If the 2022 literary season had a face, it would have that of Virginie Despentes. His Dear assholepublished Wednesday by Grasset, seems to eclipse – or at least overshadow – some 490 new novels expected in bookstores by the end of September.
AFP describes the author as a “superstar”. Telerama puts the 53-year-old writer on the front page by speaking of “back-to-school event”. Not a cultural media, even among its detractors, waited a week before reviewing the book. Virginie Despentes had not published a new novel since the third volume of Vernon Subutex in 2017, but this expectation alone does not explain such enthusiasm, nor such media visibility. So why is this return causing so much talk?
“She succeeded in uniting the general public with a radical universe”
“There are few female writers who achieve this level of recognition, in terms of sales and critical appreciation. Virginie Despentes sends back a different image of the “great writer”: already because she is a woman, then because she comes from a working-class background, talks about prostitution, violence and assumes a political voice , emphasizes Cécile Chatelet, temporary teaching and research assistant at the University of Angers. She built herself without a network, didn’t go to a big school, she went through prostitution, she was in the punk world. It is also this trajectory as a whole that makes her particularly remarkable in the literary landscape. »
For Marie Kirschen, author ofHerstory, history(s) of feminisms, Virginie Despentes has something unique: “She is well established in the world of publishing but she also has a punk, alternative side – circles that she frequented and that she knows well. Strangely, she managed a kind of union between the general public and a very radical universe. »
A style of writing
Virginie Despentes is a style of writing, rhythmic, marked by orality, a certain humor and references to more or less recent pop culture – walking dead and RuPaul’s Drag Race are cited in Vernon Subutex, pretty Little LiarsPNL and Bad Bunny in Dear asshole. “His way of writing tenses some of the readers who find his writing a little easy. Without extolling her, she does literary things very well which are passed over in silence, indicates Cécile Chatelet. Virginie Despentes reads a lot, integrates ideas and disseminates them widely. »
If she made a thunderous entry into the French literary landscape in 1994 with fuck mehis first novel sold hundreds of thousands of copies, six years before hitting the headlines by bringing it to the screen with Coralie Trinh Thi, it is with his trilogy Vernon Subutex, released between 2015 and 2017, that the notoriety of Virginie Despentes has reached a wider audience. She has composed a gallery of characters who, over the chapters, compose a portrait of French society at the time. It is about music, precariousness, religion, disenchantment, the rise of populism, attacks, Nuit Debout or, because the list is far from exhaustive, violence against women, certain pages seeming to predict the MeToo move.
“Reading Despentes allows you to take energy to campaign”
“I think that many people will look to Despentes for food for thought, to draw anger from his works. Her energy is life-saving for many feminists. Reading Despentes allows you to recharge your batteries, to take energy to militate, ”says Margot Lachkar, researcher at the University of Vienna (Austria) and Paris-8 and co-author ofWrite in purple ink : Lesbian literature in France from 1900 to the present day.
“She is an icon for feminists and / or lesbians, supports Marie Kirschen. This love story begins with King Kong Theory which is, for me, one of the most significant French feminist texts. When it was released in 2006, it was a shock for many women. It is often one of the first texts that we recommend reading as an introduction to feminism because it is both theoretical, it is a real essay, but also autobiographical. She talks about subjects like sex work, pornography, which are the subject of inflammable debates, but she approaches them through what she has experienced. »
If Margot Lachkar believes that King Kong Theory is “a work that is beginning to date and needs to be surpassed”, she emphasizes that it was at the time of its publication that Virginie Despentes “became someone else in the public eye: she was no longer only the author of committed novels but also a theoretician. And the researcher continues: “The other change came with baby apocalpypsethe next book [paru en 2010], which has a special status in his work. It is the first she has published after coming out as a lesbian and the first to contain such an important lesbian dimension. He’s very radical, feminist, queer and still got an award [le Renaudot]. »
“Lesbian at 35”
Virginie Despentes says “to have become a lesbian at 35”. “She came out in a time that has nothing to do with today. I was happy to see a very well-known woman, respected in her community, 100% assume being in a relationship with a woman, claiming to be a lesbian, testifies the author ofherstory. It was great to see her carry this identity and these messages without apologizing, in a very uninhibited way. »
“Its singular position is precious for a whole section of the population which does not feel represented in literature, nor in media discourse”, notes Cécile Chatelet. Marie Kirschen gives the example of the platform Now we get up and walk away in reaction to the César for best director awarded to Roman Polanski in 2020. “In the media, we heard a lot of the idea that it was necessary to “separate the man from the artist”. During the ceremony, there was the protest of Adèle Haenel and Céline Sciamma. The fact that, following that, Virginie Despentes kicked in the door and took a clear position sparked great enthusiasm among people happy to hear this message conveyed publicly. »
The column published after the attack on Charlie Hebdo has sparked controversy. “People quote three sentences, use this text to pass her off as an apologist for terrorism, when that is not at all what she says,” laments Marie Kirschen.
“His novels are those of the diversity of points of view”
The critics of Virginie Despentes easily caricature her speeches and the content of her books. This is what happens with Cher connard where it is about MeToo, feminism, addiction, social networks… “Despentes is a vacuum cleaner. She recovers all the ideas of our time, leftist tendency, grinds them in her spoken language, gives them rhythm, punch (…). And voila”, pings for example Defectorgoing so far as to describe her as a “left-wing Pascal Praud”.
“We insist a lot on the fact that Virginie Despentes gives voice to female characters, to minorities, to people we don’t usually hear – which is completely true – but her novels are those of the diversity of points sight, recalls Cécile Chatelet. In Vernon Subutexas in Dear asshole, what interests her is the confrontation of positions and she manages quite well to translate reactionary points of view without it being caricatural. She is capable of forms of reversals that undermine what her detractors may think of her in a stereotypical way. »
“She is part of a constellation of lesbian authors”
Finally, if Virginie Despentes has an important place in the French literary landscape, it is because she influences a whole generation of authors. “We see many ways of writing inspired by Despentes, without it being necessarily conscious, with frank formulas”, indicates Cécile Chatelet.
Be careful, however, not to make it the tree that hides the forest. “When I do the test around me by asking to name five French authors who are openly lesbian and whose work is openly lesbian, Virginie Despentes is the only one mentioned, notes the author ofWrite in purple ink. However, she is part of a constellation of authors writing lesbian, queer, feminist literature. Moreover, in a passage from Dear assholeshe quotes a lesbian novel released last year, The time of fire will come by Wendy Delorme, and I find it very nice of her, in her own novel, to quote another contemporary book. For me, it is a feminist solidarity that is expressed through this approach,” adds Cécile Chatelet.