In a file devoted to the Gabriel Matzneff affair published Sunday, Le Journal du Dimanche gives the floor to the writer Christian Lehmann. The novelist and doctor claimed to have alerted the literary community to what he calls "predator" for more than 30 years.
In @leJDD of 5/01/2020, #Matzneff pic.twitter.com/gANdjFTwr4
- Christian Lehmann (@LehmannDrC) January 6, 2020Christian Lehmann began his literary career in 1988 with La Folie Kennaway . Then columnist for the medical weekly Impact Médecin , he was invited to an evening at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées where he met Gabriel Matzneff. The latter, who is also a columnist for the medical weekly, "presents himself as a cursed artist, victim of misunderstood passions for adolescent girls", says Lehmann in Le JDD . “He is rightly accompanied by a very young girl; she made herself beautiful to come and attend the ballet. The damsel's parents are also present. "
Matzneff, "sulfurous" but "big feather"
The doctor and writer says he is "uncomfortable", he read Drunk wine lost by Gabriel Matzneff, as well as his pamphlet Les minus sixteen , and he is "horrified" by the author. "Anyway, I hate him, he disgusts me. I told the editorial director of Impact Médecin and Gabriel Matzneff knows this. The director replied that it was certainly "sulfurous" but that it was "a big feather".
Christian Lehmann says that Gabriel Matzneff came to see him and told him that he did not understand "this distrust of [him]". “He is creamy, friendly with a terrifying side: he is an ogre. But it is a glory of the medium, I am nothing. I decide to run away from it, ”says Lehmann. The writer then begins to note “everything that [he] finds about his actions, through his own texts and interviews, which show his perversity, his narcissism, his absolute absence of empathy or guilt. "
"We finally started to see in Matzneff what he is: a child criminal"
Christian Lehmann met Denise Bombardier in 1990, shortly after the Quebec writer's public indignation in " Apostrophe ", and the two discussed this affair. "We are not crazy, we are not alone, we are at least two. The author and doctor also tries to point out to his editor-in-chief the problems of Gabriel Matzneff's writings. It is listened to only once, the chronicle is deleted; "But as those of three other contributors are coming to an end, they too, I never really knew if the reasons for his eviction were served on him," he testified.
Christian Lehmann believes that the world has changed since the 2010s. In 2013, when Gabriel Matzneff received the Renaudot Prize, "the existence of social networks makes it possible to disseminate information and I denounce this predator several times, only a click away literary adulates without a thought for the kids he breaks up ”. He sees the publication of Consent , Vanessa Springora's book which denounces Matzneff's actions, as "unexpected". "Because one day an ancient prey spoke and the people said:" The king is naked ", and we finally started to see in Gabriel Matzneff what he is: a child criminal. "
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Gabriel Matzneff affair: Is the literary milieu more porous than others to pedophilia?
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