L’affaire Matzneff and the BAnQ
A scandal making little noise on the anglo side is l’affaire Matzneff: prolific French writer Gabriel Matzneff, who has never made any secret of his taste for under-age nookie, is under investigation after a new book by one of his long-ago victims created a stir in France. The story has resonance here because the only person to challenge him back in 1990 was Quebec’s own Denise Bombardier.
Now Matzneff’s publisher, Gallimard, has withdrawn all his books, and the Grande bibliothèque here has also pulled his works from its catalogue. Francine Pelletier asks whether the permissiveness of the 1960s was an aberration in the moral order.
Update: Radio-Canada has a thoughtful piece on the Grande bibliothèque’s withdrawal of Matzneff’s works, talking to a UdeM professor and to a couple of lawyers including Julius Grey about the pros and cons of the library having made this choice.
A good piece in the Guardian, from a France-based writer, explains the laissez-faire attitude of the French intelligentsia that at least partly explains their tolerance of a writer who made no secret of his predilections.
DeWolf 12:09 on 2020-01-08 Permalink
I just watched the clip from 1990 and… wow. While I have never been a fan of Denise Bombardier, I have to give her credit for putting a self-aggrandizing sexual predator in his place, even he was surrounded by sycophants who seemed to think child abuse was something amusing.
Meezly 13:18 on 2020-01-08 Permalink
I had never heard of Matzneff until the investigation came out. Now I have to wash myself after reading about this self-entitled wanker. But this NYT article helps explain in a nutshell why he had never suffered any repercussion for so many decades, not dissimilar to Pelletier’s article, which I’m reading slowly as my french is not great: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/world/europe/france-pedophilia-gabriel-matzneff.html.
walkerp 09:59 on 2020-01-09 Permalink
OMG just when I finally learned to love the French, I watch that TV show of masturbating french intellectual elites debating how many abused children can dance on the head of a needle. Insane. Denise Bombardier’s courage and strength in this situation does show a very strong side to the intellectual integrity of the Quiet Revolution.
CE 10:09 on 2020-01-09 Permalink
I’m not sure how I feel about the BAnQ pulling works from their catalogue, no matter how unsavoury the author might be. Is there precedent for this? Have other works been pulled when it became known that an author did something objectionable?
Kate 23:36 on 2020-01-09 Permalink
CE, I just checked and you can still borrow works by Claude Jutra. Jutra was accused of pedophilia in a book written years after his death, after which his name was removed from the Quebec film awards, a city park and other memorials. But I gather – and this may not be the full picture, because I’ve never read a thing by him – that Matzneff has written a fair bit about his pleasure in having relations with underage people of both sexes, whereas Jutra’s work was not on that subject. I don’t know whether this is why the BAnQ made that decision, but another possibility is that Jutra was a culture hero in Quebec for a long time, whereas Matzneff is nobody in particular here. Removing “Mon oncle Antoine” and “Kamouraska” would leave a big hole in Quebec cinema history. Maybe both aspects came into it.
I agree with you, withdrawing books is a serious matter and I have not heard of it being done here under any other circumstances. (That is to say, not in my lifetime. The Catholic church banned library books here all the time before the 1960s.) But I read something not long ago – probably on Facebook, because I can’t find it again – about some Concordia students wanting to ban the font Gill Sans because its designer was a perv. Eric Gill died in 1940. I don’t know what kind of evil anyone thinks could percolate through a font 80 years after its designer’s death, but cancelling people is something of a thing now.
JaneyB 10:26 on 2020-01-09 Permalink
And here’s a video of the exchange. She is badass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0LQiv7x4xs
CE 09:25 on 2020-01-10 Permalink
This maybe? https://www.facebook.com/events/concordia-fine-arts-reading-room/anti-oppression-typography-residency-callout/450791448957125/
Kate 10:18 on 2020-01-10 Permalink
That’s it, CE. Ironic they’re using a font there that’s faux Old Church Slavonic.
Kate 20:43 on 2020-01-10 Permalink
JaneyB, she was badass. Now she’s writing sputtering op-eds against tattooing. Not only is her outrage on tattooing futile, it’s also coming about 30 years late.
Raymond Lutz 10:29 on 2020-01-12 Permalink
Pour ceux qui veulent en apprendre d’avantage sur le grenouillage de l’intelligentsia française et lire du bout des doigts quelques extraits de Matzneff en dégustant leur croissant dominical (beurk!) Il y a ceci: https://www.les-crises.fr/quand-bhl-soutenait-le-pedocriminel-matzneff-en-2018/
Je me demande quels sont (étaient?) les rapports de Bombardier avec le triste Bernard-Henri Lévy?