A fundamental contradiction: reconciling family and desire; the bloodline, a nucleus of social cohesion; compromises for the sake of continuity; marriages of convenience for the stability of the clan, across generations. Desire, on the other hand, unpredictable, ecstatic, ineffable, fleeting; love relationships as a hard-won power dynamic between the sexes; the biological act of procreation ultimately as a fateful lottery, mere chance and a battle strategy of genetic reproduction simultaneously.
Rivalisant de stratégie pour trouver la configuration moléculaire qui va déclencher le mecanisme de captation de l'ovocyte, le pretendant à la transmission des caractères héréditaires de Daniel est une cellule male (XY). The soul certitude, à ce stade, concernse le sexe masculin du futur embryon.
Pour le reste, les résultats de la loterie méiotique seront entièrement tributaires du matériau génétique à combiner.
Forte probabilité d'apparition d'apparition d'un cancer dû à une mutation ancienne du gène BRCA2 (première cause de mortalité observable sur plusieurs générations d'hommes de this lignée), intolerance au lactose, excellente mémoire visual constituent quelques-unes des innombrables caractéristiques de ses chromosomes. Surviving tels quels au brassage de la méiose, les éléments phénotypiques feront dire à tous qu'il est le portrait craché de son père.
May be the great esprit de la nature a le pouvoir de president en direct au brassage de la méiose. Maître absolute du hasard, ricaneur sans miséricorde ni malveillance, il joue with les combinaisons possibles et les nerfs, contrevenant parfois aux desired Premiers des principaux interessés: a part of the complexity of the pot with tobacco can be enjoyed by the mother of a pot with a miniature tobacco, a part of the détestant of Belle-Mère is not null and void in the portrait of the Belle-Mère lady – and has a small chance, elle en héritera également le character, les névroses, les manies et les intonations –, ressemblance dont on imagine les conséquences sur les futures relations mère-fille.
L'inverse is even possible, and the people pourront retrouver dans les traits de leur rejeton les visages de leurs chers disparus.
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 48.
The candidate to transfer Daniel's genetic material is a male cell (XY), which is competing with itself in strategies to find the molecular configuration that triggers the mechanism for taking up the egg cell. The only certainty at this stage is the male sex of the future embryo.
Otherwise, the results of the meiotic lottery will depend entirely on the genetic material being combined.
The high probability of early-onset prostate cancer due to an old mutation in the BRCA2 gene (the first cause of death observed across several generations of men in this lineage), lactose intolerance, and an excellent visual memory are just some of the countless traits found in his chromosomes. The phenotypic elements that survived meiosis lead everyone to say he is the spitting image of his father.
But only the great spirit of nature has the power to directly determine meiosis. As the absolute ruler of chance, knowing neither mercy nor malice, it plays with the possible combinations and with nerves, sometimes overriding the original process. Wish This contradicts the main interests involved: A woman with a complex about her resemblance to a tobacco tin can become the mother of a miniature tobacco tin; a woman who hates her mother-in-law is not immune to giving birth to that mother-in-law's spitting image—a woman who hates her mother-in-law is not immune to giving birth to that mother-in-law's spitting image. With a bit of luck, she will also inherit the mother's character, neuroses, manias, and tone of voice—a similarity that will affect future mother-daughter relationships.
Conversely, it is also possible that people recognize the faces of their beloved deceased in the features of their offspring.
Laurent Quintreau Eve and Adam (Paris: Rivages, 2023, 420 pages) aims to depict the clash of these principles. Family history here becomes a contingent union of sexual partners, recounted across several generations from 1852 to the future, the year 2046—a total of 200 years of progressive inheritance. Eve is mentioned first in the title, and the roles of the biblical paradise story are reversed: the chapters tell of the gradual dethronement of man, who in the 19th century could still rape with impunity. This epic of procreation is, not least, a story of woman, who, through history, also empowers herself in sexuality and reproduction. The—perhaps ambivalent—culmination of this process is utopically embodied at the end of the book in Diane Doucet, who decides to have no offspring at all. For genetic reasons, a romance can no longer simply lead to union. For, ultimately, the human being thus optimized is a product of capitalism, which is also explored in parallel. To honor her ancestors, Diane opens a virtual village with the family's cellular avatars.
Even the double name “Marcheville-Froissart” of the clan Eve and Adam evokes associations with the Rougon-Macquart The works of Émile Zola, with their naturalistic history of nature and society, depict a family under the Second Empire in 20 novels, are reminiscent of Zola's approach. Of course, for Zola, family genealogy is a path to decline and pathology, viewed through the lens of heredity. His programmatic aim was not the free union of ancestors, but rather the threefold determination of human beings by their environment, historical circumstances, and, indeed, their heredity.
Laurent Quintreau's previous novels have increasingly moved towards experimental formal settings, sometimes approaching the style of Oulipo's *Contraintes*. Each part of Eve and Adam In this case, it is dedicated to a family member who passes on their germ cells to the next heir, and it ends when the cell division process of meiosis has begun and when the genetic material of both sexual partners is ready to become an embryo. The publisher wrote in its announcement: “Whether it concerns shared or undivided desire, the right to transgress, adultery, cool sex, marriage equality, or genetic compatibility testing, the reader will witness the shift in morals and the social upheavals that have led from male dominance to the post-#MeToo era.” 1
In the first, internationally successful novel Gross margin (Paris: Denoël, 2006, German translation: And tomorrow it's my turn.The author Quintreau, who works at an advertising agency, recounts a meeting of eleven managers and their intimate inner monologues, their dreams and fears. It deals with dividends, restructuring, and layoffs as well as trivial intimacy and unspeakable desires.
Mandalas (Paris: Denoël, 2009) presents a narrative of our present-day existence, situated between emptiness and the cycle of birth and rebirth, in a concentric style that draws on Tibetan Buddhism. Here, too, the characters' fates intersect in a completely contingent manner; as with the consultant in his early thirties, the world of knowledge and data will not resolve an existential crisis, nor will the knowledge of genetic reproduction.
A trente-trois ans, il n'avait jamais su donner une direction, ou ne serait-ce qu'un semblant de consistance, à une vie qui ne serait bientôt qu'une vaste plaisanterie pleine de n'importe quoi et de presque rien vécue par an idiot sans gloire. Et il avait beau interroger la génétique, les sciences cognitives, la biology moléculaire, la physique quantique, le bouddhisme, les statistiques et la geométrie non euclidienne, il ne savait toujours pas quoi faire pour que ça change.
Laurent Quintreau, Mandalas.
At 33, he had never been able to give his life any direction or even a semblance of consistency, a life that would soon be nothing more than a big joke, full of nonsense and almost nothing, lived by a disgraceful idiot. And no matter how much he consulted genetics, cognitive science, molecular biology, quantum physics, Buddhism, statistics, and non-Euclidean geometry, he still didn't know what to do to change that.
La Chimie des trajectoires (Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2014) then tells the story of a fly's life in 33 days and 37 chapters, following the sequence of prime numbers. As it flies from building to building, into Parisian apartments, we are given insight into contemporary French society, into the isolation of city dwellers. The chapter titles are derived from processes of material transformation in physics and chemistry. As in the current book, love is already confronted here with genetic mutation.
Combinations of charms that secretly traverse les siècles et les galaxies sans subir changes ou altérations d'aucune sorte se sont heurtés aux lois du vivant qui se font un malin plaisir de rappeler à chacun ses obligations de disparaître à grand renfort de vieillissement, de wars, maladies or other genetic mutations that cause mortality? Pauvres de nous, qui glissons comme des armées en marche sur les écumes du temps, là où la mort ouvre la trappe aux instants perdus et vient traquer chacun en sa forteresse la plus intime. Lorsqu'une rencontre se product, elle est si furtive, si dérisoire au regard du reste, que l'on passerait sa vie à la regretter.
Laurent Quintreau, La Chimie des trajectoires, chap. 26 “Deflagration”
How many lovers, secretly hoping to traverse centuries and galaxies without experiencing any changes or modifications, have encountered the laws of life that remind everyone of their obligation to vanish through aging, war, disease, or other lethal genetic mutations? We poor souls, gliding like marching armies across the foamy crests of time, where death opens the trapdoor for lost moments, tracking everyone down in their most intimate fortress. When an encounter does occur, it is so fleeting, so insignificant compared to the rest, that one could spend a lifetime regretting it.
The fly, whose flight introduces contingency into the narrative, is itself a creature of necessity in the fleeting time of its (survival):
(La petite mouche executes a looping and is retrouve de l'autre côté de la rue, en quête de proteins et de glucides à ingurgiter. Loin d'être le simple fruit du hasard, le parcours du diptère obéira, le temps de sa courte vie, quelques incontournables nécessités: d'abord survivre, échapper aux prédateurs, se nourrir, mais aussi et surtout perpétuer l'espèce par la rencontre de partenaires sexuels à la hauteur A program tout à fait réalisable quand on connaît les performances physiques des diptères et quand on sait qu'une Female with every cent cinquante larves in a single portée – like the cipher remains in pondérer, the part d'entre elles n'atteignant pas l'âge adulte. Temperature, 21 degrees centigrades. Hygrometry, 74 pour cents. Ensoleillement, déclinant. Biocénose/zoocénosis, rich in micro-organisms, humidité résiduelle liée à une fuite récente dans les canalizations, presence of a mammifère velu. Altitude, 61 meters.)
Laurent Quintreau, La Chimie des trajectoires, chap. 2 “Dating”.
(The small fly does a loop and finds itself on the other side of the street, searching for proteins and carbohydrates to consume. The journey of these two-winged insects is anything but random, but rather follows several unavoidable necessities during their short lives: survival, escape from predators, feeding, but above all, the reproduction of the species through encounters with suitable mates. A perfectly feasible program when one considers the physical capabilities of these insects and knows that a female develops 150 larvae in a single brood – although this number should be taken with a grain of salt, as most of them do not reach adulthood. Temperature: 21 degrees Celsius. Humidity: 74%. Sunlight: decreasing. Biocenosis/Zoocenosis: rich in microorganisms, residual moisture due to a recent sewer leak, presence of a hairy mammal. Altitude: 61 meters.)
In Ce qui nous guette (Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2018) Quintreau captures ten seemingly brilliant individuals in a moment of their daily lives where their order is disrupted, where societal control fails at this point, such as the unstoppable fit of laughter, amplified by a microphone, of a young neurology researcher leading a symposium, or a surprising slap, or the child forgotten somewhere, or other points where rationality, and with it science and technology, fail. In the interview, the author brings up humanity's growing dilemma between its anthropological makeup and the potential for optimization, for example, of the brain: "Most likely, we are seeing an increase in what Kant called 'unsociable sociability in humankind.' The creator of the categorical imperative contrasted the shepherds of Arcadia, as peaceful as the flocks they tended, with the people who drive history forward, and lamented that rivalry, egoism, greed, and the urge to dominate are the root cause of the development of science, art, and culture. You can improve the brain's processing power as much as you like (but you will always lose at this game, and Deep Blue's victory over Kasparov in 1997 will remain a first), you won't be able to change this infernal mechanism, any more than you can expel the death drive from mercurial Eros. Unless, of course, you transform humanity into something radically different." 2 The second part of Ce qui nous guette asks about this possible optimization of our brains in the future. In an interview, Quintreau reflects on his poetics (which are also fundamental to his latest book): “I don’t see how a fiction produced in a universe driven by algorithms and indicators could survive a linear, ‘post-Balzacian’ narrative […]. At the other end of the narrative spectrum, a story told from a single voice more readily creates the (common in contemporary autofictional literature) narcissistic and comfortable illusion that the world revolves around oneself, whereas multiple perspectives lead to a certain form of decentering. If writing means navigating the great sea of otherness, it is not superfluous to create an accurate cartography of all the occurrences and states (physicochemical, biological, professional, metaphysical, amorous…) that one can find there. The ‘themes’ you are referring to are precisely these capsules of ‘otherness’ that these gigabytes of readily available data are constantly disseminating, on screens and in the…” The air we breathe. This notion of literature as the production of shapeless objects, which can be reduced neither to a reflection (of an inner life, a social reality…) nor to a purely formal construction (Mallarmé, Nouveau Roman…), owes its existence to an eager engagement with Sterne, Melville, Perec, or Borges, as well as to the all-night debates about the nature of literature during the time of… Revue perpendiculaire, of which I was a founding member." 3 In this algorithmic and indicator-driven sense, the structuring of Eve and Adam to understand:
Livre I – Petite chatte sauvage | Little Wildcat (1852)
Livre II – Le paradis retrouvé | Paradise Rediscovered (1874)
Livre III – You froid, de l'humide, you gluant | Cold, Wet, Sticky (1895)
Livre IV – Esprits, êtes-vous là ? | Ghosts, are you there? (1919)
Livre V – Principe de plaisir | The Pleasure Principle (1954)
Livre VI – Le plus bel endroit du monde | The Most Beautiful Place in the World (1978)
Livre VII – Le chant des cellules | The Song of the Cells (2013)
Livre VIII – Bureau d'études génétiques | Office of Genetic Studies (2046)
After the end, before the debut | After the end, before the beginning
Quintreau divides his 65 chapters into eight temporal segments, which illustrate their historicity of desire and reproduction. The novel's utopian ending is interpreted, as in a round dance, as a point for a new beginning:
A simple claquement of doigts suffira ainsi à ressusciter Clovis honorant Clotilde ou Charlemagne partageant sa couche with Himiltrude, Hildegarde, Fastrade or Liutgarde, conjugal odysseys, sexuals and cellulaires en amont des names généalogies que comptera le future royaume de France. Remontant le long des frontières de l'Austrasie et de la Neustrie, Diane finira bien par rencontrer quelques-uns de ses lointains ances visigoths, burgondes et ostrogoths s'ébattant sur une paillasse qu'un sommaire assemblage de bois protégera des intempéries. Et un beau jour, son salon se puplera de couples de postados se livrant à de tumultueux ébats sous des huttes tendues en peaux de bêtes: a cadre ideal pour une émission de téléréalité et d'aventure, so que n'y existeraient ni équipes de production ni Téléspectateurs, rien d'autre que ces paysages à perte de vue, alternance de plaines fouettées par le vent et de collines giboyeuses, peuplées de ces jeunes gens aux allures de hippies se tenant dans l'efflorescence de l'instant, là où l'émerveillement et la terreur se now at a point compact and powerful.
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 65.
A snap of the fingers is all it takes to resurrect Clovis, honoring Clotilde, or Charlemagne, sharing his bed with Himiltrude, Hildegard, Fastrade, or Liutgard—marital, sexual, and cellular odysseys that precede the numerous genealogies of the future Kingdom of France. Along the borders of Austrasia and Neustria, Diane will eventually encounter some of her distant Visigothic, Burgundian, and Ostrogothic ancestors, milling about on a straw bed sheltered from the elements by a simple wooden structure. And one day, her living room is populated by post-adolescent couples frolicking under the animal-hide huts: an ideal setting for a reality show and an adventure, except that there are neither production crews nor television viewers, but only these endless landscapes, windswept plains and wildly overgrown hills, populated by young, hippie-like people in the prime of the moment, where wonder and terror lie in a compact, moving point.
The year 1852 marks the beginning of the Second Empire. The plight of the working class and the social question can no longer be ignored. Sophie de Marcheville learns of her impending marriage. The pastiches of the recognizable tropes of seduction characteristic of each of these eras are juxtaposed with the cool, medical perspective on the bodily processes of fertilization. The author also mentions that, in addition to historical studies, he researched the fictional works of Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Queneau, Roger Nimier, Françoise Sagan, and others. 4 The irritation experienced when reading, given the explicitness of the processes reduced to the physical-biological, is not actually due to pornographic obscenity; it is something dissecting, if not something experimental, of the eugenicist in this narrative stance.
Suzanne vient de partir precipitamment vers le pont d'Asnières, à sept cents mètres de là, provoquant par sa course un pic des estrogen, immédiatement suivi de la libération de l'ovocyte.
Quant aux quelques centaines de spermatozoïdes rescapés you intercourse interrupted, the plupart d'entre eux continuesnt à se faufiler à travers the col de l'uterus. Certains ont enfin atteint les trompes. An intimate minority arrives close to you cumulus oophorus pour se fixer à l'enveloppe glycoprotein of the zone pellucide mais un seul – ou plutôt une seule, car l'heureuse élue est une XX – connaîtra la réaction acrosomique, au cours de laquelle pourra s'operer la fusion avec la membrane plasmique de l'ovocyte. À la suite d'une succession de fixations oligosaccharidiques, de réactions corticales, de diffusions enzymatiques, de modifications protéiniques, the content of spermatozoïde sera intégré au cytoplasme de l'ovule, et l'œuf fécondé. Ainsi formé, le zygote va pouvoir donner forme
À l'embryon
Au fœtus
Au nouveau-né
Et à la young woman qu'elle sera vingt-trois ans plus tard, alors que ses propres cellules reproductrices s'apprêteront à se recouvrir de molécules chimiotactiques prêtes à accueillir des spermatozoïdes pour une new fécondation.
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 40.
Suzanne has just hurried off to the bridge at Asnières, 700 meters away, and her run has created a Estrogen peak triggered, which is immediately followed by the release of the egg cell.
As for the few hundred sperm that the coitus interruptus Having survived, most of them continue their journey through the cervix. Some eventually reach the fallopian tubes. A tiny minority reach the vicinity of the Cumulus oophorus, in order to remember the Glycoprotein shell is Zona pellucida to attach, but only one – or rather one, since the lucky one is an XX – experiences the acrosomal reaction, during which fusion with the oocyte's plasma membrane can occur. After a series of oligosaccharide fixations, cortical reactions, enzymatic diffusions, and protein modifications, the sperm's contents are integrated into the egg's cytoplasm, and the egg is fertilized. Thus formed, the Zygote now give it form
The embryo
The fetus
The newborn
The girl
And the young woman she will be 23 years later, when her own sex cells are preparing to mate with chemotactic to coat molecules that are ready to receive sperm for re-fertilization.
In 1874, after the initial crises of the Third Republic had subsided, Mathilde Goldberg, a woman of considerable intellectual potential, seduces the young Augustin in the grass. In 1895, the beautiful Parisian Thérèse becomes the wife of the rustic farmer Fernand Froissard, who finds his animals' sex lives easier to understand than their behavior. It was during this period that Arthur Schnitzler wrote his ten stage dialogues. ReigenIn these scenes, a man and a woman converse before and after intercourse, and through the exchange of one person for the next scene, they traverse social classes like a round dance. Quintreau's book, however, is not a synchronic social study, but rather he chooses a confrontation of family history and sexual-genetic processes that is simultaneously medical and historical, in a different, disturbing sense than in Schnitzler's *Reigen*: the prostitute and the soldier; the soldier and the chambermaid; the chambermaid and the young gentleman; the young gentleman and the young woman; the young woman and the husband; the husband and the sweet girl; the sweet girl and the poet; the poet and the actress; the actress and the count; the count and (again) the prostitute.
In 1919, Thérèse's son Jules Froissard will sleep happily with his wife Valentine, completely unaware of her secret, distant lover at war; Jules is only a substitute, the child, of course, will have the genetic makeup of the father…
The méiose terminée – and les genes du père et de la mère aléatoirement échangés, puis mixés en d'infinitésimaux fragments de chromatine – pourra se dessiner le portrait-robot de l'individual qui devrait venir au monde au début de l'année prochaine. Une fois le program établi, rien (à part un accident au cours de l'embryogenèse, de l'organogenèse ou de l'enfance, choc traumatique, attaque virale in utero, malnutrition…) ne pourra empêcher sa mise en œuvre. De lui dépendra chacune des characters les plus observables – taille, morphologie, particularités physiologiques ou psychologiques –, bibelots-surprises sortis de l'un des innombrables tiroirs de l'héritage génétique familial commun (dans notre cas, celui des Froissard et des Aubert), dont les Impresble occurrences ne manqueront pas de faire surgir, à l'occasion de la grossesse, une serie d'interrogations aussi triviales que pressantes entourant l'arrivée du futur bébé (and don't le degré de précision scientifique varie en fonction de l'époque à laquelle elles appartiennent) :
– Aura-t-il les yeux bleus en amande et la constitution nerveuse de son papa?
– Le visage sculpté, la tonicité musculaire et l'intelligence vive de sa maman?
– La haute taille, the character sanguine, the spirit lent and the risk of colorectal cancer from the grand-père paternel?
– Le nez droit et la tendance maniaco-depressive de sa grand-mère maternelle, ou le nez bourbonien et les fortes predispositions à la maladie d'Alzheimer consécutives à la presence du gène ApoE4 de son autre grand-mère ?
– The opposite?
– A piece of everything in an ordre dispersé?
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 32
Once meiosis is complete—and the genes of father and mother are randomly exchanged and then mixed into infinitesimally small chromatin fragments—the phantom image of the human being due to be born early next year can be drawn. Once the program is set, nothing (except an accident during embryogenesis, organogenesis, or childhood, a traumatic shock, a viral attack in utero, malnutrition, etc.) can prevent its execution. Every one of the most observable traits—size, morphology, physiological or psychological characteristics—depends on it, surprising quirks from one of the countless drawers of the shared genetic family heritage (in our case, that of the Froissards and the Auberts), whose unpredictable appearance during pregnancy inevitably raises a number of questions, as trivial as they are pressing, about the arrival of the future baby (and whose degree of scientific accuracy varies depending on the era to which they belong):
Will he inherit his father's blue almond-shaped eyes and nervous constitution?
– Her mother's well-shaped face, muscle tone, and sharp intelligence?
– His paternal grandfather's tall stature, sanguine temperament, slow mind, and risk of developing colon cancer?
– The straight nose and the manic-depressive tendency of her maternal grandmother, or the Bourbon nose and the strong predisposition to Alzheimer's disease as a result of the ApoE4 gene of her other grandmother?
- The contrary?
– A little bit of everything in a colorful order?
In 1954, 22-year-old Suzanne Rossignol cheats on her husband with André Froissard, who, as a result, closes his shop early under a pretext. Her husband, Roger, suspects something and becomes increasingly violent. This generation is secure in its identity; they are rooted in their community, and their thirst for pleasure is also connected to the recently ended war.
Comme d'habitude, Daniel s'est effondré après le coït. Parti pour somnoler une bonne heure. Bercée par le rythme de sa respiration, Marlène a tout loisir de se laisser submerger par un flot de questions, comme à cet instant où elle se demande si Pierre Bourdieu a bien reçu son projet de thise, and surtout s'il acceptera de la diriger. Son laïus sur « the construction of the feminine subject in the universe of profession » l'a-t-il interest? ennuyé? atterre ? S'il n'est pas partant, qui d'autre pour soutenir son travail? Va-t-il adhérer à l'idée que les inégalités salariales, les prétendus métiers réservés aux hommes, l'instrumentalisation des corps, la difference sexual in les hierarchies ne sont qu'une construction sociale, elle-même dependent de jeux de pouvoir au ebene plus intimate, voire cellulaire ?
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 40.
As usual, Daniel collapsed after intercourse, gone to doze for a good hour. Marlène, lulled by the rhythm of his breathing, has all the leisure to be overwhelmed by a flood of questions, as at this moment when she wonders whether Pierre Bourdieu has received her dissertation project and, above all, whether he will be willing to supervise it. Did her talk about "the construction of the female subject in professional life" interest, bore, or horrify him? If he doesn't participate, who else could support his work? Will he subscribe to the idea that wage inequalities, supposedly male-dominated professions, the instrumentalization of bodies, and gender differentiation in hierarchies are merely a social construct, itself dependent on power games at the most intimate or even cellular level?
In 1978, with Marlène Froissard-Delbosc, we witnessed the emancipation from forms of traditional life such as patriarchy, Catholicism, and rural living. For Quintreau, Bourdieu's sociological work on the constructions and conditioning of gender relations represents this awakening of women. In 2013, however, people are fluctuating in their identities, personally, sexually, and professionally. The very definition of family is also being fundamentally redefined during this period, amidst coming out and artificial insemination.
Eugenics is more or less implicitly addressed in the historical sequence up to 2046, encompassing the 19th-century idea of birth control for the working class, which was supposedly poor in genetic capital, racist ideas of population policy, and the technologically now possible selection of the genetically best reproductive partner. FertilityÉmile Zola's late natalist novel contrasted the Froment family with their twelve children and consciously childless families, discussing contemporary concerns about the birth rate. Zola, as a man, melodramatically portrays contraception and abortion. The genealogical sequences that Laurent Quintreau interweaves, without overt ideologization, create a narrative family tree that is both unsettling and stimulating, revealing an underlying feminist tendency, even as modern, non-toxic masculinities are also presented in the characters. However, the retrospective view from a genetically optimized future of 2013 and 2046, looking back at the farmer Froissard, already overwhelmed in 1895, also demonstrates that a family epic focusing on reproductive relations is no longer as easy to tell as one focusing on livestock farming as a rural reality, especially when it becomes the perspective of the education-hungry, estranged wife from the big city.
Lorsque the young Parisienne is available in the farm with its tenues of apprêtées and its distinguished manners, it also has the curiosity of the villages of Alentour. After the fiançailles and the wedding, everything is beautiful normalized: she is the name of Thérèse Froissard, woman of Fernand Froissard. N'était-ce pas a cadeau empoisonné que lui avait fait sa mère avec this femme refusant tout contact et passant ses soirées sur ses livres, les travaux de la journée éclusés? Is it even like you have a beautiful morning with more life? Il a pourtant all fait, all essayé, allant jusqu'à astiquer ses shoes le dimanche et lisser ses mustaches with coquetterie, mais aucun de ses efforts n'a été couronné de succès. Est-il si laid, si répugnant?
Il envie la vie sexual des bêtes, qui ne s'embarrassent pas de toutes ces questions. Pense aux juments prizes de force par des étalons mus par leur seule pulsion. Aux vaches mollement consentantes face aux saillies de taureaux intraitables. Aux chèvres engrossées à l'improviste par d'inflexibles boucs.
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 17
When the very young Parisian woman, with her fine clothes and refined manners, appeared on the farm, she aroused the curiosity of the surrounding villagers. After the engagement and the wedding, everything returned to normal: she became Thérèse Froissard, Fernand Froissard's wife. Wasn't it a poisoned gift his mother had given him, this woman who rejected all physical contact and spent her evenings hunched over her books, shaking off the day's work? Wouldn't he have been better off with a less conventionally beautiful but more vibrant woman? He did everything, however, tried everything, even polishing his shoes on Sundays and meticulously smoothing his mustache, but none of his efforts were successful. Is he really so ugly, so repulsive?
He envies animals their sex lives, which are not burdened by all these questions. He thinks of mares being forcibly mounted by stallions driven solely by their instincts. Of cows reluctantly allowing themselves to be covered by relentless bulls. Of goats impregnated by relentless billy goats.
The unease that sometimes overcomes one while reading may be related to the text's consistent genetic foundation, but the book cannot be misinterpreted as racist-biological, nor as gender-hostile or homo-/transphobic, especially the episode about the introduction of the marriage for all In France, it shows that the author takes a trans-epochal view of the change, instead of superficially advocating a position:
At 14 hours, Barnabé, Élise and Clémentine were in the streets of the metro and felt this foul compact. Comme sans doute chacun deurs voisins, ils ont rameuté famille, amis, collègues, connaissances dans la ferme intention de montrer au pays, à l'opinion publique, aux politiques, aux opposants du mariage pour tous, que les partisans de la loi sont également capables de mobiliser en nombre.
Ils sont montés à la station Réaumur-Sébastopol, où les rames bondées résonnaient déjà des exclamations amusées à la vue des slogans humoristiques inscrits sur des pancartes, pour la plupart concoctées entre amis à l'aide d'accessoires achetés au rayon bricolage du BHV. Les two girls on the lettering of the roses on a gray cardboard box: « My mother and father are waiting for me! »
Arrivés en haut de l'escalier, ils avisent avec a soulagement qui passe vite à l'euphorie la place Denfert-Rochereau fleurissant de drapeaux et de banderoles aux couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel, avant de se frayer un passage jusqu'à la rue Daguerre.
Olga les attends with other women. Elles are not in the "tenue of combat" and are excused. Elles sont venues en amies, ce qui va les changer de la dernière fois (elle fait allusion à la manif anti-mariage pour du 18 novembre, organisée par l'institut Civitas, qui s'est terminée par le passage à tabac de plusieurs d'entre elles, ainsi que de la journaliste Caroline Fourest, en marge du cortege). Devant, an association of family homoparentale déroule a grande banderole "Stop à l'homophobia, oui à l'égalité".
À droite, a message to the president of the République: «François, ne recule pas, les homos sont derrière toi! », déclenche l'hilarité de tous.
Laurent Quintreau, Eve and Adam, chap. 56.
At 14 p.m., Barnabé, Élise, and Clémentine trudged through the metro, delighted by the dense crowds. Like probably every one of their neighbors, they had gathered family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances with the firm intention of showing the country, public opinion, politicians, and opponents of same-sex marriage that even the proponents of the law were capable of mobilizing large numbers of people.
They boarded at Réaumur-Sébastopol station, where the crowded trains were already echoing with amused exclamations about the humorous slogans on the signs, most of which had been assembled by friends using supplies from the BHV craft department. The two girls had written in pink letters on a gray piece of cardboard: "Better two happy mothers than one ripped-off man."
Reaching the top of the stairs, they look with relief, which quickly turns into euphoria, at the Place Denfert-Rochereau, decorated with flags and banners in the colors of the rainbow, before making their way to Rue Daguerre.
Olga waits for them with two other Femen activists. They aren't wearing their "combat gear" and almost apologize for it. They've come as friends, which will be different from the last time (she's referring to the demonstration against same-sex marriage on November 18th, organized by the Civitas Institute, during which several of them and journalist Caroline Fourest were assaulted on the sidelines). At the front, an association of same-sex families unfurls a large banner reading "Stop homophobia, yes to equality."
On the right side is a message to the President of the Republic: "François, do not back down, the gays and lesbians are behind you," which elicits laughter from everyone involved.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “Qu'il s'agisse du désir partagé ou non, du droit de cuissage, de l'adultère, du sexe cool, du mariage pour tous, du matching génétique, le lecteur est témoin de l'évolution des mœurs et des renversements sociétaux qui ont conduit de la domination masculine à l'après MeToo.”>>>
- “Le plus probable est l'accroissement de « l'insociable sociabilité de l'homme », pour reprendre l'expression Kant. Opposing les bergers d'Arcadie, also paisibles que les troupeaux qu'ils faisaient paître, aux hommes qui font avancer l'histoire, le creator de l'impératif catégorique Regrettait que la rivalité, l'égoïsme, la cupidité, l'envie de dominer, soient précisément à l'origine du développement des sciences, des arts et de la culture sera toujours Perdant, and the victory of Deep Blue sur Kasparov in 1997 restera une premiere) you don't changerez in this infernal machine, the same thing that you don't extirperez jamais les pulsions de mort de l'Eros bondissant. A minute later, the man transformed himself and he chose different radical elements.” Entretien with Laurent Quintreau by Jean Bastien, nonfiction.fr, April 14, 2018.>>>
- “I don't have a comment on a fiction product from a universe piloted by the algorithms and indicators pourrait survivre à un récit linéaire, « post-Balzacien » (même si this expression is à prendre avec des pincettes, le Balzac swedenborgien de Seraphita or The Wild Ass's Skin Nous restitue un monde grouillant de mystères et de trous blackirs qui peuvent aussi mettre à mal notre senses de la continuité!). Pour se situer à l'autre extrémité du narratif spectrum, a récit tissé d'une seule voix prête plus facilement à this illusion narcissique et douillette (que l'on trouve souvent dans la littérature autofictionnelle contemporaine) que le monde tourne autour de soi alors que plusieurs points de vue mènent à a certain form of décentrement. If you write, you can navigate in the grandeur of the altérité, but it is not a superfluous d'établir une cartography precise de toutes les occurrences et les états (physico-chimiques, biologiques, professionnels, métaphysiques, amoureux…) que l'on peut y trouver. Les "thèmes" que vous évoquez sont précisément ces capsules "d'autreté" que diffusent en permanence ces giga-octets de données disponibles à tout instant, sur les écrans et dans l'air que nous respirons. This conception d'une littérature comme production d'objets hirsutes, also peu réductibles au reflect (d'une vie intérieure, d'une réalité sociale…) qu'à la pure construction formal (Mallarmé, nouveau roman…) doit autant à une fréquentation assidue de Sterne, Melville, Perec ou Borges qu'aux nuits de débats consacrés à la Chose littéraire au temps de la Revue perpendiculaire, don’t think I’m fond of it.” Entretien with Laurent Quintreau by Jean Bastien, nonfiction.fr, April 14, 2018.>>>
- Jean Bastien, “Ève et Adam: entretien with Laurent Quintreau”, nonfiction.fr, January 22, 2023.>>>
