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Nelson Algren Accuse Playboy Frédéric DUMAS

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Nelson Algren Accuse Playboy Frédéric DUMAS Éros est mort à Chicago : Nelson Algren accuse Playboy Frédéric DUMAS Nelson Algren fut Lauréat du premier National Book Award en 1950 pour The Man with the Golden Arm, dont l’adaptation cinématographique par Otto Preminger eut un immense succès (avec, dans les rôles principaux, Frank Sinatra et Kim Novak). Malgré son talent d’écrivain, il reste avant tout célèbre pour sa relation amoureuse avec Simone de Beauvoir. À la suite de la publication de Lettres à Nelson Algren, il y a quatre ans, la BBC, les télévisions américaine et française ont diffusé plusieurs émissions, consacrées à cette relation, qui a profondément marqué les œuvres respectives des deux auteurs. Sur le plan anecdotique, l’évocation d’Algren dans le cadre de ce colloque est d’autant plus justifiée, qu’Algren est définitivement rentré dans l’histoire pour avoir donné à Simone de Beauvoir son premier orgasme ! Entre 1935 et 1981, date de sa mort, il a publié neuf ouvrages : des romans, un long poème en prose, un recueil de nouvelles toujours populaire (The Neon Wilderness) et quelques ouvrages inclassables, mêlant entre autres les récits de voyages, la poésie, la nouvelle et le récit auto- biographique. Pour Algren, les relations sociales sont devenues vides de sens en raison de la toute puissance du monde des affaires et de son conformisme, incapables de donner un sens à l’existence. Le “business” propose une seule façon d’appréhender la vie, exempte de tous les aléas inhérents aux affres des sentiments ou des plaisirs naturels : ils seraient susceptibles de mettre en danger le confort de l’individu, et par conséquent, indirectement, la pérennité du système. Il s’agit de ne pas vivre ses sentiments soi-même, d’en faire l’expérience par procuration. C’est ce qu’Algren appelle “third person society”, où tout épanchement spontané est proscrit, et remplacé par des représentations édulcorées de ces épanchements. Il situe l’épicentre du phénomène dans sa propre ville, Chicago. Playboy et la “société à la troisième personne” Chicago a produit le symbole même de cette “société à la troisième personne” : Playboy. D’après Algren, le magazine est, paradoxalement, tout le contraire d’“érotique”. L’auteur déclare dans un recueil d’interviews : “it’s sexlessness, not sex, which I think is the big thing at Playboy” (Donohue 317). Pour lui, Playboy incarne toutes les valeurs de cette société par procuration, et donne une représentation des fantasmes de celle-ci, destinés à rester inassouvis. Playboy offre ainsi le spectacle ridicule d’une parodie du Rêve Américain. Algren en donne l’exemple dans Who Lost an American? (1963), à travers le récit débridé d’une réception donnée par Hugh Hefner, le patron fondateur du magazine. Cette réception est en fait une trahison du Rêve, qui laisserait insatisfait même le convive le plus matérialiste. Tel est le cas de la persona “Algren”, pourtant enthousiaste à l’idée d’y être invité : “Of all my childhood dreams, the one I most cherished was that of someday getting to spurn somebody with less money—and now my chance had come!” (286). Dès le début, la réception déçoit, en raison même du mauvais goût du style Playboy : “(...) the rosy glow didn’t go with the dream” (287). Tout le monde y danse le twist, bien qu’il fut considéré quelques années auparavant comme totalement indécent lors des passages d’Elvis Presley à la télévision. Cela ne résulte pas de l’épanouissement de l’individu ni du changement des mœurs que Playboy se targue de promouvoir, mais plutôt d’une perversion de l’esprit de la danse, ainsi coupée de ses racines sensuelles. Les conformistes peuvent à présent pratiquer le twist en toute impunité à condition expresse d’éviter tout contact physique entre danseurs. Les jeunes filles sont jolies, mais ne doivent pas susciter le désir, quitte à sacrifier leur féminité : “Most of the girls looked like their bras had been wired on in puberty—well fitted but unreleased” (289). Hommes et femmes ne donnent que l’apparence de la fête. Ils ne parviennent qu’à se mouvoir au milieu d’un vide existentiel révélé par cette danse, dont le rythme agite les corps sans les faire communiquer tandis que les paroles des chansons, dans leur naïveté adolescente, expriment des désirs qu’eux ne savent pas formuler : Everyone seemed to be trying to join herself as though she’d been away too long. And the men were trying just as hard to twist themselves into finding out who they really were— Dumas, Frédéric. “Nelson Algren accuse Playboy”. EREA 1.1 (hiver 2003): 69-75. <www.e-rea.org> 69 My baby wrote me a letter Just got it in the mail Told me she’d marry me— I’m so happy that I got to wail— one more time! one more time! one more time! (290) “One more time!” s’apparente autant à un slogan publicitaire qu’à une locution à forte conno- tation sexuelle. L’insistance des danseurs à la prononcer dénote la profondeur de leur insatisfaction ; pour eux, l’amour est avant tout un produit de consommation. On retrouve cette expression à cinq reprises dans le chapitre, utilisée comme un leitmotiv sarcastique, ponctuant le texte d’Algren comme il ponctue celui de cette chanson puérile conçue pour la distraction des masses. En fait, le spectacle a beaucoup en commun avec celui donné par Leiris et la génération des années vingt ; eux aussi dansaient au rythme d’une nouvelle musique américaine. Je cite ici un extrait de L’âge d’homme : (...) le jazz fut un signe de ralliement, un étendard orgiaque, aux couleurs du moment. Il agissait magiquement et son mode d’influence peut être comparé à une possession. C’était le meilleur élément pour donner leur vrai sens à ces fêtes, un sens religieux, avec communion par la danse, l’érotisme latent ou manifesté (...). (…) il passait dans le jazz assez de relents de civilisation finie, d’humanité se soumettant aveuglément à la machine, pour exprimer aussi totalement qu’il est possible l’état d’esprit d’au moins quelques-uns d’entre nous : (...) ébahissement naïf devant le confort et les derniers cris du progrès, (...) abandon à la joie animale de subir l’influence du rythme moderne, aspiration sous-jacente à une vie neuve où une place plus neuve serait faite à toutes les candeurs sauvages dont le désir, bien que tout à fait informe encore, nous ravageait. (159-60) Le récit de Leiris éclaire celui d’Algren de façon éclatante, car il place les deux générations en perspective. Ces jeunes gens ont, en effet, beaucoup de points en commun : la communion, la soumission à des rythmes modernes et mécaniques, et la jouissance de biens matériels modernes. Cependant, le jazz était porteur de valeurs totalement absentes du twist de la fête de Playboy. Le caractère fortement sensuel de la danse exprimait l’idéalisme de la jeunesse, pour qui le progrès matériel était au service du désir, et non le contraire. Les danseurs de Who Lost an American? ne nourrissent pas de telles aspirations ; le sarcasme d’Algren tranche avec le lyrisme de Leiris, et suggère que les jeunes Américains du début des années soixante constituent une nouvelle génération perdue. C’est dans un dialogue surréaliste avec Tom O’Connor, un célèbre bandit de Chicago du début du siècle, que la persona nous livre son explication : en fait, le concept Playboy a été bâti autour du fameux hors-la-loi, qui est parvenu à sauver sa peau en renonçant à sa véritable identité. L’astuce a consisté à nier son humanité en renonçant à vivre à la première personne (c’est-à-dire en étant lui- même), et en s’excluant de toute implication avec le monde extérieur d’abord, et avec lui-même ensuite : “How can you pin a dead-or-alive fugitive warrant upon a man who isn’t alive yet neither is he dead? (...) All I had to do was to stop walking in the first person and start walking in the third. (...) I found myself thinking in the third person instead of the first.” (295) En niant son identité d’homme vivant, O’Connor évitait les foudres de la société en parvenant à se faire oublier, mais il se retrouvait incapable de penser par lui-même. D’où le parallèle avec Playboy, qui offre le spectacle de la vie à des gens qui souhaitent s’en soustraire, et renoncent à leur identité d’êtres pensants en vivant leurs émotions par procuration : “I found I could get as much kick out of watching somebody else fall in love than fall in love myself—and look how much safer!” (295) O’Connor était d’autant plus un précurseur qu’il était en mesure d’éprouver les mêmes sensations que celles des invités de Hugh Hefner, sans pour autant s’impliquer dans une activité physique : “It was like doing the twist spiritually” (295). Le lieu où se déroule cette conversation est chargé de signification symbolique, dans la mesure où Tom O’Connor — dont on n’entend que la voix — vit dans une grotte, qui, ainsi que l’évoque Eliade dans Le sacré et le profane, “sont des retraites secrètes, séjour des Immortels Dumas, Frédéric. “Nelson Algren accuse Playboy”. EREA 1.1 (hiver 2003): 69-75. <www.e-rea.org> 70 taoïstes, lieu des initiations” (132). La description que fait Algren de la demeure où se passe la fête, ainsi que celle de son entrée dans celle-ci, présente un contrepoint ironique saisissant avec le tableau que dresse Eliade des lieux sacrés. Tout d’abord, pour l’auteur du Sacré et du profane, les grottes “représentent un monde paradisiaque, et pour cette raison ont l’entrée difficile (symbolisme de la porte étroite” (132) ; elles prolongent une conception religieuse du site parfait, c’est-à-dire complet — comprenant un mont et une pièce d’eau — et retiré.
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