on to the TV book show Apostrophes when the second one had come out: Rain. It had meant something in those days. You didn’t get on TV as easily as all that, and certainly not to do some chitchat about anything other than your writings. Some good reviews, a reputation for brilliance. Even Pierre Frank, in a short paragraph at the end of one of his articles, had mentioned François’s book. He’d had a few successes, nothing vulgar, nothing over the top. He’d been noticed, but he hadn’t won any prizes. He was still under thirty then, and convinced that one day he’d get the Prix Goncourt. He didn’t have any doubts. And he didn’t suspect anything. He counted the potential jury votes as he wrote his books. He had a prominent publisher, Le Seuil, and he’d been short-listed three times. Never won, though. Always an also-ran. People told him it wasn’t good to get it too young. He took it nonchalantly. He didn’t know that he’d already had his moment of glory, that this was it. A promising beginning. Followed by not very much. He didn’t have the right contacts, he wasn’t well-enough connected. No hook to make an impression. Nothing but his books. A bit late in the day, he’d discovered this wasn’t going to be enough. He would have liked to be able to console himself by concentrating on posterity, on the generations of young Japanese readers who would be moved to tears when they discovered him too late, and who’d write many biographies, indignant at the vulgar indifference that had greeted his publications during his lifetime. But the more years went by, the less likely that seemed. He didn’t lose confidence in his work, but he had his doubts about the world of the future. He’d published the early novels convinced that one day there’d be a Pléiade edition of his collected works, that his oeuvre would be looked at as a whole: readers would admire its coherence, its stability of purpose, with its clear progression, its willingness to take risks, and its striking intuitions. He hadn’t imagined what would happen in the early 1990s. That was the first sign of decline. The scruffy, uneducated, journalistic writers who’d become the best-sellers for their generation. He was ashamed, in retrospect, that he hadn’t anticipated what publishing would turn into: an industry as stupid as any other. A resentful and antiquated street-walker. Mincing about in tattered robes. Dependent on television and trendy magazines. Enemies whose nuisance value he hadn’t spotted. Neither left nor right wing. Neither classic nor modern. TV personalities. Celebrities of the day. Pitching a line, always on the lookout for fresh flesh, greedy for readership figures. At first, he had decided to laugh them off. And he wasn’t the only one. He remembers, with bitterness today, a dinner party at which an eloquent publisher had kept them in stitches talking about the current best-sellers, forecasting that the way things were going, one day people would want to read novels by young girls going into detail about their hemorrhoids. How they had laughed. No, he hadn’t seen it coming. Authors who wrote about their eating disorders, or getting raped by their fathers, writers who were illiterate sluts, writers who boasted of screwing teenage girls in Thailand, or of being high on coke. He hadn’t seen it coming at all. Not to mention that the 1990s, compared with what followed, were in the end quite tame. He could have adjusted. But then along came the Internet. Nowadays, he had to make a constant effort not to spend all day long searching the web, haggard and depressed. Reading the comments. The anonymous load of crap. The litany of nonstop insults delivered by the incompetent. As soon as he discovered them, he realized he had entered the tenth circle of hell. Parallel little comments, deaf to each other, all in the same format, laconic and sickeningly hostile. Mediocrity had found its voice: the comments on the Internet. He wasn’t even being insulted. He would have liked to be able to rage and complain about the way he was treated. But he wasn’t even interesting enough for these sick fashionistas to launch campaigns against him. He was reduced to writing under a pseudonym, a few words of subtly critical praise for himself on the literary forums and blogs. He did have a few loyal readers, but they didn’t feel any pressing need to discuss his work on the Internet. Still, he didn’t throw in the towel. For his latest novel, The Great Paris Pyramid, he’d tried to adapt. Without betraying himself. People were talking about the return of the great French novel; he thought his moment had come at last. Times had changed but he wouldn’t. This might finally do the trick. A bit of Egyptian history, which he was knowledgeable about, a romantic plot, young characters who listened to music on their phones and talked about sex with no holds barred. But it didn’t seem to be taking off. And yet writing it had been a real pleasure, such as he hadn’t felt for a long time. He’d taken it as a sign. He’d been drafting the first few pages while suffering with a terrible toothache. The dentist had prescribed Solupred pills, which would reduce the abscess enough for the tooth to be extracted. Never having taken them before, he didn’t realize he was particularly sensitive to the effects of cortisone. He finished the packet, after the tooth had been pulled, and asked a doctor friend to prescribe some more, then more again, and so on until the book was finished. He wrote for twelve hours at a stretch, smiling over his keyboard. He’d completed it in five weeks, a record for him, since usually every page called for scrupulous rereading, second thoughts, and searching criticism. Fear of being untrue to himself had surfaced briefly, but the siren hopes of making a huge literary comeback were growing inside him, the warm welcome he’d get when he visited his publisher’s office, the endless invitations to prestigious dinners, the voicemail full of requests for interviews. It would be worth cheating on his talent if it succeeded. He went on taking cortisone while reading the proofs, and the effects didn’t wear off. When he wasn’t writing, he was talking, talking to anyone and everyone, he who was usually so reserved. It had been a sparkling season. He probably never would have stopped if he hadn’t one evening watched the transmission of a pre-recorded music program made in the ministry of culture, in which he’d taken part alongside the minister. He’d spoken well, brightly and incisively in the short interview he’d had, so he wasn’t worried as he waited to see himself. On the wide TV screen, he’d wondered with amusement who that great fat whale was in his tight gray suit, fidgeting nervously alongside the other guests. And then he’d recognized himself. His wife and daughter, the first gently, the second rudely, had pointed out to him that he’d been putting on weight these last few weeks. But seeing himself every day in the mirror, carried along on a wave of euphoria and creative energy, he hadn’t realized it. Until that evening, watching TV, he hadn’t taken in how much he’d changed. And then he had seen himself, flopping about, sweating like a pig, his red face reduced to a pair of obscenely joyous cheeks, and talking nonstop, nobody being able to curb his logorrhoea. That very night, the packets of cortisone, hitherto carefully kept in the bathroom, went into the garbage bin. Thereafter, he was to regret not having listened to the advice of the doctor friend who had warned him, as he bent over the precription pad, that he was renewing the pills for the seventh time in three months, and that he should be aware of the risk of stopping them suddenly. He hadn’t taken him by the scruff of the neck, put him up against a wall, and shouted, “Watch out for what happens if you stop taking the meds,” which would at least have been clear. The doctor friend, whom he called Dr. Drug during his season on Solupred, was rather easygoing, and like many in his profession, insensitive to other people’s pain. He had merely said in a gloomy tone, “You’ll have to come off these sometime, so let me know before you do, and I’ll tell you how to handle it.” But when François had seen himself looking so grotesque, he had felt he should give up the pills at once. He regarded himself proudly as a strong-willed character, his book was written, that was enough, no more foolishness. The first day, he’d thought it an interesting experience, if he’d had the strength he’d have taken notes, since he had never suffered so much pain. No corner of his anatomy escaped the disaster. By the end of the first week, he told himself he wanted to die, that he was an imposter, his friends were useless, his wife old and ugly, his daughter a fat little fool, he’d never have any literary reputation, his books wouldn’t survive him, everyone despised him, he’d never written a good sentence in his life. These moments of lucidity exhausted him. He came to think that suicide was the only strategy that would validate his work. Tortured by fearful hunger and early-morning cramps in all his muscles, he began the second week in a state of complete collapse. It was at that point that Claire had packed him off to see her osteopath, a woman of immense strength who had set about trying to break every bone in his body before putting him on to a vitamin diet of such complexity that simply adhering to it had monopolized all his energy: Spirulina, fermented beetroot juice, and fresh almonds . . . he endured such delights as these, plus an hour’s jogging every day. By the eighth day of this regime, which he followed religiously, the depression began to lift and leave
