Consent: A Memoir

Description

Already an international literary sensation, a memoir of a young French teenage girl's relationship with a famous, much older male writer, 'Consent: A Memoir' became a flashpoint for #MeToo in France when it was first published in 2019. The book looks back on Springora's relationship with Gabriel Michel Hippolyte Matzneff (born 12 August 1936), a left-wing intellectual French writer and self-identified and open pederast - which he defines as a "lover of children". Matzneff's works often described mutually willing sexual activity with young people, and prior to Springora's book he won the Mottard and Amic awards from the Académie française in 1987 and 2009 respectively, and the Prix Renaudot essay in 2013 and the Prix Cazes in 2015. In 1985, in his published diary 'Un Galop d'Enfer', he stated that whilst in the Philippines he would regularly engage in sexual contact with young males. He wrote that "Sometimes, I'll have as many as four boys — from 8 to 14 years old — in my bed at the same time, and I'll engage in the most exquisite lovemaking with them." Matzneff has claimed to be the author of the French Petition against Age of Consent Laws, signed by many prominent French intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir and Guy Hocquenghem. Matzneff has penned an account of his relationship with Vanessa Springora in 'La Prunelle de Mes Yeux' (The Apple of My Eye), published in 1993. However, this work has not yet been translated to English. In this book, Springora describes how, although she was a willing participant with Matzneff at the time of their sexual relationship, she felt it was his responsibility to not engage in such activity, and that the experience had negative effects on her and her life as a result. Her book ignited controversy over the tolerance of the literary milieu towards an open, practicing pederast, and the French age of consent being 15 at the time. This explosive controversy at the time, led Matzneff's publisher Éditions Gallimard to withdraw their marketing services for some of Matzneff's works, with other publishers to follow. At 84 years-old, Matzneff self-published a short response to the book entitled "Vanessavirus" (2021), which is currently only available in Italian, and to which Springora replied "No comment". In the wake of Springora's bestselling book and the media attention generated in the international press, at the beginning of 2020 the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation against Matzneff for "rape of a minor under the age of 15". Gallimard, the leading French publishing group and Matzneff's historical publisher for 30 years, abruptly stopped marketing the author's books in early January 2020 and recalled his books from bookstores, less than two months after having published L'Amante de l'Arsenal, the last installment of Matzneff's diary. On 12 February 2020, police searched the headquarters of Éditions Gallimard looking for, among other things, unpublished manuscripts detailing Matzneff's sexual activity with minors. According to newspaper reports in October 2021, the investigation will likely be closed due to the statute of limitations. Note that, a pseudonymous writer using the name Lisi Cori, in a 77 page privately printed 2021 work entitled 'La Petite Fille et le Vilain Monsieur' (The Little Girl and the Naughty Man), has compared the two published accounts of Matzneff and Springora. Their text challenges Springora's framing of their relationship and some factual matters such as chronological accuracy. This book is available on Library Genesis. For an illuminating biography of Matzneff, see (in print and French only) Philippe Delannoy, 'Gabriel Matzneff' (Editions du Rocher, 1992). About the author: Vanessa Springora (b.1972) is a writer, editor, and film director. Born and raised in France, she graduated from the Sorbonne with a degree in literature. Springora is currently director of the French publishing house Julliard. In 2020, 'Consent' won the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Prize for Autobiography, and the ELLE Grand Prix des Lectrices in Nonfiction.