The “Louis” of his last name inexorably calls Jean-Luc Lagarce and his hero of Just the end of the world : Louis returns to his family with the intention of announcing his imminent death, but this family reunion will not allow him to confide. In his last story, Édouard Louis also goes towards his family, not only by sociologically dissecting the mechanisms at work, but by making the announcement of his brother's death a starting point which leaves plenty of room for doubt and a form of tenderness. As if he too had not had the space to announce his own death and that through his book, Édouard Louis gave him one.
The Collapseis the seventh work by Édouard Louis, it was published on October 4, 2024 by Editions du Seuil, shortly after his previous book, Monique escapes, devoted to his mother which was published in April 2024. This time, he tells the story of the short life of his brother, found dead on the floor of his studio at the age of 38. With this ultimate book of a family fresco started with Put an end to Eddy Bellegueule in 2014, Edouard Louis chose the method of investigation, to pick up the pieces of this broken life, and try to understand.
Knowing that you don't know
Until then, Édouard Louis had written books about things he knew: “In 'Who killed my father', I spoke about the political reforms which had damaged his body, in 'Monique escapes', I spoke about the money necessary for my mother to flee a violent man”. But with this new book, the author moves the cursor: “with 'The Collapse', it was about talking about what it's like not to know. Because when I started the investigation into my brother, I realized that I knew nothing about him, but still more fundamentally than I thought I knew and didn't know.
This book recreates the investigation carried out by the author to understand who this violent and sad brother was: “Everyone I asked about him made me understand things and taught me things that went completely against what I thought I knew. So it's a book that talks about that : what is it to think you know and not to know? What is it to think you know and not know?
Edouard Louis, Antigone of the 21st century
Édouard Louis puts a question at the center of this story: “what would my brother’s life have been like if it could have been anything else” that this life struck by sadness and Wound as the author calls it: “sometimes while writing this book I had the impression of being Antigone, of burying the body of a brother that society would not allow me to bury. My brother was someone whose society would not have took the defense, he is not someone whose death we are going to celebrate, he is even the absolute negative of what can produce pity or compassion in society”.
In this story which closes the family fresco and more broadly in his work started since 2014, the author is interested in combating the mechanisms which corrode societies: “fight male domination, fight patriarchy, but probably not individuals. Today we accuse individuals in a very strong way and therefore, no one would have wanted to bury my brother. With this book I tried to create this ritual which does not mean loving him, hiding who he was or denying it, but trying to go as far as possible in understanding what a body like his was, a life like his and a death like his.”
Sound clips:
- Reading of The Collapse by Edouard Louis by Oriane Delacroix
- The year of magical thinking by Joan Didion, read by Françoise Lebrun in “Don’t bother to cry” on France Culture in 2012
- Archive of Man and deatha program produced from extracts from the work of the historian Philippe Ariès
- Ending song: People who doubt by Anne Sylvestre
