Yann Moix: Orléans (2019)

Yann Moix is hardly a stranger to controversy: to give four examples, he lost a court case for calling extreme right-wing writer and politician Renaud Camus 'anti-Semitic'; he's said that he could never fancy a woman over fifty; he's said that Michael Jackson wasn't a paedophile but a child himself; and now (just a short time after after the publication of this book) his brother Alexandre wrote a letter published in Le Parisien claiming that he was the person who was violently abused by Yann, and that it wasn't their parents who violently treated and humiliated Yann, as this book describes.* I note that several people (not all of whom have even read the book) on Amazon reviews have lashed out against it, it seems to me, because, among other things, they call Yann Moix narcissistic. I can find nothing narcissistic in this book.

In this month's Le Grand entretien in Lire with Yann Moix, Claire Chazal says that some of the excessive violence described as being meted out to him by his parents (who seem out to destroy him mentally if not quite physically), and asks him what is true in the book. Moix says, rather cryptically, that 'exactness' is more important than 'the truth', and goes on to say that he may have mistaken one of the years in the book for the year before! And anyway, calling the book 'a novel' acts as a 'tiny filter between reality and the author, who can protect himself behind this word'. So that's all right then: we can treat the work how we please and ignore what is truth and what is fiction? The best way, for a number of reasons, is to treat the book is as a work of fiction.

The novel is divided into two equal parts: 'Dedans' and 'Dehors', the first of which deals with the savage and mindless treatment of the first person narrator by his parents, who pick on any opportunity to attack him; the second part explains activities outside the home (mainly at school). Both parts of the novel are divided into a number of sections corresponding to each year the narrator went to school, from maternelle to terminale.

At no time in either section is there a mention of a brother, and I don't believe the names of the parents are ever mentioned. But in the first part, the slightest error the narrator makes, the punishment is harsh: his incontinence, his listening to music under the bedclothes late into the night, coming home smelling of smoke, even his obsession with André Gide is seen as negative because he was a pédé: the punishment is violent and often humiliating.

In the second part there is still humiliation for Moix, particularly on the part of girls, who make fun of him, torment him, even mentally torture this testosterone-fuelled (but painfully shy) young creature. But Moix comes to love literature through Gide, then Francis Ponge, Sartre, and there are many more writers to come. In fact, he states, intellectual enlightenment can be as rewarding as the sex act.

Yann Moix is a much reviled personality, but that notwithstanding, Orléans is an extremely well written book and should not been condemned for reasons unrelated to its contents.

*Since writing this, new information has emerged about Yann Moix's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial thirty years ago, specifically concerning cartoons he drew, as well as writings. He appeared on On n'est pas couché yesterday and vociferously condemned the person he was as opposed to the person he is now. Somehow, I think he's probably dug himself more and more into the ground.

Yann Moix: Partouz (2004)

For the first time in a long time, I was unable to finish a book: that is indicative of the level of boredom to which I felt subjected by Yann Moix's Partouz.

In the literary magazine Le Matricule des anges no. 57 (October 2004), Ludovic Bablon gives a scathing review of this novel that he claims isn't a novel. For a French periodical to state such a thing seems very strong to me, as the expression 'roman' (the equivalent to our word 'novel') is generally accepted in France to cover a number of written works that in Britain would just not come under that term: plainly autobiographical works, short stories bundled together by a common theme, novellas, collections of ramblings notes, etc. So what is it about this book?

Bablon clearly intended a strong criticism. Partouz – which gives the Arabic transliteration of 'partouze', a word with the same meaning in both French and English – is divided into four parts, although by the time I reached halfway I'd not got through the second part but had read just over 200 pages. The central premise of the first part – which in large part concerns the Twin Towers terrorist Mohammed Atta – is that Atta became a terrorist out of sexual frustration, and the narrator invents Pamela Wiltshire, a girl he says Atta was lusting after. The narrator is experiencing his first partouze and feels somewhat uncomfortable, although he gives vivid descriptions of the many sights he sees: yes, it's something of a porn novel.

The second section is called 'Masturbator' and painfully reconstructs the history of the narrator's masturbatory activities and fantasies, and after so many pages I just gave up. I thoroughly enjoyed Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Brian Aldiss's Hand-Reared Boy – both books having wanking as their main subject – but Partouz? Oh no. The critic who wrote 'Moi, Moi, Moi!' of him (I forget the name) seems spot on.

The reason I'd started this book was as a kind of preparation for Moix's Naissance, which won the prix Renaudot last year for this 1200-page door-stopper (brique in French), and I was testing the water. And it just seems to be all about Moix's birth, with many digressions. Yeah: Moi(x), Moi(x), Moi(x).

However, Frédéric Beigbeder's infuriating yet fascinating Premier bilan après l'apocalypse (2011), which I reviewed earlier and which lists his favourite 100 books, includes Moix's Podium (2002) at number 79, and tells me something I didn't know: Partouz is Moix's second volume of his second trilogy, which begins with Podium and ends with Panthéon (2006). Beigbeder says Podium is about 'fame, the new opium of the people', and that sounds interesting. Plus, his Jubilations vers le ciel (1996) won the prix Goncourt for first novel. I don't give up easily, so I'll no doubt get back to Moix when the occasion presents itself.