in the autumn in France, the movement of the “gilets jaunes” was formed, the yellow West, the protest since then, every week, everywhere in the country against the policy of Emmanuel Macrons, hesitated for the writer Édouard Louis not long, to show solidarity. In a Text for the French culture and rock magazine “Les Inrockuptibles” he wrote at the beginning of December, the movement represent something “Real, Urgent, Radical”, you do “finally, the faces and voices visible and audible, which are normally banned in the invisibility”.
he meant, not least, the faces, voices and body from its environment of Origin in the North of France, a desolate, homophobic and racist Milieu, as Louis has it in his debut novel “The end of Eddy,” and the passage way in his second novel “In the heart of the violence”. Both books are equally angry as analytical reports, with parents, with siblings, with the people from his vicinity. Are memories of a Childhood, with whom he “connects not only happy memory”. In the yellow West, however, the bodies of the people behind it, looked at Louis, “my father, my brother, my aunt. They are similar to the bodies of my family and the people from the village in which I grew up“.
“We need to shout actually.“
Against this Background, the attitude change of Édouard Louis liked to be a bit of a surprise, especially as still unclear is how big the right-wing populist, right-wing Reservoir of the yellow West is movement, including racist and homophobic sentiments. But was released at the time of Louis’ partisanship for the “gilet jaunes” his third book in France a long time ago. Title: “Who killed my father.”
unlike in “The end of Eddy” and “In the heart of the violence” reigns, the compassion, the understanding. Yes, this father book has something of a Declaration of love, after the father and the son have spoken. From the indictment against the family and the home environment an indictment against bourgeois society has become, against the ruling class, “charges of political history”.
on the first few pages, Louis confesses that he’ll get back. He had told some things already, in his books, in Interviews. But it doesn’t help: “I have to repeat myself but, when I tell of your life, because of such a life, nobody wants to hear!”, he insists that the father always in the second Person Singular, addressing. “You have to repeat till they listen to us! In order to force them to listen! We need to scream.“
You realize alone of the many Exclamation marks, the fact that he speaks of “We”, how important Louis is, despite all the repetitions, to emphasize, who has his father on the Conscience of the politicians from Chirac on Hollande to Macron, the policy “has provided a premature death” for the category of people to which it belongs to be very malader father.
The literature is for Louis, in particular, this book is only a means to an end, a means of struggle against the Power. Your needs, as he admits, he wants to wear, “but the need, the urgency, the fire”. The Form, beauty, and stylistic consistency, therefore, have the Look, and so change in “Who killed my father” even more than in the previous books scenes from family life with sociological interpretations and, in the end, with unadorned, pamphlet sticking passages, as always, while new cuts in the social system.
role models for Louis: Didier Eribon and Annie Ernaux
Much of Louis’ family life is by now well known: from the violent half-brother, about the unfortunate Childhood of the father, the beatings he received from his father, so that he might rise vowed to never Hand against his children, to the Vegetating of the father on the Couch at home with Pastis and Chips, because he has become incapacitated. Also, Imre Kertész leads Louis as in “In the heart of the violence” as a guarantee, man, what irritated once more. Could as a man, as Louis does, the boredom in the concentration camp, Kertész reported, with the help of his disabled father to compare. Peter Handke’s book about his mother, “has a Wish-less misfortune”, from the Louis also cited, in this context, already mounted. And since it is Louis’ a confined intellectual circle of friends not far away; to the sociologist Didier Eribon, had written with his “returning to Reims” in 2009, the model for Louis’ books and Handke’s mother’s book in “the company as a judgment” as a guide served; to the philosopher Geoffroy de Lasagnerie and especially to the writer Annie Ernaux, whose in the early eighties, written father-Requiem “The space” coming soon also in German appears.
As the leitmotif of this in spite of the brief in a three-Chapter-structured book, a performance of Louis with three friends at a Party the parents. The boys are playing a concert, the little Édouard occurs as the lead singer of the Band, with rehearsed choreography, movements, and Gestures. The concert was the father commented only in silence. He goes outside to smoke, and the son is clear, why: Anything Feminine is contrary to the father when a boy, “a man, that is, not like a girl like a faggot list”. So it knows Édouard Louis, so it’s been told, including that he has suffered severely.
The father criticized the racism in France
However, in this book he also tells how he discovered that his father even dressed up once as a woman. This was scented when he met his wife, Édouards mother (which, as she explains to her son, earlier not common practice was). And that the father also has a penchant for Opera. Louis tells of how the father met him once, a birthday wish, almost übererfüllte, how he spent Christmas, more money for more food than is necessary, although it is a Christmas hater. Or how he allowed the fun to drive with the son “over the water” a rally on the beach. As the little Édouard apologized for his appearance as a singer, the father responds: “You took me in the Arm, said: It is nothing, it is nothing. Don’t you Worry.“
It is touching to see how Louis tried not to let his father in a completely new light. From a former racists and Homophobes, he finally makes a man, criticizes the racism in France, which is proud of his writer-son and his friend absolutely wants to get to know. If it is really progressing readily, after several debates, insights on the sick? Louis doesn’t bother to deal with such short-circuits. To him, it’s about “revenge”, as he once wrote, he would like to enroll the names of the political offenders who make people like his father to cripples, “in the history”.
At the end of the father is happy that Édouard is still politically active. And he says that it would now need “a regular Revolution”, and sure, he says, the representative for the son. That was visionary, as this book – which is always now, from the movement of the yellow West.
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Édouard-Louis-Roman, the Berlin-based Schaubühne “The police stole my story”
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Édouard Louis </strong Who has killed my father. From the German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel. S. Fischer, Frankfurt/Main, 2019. 77 pages, 16 €.
