‘Inhuman’ by Philippe Claudel: an inhuman book | Culture

Literature splits the world in two and that is its strength. There are those who think that, with Inhumans, Philippe Claudel (Nancy, 59 years old) signs a magisterial book. Others believe that the pot is gone. Those who flew with the power of evocation and the intensity of metaphor of a book like Aromas they are now surprised – perhaps it would be better to say cornered – by a dry, beast, brave, and widely debatable artifact as Inhumans. Two short story books written by the French author about 10 years ago, almost in a row. The difference is that the first came out in Spain, published by his usual label, Salamandra, in 2012, shortly after doing it in France … and that the second just did, four years after the French release … but on another label, Bunkerbooks.

According to the author, his Spanish publisher has been afraid of Inhumans, where a man offers his wife for sale on the Internet the same as another gives his wife for Christmas three gentlemen (“one for each hole, very funny”), some friends from a company and their wives have group sex while children play upstairs and a group of vacationers charter a yacht to watch immigrants from various boats drown in the sea. Something scary, of course, gives Inhumans. It provokes it in the reader, and one can come to understand that it also provoked it at the time in the Spanish editor, although now it will be seen if Claudel decides to continue being faithful to him after the rudeness, or changes course. The secretary general of the prestigious Academia GoncourtBesides being a playwright and filmmaker, he says that he wrote this book because in his opinion the world has lost all moral and authority references, everything is going too fast and he no longer understands anything. The conclusion is transparent: Philippe Claudel has written a book that is both transgressive and reactionary. Reactionary in the literal sense of the term, reaction against what is not understood … or is understood too well.

The following dissertation about the technique and the way in which a writer faces the literary fact according to his mood and the themes that fly over him gives an idea about the ability to capture the world in such planetarily opposed books. But also about its parallels. Sitting last Wednesday in front of a cafe in the center of Madrid, the narrator, filmmaker and playwright launches himself: “When I start a story, it is the atmosphere that ends up leading me to writing. On Aromas I said to myself: ‘Since I have been quite sensitive to smells since I was a child, I am going to make a list of everyone I have known since childhood.’ I collected like 130 and ended up withholding 63 for the book. I decided to write a very short text about each aroma, but about the first I already found 40 pages. I said to myself: ‘It can’t be, I have to leave it in two or three pages for each entry’. With Inhumans The same thing happened: I wrote the first story and I got 40 pages. I threw it in the trash and said to myself: ‘Hey, two or three pages maximum’. It is clear to me, less is more. The difference between the two books is precisely in the writing. On InhumansAs I was working on inhuman material, I said to myself: ‘Well, writing has to be too. No images, no metaphors, a dry language, almost as if it were a machine that wrote the text, a robot ”.

We always believe we have reached the top of the worst, but no, we can always improve. At worst we are really good!

As for the savagery that cement the plots of these 25 short stories, Claudel refers to the fearful context in which, according to him, Western societies move today. And to his absolute personal bewilderment. “I actually wrote this book because I felt lost,” he admits. “I come from a world that was pretty easy to decode. I’m not saying it was better, I’m saying it was pretty easy to decode. Today many certainties are crumbling. Technology, medicine and biology produce fabulous things, but they do it too quickly for the level of human acceptance, and that sometimes brings a great metaphysical malaise. And then there is the question of truth, and the emergence of those formidable expressions that are alternative truths, often driven by political discourse, as we already saw with Trump, although it is not the only one. For me, for example, pretending that sex is not a biological issue but a mere invention of society or that the concepts of male and female no longer exist… they seem to me to be alternative truths. In the end, if I lower my pants, I see that I am a man and a woman the same ”.

There is terrible self-censorship. Every day there are more issues that we do not dare to talk about

A small sample of phrases that serve as a starter to some chapters of the book: “My wife died a few days ago. Without warning. The ungrateful. I immediately replaced it ”. “Old people are a problem. Where do we put them ”. “For a relatively short time the poor have been confined. It is much better ”. “I like you without hair or with it because I love you. How nice what you say. You should write poems. ” Everything is atrocious in this book by a writer who, he says, writes to change things. Because the human being is basically bad, Claudel argues. “We always think we have reached the top of the worst… but no! We can always improve. At worst we are really good. I think the big difference from the past is that before there were barriers, locks that managed to keep the door closed. Above all, religion, which had an incredible weight in our Western world. Also the school teacher and the family. But we kill God, respect for the teacher no longer exists, in France he is even murdered. And the traditional family has exploded. We have lost the referents, we have assassinated the symbols of authority and we are more and more abandoned to ourselves ”.

Such themes and such tone led to an editor change for the Spanish version of Inhumans, which, by the way, in France was titled Inhuman. “I think that Salamandra, who is my usual editor in Spain, has been afraid of this book,” the writer advances. “They’ve asked themselves, ‘Oh my gosh, what is this ?!’ And it is because every day there are more issues that we do not dare to talk about, suffocated in a political correctness that anesthetizes any debate of ideas ”. And he goes further: “A while ago, all themes could be the object of laughter and irony, today no longer. Today there is a terrible form of self-censorship. There are more and more subjects that cannot be humorous. Every time there are more comedians forced to apologize ”. For her part, the regular editor of Claudel in Spain, Sigrid Kraus, from Salamandra, points out: “Fear no, it was rather that we saw this book as a minority that could not provide us with an adequate volume of sales.”

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