Thévenon, Patrick
Thévenon, Patrick
PERSONAL: Male.
ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 61, rue des Saints Péres, 75006 Paris, France.
CAREER: Writer.
WRITINGS:
A.A.: un roman-colleage conçu et réalisé, Tchou (Paris, France), 1967.
L'artefact (novel), Calmann-Lévy (Paris, France), 1977.
L'apathiste: sotie, Calmann-Lévy (Paris, France), 1978.
L'adonisant (novel), Calmann-Lévy (Paris, France), 1980.
Le fils puni et autres récits, Balland (Paris, France), 1981.
Le vice roi (novel; title means "The King of Vice"), Grasset (Paris, France), 1982.
Le Veilleur de jour: sotie, Grasset (Paris, France), 1983.
La vertu des simples (novel), Grasset (Paris, France), 1984.
L'air des cartes (novel), Grasset (Paris, France), 1985.
Le palais de la découverte: une intoxication alimentaire, Le Dillettante (Paris, France), 1985.
L'air des cimes (novel), Grasset (Paris, France), 1987.
SIDELIGHTS: In his first novel, L'artefact, Patrick Thévenon tells the story of Valentin Body, a young man dissatisfied with his own life and who begins to take on different personas. He even goes so far as to reshape his own body to the point where he undergoes a sex change operation and becomes "Valentine." The novel is essentially divided into three segments reflecting the protagonist's ability to overcome his predicament and rise to the level of a hero, to achieve a certain amount of stability, and then to eventually fall. French Review contributor Victor Carrabino noted that the author "experiments with the art of writing, and most of all with the creative process itself." The reviewer went on to comment that "he underlines the pain, the solitude and the joy that accompany the creative act."Carrabino called the book a "fascinating story."
Thévenon focuses on Pierre-Paul Jacquelin de la Roche, the "King of Vice," in his novel Le vice roi. The character is a wealthy sensualist devoted entirely to his own pleasures and cruelly contemptuous of the poor and the humble. He decides to take a sort of reverse pilgrimage, with each spot chosen as a place to practice and celebrate a particular cardinal sin. Jack Kolbert, writing in the French Review, commented that the author "has created a fascinating, most readable twentieth-century version of Husmans' A rebours." Kolbert, who called the novel part travelogue, part moral novel, and part satire, also wrote, "The novel's chief virtue is that it is entertaining to read. At the same time, it transmits a very thoughtful message: even the king of vices will not escape ultimate sanctions."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
French Review, March, 1979, Victor Carrabino, review of L'artefact, p. 676; February, 1984, Jack Kolbert, review of Le vice roi, pp. 420-421.