The “right” to think differently
Benjamin Stock’s idea is great. This young author (born in Blois in 1988) won the Prix de Flore for the novel Marc in which he deploys it. Throughout his chapters, he pulls the writings of Marc Levy by the hair and, in doing so, delivers brilliant pages on the interpretation of the texts, what we can make them say, the far-fetched plot that we can easily get out of it. But Benjamin Stock’s novel does not stop there. Through a gallery of characters, he acidly sketches the evils of our time, our tics on social networks, our relationship to information, our relativism, this poison which, from left to right of the political spectrum, leaves us to hear that there would no longer be truth, that reality would no longer have anything to tell us, that what we think determines what is. “Each time he wanted to defend the scientific approach against the primacy of intuition, against superstitions or grandmother’s remedies, he was opposed to the ‘right’ to think differently”writes Benjamin Stock.
In this sense, Marc is a very intelligent work. But this is also its limit. Long, sometimes too long, it is an essay written in the style of a fable. Except in Diana, David’s companion, we look for a real romantic breath there. Each of the characters reflects a societal observation of the author, serves a thesis, a message, and remains a prisoner of it. The bourgeois parents who are blind to the misery of others, the feminist, non-binary and individualist roommate, the collaborator who thinks she is a witch and turns away from reason in favor of alternative medicine, the suicidal friend, the nihilist boyfriend, the start-ups and companies that are empty of meaning and which turn on themselves…
Therefore, if you already despair of human nature, do not throw yourself at this book. A caustic mirror of our stupidities and our vulgarities, it depicts our times with talent, even if it does not bear witness to our humanity which cannot be reduced to it.
⇒ Marc | Novel | Benjamin Stock | Éditions Rue Fromentin, 448 pp., €23
