Last inventory before liquidation

Original language: French

Original title: Last inventory before liquidation

Translation: Sergi Pamies

Year of publication: 2001

Valuation: Between recommendable and okay

You could say that today we inaugurate a new species for the entries of this blog: we can call it meta review, that is, a review of a book of book reviews. There may not be many of these from now on, and this will most likely be the only meta-review we present, but I confess that I liked the buzzword. That book of reviews I’m referring to is signed by Frédéric Beigbeder, one of those bad guys that is so popular north of the Pyrenees, you know, the enfant terrible, sarcastic, delighted to meet him, and if possible with unruly hair. This man, apart from other various things, is also a writer, with several reviews in ULAD that you can see below. Apparently, with the beginning of the century and millennium The World and the FNAC carried out a survey asking about the key book of the 20th century, as if it were the Ballon d’Or. The result was a list of the fifty most voted titles, each of which has its signed review in our book today. by Beigbeder.

The reviews, of three or four pages maximum, are just a sketch, a couple of brush strokes and, in tune with the image of the character, they always have an iconoclastic and ironic air, like a ‘attempt to overcome the intimidating effect produced by great works of art’with the laudable intention of ‘read those famous books as if it were the first time’. These intentions are very good, but the problem is making them come true fifty times in a row. That is by no means easy, and Beigbeder decides to use sarcasm to unify the results, without also missing a narcissistic touch that he seems unable to resist.

All in all, it must be recognized that the work is overall quite good. With so many books to comment on and such a limited length available, multi-reviewer Beigbeder resorts to a fairly obvious but also effective resource: varying the center of attention, which is sometimes located on the author of the work, other times on his time, movement. with whom you identify, the audience you are addressing or anecdotes related to the book. Irony and disinhibition allow him to do things like question whether voters have actually read the works they voted for, something that seems like a very well-thrown dart, or reflect on certain impostures in the literary world:

‘Not everyone is Faulkner […]the problem arises with the cretin followers whom he has inspired. Because of Proust, a lot of French authors feel obliged to write long sentences about their mothers to appear intelligent; Because of Joyce, any impostor believes himself to be a poet when, in reality, he only manages to be illegible.’

This is what it is about this type of characters who love to scandalize or lambast without regard: although what they seek is above all notoriety, sometimes they hit the nail on the head.

In any case, I think that Beigbeder passes the test with flying colors, the whole is balanced and reads with pleasure, sometimes it makes us smile and other times it sheds light on some works that we may have forgotten or postponed. And, as I pointed out before, the merit of writing fifty reviews on such a varied list cannot be denied.

Oh, well, and the list, which I suppose someone will be a little intrigued by. It can be found at this entry from Wiki. As anyone can imagine without even looking at it, more or less half of those selected are authors in the French language, which this time should not be attributed only to the traditional chauvinism of our neighbors. I suppose that if we ran the survey here or anywhere else, voters would also favor a good number of local authors. By the way, the only writer in Spanish who makes the list is, almost obviously, García Márquez with One hundred years of loneliness (I didn’t say that only one title per author was allowed).

It also draws attention, and Beigbeder highlights it, I think with a certain disdain, that there are a good number of Nobel Prize winners, I don’t know maybe fifteen or thereabouts. And at the top of the ranking stands out The foreigner of Camus, just above In search of lost time by Proust. To look at ourselves a little in the navel, I will also say that approximately half of those top 50 already have their reviews in ULAD and, with natural objectivity, they are at least as good as those of Beigbeder. Or better.