You have to imagine IGN maps published in “La Pléiade” to get a good idea of the fusion between novel and geography operated by Aurélien Bellanger and Philippe Vasset. In their new books, the cartography is less that of territories than that of the stories that irrigate our era, disoriented by the proliferation of false information and marked by the spread of far-right ideas. The first publishes The Last Days of the Socialist Partya political satire imagining a secret project carried by a movement mimicking that of the Republican Spring. Or how a “Heresy of the Socialist Party”as the author describes it, would have given the National Rally a leg up. The second delves into the mysteries of blackmail in the Internet age with Diary of a BlackmailerIn this novel, small schemes have big consequences, as the characters emerge from the underground to infiltrate legitimate organizations (communications agency, temporary employment agency discreetly converted into an intelligence service, magazine management).
Both issue the same warning: stories are not confined to books or screens, they also circulate under the counter. Interview with two novelists who are picking the pockets of today’s apprentice Doctor Mabuses.
Your new novels focus on groups that work discreetly, if not secretly. This is nothing new for you. To cite just two examples, in your “Conjuration,” by Philippe Vasset (Fayard, 2013), the narrator founded a sect; in your “Grand Paris,” by Aurélien Bellanger (Gallimard, 2017), the character of Machelin, Patrick Buisson’s fictional double, worked behind the scenes of political life. Why does this motif interest you?
Aurélien Bellanger: It is first of all a taste as a reader, since I was marked by theHistory of the thirteenby Balzac [1833-1835]and serials. I also see it as a good literary tool. The motif emerges around 1830 with the exhaustion of romantic sensitivity and the artist’s demotion to positions considered inferior, such as those of the investigator or the journalist. At that time, the artist self-destitutes himself as an autonomous individual: he must seek other things, because it is no longer thought that his freedom alone will allow him to see clearly. The novel ceases to be the place for the magnification of an individuality and becomes that of the author’s confrontation with elements that are foreign to him. Hence the taste for conspiracies and secret societies: it comes from a decentering of the novelistic posture.
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