Benjamin Stock wins the Flore 2024 prize for a hilarious book on Marc Levy

In “Marc,” a community of readers is convinced that the bestselling author is distilling a communist message through his work.

What if it was true? The merry fellows of the Prix de Flore have just announced, this Thursday, November 7, that they are awarding their prize to Benjamin Stock for his novel “Marc” (rue Fromentin). The prize celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and we don’t know if there is a connection, but the jury of the famous Parisian brasserie continues to bet on youth. Among his five finalists were only beginning writers. The first novelist Benjamin Stock thus won against Nagui Zinet and his “Exemplary Trajectory” (Joëlle Losfeld), a wandering under Bukowskian influence, Daphné Tamage with “The Return of Saturn” (Stock), about a thirty-year-old who sees herself prescribe a month without men, Joy Majdalani, noticed with “the Taste of Boys” and who returns with “Jessica alone in a room” (Grasset) and finally Pierre Deram, for “Nuits » (Grasset), soaked and sensual wandering. A crushing unanimous victory in the first round, minus one vote for Joy Majdalani.

Born in Blois in 1988, zigzagging between Perche and the capital for his work as a communications manager in the ecological transition, Benjamin Stock has undoubtedly released the most hilarious first novel of the literary season. The pitch reveals all its zaniness: a group of followers thinks they can decipher crypto-communist messages in Marc Levy’s best-sellers. “It could have been Guillaume Musso too… I took one of the most read authors in France. […] But it is not a novel about him, nor an interpretation of his texts”he explained to “Action l’Echo” last September.

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The story follows the moods of David Baumer, in his early thirties, who is vegetating at the Share Academy, the start-up that he himself founded. What can the positions of Chief Information Officer, Program Manager be used for? or Growth Hacker? What exactly produces the Share Academy, this “hypertrophied hive” where the “collaborators” propose “ here support for businesses towards the digital transition, there workshops for reflection for “a more inclusive and more sustainable society” ? David wants to find meaning again. It will not necessarily come from where he expects it. It was Sheyenne, one of his somewhat mystical employees, who introduced him to a community of fanatical exegetes of Marc Levy. David, cynical but nevertheless idealistic, believes he has found the new prophet. Thanks to the prose of the writer of “Where are you?” “, civilization could get back on track, he believes.

In this first text, surprising to say the least, Benjamin Stock criticizes everything: coaching, social justice fighters on social networks or « bullshit jobs » theorized by David Graeber. How to be happy when the only horizon is the launch of a “mojito flavor mustard”asks this author who, having been through communications, must know something about it. Through comedy and this bizarre conspiracy which is as good as any other, it is the mediocrity of the modern world that he crushes. There is some proto-Houellebecq or Beigbeder in him – that’s good, the latter is on the jury and undoubtedly recognized something in the young novelist.

Benjamin Stock succeeds Maria Pourchet, awarded last year for “Western” (Stock). Like all Flore winners, he will be given a check for 6,150 euros and the right to consume Pouilly-fumé every day for one year in a glass engraved with his name. But it’s nothing compared to the honor of having put Marc Levy on the radar of literary juries, who rarely cared about it.

Please note: The Flore Prize jury is made up of Frédéric Beigbeder, Jacques Braunstein, Manuel Carcassonne, Carole Chrétiennot, Michèle Fitoussi, François Reynaert, Jean Pierre Saccani, Bertrand de Saint-Vincent, Christophe Tison, Philippe Vandel, Jean-René van der Plaetsen, Arnaud Viviant.