It is impossible not to think of Joseph Ponthus and his book At the line where he described, in 2019, his daily life as an assembly line worker in a cannery and a Breton slaughterhouse, before dying two years later while his story was a great success. Lorrain Voisard also takes us to a slaughterhouse. Like Ponthus, he has letters and he lets us know this through a multitude of literary quotations. What happens in a slaughterhouse is absolutely fascinating. The slightest slice of ham or steak is the result of the more or less brutal killing of an animal. We of course tend to forget this when we chew this flesh, when we grill it on a barbecue. The question is not to be moralistic but to note how far we are from the reality of things. This is why it is interesting to read In the heart of the beast and the formidable descriptions of the blood, the guts, the looks of the animals going towards death, of their hooves sliding on the concrete. If Ponthus were in the line of Robert Linhart – author of L’Etabli (1978) – and proletarian literature, Lorrain Voisard adopts the point of view of an author carrying out an experiment rather than that of a worker delivering the story of his work. It dilutes the story a little, it puts the reader at a distance, too bad. As for the title… The ligne of Ponthus, this is what was formerly called “the chain” in the factories, L’Etabli Linhart’s is self-explanatory. So, In the heart of the beastit’s a little vague, it sounds like the title of a Catholic novel from the beginning of the 20th century… But just don’t think about it while reading the book.
