On the occasion of the “Rendez-vous de l’histoire”, which is being held in Blois from October 9 to 13, 2024, journalists from Release invite around thirty historians to take a different look at current events. Find this special issue on newsstands Thursday October 10 and all articles from this edition in this folder.
Can comedy, the light one that makes us smile, protect us from the disorders of the world, the anxiety-provoking situations and the war stories that surround us? This is the complex question that Gaïa, the heroine of the Book I didn’t write by Laure Gouraige. Fashion journalist, novelist (she has just released her second book) here she is overwhelmed by current events, totally annihilated by the fate of Afghan women. Depressed, desolate, she nevertheless decides to write again: it will be a comedy, she tells her publisher, a book of humor and frivolity, in which she refuses even to be a question of love, this one This can hurt so much. Yet doubts assail her: around her, her friends have no respect for comedy, even if they know that “France has such a cult of tragedy”. Should literature be serious?
Eight days of fasting
A novel to free oneself from the darkness of the world: it is with this very particular theme that Laure Gouraige begins a journey as disturbing as it is disturbed, crossing with vigor and humor several comical aspects of the stages of the life of Gaïa, which oscillates, from New York to Paris, between the construction of his book “light” and the destruction of his project. Thus we witness “fashion week”, recounted with biting irony, an ubiquitous crossover between creators, jewels, brands, guests and columnists – the latter happily drinking in the cafes of rue Saint-Honoré in laughing at the postures of the models during the fashion shows.
Despite this mocking whirlwind, Gaïa’s uneasiness continues as she goes to New York to stay with her parents. The father is an intellectual who declaims Joyce or Derrida, while her mother refers her to the superficiality of her project. During this time, the book is not written, except for three or four sentences here and there. Humiliated, Gaïa will still go through several ordeals which could have been funny but were not like during a retreat with her friends, under the guidance of a coach who will make them fast for eight days. Returning exhausted, she confides in her friend Marcus (for him, she has a little “quiver”): nothing suits him, neither fashion too close to money, nor literature, nor love. And the comedy is visibly repudiated by everyone…
“Abolition of melancholy”
There is something striking in the Book that I did not write : Gaia’s attempts to escape the morbid and anguished atmosphere of our society (wars, political crises) are in fact very current. We all have the desire to free ourselves from the anxiety in which we are immersed. Can humor, doubt and derision dispel this worry? Can comedy, an often despised genre, caress the whole of a text so that the sadness is less heavy?
Finally, the editor of Gaïa will offer him a translation: that of a “real comedy” American, for which she could settle in the United States. Surprised but happy, she leaves for New York; here she is finally who “admits the possibility of a life”. She will live at Marcus’ house, with him, and translate a comedy that she did not write. What “believe in the abolition of melancholy”. And perhaps write his own comedy in turn.
Laure Gouraige, the Book that I did not writeP.O.L., 416 pp., 22 € (ebook : 15,99 €).
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