Guy Debord just has to watch out. If the last great anti-system musketeer slew the society of the spectacle in haunted and desperate books, Lydie Salvayre rants against our civilization of success, in the mocking manner of moralists observing mores at Versailles. Social networks, culture of winning, showing up on the news, Instagram narcissism, money-king, excessive starization and vulgarity at all levels.
The author of “Pas pleurer” is having a field day, drawing on new modern mythologies, wearing the obligatory Rolex and the last fervently desired Ferrari. For Lydie Salvayre, who mixes advice on getting a boost and portraits of new fashionable decision-makers, it is indeed a Copernican revolution that has taken place in recent years, through which the success “makes the dumbest individual look intelligent, the ugliest seductive, the most ungrateful amiable, the most dishonest honest, and the most basely mortal immortal”. Extracts
• A cosmic ass
“The velvety look, very breasty after surgery in Dubai (trendy destination), advantageously endowed with a billowy behind whose dimensions are inversely proportional to those of her mind, she has an extraordinary erotic potential, no doubt accentuated by a sulky pout that she cultivates at will.
Struggling to plaster on her face the depth that her brain lacks, she lets slip, from her redone lips, great declarations fertile in evidence, or launches out, with the appearance of the greatest affliction, into vibrant speeches. compassionate feelings and comforting proposals (concerning the poor who are hungry, the Uighurs who are cold, the Somalis who are hot, the Sahrawis who are thirsty, the Afghan women who are afraid, the Ukrainians who are in pain… she has a lot of them whole) thanks to which, she thinks, her compassion market will gain surface area, and her small capital: in euros.
She goes so far as to defend good against evil—for which we can’t praise her enough—while advertising Fastel’s raspberry-red plumping lipstick. The smile she then sketches and which projects an aura of happy silliness on her face, constitutes a real consolation, an exhilarating reason to hope for the teenage girls living in the HLMs of Créteil, which represent her buoyant market. These, in fact, since they follow her on TikTok and Instagram, no longer look with the same eye at the entrance hall of their building strewn with garbage and reeking of urine, because they now know that this hall can open up to exhilarating perspectives. Idolizing herself, she devotes a particular devotion to her face, her breasts, and above all to her ass, which, like rump steak with beef, seems to her to be the cut of choice. Her ass embodies for her the cosmic center around which revolve the world and its admirers. Moreover, she lodged her soul there, and cannot evoke one without moving the other. »
• The Influential Man
“He currently manages a company of 20,000 employees, and its turnover is around 20 billion euros. Is he rich in anything other than money?, you ask yourself. This is a question that shows a very unfortunate turn of mind in you.
Learn, my rebels, that this gentleman is rich enough to buy himself a butler, servants (paid for nothing), friends (plenty of them), influential ministers, prominent journalists, museum curators (turned advisers ), important businessmen, fair-haired mistresses, a cohort of flatterers, a few renowned intellectuals and a few artists. Like you.
He particularly appreciates the latter, which he finds both decorative, more amusing than the patterns of the CAC 40, and excellent value since they entertain him while enriching him.
From the above, it can be deduced without risk of error that he has a long arm and has a considerable sphere of influence. That’s why his jealous competitors say he has surface, but little depth.
To give himself (depth), he frequents art circles and prides himself on being a connoisseur and patron.
He understood that by surrounding himself with artists and writers he cast a sort of respectable veil over his financial dealings that some petty minds dare to call immoral and even scoundrels. Art is for him, he says as a poet, his valve. Art, he says, is his sin. Moreover, as soon as he hears the word artist, he pulls out his dick (mentally). It excites him, it perks him up and drives away his worries as a very superior man. »
• The attraction for novelty
“Even if the novelty is mediocrity, we much prefer it to a dated and already fragrant excellence. And beware of anyone who dares to issue a reservation about him! He will be regarded as an original who believes in it, or worse, as a redneck coupled with an arrogant one!
But one fine day, the rumor wears off, the excitement subsides, and the spell fades away. The fever for the new disappears as quickly as it came. Three little turns and puff! It will have lasted as long as love lasts. This is perhaps, you will tell me, its charm.
[…] Success is a drug that must be consumed immediately. But beware of the effects of lack, secondary to this addiction, which can degenerate into melancholy!
For there is addiction, my dear ones, and its procession of symptoms: crisis of intense exaltation followed by a steep fall to the bottom of the abyss, hypertrophy of the ego followed by its collapse, furious desire to exhibit one’s ‐tits then to go back underground and not move, terror of becoming anonymous again, in other words dead.
Using this so-called successful drug therefore requires you to be acutely aware of the volatility of its effects.
The praises that had lifted you to the skies can in an instant turn into disgrace and, when turned around, make you fall from above. And kill you. »
• The joys of competition
“Don’t be afraid to show off. The side you saw me, formerly reserved for the Mediterraneans of the poor classes and other badly brought up, is a quality which today is admired.
Lather up.
[…] Don’t go there with a dead voice. Makes some noise. Create buzz. Do bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz… Imitate the tireless zoning of the flies which, according to Blaise Pascal, eat the body, parasitize the mind and prevent the soul from acting.
The flies, today, my little ones, have won the battle over the silence without which thought, it is said, withers.
You better be warned if you want to get any benefit from this new paradigm.
Do not lower your heads, my bull calves, boldly advance with all horns out. Show your fangs, puff out your chest and, without prolegomena, bite, attack, send the sauce and act as the great contemporary poet Maître Gims urges: Run into the heap, and put on the full headlights. »
ORGANIC EXPRESS
Born in 1946 in Loir-et-Cher, Lydie Salvayre has written more than twenty books, including “La Compagnie des specters”, November 1997 prize, and “Pas pleurer”, Goncourt prize 2014.
Irrefutable essay on successology, by Lydie Salvayre, Seuil, 190 p., 17.50 euros (in bookshops on January 6).
