Has the writer Yann Moix been a beaten child, victim of abuse? Yes, says the novelist in his novel Orleans . "Pure fabulation", replies his father José.
The family and literary controversy comes as the new book of the novelist goes out in bookstore Wednesday. Orléans (Grasset), the 17th book of the writer awarded the Renaudot prize in 2013, is presented by the author, aged 51, as "a novel of humiliation". The writer recounts his unhappy childhood from kindergarten to the end of high school. The book is divided into two parts. "Inside", where he describes his family hell and "Out", where he revisits the same years at school, with his friends and his first love.
Humiliation in series
The first part is appalling. The reader learns that the mother of the very young Yann Moix looked at him with "hatred and scorn in the eyes". He lends his mother criminal intentions. "She struggled relentlessly against drowning in the foamy bath water or choking me under the pillow of my little bed," he writes.
The writer does not hide any of the beating and humiliation that his parents, especially his father, make him suffer. He describes him as a cruel child hangman. Yann Moix remembers the contents of a trash can spilled on him, shots with an extension cord, his head dipped into the bowl full of toilets. The writer had already mentioned this terrible childhood in Pantheon (2006), but also on television, in the show On un couché , on France 2.
He "never was beaten"
A former physiotherapist, the writer's 75-year-old father categorically challenged his son's memories. He "has never been beaten," said José Moix in an interview with the daily La République du Center . "The notion of a battered child evolved between the years 1970-80 and today, and nowadays, a simple tap on a child's bottom is very badly perceived, maybe even big risk" , concedes however José Moix.
He admits to having given a correction to his son "as this time when Yann tried to defenerate his brother on the first floor (...) or when he put the head of Alexander (his brother) in the toilet and pulled the flush". "I do not deny it, so he picked up a good pair of slaps, but he was a hard teenager, and maybe deep down, if I had been less severe, he would not be where he was. is today, given his associates of the time, "added José Moix. All that is told in the book "is pure fabulation," he said.