The previous time he had told his story intimately, releasing his memories like Proust madeleines in a text which made his readers happy. “I would go swimming in more rivers” could have been Philippe Labro’s last book. But, at 88, he felt the need to return to fiction. Well almost. “Two Gimlets on 5th Avenue” is a lovely love story. Lucas and Élisabeth met in Paris in the 1960s, lost sight of each other, only to meet again in New York in the early 2000s.
Labro knows how to tell stories by distilling elements of his life into them. We become attached to Lucas, fiery but clumsy, too young to know how to love a rebellious and free Élisabeth. “At home,” smiles the octogenarian, “fiction is not very far from reality. I have never been as unbearable as Lucas, yet I recognize myself in his shyness, his complexes, his hesitation in the face of the paths to take in life. Élisabeth is more mature, more lucid, more intelligent and clearer. » Don’t throw any more away! Men toast Labro in 2024 when women are the real heroes.
“The novel is the art of confusing the cards, even if I use the cards of experience”
But above all, Philippe delights when he talks about his Paris of the 1960s, that of the platform buses, the one where we were indignant at the musical poverty of the yéyés and where we went to listen to the greatest jazzmen in the clubs of the capital. “These are my pleasures gone. For example, I remember very well how I, as a kid, thought I was a movie actor, in the streets of Montauban, after seeing a film with my father and my brother. » In life, Philippe’s older brother was called Jean-Pierre. “His disappearance a few years ago was a real shock,” confides the writer. It was a turning point since it was his judgment that mattered the most to me. He and I had a love for rugby and current affairs, I always wanted to be dubbed by him. » Should we read differently the passages devoted to Lucas’ deceased brother in “Two Gimlets on 5th Avenue”? “The novel is the art of confusing the cards, even if I use the cards of experience. » It is pointed out to him that from now on his writing is brief, concise, Labro not going beyond 200 pages. “Yes, I no longer write like I did in “Missly Extinguished Fires” or “The Little Boy”. But a “small book” is not necessarily a small book…”
It’s difficult not to evoke America in the face of the man who was, by chance, one of the first French journalists to cover the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Labro sends his characters to New York, this time , to make them experience September 11, 2001. “It’s the day America was raped. The same shock as Pearl Harbor. My wife was in New York, me in Paris. I was able to get her on the phone, find out she was okay and then all communications were cut off. I was left in a state of astonishment: America was therefore vulnerable. » But Labro also points out that she has been able to bounce back greatly since then. “Until we get to this fractured country, ready to re-elect Donald Trump. His election to me was the white supremacists’ response to eight years of Obama. And that’s why the fight for Kamala Harris is going to be complicated. Basically, the Civil War is still there. » Labro confesses to having less desire to fly to this increasingly incomprehensible land. “Trumpism is frankly disgusting. »
He knows that nothing happens by chance in life. “On the contrary, I believe in circumstances and in the convergence of events when we are, like me, driven by curiosity and the desire to move forward. » This is also how Françoise, his wife of forty years, entered his life. She was able to offer him a second chance, to allow him to have children and grandchildren. With her, he sometimes drank gimlets, that New York cocktail, and he became a better man. “With the decline of age and the certainty that time is running out, I know that the most important value in our lives is love. » And it is obviously to her that this “little” just and moving book is dedicated.
“Two gimlets on 5th Avenue”, by Philippe Labro, ed. Gallimard, 128 pages, 17 euros.
© DR
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