Philippe Muray

Philippe Muray , born the June 10th 1945 with Angers, dead the March 2nd 2006 with Paris, is a French essay writer and novelist.

Biography

One knows few things about the private life of Philippe Muray. His/her father was writer and translator of Anglo-Saxon authors (Jack London, Melville, Kipling, Barbara Cartland, etc), his mother an impassioned reader. According to Philippe Muray (in After the History, I ), his parents played a big role in its literary education and its taste for the reading. So that to the adulthood, Philippe Muray followed studies of letters to Paris.

During a few months, in 1983, he taught the French literature at the Stanford university, in California. It is there that the idea came to him from the empire of the Good and that it gathered the matter of the XIXe century through the ages , published by Philippe Sollers at Denoël, in 1984 (republication Gallimard, 1999), plentiful and daring fresco in which Muray stresses the importance of the Occultisme in the foundation of the Socialisme. Previously, it had published a test discussed on Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Seuil, collection “Such as it is”, 1981, Gallimard republication, 2000), in which it refused to separate the author from the Voyage at the end of the night and the lampoonist anti-semite of Bagatelles for a massacre .

In many chronicles, published initially in newspapers and reviews (of the Re-examined of the Two Worlds , Art Close and Infinite the with the international Idiot , Immediately , the Mountain and Marianne ) then taken again in volumes ( After History I and II, the Beautiful Letters , 1999 and 2000, and four volumes of spiritual Exorcisms , id. 1997-2005), Philippe Muray did not cease fighting the modern world under his various figures. Its prose, in accordance with the tradition lampoonist, is rich formulas and short cuts.

“I did not seek, writes it, to give a table of our company. I made the analysis of the praise which in is made. ”
“It in front of what a company prostrate says to us what it is. ”
“the right, it is initially art to fill the interstices. ”

With the image of Celine, with a developed critical spirit, Philippe Muray wanted to be the chronicler and the despiser of the contemporary disaster, this time when “the laughable one amalgamated with the serious one”, where the festivism makes law. Its work stigmatizes, by the laughter, the derision and the excess of the caricature them through our time. He invented for that (in After the History ) an emblematic figure of this time: Homo festivus , the average citizen of the post-history, “wire naturalness of Guy Overflow and the Web”. Contrary to a narrowly nihilist vision, it had the project, against the “reign of the Good” (described in the test the empire of the Good ), “to reintroduce the negative one to show that when it is evacuated, one can nothing any more include/understand”.

Philippe Muray also invented the concept of “desire of penal”, which stigmatizes the savage will to create laws “to fill the gap in the law” , i.e. removing any form of freedom and responsibility. Envy the penal one that one also finds in the judiciarisation of the daily life, in other words the permanent recourse to the courts to regulate the problems with which the individuals are confronted.

Author of novels ( plural Song , its first book, Gallimard, 1973; Posterity , Grasset, 1988; One closes , the Beautiful Letters, 1997), of a test on Rubens ( the Glory of Rubens , Grasset, 1991) and of a collection of comic poems ( Minimum Respect , Beautiful Letters, 2003), Philippe Muray was assimilated by Daniel Lindenberg, in his work the Call to order: inquire into the new reactionaries , with Michel Houellebecq and Maurice G. Dantec. In 2002, with in particular Alain Finkielkraut, Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent and Pierre-André Taguieff, it signed a Manifeste for a free thought against the book of Daniel Lindenberg, who arranged it in the category of the “new reactionaries”.

The last three books published of alive sound are Dear djihadists… (Editions Thousand and One Nights - Foundation of March 2nd, 2002), Festivus festivus, conversations with Elisabeth Levy (Beech, March 2005), " Modern against Modern (October 2005).

Deceased on March 2nd, 2006 of a lung cancer, Philippe Muray was buried on March 8th with the Cimetière of Montparnasse (the 10th division).

An special issue of the literary review the Workshop of the Novel N°49 (March 2007) entitled After the festival, review where Philippe Muray collaborated, pays homage to him one year after its death.

Style of Philippe Muray

The style of Philippe Muray is generally copious, burning and funny. He liked to create neologisms assassins, as “Artistocrate” (to describe the artists which lends oath of allegiance to the politicians and to the civils servant and whose artistic activity becomes a load, as there were some under the Ancien Mode), “Mutineer of Panurge” (individuals whose rebellion is factitious and in agreement with the air of the time) and “Screw of Panurge” (individuals which try by all the means of making conceal the voices which is opposed to the correct consensus Politiquement), inter alia.

Texts of Philippe Muray available on the Web

“the desire of penal” (1992 - in '' Spiritual Exorcismes I '', Beautiful Letters, 1997) the
“Autopsy of pacifism” (in '' the '' Free spirit, n° November 12th, th and th 1995)
“Portrait of before gardist” ('' Commentaire '', number 73, spring 1996 - Included in '' Spiritual Exorcismes I '' - Beautiful Letters, 1997)
“the prostration of the clerks” ('' Le Figaro '', 4/18/2002)
“new shareholders” ('' Le Figaro '', 11/16/02)
“Interview with Vianney Delourme” ('' Parutions.com '', did 1/23/2003)
“the festivals take place well” ('' Le Figaro '', 7/22/2003)
“Good-bye with the '' will nomenklatura '' right-thinking people” ('' Marianne '', 9/29/2003)
“the communautarism? A monster” ('' Marianne '', 3/15/2004)
“the marriage transformed by its same single people” ('' Marianne '', 9/18/2004)
“'' Minimum respect '' Poème on Bertrand Delanoë” (2003)
" What supports with the Juste the support groups? (Boxing ring) "
the Smile with Human face (Ségolène Royal) - 2004

To listen to Philippe Muray on the Web

Counterparts of Alain Finkielkraut - the future does not miss future
Répliques of Alain Finkielkraut - Modern and anti-modern
While living, while writing - Against the mutineers of Panurge
Libre Newspaper of P-M Coûteaux in homage to Philippe Muray, with interventions of Anne Muray, Juan Asensio, Renaud Camus, Elisabeth Levy and Basile de Koch.

Texts in its homage at the time of its death

“Philippe Muray the enchanter”, by Jacques de Guillebon
“Text of homage of Michel Desgranges, President of the Editions of the Beautiful Letters”
“a mass for Philippe Muray”, UJR, March 9th, 2006
“Of the Lights and of died of Philippe Muray”, Political Freedom , March 9th, 2006
“Philippe Muray, the large indicter”, the independent Opinion , March 10th, 2006.
“Homage, Philippe Muray: respect maximum”, Current values n° 3615, March 10th, 2006, Bruno de Cessole.
“Muray is a festival”, by Benoît Duteurtre, Marianne , March 11th, 2006.
“Text on the work of Philippe Muray” by Yannick Rolandeau
“Philippe Good-bye” by Yannick Rolandeau
“Why we miss Muray, or the chattering of the clerks” by Pierre-André Taguieff
" After the fête" , special issue on Philippe Muray of the literary review the Workshop of the novel (Flammarion-Boreal)

Complete works of Philippe Muray, under his own name

an off-season , Flammarion, 1968 (text of youth that Philippe Muray did not include in his bibliography)
In the middle of Hachloums , Gallimard, 1973
plural Chant , Gallimard, 1973
Jubila , Seuil, 1976
Céline , Seuil, 1981 (Denoël republication, 1984; Gallimard republication, “Such”, 2001)
the XIXe century through the ages , Denoël, 1984 (Gallimard republication, “Such”, 1999)
Posterity , Grasset, 1988
the empire of the Good , the Beautiful Letters, 1991 (republication Beautiful Letters, 1998,2002 and 2006)
the glory of Rubens , Grasset, 1991
One closes , the Beautiful Letters, 1997
Rejet of Clerc's Office , Exorcismes spiritual - volume 1, the Beautiful Letters, 1997 (republication Beautiful Letters, 2002 and 2006)
mutineers of Panurge , Exorcisms spiritual - volume 2, Beautiful Letters, 1998 (republication Beautiful Letters, 2006)
After the History , volume 1, Beautiful Letters, 1999 (republication Beautiful Letters, 2002)
After the History , volume 2, Beautiful Letters, 2000 (republication Beautiful Letters, 2002)
perfect Dissension , Gallimard, 2000
Dear Djihadistes… , Beech - Thousand and One Nights, 2002
spiritual Exorcisms , volume 3, Beautiful Letters, 2002
Minimum respect , Beautiful Letters, 2003
Modern against modern , spiritual Exorcisms - volume 4, Beautiful Letters, 2005
Festivus, festivus , Beech, 2005
square Wheels , Beech, 2006
the Transportable , 1001 Nights, 2006
Disc Minimum Respect (Poems put in music), Festivus, 2006
the Smile with Human face , Manitoba/Beautiful Letters, 2007

Related thinkers

External bonds

official Internet site carried out on a purely posthumous basis, summarizing its work as well as extracts of its album resulting from its collection of poem: Minimum Respect

Philippe Muray Site very complete which proposes to gather various texts of Philippe Muray, of the talks granted by the writer, like some homages paid by other authors.

ethical Purification; General article of Yannick Rolandeau on the thought of Philippe Muray and the post-modernism.

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