health club sentences with Nicolas Fargues – Libération

The novelist led a writing workshop in the Parisian prison. “We are the bad boy we can be” is a dive into this separate world, with side steps, as when the author smuggles kebabs, congratulated by an inmate: “Nico, you are a good .”

In 2023, for seven months, Nicolas Fargues went near the last vespasian in Paris: behind the walls of Health. He is neither the first nor the last to lead writing workshops in prison and produce a book from them. The writers who do this are probably driven by a mixture of altruism, activism, curiosity, fascination and challenge, in proportions which vary according to each person. Perhaps they also seek to verify these verses from La Fontaine: “Reason usually /Does not live long among sequestered people.” Fargues notes “with satisfaction that the word packing is commonly used by 2023 inmates.”

He describes well the atmosphere of this separate world, where he notes “a notable recurrence in the landscape of physiognomies: the scar on the forehead, on the temple or on the skull. Your choice.” He notices that Arago Boulevard, along the prison, always seems empty even though it is not. Objects, called “missiles” or “parcels”, are constantly being thrown over the wall, which the detainees collect with sheets to which hooks are attached. : “No more potatoes in these nets, which can be easily fished from the windows, than water in the bottles, rather intended to contain meat, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol or a cell phone wedged between two sponges to absorb the shock.» The jamming system works poorly, especially for states