As France has just appointed a new prime minister after weeks of summer suspense, a writer, Aurélien Bellanger, has delivered his political history lesson in the form of a roman à clef. The Last Days of the Socialist Party was published on August 19 by Editions du Seuil.
The back cover declares loudly: “Aurélien Bellanger constructs from book to book a modern-day Human Comedy. Is his work the memoir of a hard-working student at Sciences Po or a brilliant decoding of the nation’s turbulent political period, worthy of Balzac? An attempt to clarify this strange literary object in seven points: from the game of literary guessing to the author’s cynicism.
1 Who is the author, Aurélien Bellanger?
We could have the same method as the author, that is to say “romanticize” his bio to make him a hero of French literature. More simply, Aurélien Bellanger is a philosopher by training, a columnist on France Culture, and a writer with seven novels to his name. A sociologist and novelist, he explores French society and his literary exploration fields are the world of information, advertising, urban planning and politics. Since the beginning of his career, he has sometimes been described as Houellebecq from the leftlabel that the Inrocks have stuck to him since the publication of his first novel, Information theory in 2012, dedicated to Xavier Niel. He, humbly, would like to remain in history as the Balzac of the smartphone, 2.0 and artificial intelligence years.
His style: when reading the novel The Last Days of the Socialist Partyit oscillates between a lyricism in the descriptions of urban peripheries or the Normandy countryside and what some critics call “Wikipedia style”, dull and cold.
2 What is this novel about?
It is therefore a roman à clef, a long account of the last 25 years of the left, from the rue de Solférino, headquarters of the PS to the discreet circles of think tanks, with a hint of Freemason secrecy in it. There is a bit of “popol” (a term describing the small strategies of the political world): “So it was to Hollande and his good-natured, Corrèze-style Machiavellianism that Grémond had decided to give his apparatchik loyalty.” There are detours through the newsrooms: “Thus protected, Charlie Hebdo Was it still a satirical newspaper? And media philosophy, since two of the characters are fashionable philosophers.”The new fashionable philosopher was being fought over. He was preparing for it as if he had been Napoleon on the eve of a battle.”
From this cocktail, close to the society pages of the Thursday weeklies, the reader sometimes thinks of the various editorials that are read and forgotten as soon as they are. Then, through a tortuous sleight of hand, Bellanger’s murderous thesis emerges: the republican and secular left has paved the way for the National Front and far-right ideas.
3 Who is behind Bellanger’s characters?
In the game of “who’s who” in the novel, the puzzle resolutions are easy as Aurélien Bellanger makes no effort to give depth to his characters. They are described and written as they are known in public life. In order of appearance over the pages: here is Grémond, or Laurent Bouvet, co-founder of the Printemps républicain, who died in 2021 of Charcot’s disease. He is the main character of the novel and the least known to the general public. It is through him that the misfortune of the left arrives. A reader of Richelieu and Maurras, Grémond becomes an admirer of strong powers and the éminences grises.
Then the two philosophers appear, “that of the fields and that of the cities”, or Taillevent, philosopher of Saint Germain and the Latin Quarter, portrait by Raphaël Enthoven, in “mediocre intellectual and Don Juan of the Sainte-Geneviéve mountain” and Frayère, the hedonist Michel Onfray coming from his native Normandy with pathetic adolescent sexual experiences: “This Casanova of the groves”. Further on we meet Philippe Val, former editor-in-chief of Charlie in the guise of Revêche. “He knew how to make people smile, an intelligent smile, but making people laugh was a gift he didn’t possess.”
At the grand finale, Aurélien Bellanger himself under the pseudonym of Sauveterre. A beautiful role that the author attributes to himself, perhaps the only one. It is not necessary to unroll the entire credits to understand that the casting is that of the Parisian media-politico-philosophico microcosm… It is as if we had returned to the annoying “germanopratin” of the old 80s: from there to building a human comedy, we must see…
And the author confesses his method in the pages of the newspaper Le Monde: “For my book on Xavier Niel [La Théorie de l’information, Gallimard, 2012]all biographical details were based on six articles by Releasehis Wikipedia page and an interview given to Echos“. We do not know whether the sources were more diverse for The last days of the Socialist Party, but a careful reading could lead one to think that no, so few surprises emerge throughout the pages. Except what would be invented. And that is where the unease appears.
4 A disturbing cynicism for these characters
Page 63, Grémond is in Toulouse, a professor in un Science Po provincial as Bellanger points out. “Grémond is also a professor at Sciences Po, which is what is written under his face when he is invited on La Chaîne parlementaire or, more rarely, on the BFM set. But the banner has something a little misleading: under “teacher at Sciences Po”, there is no room, or it is he who asks for it, to specify that it is in Toulouse, between Saint-Sernin and the Jacobins, and not rue Saint-Guillaume in Paris.” The portrait of a half-failure from the pen of Bellanger.
The character therefore learns that in Toulouse a massacre has just taken place in a Jewish school. In real life, we remember that on March 19, 2012, Mohammed Merah murdered four people including three children in front of the Ozar-Harorah school.
In Bellanger’s literature, Grémond’s first reaction to this killing was: “that it came at a double bad time. Firstly because we were a month away from the 2012 presidential election, and secondly because it happened on a Monday, and it was on Tuesday night that he was sleeping in Toulouse.” So under the author’s pen, Laurent Bouvet becomes this cynicism calculating in the face of a child murder. Those who knew the creator of the Republican Spring are shocked at this reading. Calculating cynicism is the prerogative of Bellanger’s characters, it is surely that of many politicians, but if Raphael Enthoven, Michel Onfray, Caroline Fourest, Philippe Val or Emmanuel Macron can take up their pens or call for justice, but the deceased Laurent Bouvet will never be able to settle his score with Bellanger.
5 The gist of the argument: this left which would pave the way for fascism
Since the text is still 470 pages long and Aurélien Bellanger struggles to prove his thesis, we must return to the subject and the heart of the work. It is the story of activists, intellectuals, politicians, and a left-wing prime minister, who call for a return of authority through a “radical” secularism. The author summarizes these political efforts on X: “I wrote a book that tells how a heresy of the Socialist Party, the Republican Spring, surrounded by a small group of mediocre intellectuals, made possible the victory of the extreme right in France.”
Briefly stated, Bellanger accuses this left, which he believes is stubbornly opposed to French-style secularism, of propelling the country towards fascism. A bit of a quick analysis for someone who went from being a supporter of Nicolas Sarkozy to a fellow traveler of Jean-Luc Melenchon. But politics and literature are words that rarely go well together.
6 The Republican Spring’s response
To this charge against the Republican Spring, imagined by Bellanger as the cradle of far-right ideas, Gilles Clavreul, co-founder of the movement with Laurent Bouvet, responds for Franceinfo culture: “It is quite grotesque to attribute to a handful of people the ability to literally take control of the State and lead the country to swing towards the extreme right.” And if he recognizes the right to political fiction, the novel wanting to be realistic, he adds: “There is not much invention, there are many errors, there are many historical factual misinterpretations which mean that the narrative framework does not hold up very well.”
But it is on the cynicism and the desire to destroy his characters that Gilles Clavreul is most severe when reading the novel: “Laurent Bouvet’s portrait is gloomy but the way in which he portrait those of CharliePhilippe Val or Richard Malka who are still happy on the evening of January 7 of the death and murder of their friends, it is “completely crazy and completely abject”he said.
7A welcome made of good words in the press
If Aurélien Bellanger does not lack humor, if sometimes his words hit the mark in his descriptions of the tactics and strategies of the political swamp and if, as in Greater Parishis descriptions of gray areas of the suburbs are good pages, it is still in the press review of the critics that the reader would find his pleasure.
In the weekly The Point : Gilles Clavreu, co-founder of the Republican Spring, declares: “He looks like a Houellebecq with chamomile, without humor, without self-mockery, without that tenderness which emerges in a somewhat miraculous way, especially, in the author of Platform and some Elementary particles“
Marianne titre : “Aurelien Bellanger, The Last Days of the Socialist Party or the neurosis of the leftist” and continues: “The nonsense he spouts in a t-shirt? All secularists are crypto-racists who play into the hands of the RN, basically. Simple, effective. Even on France Inter, they tell him he’s going a bit far.”
The most mocking or sly will be Fréderic Beigbeder who knows a thing or two about witticisms to trash a colleague: “It is true that Bellanger has the style of a What do I know? on French social democracy. Yet he manages to make an epic out of it! The author of Land use planning (Prix de Flore in 2014) has the genius to hold 500 pages on an editorial subject by Laurent Joffrin.”
With The last days of the Socialist Party, Aurélien Bellanger wanted to decipher the French political scene and a left in decline, with its arrangements and about-faces. The news of the last few weeks with the elections, the dissolution and the interminable nomination of a prime minister will have had more talent than the author: for once again, in politics, reality does better than fiction.
Extract :
“This is how Grémond found himself at the head of the party’s secularism commission – a commission where he would remain for ten years and which would be, under his leadership, the most feared in the PS, because it had the power to prevent anyone who opposed its president, or his republican orthodoxy, from being invested. The weight he has gained, from lunch to lunch, reflects his new importance – even if he pretends to attribute it exclusively, overplaying the old radsoc, to the cassoulet toulousain. He speaks of Toulouse as a member of parliament would speak of his constituency. His teaching position in this city, which he initially accepted reluctantly, is beginning to bring him interesting benefits. However political his commission may be, his presence as close to the field as possible seems to guarantee his impartiality. It is he, from now on, who directly informs Le Canard enchaîné — or Charlie Hebdo, if the matter is serious enough to merit a major caricature — when he has a personal score to settle. And he will make, in this strategic position which consists of distributing or taking back citizenship certificates, a considerable number of enemies and friends, in the right proportions.”
“The Last Days of the Socialist Party” by Aurélien Bellanger, Editions du Seuil. 470 pages. 23 Euros
