Death suits him so well. Frédéric Beigbeder, the lover of all excesses, for whom “frivolity is serious business“, buried his father Jean-Michel Beigbeder, on October 2, 2023, in the Guéthary cemetery, to the sound of Basque chants, and this disappearance inspired him, without him resorting to illicit substances or relief adjuvants, his most beautiful book.
This father and son had never been close, or so rarely: “We didn't love each other the way we should have. The misunderstandings have continued too long not to turn into mutual incomprehension..” The father seemed indifferent to his son's literary career and escapades; the son did not really know who this solitary and solipsistic father was, weighing around 150 kg and as many secrets, nicknamed “the pope of headhunters” by the wealthy CAC 40 tribe.
“Unimaginable sadness”
It was necessary for Jean-Michel Beigbeder to be struck down, at the age of 85, by Parkinson's disease and cancer of the bile ducts, for the author of A French Novel to attempt to unravel the mystery of this once flamboyant father, whose end was “of unimaginable sadness“It all began at the Catholic boarding school of Sorèze (Tarn), among the “kapos with rosaries“. It was there, in the cold, the humidity, the hunger, the lack of sleep, the military violence, the humiliation (and worse, no doubt), that the destiny of little Jean-Michel was forged “From the age of 8, he is a lonely man, eternally curled up, with a hardened heart, incapable of confiding in himself..” He will live from now on, according to his son, to erase the misfortunes of childhood, or turn them to his advantage.
Then trained in the United States, at the age of 24 he joined Spencer Stuart, a world leader in the field of executive search, a firm of which he was the boss for more than twenty years. In other words, he becomes a headhunter. Very big heads. “All his life, explains Frédéric Beigbeder, my father's job was to serve as an intermediary between the powerful, he sold to big industrialists the love that he was powerless to express in his family..” By searching through his papers and his computer, he also discovered that his jet-setting father had two American passports under a pseudonym and that he had, undoubtedly, been recruited by the CIA.
Recruited by the CIA
The more he investigates, the deeper the mystery of a brilliant, cultured, funny man, who led the life of a castle, spoke on familiar terms with the greats of this world, crossed time zones, multiplied his female conquests, but was going to end his life ruined. , alone, emaciated and bedridden.
In this poignant book of regrets, but not reproaches, where Catholic prayers add to Anglo-Saxon songs, Frédéric Beigbeder attempts on each page to reconnect with his father, even though it is too late. And to believe in their reunion, in this “eternal present” of which Patrick Modiano speaks so well. We have never known the novelist of Windows on the World so peaceful and pacified, even in grief.
