Passwords. Rhythm, composition, soundtrack … music and literature is a whole for the writer. “Variations by Paul”, his new novel, plays the favorite themes of the author. Exhibition in four movements.
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“It’s always worth getting carried away,” says a character of variations from Paul, the fifth novel by Pierre Ducrozet. Getting away, the writer has always done it in his books: characters often on the edge, brown intrigue around the world, when it is not a travel diary like leaving light (Actes Sud, 2020) , and a browse style in all registers and tones. What takes this time in his new novel is music.
Through three generations of the Maleval family, the novelist compiles a century of history, ranging from Claude Debussy to the French Touch. Antoine, the grandfather, will go from classic to jazz; Paul, the father, will be taken in the metamorphoses of rock, from the 1960s to the 1980s; And Chiara, the daughter, will spend free parties in the Paris region at the Berlin clubs. The project could have something from the hit parade, but it would be bad to know Pierre Ducrozet and his ability to build labyrinthine stories.
phoenix
“First of all, I had the title:” Phoenix “”, tells Pierre Ducrozet to the “world of books”. His fifth novel finally bears another. Logical thing, after all, that this initial “phoenix” died to be reborn in multiple places in the story, especially through Paul, victim of a cardiac arrest at birth, inanimate, without breath, but back in extremis Among the living. All of Paul’s life is chanted by brief forays into death. His heart stops, then leaves. The story too: we leave an era for another, before coming back later. “The chronology makes no sense,” says Pierre Ducrozet, who continues to assert himself as the author of a Rhizomic work, taken in voluntary scattering. It is that “the world has no center”, as we could read in the invention of bodies (Actes Sud, 2017).
Faced with this truth, weariness and discouragement even await the most valiant, like Paul: “Behind the ardor there had perhaps only the void and Paul had been very unconscious not to see him . “Roman on music, variations of Paul could not avoid the question of enthusiasm or, conversely – given the subject -, disenchantment. Arrived in the 1980s, Paul has already experienced so many musical emotions that boredom prowls. “This is the big challenge: becoming more and more young. It is a choice to go for joy. It is a real quest, not a escape”, professes Pierre Ducrozet. The Phoenix Paul presents himself as the incarnation of this faith.
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