Tuesday, Christine Angot received the Medici Prize for The trip to the east. An award crowning one of the most remarkable books of the fall, in which the author discusses the incest of which she was a victim.
The same day, his name was mentioned among the four finalists of Goncourt, whose prize will be awarded next week. Selected in the past for The Misfits (2004) and An impossible love (2015), never has she been so close to winning the prestigious award. For some observers, however, obtaining the Medici would reduce his chances of triumphing at Goncourt as well. Whatever the verdict, this dynamic proves that Christine Angot has achieved solid recognition among the French literary community. But why only now?
The central place of incest
In 1999, Christine Angot, who had hitherto signed half a dozen novels, obtained real media visibility with Incest, a hard-hitting book in which, for the first time, she tackled head-on the violence inflicted on her by her father on several occasions. Scenes of sexual assault dot the story like blinding flashes.
“It was a violent book in which Christine Angot, and it was the strength of her writing, attacked the reader directly,” explains Elisabeth Philippe, journalist and literary critic at The Obs. She addressed him and did it in a very lively, very virulent manner. It was not a very obvious and accessible text. He was really aggressive, rude, but you don’t expect literature to be pleasant. The novel had earned the author brutal, misogynistic criticism, contempt, and mockery.
The subject of incest, Christine Angot then declined in several of her books, such asAn impossible love Where A week of vacation. Or The trip to the east, which begins in Strasbourg alongside a 13-year-old girl and ends many years later, at the Gare de l’Est, in Paris, with a woman as an adult. Between these pages, the author reconstructs the thread of his life, the meeting with this father who had left his mother before his birth and had not recognized her, the multiple sexual assaults, the denial of his identity and his filiation.
” Even if The Journey to the East evokes elements that she has already related in other books, he tells them in a totally different way, with perhaps a sensitivity to which she had not accustomed us, notes Elisabeth Philippe. It traces the facts in a linear, chronological way, according to the perception and the evolution of the perceptions of Christine Angot over time. I think that makes her story a lot more accessible, understandable, and it can create more empathy in the reader, although I’m not sure that’s what she’s looking for. “
The recognition of a style and a radicality
The literary juries, them, seem more inclined to grant their favors to this book, as well as to the so particular pen of the writer. “Although she has not been spared criticism at all, she has never attempted to soften or soften her style. She has never compromised and that is already how we recognize a great writer. This perseverance and this radicalism that she has never abandoned ”, underlines literary criticism. “Beyond this single work – considered a good Angot ‘vintage’ – it is a work as a whole that is really distinguished,” said Baptiste Liger, editorial director of Read.
He continues: “His work divides, has always divided. Christine Angot has a very singular and personal writing, a way of her own to use her life in her literary endeavor, a theme that she has never ceased to explore, obsessively with, from book to book, a few small differences. We like it or not – we can also oscillate from one book to another, from one scene to another – but it undeniably has a place in contemporary literary history. Even if you don’t adhere to her style, listen to her read her lyrics and you will see the work on the rhythm, on the sounds. Christine Angot also knew how to create a character, like, for example, Marguerite Duras before her. “
A media figure also, often reduced to his lapidary sentences. From 2017 to 2019, her role as a columnist in We are not in bed on France 2 makes it known and exhibits it to a general public who are not necessarily familiar with its prose. Although decried by some, it succeeds in imposing its particular style and marks the history of television. We especially remember the sequence facing Sandrine Rousseau around the issue of sexual violence against women. It was a few weeks before the appearance of the #MeToo movement.
A change of society
This awareness and the profound societal and cultural upheaval caused by this wave of victims’ free speech is perhaps not unrelated to the status acquired by Christine Angot. “Society has changed enormously. The trip to the east comes a few months after the release of La familia grande by Camille Kouchner and after Edouard Durand’s commission on incest, contextualizes Elisabeth Philippe. We no longer consider incest as it was twenty years ago. At the time, critics allowed themselves to say despicable things about Christine Angot’s book that went beyond simple literary criticism ”.
Baptiste Liger does not share this point of view. According to him, it was not the resonances of #MeToo that changed the outlook on the writer. “The Medici Prize is above all a reward for literary work, its inventiveness, its uniqueness. It turns out that this choice meets the theme of incest, which has been talked about a lot in recent months. Yes, of course, Christine Angot brings up the issue of incest, a scourge that has returned to the forefront of the media scene – which did not escape the jury’s notice – but it is what she literally did with it that is especially put in the spotlight. This subject, she transcended it with her words and she found a way of her own to evoke it. “And to add:” We should especially not reduce Goncourt to political intentions – as many generalist media readily do, which forget that a book is a work of form, of treatment. “