Qui a tué mon père and an Amsterdam standing ovation for Édouard Louis

 

I meet Frédéric (a friend through the Amsterdam Queer Bookclub) today for Édouard Louis's new play "Qui a tué mon père" which was quite amazing.

I really admire Édouard Louis works and in my opinion, he is just getting better and better as a writer.

Édouard Louis first book "En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule", is a real shocker, it grabs that reader by the throat and never really takes its foot off the pedal, one hell of a ride and not for the faint hearted. 

This book seems to be a new genre that is very largely autobiographical, similar to the American poet Ocean Vuong, whose lyric style seems to accentuate the negative and shocking. Édouard Louis's childhood is portrayed in unrelenting misery, the principal villains being a nasty mixture of toxic masculinity and poverty. After reading "En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule", I did wonder how his family and especially his father took the publishing of this sensational childhood story?

Édouard Louis's second book "Histoire de la violence" is of a similar shocking style, he is a little older and the events are just as grim, very Hobbesian again i.e. the 17th British philosopher who maintained life is 'Nasty, brutish and short'. And yes, it would appear that there were some parallels between poor and working-class between 1650 and 470 years later, in 2020?  This regression in the quality of the life for the working poor, especially over the last 30 to 40 years, with neo-liberal and more purist free-market economics, which has hit the poorest in society hard, drives much of Édouard Louis' writing.

On a lighter note, if I remember correctly, I think there was a bit more humour in this second largely autobiographical novel? I need to re-read it to verify, but I remember it feeling very real but people took some absurd pleasure in the farcical nature of their lives

Édouard Louis now has a new play, focusing on the last few years of his father's life. While his father seems to be the victim of his own toxic masculinity, his wife eventually could not stand it anymore and he spend the last few years of his life in grinding poverty.  Louis details the repeated benefit cuts and how his father was forced to work to travel long distances and work as a street cleaner (barely covering his travel costs) until his health failed him. A very raw account of the harsh reality of the populist "back to work schemes" of the last few decades. On a more everyday level, he portrayed a more balanced relationship with his father, who was also very loving and proud of his son, even if he rarely showed it. His father seems to have had toxic masculinity in spades and he was sometimes his own worst enemy? 

Anyway, today was a very special performance for me, I had assumed that some actor would be performing today. I didn't realize Édouard Louis was actually performing his latest play until after the play had actually started and then I had this crazy dawning realization: that guy looks like quite Édouard Louis. I had seen a few photos of him, but I was more interested in books than his looks (although he is quite handsome), but then I thought this guy really sounds like Édouard Louis and I had heard him give radio interviews, plus I had listened (twice through), to the audiolib.fr french version of Qui a tué mon père, read by Édouard Louis ... so then I realized this guy actually is Édouard Louis ... OMG!

To see him perform live was simply incredible, a remarkable writer, performer and event. Édouard Louis received a standing ovation for his performance today.