In Le Consentement , an explosive new memoir, Vanessa Springora describes her relationship with Matzneff, which began in the mids, when she was 14 and he in his 50s. Springora was seduced by Matzneff after meeting him at a dinner party to which her mother had taken her.
She writes of spending afternoons fellating Matzneff, while her schoolfriends hung out in the playground around the corner. French prosecutors open rape inquiry into author Gabriel Matzneff Read more The revelations have caused a storm. Prosecutors have now opened a rape inquiry. The same day the government announced the withdrawal of a state-funded bursary enjoyed by Matzneff that presumably freed up his time for his amorous pursuits.
He is the latest man to have his reputation destroyed in a matter of days for behaviour to which many people turned a blind or an indulgent eye for decades. His diaries, in which he details his sexual exploits and boasts of the dozens of young girls and boys he slept with in Paris and the sex tours he took to the Philippines where he paid for sex with underage boys, have been published by Gallimard for years. He appears deeply offended when one guest, the Canadian writer Denise Bombardier, expresses unalloyed disgust; the following day the writer Jacques Lanzmann declared that someone should have slapped her for being so rude.
The heated debate both in France and further afield over the past few days has tended to focus on what the Matzneff affair tells us about literary France and its self-indulgence.
There has been shock at the willingness of such figures many of whom later acknowledged that they should not have signed it to support the petition, amid claims that it proves how out of touch the elite is and has always been with the rest of the country.
