On Boulevard VoltaireGabrielle Cluzel has long denounced in the person of Annie Ernaux, Nobel winner, the wanderings, contradictions and hypocrisy of this left which has reigned supreme for decades over the intellectual world. But now, at the start of 2025, a new blow has just been dealt to the statue of commander of official feminism, the self-proclaimed Madonna of class defectors. But, this time, the scratch which breaks the official veneer comes from his own camp, from a writer, from a specialist in his work (his thesis concerns the work of Ernaux) who was also… his lover. Thirty years younger.
This January literary return sees the publication of the latest book by Philippe Vilain, Bad Student. An autobiography – or autofiction, to use the concepts of the time – of one of the respectable authors of the day beginning with this sentence: ” Reading bored me » cannot be a bad book. The first pages set the scene, very Annie Ernaux, that of a child from a very disadvantaged background, who has now become a literature professor and writer.
But Philippe Vilain also looks back on his relationship with Annie Ernaux. We can understand why he authorized himself to do so because, if he owes her, by his own admission, his literary education, she owes him a share of her Nobel, for having made him a character in her work. . On at least two occasions. First in L’Occupation (2002) « where Ernaux anonymized him and already belittled him with disconcerting class contempt on the part of a Pythia of the intellectual left ”, according to the critic of L’Express Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld. Then, in the opus she published a few months before the Nobel, The Young Man« where she relates with great condescension a story she shared with a boy in her twenties when she herself was in her fifties ».
In the interview he gives to L’Expresshe makes the protest of the young man that he once was heard: “ Annie Ernaux presents me as a redneck – she uses the word, and it's not nothing. How can she be so lacking in kindness towards me? […] His story factually transcribes the truth of the situations, but everything is so decontextualized that it results in a text woven with lies by omission. » And puts his finger on all the contradictions of the great lady of letters: “ In addition to the violence of her judgment on someone of more modest origins than herself, Annie Ernaux is not intellectually honest, even though she claims to be a literature of truth – it's a bit embarrassing… »
From Annie Ernaux, the leftist, unwavering support of Mélenchon, he also shows us the “ luxurious life » with, for example, its “ numerous prospections to buy a second home ».
Vilain does not avoid the ambiguities – to remain in euphemism – of the power exercised by this woman ” dominant » about him and his way of degrading him literary: “ The young man is not a thinking being, an apprentice writer who has escaped from his social class; he is nothing more than a body, it's violent… Let's reverse it for a second: if, now aged 55, I wrote The Young Girl using the same terms as Annie Ernaux, would that be appreciated? It’s a safe bet that I would, on the contrary, be blacklisted… »
A bad student, Philipe Vilain is also a bad student in relation to Professor Annie Ernaux, and he is right: he does not imitate her in his contempt, knows how to recognize what he owes her, repeats his admiration while setting the record straight on time and by demystifying his postures. A lesson in literary ethics. If Vilain begins his second half of the year 2024-2025 well, let's not be fooled: it is ultimately his literary duo that he unwittingly dynamites, and an entire era. Student Vilain, you are on the right track!
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