I had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn’t dreaming: in Not even afraidreleased less than a year after his previous book, Patrick Sébastien speaks about me. So as not to give me free publicity, he does not mention my name (small frustration); on the other hand, he does not hesitate to take all his time to say to what extent my series of articles devoted to his work may have upset him. Pure Patoche: he pretends to lead his boat without worrying for a single second about the opinions of others, but deep down, the fact that his work can be called into question damages his ego far too much for him to pass it over in silence.
Allow me to dwell on what is one of the events of my year 2025. Because who can sit at my table and say that PatSeb devoted three pages to it? Nobody or almost no one. We are part of a very exclusive club that so many people would like to join. But more seriously, if this passage from Not even afraid particularly interested me, it’s not only because it revolves around me. Hence the desire to comment on a few extracts.
Sexual frustration and consequences
It all starts on page 156. Like a hair in the ointment, the sequence devoted to me arrives just after some memories of the time when the young Patrick Boutot was an altar boy. Stating that the priest of his parish has always been correct with him, the author takes the opportunity to share an aphorism of which he has the secret (“The ways of the lord are inscrutable / No doubt I should have been too”). He points out to us that contrary to what he usually does, he did not conclude his witticism with an exclamation point.
Immense pride: we learn that if Patrick Sébastien chose to moderate his use of this punctuation mark, it is because I had pointed out his tendency to overuse it. “Last summer, he writes, a literary critic, or so-called one, spent his time every week demolishing all my books on the web one by one. (…) One of his criticisms, the least, concerned my too frequent use of the exclamation point. It’s the only one I took into account by making it rarer.”
If someone had told me that I would one day have an impact on Patrick Sébastien’s style, I wouldn’t have believed it. Alas, the questioning stops there. Regarding his excessive use of metaphors, he says it loud and clear: he will continue. “Without reservation.” The message got through.
If these first paragraphs are relatively soft, it’s because Patrick needs to warm up. Because from the following paragraph, I have my ears cut into points: “On the other hand, the other criticisms were of rare intellectual dishonesty. His hatred of me shone through every line. He questioned the veracity of the anecdotes, insulted me, distorted my words to attribute all the faults to me. Sexist, racist, homophobic, champion of rape culture. (…) Defamatory and disgusting.”
At this point, I feel obliged to point out that if the articles in this series are written in a relatively humorous tone (this was the price of my survival), this does not detract from the seriousness of my approach: the quotes are all taken accurately from the master’s works and the context is given as precisely as possible so as not to distort anything – this is easily verified by opening the books in question. But Patoche only sees a flood of gratuitous attacks and vile manipulations.
Why such a gap between us? For my part, I interpret Patrick Sébastien’s aggressive defense as a symbol of his total refusal to evolve, to question himself, to question his past actions and comments. The interpreter of Raoul’s peckerhe has another point of view on the reasons why I criticize him: “No doubt a professional (or even sexual) frustration, added to an intellectual vanity placing him at the peak of intelligence. With assumed contempt for the crude and uneducated acrobat that I am in his eyes.”
From burning to friendship
Patrick Sébastien is the man of all paradoxes: he would like to displease those he considers “right-thinking” (and whom he now calls “wokists”taking up the vocabulary of the right of the right), but at the same time, the idea of having detractors irritates him enormously. Anyone daring to criticize him is immediately ridiculed for his contempt for class and his feeling of superiority.
Alas, Patrick forgets that he himself is the embodiment of what he denounces by victimizing himself: for example, in each of his last three books, he finds a way to mock Aya Nakamura, of whom he has probably never heard more than half a song – if he knew that she had already been compared to Édith Piaf in the columns of Slate, he would probably throw up his ham and butter.
“A stone’s throw from the book burning. The height of dictatorship for a supposed champion of universal tolerance.”
After calling me “hater’s head”Patrick then gets his feet in his own carpet, explaining that my case “allows us to bounce back from the harmfulness of so-called social networks where anyone can write anything”. That I am anyone is a fact. On the other hand, if someone could try to explain to the author of Not even afraid what is the difference between an online media and a social network, this might help us a little.
Really, Patoche has a big stake in the matter. Because it’s not over: he still has things to say about me, my work, my intentions. Are you ready for Godwin point? “Far be it from me, as far as this critic is concerned, the idea of preventing him from vomiting his bile. Unlike him who would like my publisher to stop supporting me. That I give up writing. Remove my books from sale. A stone’s throw from the book burning. The height of dictatorship for a supposed champion of universal tolerance.”
The ending beats me up. “It’s just one of those modern-day Torquemadas of which there are so many. Intelligent, fine analysts of course, but with rage in their stomachs. Frustrated, highly pretentious, full of angry certainties. Harmful much more to themselves than to those they kill. More to be pitied than blamed. To love is a pleasure, to hate is a pain. Damage! All they need is a little more humility and righteousness for us to be friends.»
I admit that these last words shook me. Would Patrick Sébastien ultimately be more open than I think? Obviously, apart from a few details, we could have been friends. I had never considered this idea. Perhaps he could have introduced me to other friends of his, like the delicious Cyril Hanouna, who is also part of the club of people to whom Patoche devotes several pages.
Cyril Hanouna, a hagiography
We no longer present the late host “Touche pas à mon poste!”, who no longer hides his sympathy for anything that closely or remotely resembles a representative of the extreme right – and whose show “On marche sur la tête”, broadcast on Europe 1, resembles a gigantic den for National Rally voters. Does this worry Patrick Sébastien? Not in the least. In this book on the theme of the little fears that consume us (a common thread that he often tends to let go), he simply says he is worried about his friend – but not because he has gone politically wrong.
No: what concerns Patrick is just the well-being of his friend. “I don’t know how they’re going to do it, but I fear that the growing number of enemies he’s made by getting too close to politics will end up doing him more harm than he imagines.” “Cyril is a boy that I like very much, he says a little further. Sincerely. I love his talent, his loyalty, his courage. I love the man for who he is beyond what he shows. I admire the way in which until now he has avoided the traps of fame, excessive money, and the artificial paradises that sometimes go with it, to which he has not succumbed.
“Islam is eating away a little more every day at the smallest territory of the republic and the RN was democratically elected the leading party in France.”
It’s not a portrait, it’s a hagiography. And if he has some reservations about “Don’t touch my post!” (while writing that“between two clown pirouettes, we sometimes learned much more than in a debate between sworn thinkers”), it is also and above all to better position yourself as a defender of freedom of expression: “As I write, the show and the channel (C8, editor’s note) are stopping. The law corrupts hidden dictatorships: when we can no longer control, we amputate.”
For PatSeb, if France is a dictatorship that does not speak its name, it would not be (among other things) because demonstrations are severely repressed there, but because it prevents Cyril Hanouna from expressing himself – before giving him the possibility of saying the same things again, but on another channel, which is rather cool for a dictatorship. From someone who also describes himself as an anarchist, the results are incredibly sad.
Islam and the National Rally, back to back
Politically, Patoche is impossible to pin down. He regularly hits on La France insoumise (LFI) in general and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in particular, does not say anything good about the power in place (even if having Emmanuel Macron’s 06 tends to soften it a little) and continues to affirm that he keeps his distance from the National Rally (RN) – while seeming less virulent than when he speaks of LFI. Where do we place him on the political spectrum, he who recently affirmed (at Cyril Hanouna, here) wanting to play a role in the next presidential campaign?
The left? He obviously hates it. The right? Those who represent her don’t seem to inspire her more than that. Deep down, Patrick Sébastien would like to find another path, inspired by the common sense he believes he demonstrates and by the numerous conversations he has had with the French men and women he has met over the years. If this did not risk making the political debate even more heartbreaking, we would happily sign to see what his entry into politics would mean. Because for the moment, his positions, as unintelligible as they are incoherent, would above all risk creating ever more confusion.
This does not prevent Sébastien’s words from being nauseating: “I am well aware that my humanist idealism is a Care Bear fad. Because the evidence is glaring. Urban guerrilla warfare is no longer a fiction, it is a reality. Islam is eating away a little more every day at the smallest territory of the republic and the RN was democratically elected the leading party in France. Alas! I fear that nothing will come to bridge the growing chasm between the two clans.”
So that’s France as Patrick Sébastien sees it: on the one hand, the Muslims (he doesn’t use the term “great replacement” but it’s just like that); on the other, the National Rally. Returned back to back. I don’t know if it’s more racist than stupid or more stupid than racist. In any case, it no longer makes me want to laugh and tell you invented anecdotes (he now recognizes his tendency to “script the events a little”), the approximate aphorisms, the embarrassed silence about the Cap d’Agde event and the CE1 level poems. Patrick and I definitely couldn’t have been friends.
