The extracts from his intimate e book, “the thirst for shame” | EUROtoday
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
Dyears The thirst for disgrace (Editions of the Observatory), Nicolas Bedos traces, as shut as attainable to intimate chaos, the autumn of a person confronted along with his faults and the collapse of his world.
The father’s agony, the start of a woman, the crossing of the scandal and the social banishment intertwine in a confession the place the “you” turns into an accusation in opposition to oneself. Drunk, absent from his personal life, the actor, director and screenwriter questions the disgrace, the fault and the potential of forgiveness.
Without ever making an attempt to abuse, he describes the sluggish change to a person as soon as pampered in pariah, and his effort – typically pathetic, typically poignant, all the time literary – to search out, within the abyss, the assets of a change. Exclusive extracts.
” – Got it.
– You took the time! Who hadn’t warned you that you were taking immense risks and that it was having in the middle? It is not to spend the time that you started writing a book-this book-which would try to describe, to prying and yourself, the evil double which, certain nights, seizes you and lives in the illusion that the world is a large playground.
– Yes. I should have stopped going out, I should have stopped drinking. I tried and failed. I sincerely regret it. And I ask forgiveness from those that my attitude could hurt.
– Too late. When you are at the bottom of the hole, surrounded by no one, you will have the leisure to gamber the adaptation of Salem witches. Rest assured, little man, you are about to have a long early retirement to greeted on the time, public denunciation, social death penalty, erasure of works, the cowardice of the profession and the opportunism of the media. All that, I promise you. Until death, the real one, you can howl in the void: “They have been simply ready for that!” »» But, for the time being, your tears swallows and think of those who have flowed on the cheeks of your victim.
– I would have to meet it but I was refused all confrontation. Now it is difficult for me to understand the distress of a woman on the basis of a story relating events that I do not remember and which do not look like me.
– So will make you fucked.
– Pardon ?
– You’re screwed up. You deserve the exclusion and stigma that awaits you. It is a show that I can’t wait to attend.
Describe the evil double which, some nights, seizes you and lives in the illusion that the world is a large playground.
Read too Nicolas Bedos case: the last lock jumped*
At the end of the morning, Pauline returned with a bag filled with books of parental advice, prescribed by her mother and some friends. There is something grotesque in the idea that you are about to raise a child even though some people call you monster on social networks. You no longer have the right to work but the law, for the moment, authorizes you to procreate. Your fiasco made you want the desire to transmit anything to anyone. For several weeks, you mentally dissect the education that your parents have given you, trying to assess the share of responsibility in the irresponsibility you have shown.
The world in which you grew up was not obsessed with the mental health of the kids. With the notable exception of your mother, who favored more classic learning, those who raised you never took tweezers with your cerebellum. You were only a few months old when your godmother, Gisèle Halimi, the feminist heroine whose most of your contemptors waited for death to know the name, got into the habit of soaking her little finger of Jewish Franco-Tunisian in a cup of Harissa before you stuff it with force in your mouth, even if you have the language: “It varieties his style for her,” she said to your mother about to call the Samu, “you should not put her style buds to sleep. »» […]
So right here is the place you come from: a tradition that’s scary and that hurts and strives to place our coronary heart to the take a look at. It is a secure guess that at present this academic strategy would earn your ancestors a keep in jail. It would subsequently be very handy to think about you want a pinball ball launched on the circuit of their tastes and ending inexorably within the pit.
*
She picked up a sip of her espresso, then rested the cup.
– I’ve by no means seen you assault a lady. But I noticed a bundle struggling. I listened to them, years after me. Some, I didn’t even know that they existed. They had been there earlier than, or between two nights with me. They instructed me the identical issues, the identical sentences, the identical joys, the identical tears. You will not be a predator, however you’re a devastation.
You regarded down.
– So you’ll inform me “It’s not a crime to be an asshole”. No. But are you certain to not pay it at present? Are you certain that each one that has not left traces? That these girls didn’t hyperlink their recollections? That they didn’t really feel, by pressure, one thing just a little bigger than a easy penalty of coronary heart? You by no means taken with your self. That’s your largest fault.
She took out a cigarette, turned her between her fingers.
– Do you ask me in case your e book appears sincere to me? Yes and no. It is since you say all the pieces you’re feeling and all the pieces you assume, it isn’t as a result of you haven’t puzzled sufficient to ship different ideas. Mediapart will dismantle you, Liberty Go write that your e book is a disguised plea, that you’re not so thirsty for disgrace as they’re rehabilitated. That you wish to go for a sufferer. That you do not assume something. They will say that you just grasp all the pieces, even your disgrace, even your fall, and that you just discover the best way to be the hero of this story. They will probably be partly mistaken as a result of you don’t home your self and that you just do a job that many males don’t do, however they are going to be proper as a result of you don’t take sufficient hassle to look again. Because all the pieces that occurs to you at present, you contemplate it a brutal, unfair, out of context. But when you made the record, severely, of all of the errors, of all of the pains that you just left behind, do you assume it will not weigh heavy?
She put her cigarette on the desk and regarded you straight within the eyes.
– You can spend your life asking your self why we punished you so onerous. Or you possibly can marvel why no one ever instructed you something earlier than.
To uncover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
She bought up, put her coat. Before leaving, she gave you a final look. You noticed him go away as soon as once more. Then you completed your espresso. He was lukewarm and bitter. »»
The thirst for disgracefrom Nicolas Bedos, on the editions of the Observatory (220 p., € 22). To be printed on May 7, 2025.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/nicolas-bedos-les-extraits-de-son-livre-intime-la-soif-de-honte-29-04-2025-2588544_23.php