Posted on 08/25/2007 9:14:46 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
HAILED as a literary sensation last week, the intimate portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy published in Paris was becoming a political riddle this weekend, raising eyebrows not only for its revelations about the French leader but also for the enigmatic G to whom it is dedicated.
Yasmina Reza
Yasmina Reza, Frances most celebrated playwright, has refused to identify the figure behind the single initial at the start of her book about Sarkozy, the hyper-president to whom she was granted extraordinary access when he ran for office earlier this year.
She gives various clues, however, to suggest that G is a Socialist politician to whom she is close and whom she would like to understand better: he also dreams of becoming French president one day.
There have been suggestions that G was none other than Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former Socialist finance minister and presidential contender with a fondness for women. He is expected to become head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Reza is writing about Sarkozy in order to understand G, said Le Point magazine. Did Sarkozy know he was second choice?
What seemed a very French debate about politics intersecting with passion and literature was the result of a curious gamble by Sarkozy, 52, to allow Reza, known in Britain for her play Art, a hit in Londons West End, to follow him for nine months as a fly on the wall of his presidential election campaign.
Her book, LAube, le Soir ou la Nuit (Dawn, Evening or the Night) confirmed what the French already knew about their pint-sized president with the Napoleonic ambitions: he has a volatile temper, swears like a trooper, is a workaholic but also a proud father and family man devoted to Cécilia, his mysterious wife, and Louis, their 10-year-old son.
Other, less well known frailties of the most popular president since General Charles de Gaulle are also exposed, however, including a fondness for attractive women, Rolex watches and chocolates.
Yet the 48-year-old author, who shares Hungarian parentage with Sarkozy, has admitted to having some affection for him and the picture to emerge is not entirely unflattering.
So much so that Reza, who regards herself as a woman of the left, has been accused by the French press of falling under the spell of Sarkozy. He is often described, in the best French presidential tradition as a chaud lapin (hot rabbit), meaning a man who likes chasing women.
In the one interview that Reza gave to discuss her book, she was asked if she had been seduced by Sarkozy.
No, he wanted to seduce France, she replied, before adding: Thinking about it, though, it is almost hurtful to spend an entire year with a man without him trying to seduce you.
Even so, the theme of seduction runs like an electric current through the book and Reza describes Sarkozy beaming at her one evening as he tells her about the conversation he is conducting simultaneously with an attractive blonde, his other neigh-bour at the dinner table: She just told me, I dream of you every night, isnt that moving? says Sarkozy to Reza.
Sarkozy puts his hand on the womans bare back as he addres-ses Reza again: Shes charming, this young woman, have you seen how beautifully adorned she is, not a hint of vulgarity. In the next breath he asks Reza: Have you tried the white chocolate mousse?
Reza then tells him: Try to restrain yourself, Nicolas, dont forget that you want to be president of the republic. Sarkozy gives his childish laugh, she writes, smoothes his hair as the girl leans against him. He drinks Limoncello, he says, This is a magic place, everything is magic this evening.
On another occasion, displaying the same spontaneous enthusiasm, Sarkozy wraps Reza in his arms to dance with her while waiting to go on stage to deliver a speech during the presidential campaign. I challenge anyone who has come up close to him not to be impressed, she said.
Her mother was less flattering, however, and is quoted in the book as saying that Sarkozy was like a fox terrier running around barking.
His well documented volatile streak is on display when he lays into his staff during a recording session because he does not like the chair he is sitting in sack everyone, Im fed up, he says or when, in his last campaign appearance, he is dragged to a radar site in Brittany.
I dont give a damn about the Bretons, he rants. Im going to be surrounded by 10 morons looking at a map. Last campaign day, in a room, looking at a map. Great.
She describes him sitting alone on a train in a foul mood one day. None of his advisers dares to go anywhere near him. He plays obsessively with his mobile phone, repeatedly turning to the picture of young Louis, but Reza resists addressing one of the most sensitive subjects in the Sarkozy universe and the possible cause of his distress that day: the tempestuous relationship with Cécilia, his wife.
She left him for another man in 2005 and was rumoured to have gone off again in the midst of the most important campaign of Sarkozys career. Reza justified Cécilias absence from her book by noting that she was seldom on the campaign trail. It was widely believed, however, that Sarkozy insisted on an agreement that Reza would not write about his stormy relationship.
The mysterious G, by contrast, haunts the books pages, a conundrum to preoccupy politicians at the end of their long summer holidays.
She describes seeing G on television in late 2006 and says: I dont recognise him. He is saying I want . . . I want . . . I am the one who . . . He is saying I all the time. I know him to be a modest and secret person. I suffer listening to him.
Le Point magazine said that she might be referring to the 58-year-old Strauss-Kahn, often referred to as DSK, who was in the midst of a tour of the world last week to promote his candidacy for president of the IMF.
He and Laurent Fabius, the former Socialist prime minister, were heavily defeated by Ségolène Royal in the Socialist partys primary contest for the presidential nomination in November 2006, and after that were accused of sniping at her from the wings in an attempt to undermine her campaign. They succeeded, but since Sarkozys victory they have been unable to wrest control of their party from François Hol-lande, its secretary-general and Royals estranged partner.
In what many see as a further attempt to undermine the Socialist opposition, Sarkozy, who last week marked his first 100 days in office, has been vociferously promoting Strauss-Kahns IMF candidacy: it would remove him to Washington from where he could hardly play much of a role in the looming Socialist leadership contest.
However, Libération, the left-wing newspaper, said Strauss-Kahn, whom it described as a seductive epicurean, might be a liability in Washington. It said his flirtatious behaviour sometimes verges on harassment and that this would not go down well among Anglo-Saxons.
They do not forgive misplaced gestures or words, wrote Jean Quatremer, the veteran Brussels correspondent.
It would suffice for DSK to corner a secretary behind a desk to trigger an immediate media frenzy in the United States and France would not come out of it unharmed.
Strauss-Kahn may have more of a future in Paris, where he is considered the only figure on the left to pose a serious threat to Sarkozy. A subject for Rezas next book, perhaps.
Is that Marilyn Manson’s twin sister?
Barack O.’s aunt, maybe?
My former mother-in-law got a chin implant. It was really a big improvement, and no-one would guess she had it done that hadn’t known her before!
Yikes! This post needs a FUGLY warning. :-)
LBT
.....
yitbos
Ummm... have you looked in the mirror lately?
That is too funny. Clinton could corner anything, get sued for it, and the MSM with all their feminists would give him a free pass. And France knows by experience how to come out of anything unharmed; just lay down and act like they're enjoying it.
More from Mr. Bremner:
It's rare that I can use that cliché about Paris being abuzz over a long-awaited book. That's the case today with the appearance of Yasmina Reza's inside account of Nicolas Sarkozy's triumphant election campaign.
Sarko let Reza, a playwright who enjoys taking a scalpel to human frailty, watch him close up for nine months, ending with his installation at the Elysée Palace in May. He knew that he was taking a risk inviting her onto the inside of his campaign. She has not been kind, but he does not emerge badly from L'Aube le Soir ou la Nuit.
Ego-mad, ruthless and rather cruel to those around him, Sarkozy in private is everything that we suspected. Yet her portrait, full of theatrical dialogue, also shows a fragile and even touching side to a little-boy president who, it seems, is short of affection.
Below are a few more Sarko quotes, but first it's worth noting that Reza's book is a very French exercise.
Her task was to report the final conquest of power by her generation's most ambitious politician. She has done that, but her account of "a modern king in his ancient castle" is couched in a literary style that reads like modern fiction.
As such, her book is being tipped as a contender for this autumn's Prix Goncourt. France's most prestigious award goes to "the year's best work of the imagination in prose" -- in other words a novel. Surely a documentary narrative, however elegant and fanciful, cannot qualify as fiction ? Well yes, French writers have done good business for years with plots that are simply accounts of their lives and times.
Reza tells le Nouvel Observateur today that she was not burdened by the journalistic obligation "to track the truth". "I don't hunt the truth, which in my work does not exist outside the point of view," she says. She never takes sides or expresses an opinion, she maintains. "I neither denigrate nor admire Sarkozy in the book. Between the two there is space for observation... I saw, I felt things and I sketched them."
She also says that, despite their time together, Sarkozy never tried to come on to her. "No. He wanted to seduce France. When you think about it, it's almost annoying to spend a whole year with a man without him trying to seduce you."
Here are a few of Reza's quotes from Sarkozy:
Rehearsing his television debate against Ségolène Royal, his Socialist opponent, on her plans for higher health spending: "You're never happy, pauvre conne (poor stupid cow)! Tell me where you'll find the money. A member of my family called Jacques (Chirac) has gone deaf. He has to have money for his hearing aid."
Why he likes Tony Blair, Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister, and Jose-Luis Zapatero of Spain, all leftwing leaders. "It's because they are not on the left. It's only in France that people are on the left!'.
Sarkozy joking about his plans: "If I'm elected I will abolish the National Front, the Rotary Club and the Lions' Club".
On plan for final campaign appearance in a radar centre in Brittany. "Who had this retarded idea? I don't give a s..t. about Bretons. I'm going to be surrounded by ten c...ts looking at a map."
To New York Jewish leaders: "Part of the French elite hates me more than they hate Israel or the Americans."
Sarkozy complaining about being surrounded by spin doctors and publicity staff: "I don't want to be followed by these c..ts who I never see. What kind of a picture is that, a guy arriving surrounded by an army of bloody stupid publicists?"
Sarkozy to Reza after taking office as president: "I am happy but not joyful...I can't say that I'm unhappy. At last I have got rid of that burden.... Winning means pleasing people. My job is taking decisions. I was a lot more worried about my ability to please people."
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yitbos
Sounds like a very bad case of SDS.
“Reza tells le Nouvel Observateur today that she was not burdened by the journalistic obligation “to track the truth”. “I don’t hunt the truth, which in my work does not exist outside the point of view,” she says.”
I guess this rather homely womsn in need of a face transplant has a lot in common with journalists in the American MSM. It depends what the meaning of “is “
is.
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