to Cheers!

Ah, Rene Fallet! The sympathetic writer, there, my friends ... And like French literature can be proud to count among its ranks ... Born in 1927, he falsified company we too soon, alas, by a 1983 dark day, the age of 55, but the work he left us starting is one of the most engaging I know. It is not only of great literary quality, it is also deeply human, fundamentally humanistic and wildly generous in his words as in form. The novels that compose it are those that make your spirits when you lost and you warm the heart when he took cold.

Precocious talent, our dear René was only 19 years old when gave birth to her first book, "District southeast" in 1946 and that's saying What already shone all its qualities. Qualities which he then decline to suit twenty willingly picturesque works, often picaresque, and many were adapted to the cinema. Quixotic, anarcho-hedonistic, so-called enemy of progress when it dehumanizes man, Fallet loved good wine, cycling, petanque, his cats and his friends, beginning with Georges Brassens, his heart and brother soul. But above all he loved the French language he considered his true home and that he served so well.

Released in 1975, this "Beaujolais" was one of his last novels and this is perhaps the one I prefer. In any case, I often plunges me to fish a few lines at random and quench my thirst to his humor oh how subversive humor of a cheerful pessimist who saw with dismay the world running to its loss and consoled by assiduously cultivating small simple joys of everyday life. The plot of the book is minimal, the story we anecdotal tale. What is important in these pages, their true purpose is the portrait they paint us a nice group of friends and obsolete suburban bistro where they come every day to celebrate the god Pinard and commune in drunkenness of Friendship.

Ah, the fine team here ... Camadule, Poulouc, Captain Beaujol, Debedeux ... The Company, themselves, they did not care ... Go work in factories or elsewhere, it is not their thing ... Why sweat for a boss when you can spend the day at the boozer, though cushy to écluser good red typing pinochle? Casually, they are rebels, in their way, these guys ... but peaceful revolt ... They do not make barricades, do not swing pavers, no, they just calmly, quietly, refuse enslavement by the wage ... Loafers full time, the Blowin their job ... professionals bubble Clutches ... And they are not afraid of overtime, our countertop Diogenes ...

Should we see in it a serious critique of capitalism or simple praise of idleness? To each his reading ... Anyway, forty years later, this book has never been so insolent. So that we sing all day long the virtues of profitability, competitiveness, performance, what cool oasis that "Poor Coffee" where everyone puts a point of honor to being just nor profitable neither competitive nor efficient ... There Carpe Diem in there, but the Carpe Diem accommodated in falletienne sauce, that is to say, shrouded in poetry and casual nonchalance fatalistic ... Come on, dare we say : this book is more than a novel, it is a salutary lesson in wisdom and a great honor to arm the consumer society!