INTERVIEW
The writer and poet Philippe Delerm was the guest on Wednesday of the show Ça fait du bien where he presented his new book The ecstasy of the selfie and other gestures that tell us , published by Editions du Seuil. In his latest book, he describes small everyday gestures that speak volumes about our society.
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Philippe Delerm dwells for example on the selfie or on the swipe, which he describes as "the small gesture that one makes while touching the surface of the smartphone": "It is a pretty pretty gesture because it is a way to bring out moments, photos, people we loved, it's really a gesture today. "
If he calls it "iconic gesture", Philippe Delerm does not take selfie. Why ? "A quick look at my laptop will answer the question," he says, showing his old model phone Anne Roumanoff.
In the steps of The first sip of beer
As in his book, The first sip of beer , published in 1997, Philippe Delerm was already analyzing daily gestures through short texts. "I feel more comfortable with it, it's a way of looking at the present and trying to catch things that are part of today," he says.
Today, it is partly thanks to this style that we recognize Philippe Delerm. But it is also by this eye focused on our behavior. In The Ecstasy of the Selfie and other gestures that tell us, he also looks at the supermarket shopping cart: "It's done to go straight and to put a lot of things in. But as soon as you want to do it turn, the wheels lock ".
A writer "in tune with his time"
Despite this strong literary identity, Philippe Delerm is still amazed at having managed to sell 1.5 million copies of his book The first sip of beer . "All of a sudden, I was in tune with my time whereas for a very long time I had not been," says the writer, who was a teacher for 37 years.