Gilles Martin-Chauffier. He recently left his position as editor-in-chief at Paris Match, where he entered in 1980. He has undoubtedly never been as free as today, at 69 years old. After a detour through ancient Rome (The Last Tribunein 2021) he returns to his favorite genre, social satire, and he has a blast with it.
Imagine instead: the narrator of Conscience clauseGilles, is himself editor-in-chief at Scoop (a nod to a novel by Evelyn Waugh), a weekly which does more than think of Paris Match. At the beginning of the book, Gilles has his hand forced by Corinne Content, known as Coco Contexte, a ludicrous clone of Mimi Marchand: she forces him to write a portrait of Clémence Moncœur, the new actress who is supposed to come up. Gilles and Coco will meet again throughout the 200 pages, playing cat and mouse, scolding each other then reconciling according to their interests. Gilles sees in Coco a “virago”, a “crazy”, a “bug who would sell sand to the Saudis”. The “shrew who went through prison to end up at home at the Elysée” is not to be outdone: she calls Gilles a “poor loser” or more directly a “dirty cunt”, but also “a petty bourgeois whore” , from “lethargic little lord” or even “good casual wanker from the upper class” to “little rubbish books that no one reads”. Atmosphere ! Alas for Gilles; he becomes attached to Clémence, a girl more surprising than she seems, and, to continue to see her, he must maintain good relations with the formidable Coco, half-impresario, half-master-singer having to the paparazzi, showbiz and part of the political class…
Conscience clause does not only tell this duel (often twisting repartee) and a chaste marivaudage between a promising actress and a journalist at the end of his career. There is also talk of the dog in a bowling game: a certain Vincent Bolloré is thinking of buying Scoop (as he actually did with Paris Match). The editorial staff is petrified: “In the corridors of Scoopwe crossed ourselves when talking about him.” Gilles, out of a dandy spirit of contradiction as much as out of Breton solidarity (he has a second home on Île aux Moines), takes the side of the “privateer” with “the eternal smile of carnivorous playboy with lips”: “For a complete specimen of a capitalist, I found him very likeable.”
A broader reflection on the media
Later in the novel, he drives home the point of provocation: “For months, I had been waiting for him as the Messiah.” Two pages later, finally, Martin-Chauffier places this analysis in the head of another character: “For him, the former sixty-eighters full of hollow tolerance dream of living in a dictatorship; just to display a courage which, in France, they have never been able to prove it. Contrary to their assertions, Bolloré enchants them. He offers the opportunity for one last struggle. After having adored Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Castro and Chavez opposed to the capitalist despots, they re-file the trellis to block the way for the new Citizen Kane. So-called rebels invent supposed threats to join the resistance without any risk. The eternal French comedy.” These lines will make his former colleagues laugh. Paris Match as well as the employees and authors of the house Grasset, Bolloré’s recent acquisition, where the “Messiah” is not really in the odor of holiness…
It would be unfair to reduce Conscience clause to a pro-Bolloré pochade. Behind the avalanche of witticisms and well-drawn Parisian characters (including a supposedly environmentalist minister and a crisis communicator), Martin-Chauffier delivers a broader reflection on the media. Can we contradict him when he writes these words? “The independence of newspapers! I have no original idea on the subject. Throughout my career, I have seen the self-censorship of journalists careful with their relationships, their sources, their convictions or their calculations. Censorship , I never met her.” He cites writers here and there (Mme de Sévigné, Oscar Wilde, René Fallet), but the name that comes up most often in Conscience clause is that of Molière. In the press and publishing, many comedians would like us to mistake a businessman for the Antichrist – it was time to deflate this nonsense.
Conscience clause, by Gilles Martin-Chauffier. Grasset, 233 p., €20. The Last Tribun
.