France’s Economics Minister Bruno Le Maire has published his second novel – his fifth book since taking office in 2017. Some are asking: why doesn’t he take care of the record debt? The minister disagrees.
1,312 literary pages – that’s how many pages Economics Minister Bruno Le Maire has written since taking office six years ago. More than France’s full-time star poet, Michel Houellebecq. This can be gathered from a graphic in the leftist newspaper “Libération”. The new novel alone is 480 pages long. Where does the time come from, Minister?
“I understand that the French might ask themselves that,” says the politician. “The answer is very simple: ten years of work have gone into the book. Five years of research into the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz. And five years of writing – on vacation, at the weekend, from five in the morning.”
Hard work about the pianist Vladimir Horowitz
“Fugue américaine” is the name of the hard work. Where “fugue” means fugue and escape in French. Both apply to the pianist Vladimir Horowitz, about whom Le Maire writes with fascination. The Jewish-Ukrainian-Russian master left the Soviet Union in 1925, played in Berlin and Hamburg, lived in Paris and finally emigrated to the USA in 1939. So “La Fugue”.
“Not only because of Horowitz’s exile, but also because the fugue in the music crosses one, two or three melodic lines. Horowitz is depressed, but with the help of his wife Wanda, who, like many women, has an important place in the novel, he manages back on stage and becomes a legend as a pianist,” says Le Maire.
This is contrasted by the life of the true book hero, Franz Wertheimer, who wants to be a pianist, meets Horowitz in Cuba for a concert and realizes that he will never have his talent. He also becomes depressed but does not recover. A key question for me: Why does one fall and get up again, while the other doesn’t? I have a tender feeling for the latter, you have to give them a hand.”
“The happiest of all economics and finance ministers”
In the program “C à vous” – roughly: “It’s your turn” – on the public TV station France 5, the minister was asked whether he didn’t want to retire from time to time, like Horowitz once did. Le Maire recalls 2016, when his conservative camp was looking for a presidential candidate: “No, just once. The day after the primaries – I said to myself: ‘So much commitment and effort for a disappointing less than three percent of the votes. Is is it worth it?’ I got back up and I’m now the happiest of all business and finance ministers.”
Happy? The book was published almost at the same time as the rating agency Fitch downgraded France. The lack of reform, pension chaos, record national debt – that would fill a novel, Le Maire was contemptuous, the left-wing opposition criticized. Le Maire finds that too pessimistic. It can also boast of 1.7 million new jobs, reindustrialization and a good investment climate. Still bad timing. However, Le Maire remains undeterred.
Everyone has their escape routes, needs something besides their professional life: gardening, cooking, doing sports. I write and I demand this freedom. Because it gives you an inner balance. This makes it even easier to work as a minister. Finding answers to the sometimes political questions in the novel makes you free and balanced. And balanced ministers with an open mind are not bad for the country.”
Short chapters, precise descriptions
The father of four demands a work-life balance. Roughly like the majority of the population in the fight against pension reform. After all, Le Maire calls for political engagement. Horowitz wanted to escape politics, but she caught up with him and sentenced his father to the Gulag. And in France, the extreme right is now gaining strength.
“Anyone who wants to should get involved in politics. It’s too easy to say that politics is dirty, everyone is corrupt and bends over backwards. That’s not the reality,” says Le Maire. “Political engagement is essential for our nation. When those who have convictions, who believe in reason and in French universalism, do not fight politically, they give way to people who have a different blueprint for France – less noble and less beautiful.” That almost sounds like a quote from Goethe. In the book he has a protagonist say:
You are wrong not to be interested in politics. Nobody escapes politics. (…) Do not leave them to the mediocre. That always ends badly.
The book begins “catchy”, as one reader writes. The son of the main hero Franz receives a manuscript in the mail and publishes it. It is the book that the reader is holding in their hands today. According to Franz, however, he has deleted the most repulsive chapters. And then curiosity asks: which ones? Four parts, four epochs. The chapters are short, the descriptions precise, sometimes too epic. Linguistically a fine pen, with rhythm, humor and a dash of eroticism. The hashtag “I’m stretched like never before” is already circulating online – a direct quote that brings the first-person narrator into ecstasy.
Erotic books from the Secretary of State
Support comes from the government team: the Minister of Labor had to laugh about the job, but thinks it’s good that there are feelings behind ministerial suits. Charming, says the colleague for medium-sized companies – ministers are also people with joy, sorrow and passion. State Secretary Schiappa, who publishes erotic books, recently proved this with revealing photos in Playboy.
Le Maire did not want to self-censor. “Yes, there is a lot of sensuality in the book. It starts in Cuba, in Havana. Because I wanted the sensuality of Horowitz’s play to correspond with that of the characters, with the landscape, the cities, the Caribbean, the climate. Sensuality is important for a text.”
Style exercise by the Goncourt Prize winner
The literary world is more reserved. Nicolas Mathieu, winner of the Goncourt, the most important French literary prize, admits that every erotic quote torn from the text seems ridiculous. Then he simply rewrites the erotic scene on his Instagram account as a “little style exercise”.
The piano-playing Le Maire is in the scene, is friends with Houellebecq and is not literarily illiterate. He graduated from three elite schools, a bachelor’s degree in German studies, the master’s thesis on Marcel Proust, the license to teach modern languages at secondary schools as the best in his year.
German, English and Spanish passages also appear in the original in the novel. He likes to confront French with other languages, said the polyglot minister of the “Libération”, and instills a different kind of music into it. But what does Bruno Le Maire want from his readers? “You should ignore the authors. It doesn’t matter! I would be happy if many closed the book and said: We had a very nice moment.”