‘A Report On Myself’ by Grégoire Bouillier (2002)

Original French language title ‘Rapport sur moi’ by Grégoire Bouillier (2002)

Published by Allia. A paperback edition has also been available from “J’ai Lu” since 10 June 2020.

A friend of mine from my teenage years simply said to me, during a conversation by the lake: ‘You should read a book…’. He gave me the title, told me where I could find it and that was all it took for me to go and get it. At the time, things seemed easier: I had more money, more time and fewer books to read!

I went into the big bookshop. I quickly found what I was looking for. I turned the book over and it was simply written on the back: ‘These things happen.’

Then I flipped through a few pages and came across: ‘History repeats itself in a cartoonish way,’ I sneered aloud in the streets. Before thinking that maybe it’s the repetition that makes the story.” And I bought it.

As the first so-called “new generation” novel, this story seems to me to be just one of many.

Neither autobiography, novel nor autofiction, “Rapport sur moi” inaugurated a new genre in the contemporary literary landscape at the time of its release. Somewhere between a survival manual and a miniature odyssey, the author scrutinises forty years of an uneven existence with both sincerity and humour. He uncovers the laws that mysteriously govern it, bringing together the intimate and the universal.

A great success for a first novel! A fragmentary account of the passage from childhood to adulthood, through a succession of often cruel scenes.

How did the author become an adult and a writer? That’s the subject of this little book. Grégoire Bouillier tells us everything, or almost everything! Let’s say he tells us all he wants about his early youth. Born into a loving but sometimes unloving family, with morally liberal parents but a depressive mother, he gradually discovered sexuality and had a difficult start to adult life. Apparently, literature gave his life a great deal of meaning.

The writing is relatively cold, but there is an underlying sensitivity. To use the author’s title, it’s a report on himself. There are novels about learning, but this is more a report about learning.

This short book, which was awarded the well-deserved Prix de Flore in 2002, should be singled out more for its form than its content. It is in fact a distanced autobiography, as the title tries to make us understand. It is very hard not to enjoy this text.

Grégoire Bouillier will continue in this vein, from what I’ve read about him, but I haven’t read another book by him yet.

This is a strange world, one in which the author makes extensive use of backtracking and leapfrogging, not for the sake of complexity, but as an essential tool for understanding the point he is trying to make, which is that life events can be made to resonate, either linguistically or through similarity.

So he pays close attention to the coincidence of dates, to the particular circumstances of encounters, to the words that designate things insistently, always the same over time. And I recognise myself in him, I admit. That’s probably why this book touched me so much. It’s a narrative technique that isn’t purely aesthetic, although it’s quite possible that G. Bouillier was trying to introduce art into his life.

Autobiography is in fact an opportunity to work in depth on the relationships between events and their meaning. Everything is a sign. Coincidences are no longer coincidences and become almost synchronicities.

This is a brilliant little literary object, in which the author talks about himself and those close to him, leaping from one subject to another with a light touch, despite evoking serious subjects. Grégoire Bouillier’s sense of formula sometimes brings a big smile to our faces, and he handles self-mockery like no one else, revealing himself without pretense or pretense. We want to get to know the man, sometimes cowardly, sometimes sensitive, quite bruised (very much so, in fact), and yet so luminous!

Challenging sentences and alert writing took me from one end of this book to the other in a single breath. Breath, not breath, because the world and the feelings described were unknown to me at the time. This “Rapport sur moi” belongs to Grégoire Bouillier and its particularities speak to us, even shock us. Throughout this reading, where the ‘Things of this life’ are said coldly and soberly, psychoanalytical references are present, and it could constitute a reference for analysis. Each time, between childhood and adulthood, the story comes full circle. Everything happens from our earliest years. What responsibility do parents, adults and society (schools, etc.) have? Throughout this book, a family is torn apart, mistreated… and in love… of course! Everyone has a problem, and the only way the hero escapes is by being aware of the facts. His parents are swingers, his mother is suicidal and his brother is gay. He discovers all these facets of his family by surprise.

The narrator sums up his life in a chrono-illogical but refreshing order. He puts his thoughts in a bit of an order. I dare to hope that this is fiction, otherwise it means that he’s had a slightly unhealthy sexual initiation, of the family kind. Yes, there is incest in this text. But, unfortunately, yes: these things happen (every day).

Punctuated by short paragraphs, which makes it fairly easy to read, this book is like the confession a friend would make to us on a rainy evening at the end of a gloomy bar after several drinks. He tells us about his childhood experiences and setbacks, what he did to improve himself and how his efforts ended in unexpected failure.

Funny and interesting references and links, a funny and shocking novel that can be read in one go and is so bafflingly true. A book I’ll definitely be reading again.

How does it make you feel? It all depends on your experience. I highly recommend this book, which proves that real literature doesn’t need sensationalism or fashionable subjects, everyday life is enough. Bouillier excels in this respect.