En vieillissant les hommes pleurent by Jean-Luc Seigle

Abstract

SEIGLE, JEAN-LUC. En vieillissant les hommes pleurent. Paris: Flammarion, 2012. ISBN 978-2-0812-5761-0. Pp. 245. 18 a. The author’s third novel recounts the last twenty-four hours in the life of its protagonist, Albert Chassaing. Upon awakening, Albert succumbs to tears for the first time as he realizes that this will be his ultimate day on earth. A veteran of World War II and a night-shift worker at the Michelin factory, he recognizes his estrangement from his family and even from his era: the 1961 depicted in the novel recalls the dawning of the technological age in France. Albert’s family, in fact, awaits the arrival of its first television set on this particular day, especially his wife, Suzanne. It will be the first such electronic device in the small town, invited in its entirety to the Chassaings that evening in order to watch a program on the Algerian War in which French soldiers, including the narrator’s elder son, Henri, will be asked about their military duties. Henri, born during his father’s captivity by the Germans, has long been Suzanne’s preferred child. His son’s interview notwithstanding, Albert lacks his wife’s enthusiasm about the program in that his generation silenced the details of life in combat. Unlike his wife, Albert favors their younger son, Gilles, although he does not understand the latter’s fascination with literature: the Chassaing family is descended from a long line of farmers and manual laborers. The protagonist has always interpreted the world through his hands, from lifting tires at work to gardening at home and repairing broken alarm clocks. Intuitive rather than educated , Albert correctly assesses his wife’s inability to provide Gilles with the intellectual encouragement that he needs. For this reason, the former assures that their younger son’s education will not be neglected in the future by asking his neighbor Mr. Antoine, a retired school principal, to help the boy with his spelling and literary interests. Besides making peace with his own family, Albert reaches closure with his aged, forgetful mother whose “mains d’hommes” (69, 199) are an additional connection to the family’s agricultural past; he also reconciles with his younger sister and her husband whose membership in the communist party and desire to redistribute agricultural territories not only typify 1960s French themes, but run counter to the very fibers of the protagonist’s core. In portraying Albert’s personal reasons for ending his life and his legacy to each of his loved ones, En vieillissant les hommes pleurent characterizes the midtwentieth century as a time of conflict on both individual and historical levels. The protagonist, in imagining a final conversation with his younger son, qualifies his own private pain as follows: “Gilles, peut-être qu’un jour toi, avec toute ta littérature, tu sauras mettre des mots sur tout ce désarroi. Moi, je n’en suis pas capable” (195). He continues, “Je n’aime pas qui je suis. Je n’aime pas ce qu’il faudrait que je sois, je n’aime pas me réjouir de cette vie-là, je ne suis pas de cette vie, je suis d’un autre temps que je n’ai pas su retenir” (195). Contrary to the characters who demonstrate their excitement at adapting to the increasingly modern world of the 1960s, Albert sees himself as used up and unable to meet the future’s challenges. Yet, the novel ends on a positive note: a separate section functioning as an epilogue contains the 2011 speech that literature professor Gilles Chassaing makes to his students on the absence of the soldier as a French literary hero. His lecture thus enables him to demonstrate his love for his father as it simultaneously places Albert’s depression within the context of the enduring effects of the Second World War and any war. University of Texas, El Paso Jane E. Evans 1004 FRENCH REVIEW 86.5 ...