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Fragments, sketches, aphorisms: with “Lignes de vie”, the writer makes mischief sparkle.
by Marc Lambron, FROM THE FRENCH ACADEMY
Esthete. With Jean-Paul Enthoven, style infuses everywhere: in the portraits of his literary and intimate heroes as well as in the arrows he shoots at the wordy.
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On can conceive of a book as a herbarium of preferences. In lifelines, Jean-Paul Enthoven chooses over 280 pages the form of the fragment, the aphorism, the anecdote, the sketch, the appeal of fiction. A succession of brief shards of flint, with La Bruyère features, the antics of a facetious moralist. How to give of yourself “unfaithful and intentionally blurred reflection” when the law of lying-truth immediately betrays this proclamation to better bring velvety truths? Let’s say first that we have here a treatise on gratitudes. With Enthoven, the roots aspire to the branches: the present life is increased by the tutors who have known how to cross it. At home, they are above all writers. From Casanova to Fitzgerald, from Flaubert to Modiano, the author embarks his unicorns on a…
Marian Adreani/Ed. Grasset