A father gets on his bike. A stone’s throw from home, he brakes sharply. The cable gives way as he pulls up his sock. A truck rolls down… The firefighters arrive. “It’s over. » That’s it for the prologue. What’s next? The same one, dead… but alive!
The cutting of the book? “A minute” (the next chapter) then “An hour”, “A week”, “A month”, “A year”, and finally “Their lives”. Lucas, name of the dying hero, experiences smells like never before and perceives everything with incredible acuity (the skin of“a lemon so much more present in the world than before”). This won’t last. He lies in an in-between where he can do nothing for his family, neither howl, nor console, just “know what’s happening to them”.
Giving up on “knowing”
After the smells which finally desert, he loses his hearing, disappearing in pieces. Isn’t it “an autodidact of disappearance”since you only die once? He is preparing to lose the presence of his wife and his two children, with the forgetting of him that they will have.
Until the day – decades later – when the death of all of them and of those who took over, will remove all connection with the living. He can then renounce ” know “ to better get lost in the mists of time. This brief, dazzling book questions absence, what happens when we are no longer there, what those who remain alive experience.
Afterby Raphaël Meltz, Le Tripode, 132 pages, 16 euros.
Closer to those who create
Humanity always claimed the idea that culture is not a commoditythat it is a condition of political life and human emancipation.
Faced with liberal cultural policies, which weaken the public service of culture, the newspaper reports on the resistance of creators and all cultural personnel, but also on the solidarity of the public.
Unusual, daring and unique positions are the hallmark of the newspaper’s culture pages. Our journalists explore behind the scenes of the world of culture and the genesis of the works who make and shake up the news.
Help us defend an ambitious idea of culture!
I want to know more!
