In memory of Timo Obergöker.
Content
I couldn't prevail against his numbers with my letters.
His publishing company is bankrupt, its last resources exhausted. The story begins at a turning point – the day before the court hearing for official liquidation. Looking back, the protagonist recounts his publishing history, the authors he discovered and rejected, his successes and failures, but above all, his belief in the power of literature. Tonino Benacquista's novel, published in 2025. Tiré de faits irréels It is a deeply melancholic and at the same time ironically nuanced exploration of what literature can still achieve today. The text tells the story of the end of an independent literary publishing house in Paris, but deals with more than just the story of a failing entrepreneur; it can be read as a parable about cultural memory, the transformation processes of the public sphere, and the fragility of narrative claims to truth.
Mon banker avoue volontiers qu'il ne lit pas and je lui offer an exemplaire de ma dernière parution, non pour m'attirer ses bonnes grâces, encore mons son admiration, réservée aux seuls patrons du CAC 40, mais pour lui fournir de temps à autre une preuve material de mon activity. The book is not a tool for émancipation, it is not an object of creation, but the employer has the "littérature" of the piece that provokes the enemy or the genesis of an individual that is constructed against the cell, which does not profit ni épargne, you morning in the senses où il l'entend. Lors de notre rendez-vous d'hier, celui de la dernière chance, j'ai lu dans son regard la condescendance du gestionnaire ultralibéral, lucide sur les crises d'aujourd'hui mais prêt pour les défis de main, face à un résidu fossile de l'ère Gutenberg. Dans son sabir financier, il s'est lancé dans des phrases de plus de cent mots qu'il aurait pu ainsi résumer s'il avait eu le senses du resserrage: « Passe la main, papa. » On peut certes étudier la demande de prêt d'une boîte à burgers vegans, d'un bar à ongles, d'un incubateur pour start-up dans le management, mais celle d'un éditeur de romans lui vaudrait les sanctions de sa hierarchie. À ses chiffres, je n'ai pas su imposer mes lettres. Who doesn't want to see a management stage from the Goethe world? Soulagé de s'être débarrassé d'un insolvable, il a tenu à me raccompagner jusqu'au seuil de sa bank.
Tonino Benacquista Tiré de faits irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
My banker readily admits that he doesn't read when I offer him a copy of my latest publication, not to gain his favor or even his admiration, which is reserved for the heads of the CAC 40, but to occasionally provide him with tangible proof of my activity. Since books are neither a means of emancipation nor a leisure activity for him, I take care never to use the word "literature," lest I provoke boredom or discomfort in someone who has built himself up against literature that generates neither profit nor savings, at least not in his sense. At our meeting yesterday, the meeting of last resort, I saw in his gaze the condescension of the ultraliberal manager, who clearly recognizes today's crises but is prepared for tomorrow's challenges, toward a fossilized relic from the Gutenberg era. During his financial sabbatical, he indulged in sentences exceeding a hundred words, which he could have summarized, had he possessed the ability to condense them, as: "Step down, Dad." While management can review a loan application for a vegan burger joint, a nail salon, or a startup incubator, one for a novel publisher would have earned him reprimands from his superiors. I couldn't compete with his numbers with my words. Should I have taken a management course some time ago instead of reading Goethe? He was relieved to be rid of a bankrupt client and offered to escort me to the doorstep of his bank.
Already in Saga Tonino Benacquista demonstrates a strong interest in the narrative practice itself: The story of screenwriters trapped in an absurd television project reflects the tension between creativity and market logic. Also in Someone else The question of life scripts and alternative biographies plays an important role. The author repeatedly focuses on outsiders, figures caught between worlds, between fiction and reality, between conformity and rebellion. Also Tiré de faits irréels Bertrand Dumas joins this cast of characters: he is a typical Benacquista protagonist – a loner with principles, a nostalgic fighter against the impositions of the present, an ironic humanist. Nevertheless, this novel goes beyond the previous repertoire: while earlier works focused more on action and plot, Tiré de faits irréels A decidedly reflective, essayistic work. Benacquista's style has always been characterized by clarity, irony, and dialogue. In his latest book, this style is complemented by a new depth: the language is more meditative, essayistic, at times almost aphoristic. The novel largely dispenses with external plot, focusing instead on reflection, memory, and inner discourse. This stylistic development reveals a maturation of the author—a turning toward the poetic essence of his writing.
Alors Dieu chercha comment éveiller l'Humme à la beauté naturelle qui l'entourait.
Et lui thunder à voir la complexity du monde qui désormais serait le sien, comme celle de sa propre psyché.
Tonino Benacquista Tiré de faits irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
So God sought ways to awaken man to the natural beauty that surrounded him.
And to show him the complexity of the world, which would henceforth be his, as well as the complexity of his own psyche.
The novel's prologue makes a powerful statement: Literature is introduced as God's last attempt to provide humanity with a tool for reflection and for confronting evil. This "creation myth" assigns literature an almost sacred role. It appears as a moral authority, a place of empathy, memory, and nuance—in a world increasingly characterized by binary discourses, economic constraints, and technological overwhelm. Benacquista imagines God creating humankind as his final act, yet doubting its wisdom. To help humanity cope with evil, he creates literature. With this, the novel programmatically establishes its tone and central idea: literature as the last moral and empathetic means of combating the chaos of the world. A flashback leads to Bertrand's founding of his publishing house; in an encounter with a musician, the musician encourages him to confidently use his name as a publishing brand. It is a moment of idealism and entrepreneurial fantasies.
At the heart of the story is the aging publisher Bertrand Dumas, based in the literary heart of Paris, and his inner world is depicted with an impressive wealth of references, reflections, and upheavals. His central antagonist is Reynald, a reclusive intellectual who acts as a living conscience and counter-voice. A philosophical debate about the meaning and value of literature in a world gone awry unfolds between Bertrand and Reynald. Important supporting characters include his wife Coline, who accompanies his withdrawal from reality with a mixture of understanding and resignation, and Benoît Clerc, an egomaniacal author who transfigures his banal life crises into literature, thus exemplifying the decline of literary substance.
Mais pour l'heure je déjeune avec Benoît Clerc, venu m'entrittir de ses indignations du moment, comme il le fait avec a belle constance depuis vingt ans que je le publie. Que dire de Benoît, sinon qu'il existe ? J'entends par là qu'il existe plus intensément que nous autres, ses contemporary, et c'est ainsi qu'il gagne sa vie, dont les événements marquants nous sont relatés dans des volumes de 120 pages à raison d'un tous les deux ans. Pour ceux qui ne le connaîtraient pas encore, Benoît Clerc est l'inventeur de la passion et du deuil, que nul n'avait éprouvés avant lui. Son oui à la mairie fut bien plus solennel que le mien, et le décès de sa mère fut un événement bien plus tragicique que celui de la mienne. Il me fait penser à ces personnages de séries dont nous suivions les péripéties dans les Collections Verte ou Rose de notre petite enfance. “Benoît tombe amoureux”. “Benoît devient daddy”. « Benoît discovers that his parents are dead ». Certes il prefere donner ses propres titles aux grandes étapes de sa vie, like the episode “Benoît divorce”, sobrement intitulé A rupture (sales: 22,000 copies), this is my best book. Il avait su décrire une Gisèle humiliée par ses mensonges, qu'elle avait tolérés jusqu'à ce qu'il les rende publics dans « Benoît trompe sa femme » (Les accrocs, 35 000 copies), a cruel réquisitoire against the erosion of the desir, the celui de l'homme comme celui de la femme, and c'est sans doute pour ces pages-là, d'une précision dérangeante, comme une ode tardive au corps de l'autre, que je l'ai publié. Mais parfois les mots lui manquent pour traduire toute la gravity de l'existence de Benoît. « Benoît tombe malade », minute compte rendu d'une mononucléose (Sales drapes, 3,200 copies) décrite comme un long épuisement métaphysique, n'a pas su éveiller la compassion d'un public habitué à des récits d'agonies bien plus sévères. From the reading of the manuscript, you will hear from me: « This fois, passe ton tour, Benoît. I have the same ego, face in my eyes in this large, white room, there is no fair share in my life, and there is no passion in my life, the sales fall in the rest of the time. » Et cependant je l'ai publié, parce qu'on ne laisse pas un Benoît seul sur son lit de souffrance, et parce que je suis fidèle à mes auteurs, même si parfois j'aimerais que certains s'en aillent faire des enfants ailleurs. Je regrette pourtant, dans son intérêt comme dans le mien, de n'avoir jamais eu le courage de lui dire: "Toi qui as su rendre publics tes mœurs et tes états d'âme, pourquoi n'en profits-tu pas pour nous scandaliser ? Are you convaincre les lecteurs que ton quotidien était aussitôt convertible en material narratif, pourquoi ne t'autorises-tu pas, au nom de cette impunité littéraire, toutes les extravagances ? What do I have to do with a “Benoît aux portes de l'Enfer”, the journal of these excès, all inqualifiables, in a condition that you have found les mots? Transgresse, nom de Dieu! Ébranle, choque, outrage! Vis! Disparais sans explication, réveille-toi dans une favela, provoque un ennemi en duel, vomis en direct, rends-toi sur le theater des opérations, couche with 1,003 women, braque une banque: the champion of possibilities is infinite! But this is what we have in our community, we don't have enough of a series. Car toi, face aux juges qui te demanderaient ce tu as à dire pour ta défense, tu n'aurais qu'à répondre: “Je suis un écrivain.” Stupéfaction du jury! Circonstances atténuantes, excuses de la cour, relaxe immediately. And when you are still in prison, you pour yourself into the living room of the Maudit Artist Statute! The imagination is bien, ta réclusion, is in 9 m2 : dix rames de papier, une plume, mille jours et mille nuits, le cœur en révolte et l'imagination en croisade. Quel bouquin tu nous ferais! La fin de mes ennuis! »
Tonino Benacquista Tiré de faits irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
But right now I'm having lunch with Benoît Clerc, who's telling me about his latest outrage, as he has been doing with remarkable consistency for the past 20 years, ever since I started publishing him. What can I say about Benoît, except that he exists? By that I mean he exists more intensely than the rest of us, his contemporaries, and that's how he earns his living, the most significant events of which are reported to us every two years in 120-page volumes. For those who don't know him: Benoît Clerc is the inventor of a passion and grief no one before him had ever experienced. His civil wedding was far more solemn than mine, and his mother's death was a far more tragic event than my own. He reminds me of the characters in the comics whose adventures we followed in the Green or Pink collections of our early childhood. "Benoît falls in love." "Benoît becomes a father." "Benoît discovers his parents are mortal." Naturally, he prefers to give the major stages of his life their own titles, such as the episode "Benoît gets divorced" with the sober title A fracture (22,000 copies sold), which in my opinion is his best book. He had managed to describe a Gisèle who was humiliated by his lies, which she had tolerated until he exposed her in "Benoît Cheats on His Wife" (The tricks, 35.000 copies) made public, a cruel indictment of the erosion of desire, both male and female, and I probably published it because of these pages, which are disturbingly precise and read like a belated ode to the other's body. Sometimes, however, he lacks the words to convey the full gravity of Benoît's existence. "Benoît Gets Sick," a meticulous account of glandular fever (Sales drapes, The book (3.200 copies), described as a long, metaphysical exhaustion, failed to evoke the sympathy of an audience accustomed to far more grueling accounts of agony. Even while reading the manuscript, I felt the need to tell it: “This time it’s your turn, Benoît. Here, your ego, confronted with itself in this large, white room, has nothing to share with us but its boredom, and making that boredom exciting is beyond your power; these dirty sheets remain yours.” And yet, I published it because one doesn’t leave a Benoît alone on his bed of suffering, and because I am loyal to my authors, even if I sometimes wish some of them would father children elsewhere. Nevertheless, I regret, for his sake as well as mine, that I never had the courage to say to him: “You, who have mastered the art of making your customs and states of mind public, why don’t you seize this opportunity to scandalize us? If you have managed to convince readers that your everyday life has been instantly transformed into narrative material, why don’t you, in the name of this literary impunity, indulge in all your extravagances? Why don’t you bring me a ‘Benoît at the Gates of Hell,’ a diary of your excesses, all of which are unspeakable, provided you can find the right words? Overstep the bounds, for God’s sake! Shake, shock, outrage! Live! Vanish without explanation, wake up in a favela, challenge an enemy to a duel, vomit live, go to the battlefield, sleep with 1003 women, rob a bank: The field of possibilities is endless! Dare to do anything that would cause us ordinary people serious trouble.” Because you, faced with judges who would ask you what you have to say in your defense, would only have to answer: "I am a writer." Astonishment from the jury! Mitigating circumstances, apology from the court, immediate acquittal. And even if they were to put you in prison, you could claim the status of a cursed artist while you're still alive! I can imagine you alone on 9 meters2 If you are imprisoned: ten reams of paper, a quill, a thousand days and a thousand nights, your heart in revolt and your imagination on a crusade. What kind of book would you write for us! The end of my anger!
Dumas, as the first-person narrator and protagonist of the novel, embodies a particular conception of literature: the idea of a refuge for individuality, the search for truth, and subjectivity. His publishing work is not driven by commercial imperatives, but by a literary ethos that increasingly appears obsolete in today's world. The decline of his publishing house represents a broader process: the loss of faith in the power of "telling against the world." Dumas, however, is not merely a tragic figure. Rather, irony is always present in the narrative: his melancholy is tempered by the comedy of his vanities, the absurdity of the literary world, and the tragicomic stories of the authors. The novel skillfully deconstructs and simultaneously celebrates the heroic pose of the last independent publisher. Bertrand Dumas is a fundamentally ambivalent figure. On the one hand, he is uncompromising, upright, and passionate in his commitment to literature. He believes in the good book, in quality, in literary depth. He rebels against trends, the logic of bestsellers, and literary mediocrity. This adherence to principles makes him an idealistic hero of the text. At the same time, he is not without weaknesses. His inability to adapt, his arrogance towards commercially successful but, in his eyes, inferior authors, his detachment from the world and emotional reserve – all of this also marks him as a problematic figure.
— Lire, disiez-vous ?
Reynald… Que je n'ai jamais croisé ici sans qu'il me cite une phrase tirée du livre en cours, un aphorisme, une métaphore, un vers.
— Socrate en personne nous a mis en garde contre la lecture. Les livres selon lui nous donnent l'illusion d'être des sachants alors que nous nous contentons d'une pensée morte et retranscrite, du prêt-à-penser en boîte. This conversation aiguise la conscience, with our esprit à l'épreuve, nous confronte à la parole de l'autre dans une quête commune du beau et du vrai. In other terms, the lecture is the factory of ignorance.
Le plus cruel est que ma soudaine mutité ensemble illustrer sa this: à trop fréquenter l'écrit, j'en ai perdu toute agilité dialectique.
— Et Socrate ajoute en substance que ceux qui se targuent de posséder une pensée parce qu'ils possèdent le livre « se criront de nombreuses connaissances, et la fausse opinion qu'ils auront de leur science les rendra insupportables dans le commerce de la vie ».
C'est dans ces moments-là, quand je ne suis plus actor de l'instant mais son témoin hébété, que j'aimerais qu'un narrateur omniscient vienne à mon secours et prenne le relais de ma volonté. This omniscient narrator who expresses himself in all the novels of the world and does not have a bien-fondé de sa parole.
Tonino Benacquista, Tire of Faits Irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
— Read, you said?
Reynald… Whom I have never met here without him quoting me a sentence from the current book, an aphorism, a metaphor, or a verse.
— Socrates himself warned us against reading. In his opinion, books give us the illusion of knowledge, while we content ourselves with dead, rewritten ideas, with prefabricated, canned thoughts. Only conversation sharpens awareness, tests our minds, and confronts us with the words of others in a shared search for the beautiful and the true. In other words: reading is the factory of ignorance.
The most gruesome thing is that my sudden muteness seems to illustrate his thesis that I have lost my dialectical flexibility through excessive engagement with the written word.
— And Socrates adds, in essence, that those who boast of possessing a thought because they possess the book “will imagine themselves to have much knowledge, and the false opinion they have of their science will make them unbearable in the business of life.”
In such moments, when I am no longer an active participant in the present, but rather a dazed witness, I long for an omniscient narrator to come to my aid and take over my will. This omniscient narrator, who speaks in every novel in the world, and whose well-founded words no one doubts.
Reynald, a former patron and longtime friend of Bertrand's, lives in the Jardin du Luxembourg and has become a kind of human monument to erudition and skepticism. His philosophy: not books, but people preserve the true stories. This stance symbolizes a post-literary humanism that fundamentally questions the relevance of written culture. While Bertrand still believes in the power of the novel, Reynald believes only in doom. He is an apocalyptic figure whose voice culminates in a chilling monologue that seems both cultural critique and prophetic. His worldview is characterized by profound pessimism: literature, he argues, has prevented nothing, improved no one, and averted no war. In the text, this figure assumes the role of the internal critic, who counters Bertrand's literary passion with systematic deconstruction. That Reynald is also a great reader warThis shows that his stance is not anti-intellectual, but post-intellectual: the Enlightenment has failed, literature has failed, and goodness has remained toothless. Thus, Reynald poses the question of the "usefulness" of art in a way that is not polemical, but profoundly unsettling. Bertrand leaves the Jardin du Luxembourg deep in thought. He reflects on his own exhaustion, his inability to fight, his fear of failure. The chapter is a quiet interlude that foreshadows the coming loss.
Memories of earlier manuscripts ensue, disappointments and small literary miracles overlapping. Bertrand recalls failed literary projects that nevertheless moved him. This introduces the concept of "limbes": the space of failed manuscripts, unpublished works. A place of literary limbo. Another manuscript reaches him, and although he knows it has no chance, Bertrand reads it. It's about Mattéo, a boy with ideals. Bertrand recognizes his naiveté, but also his literary potential. The chapter once again poses the question of whether literature is "enough." Bertrand sorts through papers, the last traces of his professional life. In doing so, he reflects on missed opportunities, misunderstood texts, and aesthetic choices. His own taste, his blindness to trends, and his regret over rejections are also addressed.
In a Chinese restaurant, Bertrand is talking to his wife, Coline. Their quiet estrangement is evident between the lines. She knows of his inner turmoil without naming it. The relationship represents the tension between literature and life. A final note from Reynald follows, in which he invites Bertrand to a meeting. The exact location remains vague, but Bertrand knows: it is a symbolic farewell. The invitation is a final confrontation with the question: What remains of literature? Bertrand encounters Reynald again, who, during a walk through the Jardin du Luxembourg, confronts him with a long speech about the illusions of the Enlightenment, the failure of culture, and the futility of art. It is the novel's thematic climax: a mixture of cultural critique manifesto and nihilistic prophecy.
Even though Bertrand now openly admits that he is at the end of his rope, his defiance remains: despite everything, he believes in literature. The scene with the reader, whose terminally ill friend wants to read one last novel, becomes a symbol of this perseverance. In a final attempt, Bertrand contacts old acquaintances, hoping to perhaps still save his publishing house. His efforts are in vain. The literary world is no longer interested in his vision. Bertrand leaves the scene; his literary era is over. Sitting on a bench, he reflects on the past, literature, and the future. The novel ends without a grand resolution, but with a clear, melancholic view of a world in which storytelling seems possible only as memory. In the end, a fragile but defensible understanding emerges: literature can fail—but storytelling itself remains an act of humanity, of resistance, and of hope against the meaninglessness of the present.
Metafiction, polyphony, and irony
Tiré de faits irréels is a highly self-reflective text. Even the title – a reversal of the formula that something Fictional at real Based on events, the interplay of truth, narratability, and fictionality becomes clear. The novel unfolds a poetics that understands storytelling not as a representation of reality, but as an independent form of interpreting the world. Episodes are repeatedly inserted in which Bertrand judges manuscripts, muses on literary fashions, or takes refuge in narrative conventions. The narrator not only reflects on his own decisions but also becomes part of a double game: he narrates about literature and simultaneously becomes a literary character himself. This ambiguous structure allows Benacquista to play with the conventions of the novel: inner monologues, authorial interjections, essayistic passages, and narrative irony alternate. At times, an omniscient narrator even takes over, placing Bertrand himself in an observed position—a technique that imbues the text with a floating duality. The particular achievement, in my opinion, lies in the fact that all these forms do not appear as mere postmodern play, but are profoundly human and connected to existential experiences: loss, disappointment, hope, memory. The poetics of the text consist precisely in allowing complexity and refusing any one-dimensional interpretation.
The novel showcases diverse forms of communication—from philosophical dialogues and inner monologues to symbolically charged silences. The communication between Bertrand and Reynald is particularly central: a dialogical model that transcends mere argumentation and explores existential questions of responsibility, impact, and the meaning of literature. Nonverbal communication—glances, gestures, rituals—also plays a role. The literary world is portrayed simultaneously as a space of discourse (books, conversations, reviews) and as a symbolically shaped realm of experience (archives, memories, places). Benacquista employs a wide range of narrative and poetic devices to unfold his multifaceted understanding of literature. The novel combines first-person narration with essayistic interludes, dialogic passages, and intertextual references. The polyphony of voices is particularly striking: alongside Bertrand and Reynald, manuscript excerpts, anecdotes, and literary miniatures appear, lending the text a collage-like quality.
The temporal structure is also fragmented: flashbacks, memories, daydreams, and imagined scenarios disrupt the linear narrative. This narrative structure reflects the protagonist's disorientation and the fractures within the literary world itself. Furthermore, the novel employs a rich imagery and metaphorical key scenes: the "limbes," as the limbo of literature, allude to the loss of stories; the garden (Jardin du Luxembourg) becomes the stage for the final, great dialogues and symbolizes a timeless space for thought. The sensual description of books—their smell, feel, and sound—expresses a poetics of reading that aims at deceleration and heightened perception.
Death knell and lifeboat
The novel repeatedly and explicitly reflects on its own genre. In the dialogues with Reynald, in the recollections of rejected manuscripts, in the description of the "limbes" as a repository for unpublished novels, an awareness of the fragility of the literary form is revealed. At the same time, however, the novel also appears as the last medium capable of embracing complexity, ambiguity, and temporality. Benacquista advocates for a literature that cannot instruct or redeem, but may touch the reader. A literature that may not change the world, but can save an individual—as in the scene where a man awakens from a coma through the memory of a novel. This scene forms the antithesis to Reynald's total disillusionment and stands paradigmatically for the aesthetic humanism that the text never entirely abandons. The reflection on genre thus also encompasses a defense of the novel against the essay, the algorithm, and instantaneous content. The novel is slow, profound, and contradictory. Therein lies its power. When Bertrand says that he checks every book by first unwrapping it like a treasure, it is an aesthetic declaration of love for a form that many might consider outdated. Against the devaluation of meaning through speed and quantity, the novel sets the resistance of storytelling.
The character Pierre-Antoine Réa acquires an emblematic significance as the novel progresses. He represents the ideal of the true writer and, from the perspective of the first-person narrator—the publisher Bertrand Dumas—embodies the hope for a literary miracle that might still save his struggling publishing world. Réa is the author of the long-awaited novel. Café central, a work the narrator has been impatiently awaiting for four years. Bertrand Dumas describes this text as a novel "such as comes along only once a generation." Réa is a potential savior—his work is imbued with the power of a literary event capable of changing the course of the publishing house. In contrast to other authors in Bertrand's portfolio—such as the egomaniacal and routine Benoît Clerc—Pierre-Antoine Réa represents depth, meticulousness, and authenticity. While many authors—so the narrator observes—recycle their inner crises or banal everyday events in the same old novels, Réa seems to be a writer who maintains literary patience and precision. His four years of work on a single novel set him apart from the hectic literary scene. Réa appears less as a fully developed character than as a projection screen for the narrator's ideal of literary greatness. Café central What it truly contains remains a mystery – instead, it is the belief in the work that matters. Réa is thus also a kind of literary myth, a phantom of true artistry. The fact that Café central The fact that it is still unfinished after four years also points to a melancholic note: perhaps the character Réa is also an illusion – a last literary spark of hope that will never be fulfilled. Belief in him becomes the publisher's last bastion against the economic and cultural decline of his publishing house.
My certitude: the novel has been written to Pierre-Antoine Réa la reconnaissance et mettrait en lumière ses precédents titres. Et cette fois allions réussir sa sortie, avec ou sans le concours de l'auteur, si peu doué pour le service après-vente…
Comment on the day you have already announced that you are invited to a large external TV broadcast for present Eroica ? The others are also a new excellent product.
— Si je pouvais résumer mon roman en quatre phrases, à quoi bon perdre quatre ans à l'écrire? You save as much as a middle-aged author can communicate well with you, plus the chances of success that have a veritable success in your business. Imaginez Kafka en promo… Metamorphosis ne serait jamais parvenu jusqu'à nous. Je laisse volontiers ma place à un Benoît Clerc, qui signerait de son sang un pacte avec Lucifer pour passer dans this émission. If you're Laurent Neville, you're very good at the oral language. Ils parlent comme des livres pour vendre leurs livres écrits comme ils parlent.
Comme lui, je me méfie des éloquents. My affection is different from the beggars, the empêchés, the dreams, which are written for a conversation.
— Quatre ans, 420 pages. N'ai-je pas déjà fourni ma part de travail, Bertrand?
Tonino Benacquista Tiré de faits irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
My only certainty: This novel would finally bring Pierre-Antoine Réa recognition and put his previous works in the right light. And this time we would successfully complete the publication, with or without the help of the author, who has so little talent for customer service…
How could I forget the day I told him he had been invited to appear on a highly-rated television show to Eroica To introduce? Others would have considered this great news.
— If I could summarize my novel in four sentences, what would be the point of wasting four years writing it? You know as well as I do that a mediocre but good communicator has a far greater chance of success than a truly inept writer trying to market himself. Think of Kafka as a promoter! Die Verwandlung It would never have reached us. I gladly give my place to a Benoît Clerc, who would sign a pact with Lucifer in his own blood to be able to appear on this program. Or to a Laurent Neville, who is so good orally that he doesn't even have to worry about the written word. They talk like books to sell their books, which are written the way they talk.
Like him, I distrust the eloquent. My affection lies with the stutterers, the thwarted, the stumbling, who write to avoid having to speak.
— Four years, 420 pages. Haven't I already done my part, Bertrand?
Benacquistas Tiré de faits irréels Benacquista is an elegiac, clever, and at the same time sarcastic and moving novel about the end of an era. Bertrand Dumas is not just a publisher; he is a reader, a character, an author, and a medium—his story is the story of literature itself. The novel refuses easy answers: neither Reynald's cultural pessimism nor the naive hope for literary impact provides a solution. Instead, it presents literature as a place of doubt, ambivalence, and open questions. The text offers no easy answers, but it demonstrates that storytelling itself is an act of resistance against the acceleration, trivialization, and algorithmic reshaping of the world. In a time when much seems "made of facts," Benacquista insists on the necessity of telling stories from "unreal facts"—from possibilities, from memories, from visions. Therein lies its poetic power.
Merci à vous, les écrivains! Merci de nous pointer ces subtles petits riens du quotidien qui échappent à notre vigilance! Merci d'avoir des souvenirs, nous qui en manquons! Merci de trouver les mots, même quand on aurait dit all pareil ! Pour qui vous prenez-vous, fâcheux prosateurs, graphomanes obstinés, inlassables verbeux, diseurs de malaventure, gâcheurs de paper, vains rédacteurs, fabulistes épuisants, jamais décourages ? Croyez-vous vraiment que tout mensonge est bon à écrire? Do you have pensez charmeurs de phrases? If you have a dresser and a soul so that we don't have any envoûtés? Avez-vous su lui faire cracher son venin ? Ah mais, faire des phrases ne vous suffit plus? You voilà determined à fabrica a historical? Once upon a time, pensez-vous ? Non, this fois-là ne vous a pas attendus, elle has been Mille fois avant vous, et votre héros est déjà né, et bien né, sous la plume d'un poète mort depuis des lunes, lui-même inspired par une légende dont nul n'est l'auteur, sinon une conscience collective qui aux temps anciens a chanté la geste du Premier Homme.
Tonino Benacquista Tiré de faits irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
Thank you, writers! Thank you for pointing out the subtle little things in everyday life that we overlook! Thank you for having memories we lack! Thank you for finding the right words, even when we've said the same thing! Who do you think you are, you tiresome prose writers, persistent graphomaniacs, indefatigable word-nitpickers, hapless rappers, paper-wasting writers, vain editors, tiresome fabulists who never give up? Do you really believe that every lie is good for writing? Do you believe that you enchant sentences? Have you ever erected a single sentence before our beguiling eyes? Have you made it spit out its poison? Is it no longer enough for you to simply form sentences? Do you want to invent a story? Es war einmal, you think? No, this one time it wasn't waiting for you, it was nice A thousand times before you, and your hero is already born and well-born, from the pen of a poet dead for many moons, who in turn was inspired by a legend whose author is no one but a collective consciousness that in ancient times sang of the heroic deeds of the first man.
Tiré de faits irréels It can also be read as a late poetic work. The tone is calmer, more contemplative, less focused on effects than on depth. The text bids farewell—to a profession, to an era, to a particular conception of literature. And yet: the novel also contains a quiet defiance, an insistence on the power of storytelling, even when it seems to lead nowhere. In the context of Tonino Benacquista's complete works, it marks Tiré de faits irréels A high point of self-examination: What can literature still do? What can it hope for? How can one still tell stories in the face of an accelerated, digitized, and economized everyday life? The answers the novel offers are fragile, tentative—but precisely for that reason, literarily credible. The text is a worthy, quiet, and reflective contribution to late modernity, defending storytelling as a cultural relic and an ethical possibility.
Bertrand Dumas is a profoundly thoughtful, literarily complex figure. His thoughts, actions, and doubts encapsulate the central question of the novel: Is literature still possible today? And if so, under what conditions? Dumas answers this question not through theory, but through conviction. His character is a plea for fidelity to language, to nuance, to inner truth—even (and especially) when these convictions seem to have no place in the world anymore.
— Il faut que je vous raconte une anecdote. In the living room of the Parisian book, you will be a participant at a round table with a few words of conversation. The modérateur, who has the emblem of the debate, poses a question that has an extended meaning, a long question, amphigourique and complicated, the air of dire "attention, and avoir of the level!" ». Quelque chose du genre: « Vous semble-t-il possible de préserver l'aspect essentiel de la littérature en tant qu'expression esthétique et culturelle en tenant compte des relations conflictuelles qu'entretiennent l'art, l'économie et la politique? »
Acun souvenir. May the serait malvenu de l'interrompre.
— … Grande perplexité du public et des intervenants, surtout vous, qui traversiez a grand moment de solitude. Do you have a souvenir of your response?
— Non…
— Eh bien voilà ce que vous avez répondu: NON. Pas un mot de plus! Strictly developed, just the NON, assené with a calm assurance, a NON qui se suffisait à lui-même, a NON audible à deux stufex de sens, car à la fois il répondait à sa question, finalement binaire, mais surtout il clouait le bec de ce type pontificant. Tout le monde a applaudi ce providentiel NON !
Tonino Benacquista Tiré de faits irréels, Gallimard, 2025.
— I have to tell you an anecdote. At the Paris Book Fair, I saw you participating in a panel discussion with some of your colleagues. The moderator, who from the outset wanted to ignite the debate, asked you a question, which he read out in extenso—a long, amphigorical, and complicated question that seemed to say, “Attention, now for some serious discussion!” Something like: “Do you think it’s possible to preserve the essential aspect of literature as aesthetic and cultural expression while taking into account the conflict-ridden relationships between art, economics, and politics?”
I have no recollection of it. But it would be wrong to interrupt him.
— … Great confusion among the audience and the speakers, especially you, who experienced a profound moment of loneliness. Do you remember your answer?
- No
— Well, here is your answer: NO. Not another word! No further explanations.
Only this NO, delivered with calm self-assurance, a NO that was sufficient unto itself, an audible NO with two levels of meaning, for it not only answered his question, which was ultimately binary, but above all nailed this populist-like type to the spot. Everyone applauded this providential NO!
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
