A single man from Frédéric Beigbeder

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The book on the father is an exercise that dates back at least to the highest antiquity, said Alexandre Vialatte. Everyone returns literary thus carries their share of stories or novels devoted to the paternal figure and a few months after Thibault de Montaigu (to name a few), author of the beautiful Heart (Interallié Prix 2024), Frédéric Beigbeder resuscitates Jean-Michel Beigbeder (1938-2023). Son of an American and a Béarnais, he created in a way in France the profession of “head hunter”, first within a multinational whose hexagonal branch he directed in the early 1960s, then the head of his own company from 1986. In fact, A single man is also a little story of the Thirty Glorious Years, Conquerful Capitalism, a state of mind made of figures, carelessness and consumerism. Beigbeder Père placed decades during men and women at the helm of the largest companies in the CAC 40. What is left of all this? Nothing, or almost, concedes the son.

Then the author ofA French novel investigation and grows the family and intimate history of this ” businessman misanthrope “With regard to” melancholy toddler », From this play-Boy collecting female conquests, of this boomer that we would gladly imagine in the cinema in the guise of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Before success, there was the experience of the Abbey-School of Sorèze, Catholic military boarding school where loneliness, the feeling of abandonment and the bullying forged the heart and the soul of little Jean-Michel.

Failed bell tinking

Frédéric Beigbeder does not however plunge into pathos, dolorism, bazaar psychoanalysis, psychology with two sous. He does not write more for ” avenge his race “(Annie Ernaux), her class or her own injuries of” Son of divorced seventies ». Cut into brief chapters, puzzle -style, A single man Tell a missed meeting: ” Our two indifferences met. When I stopped indooring him, he stopped worrying him. “The object of the text for him: to meet” Someone I have not known during his lifetime ». Does he know him better after the trip? Not sure. Jean-Michel Beigbeder, who held passports on behalf of William Harben (his American cousin, CIA agent) himself a member of the agency? The son likes to imagine it.

If Frédéric Beigbeder does not neglect the meaning of the formula which is his brand (” France had just been released when my father was locked up. », « Palliative care is the Chronopost of the subclaf. », « Aging is replacing check-ups with a checklist. ), It makes a bit of cracked bell heard. That of a single man now in front of now composing with his doubles: “ My father's death gives me this strange impression of being both a large person and a little boy. Until the end, Jean-Michel and Frédéric remained faithful to the children they were.

Christian Authier

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A single man • Rasset