In hummus, his sixth novel, Gaspar König, makes the earthworm the heart of its plot. The essayist and philosopher takes us into an ecological fable about the tribulations of two agricultural engineers. Explosive and funny naturalistic story.
Expecting to publish an essay on the relationship of philosophers to the earth, from Locke’s apple tree to Proudhon’s apple tree, and the way in which this relationship has informed their vision of the world, Gaspar König, who submitted: Monique Canto-Sperberi, head of his think tank (Generation Libre), returns to his first love. Hummus, a powerful novel whose protagonist is a generally disliked creature, the earthworm. The earthworm thus forms the basis of the friendship of two agronomy students, Kevin and Arthur, who, as their first names suggest, do not come from the same background, and decide to take over his grandfather’s farm, starting with vermicomposting. for the other, with unexpected consequences to say the least… With this documented, original and extremely engaging social and ecological mural, the philosopher and former politician reminds us that He is also a writer.
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Madame Figaro. – How did the worm play a key role in your novel?
Gaspar Konig: He is at the beginning, and it comes from the fact that I have a vegetable garden in the village, that I saw earthworms and started reading about them. There was very little, and not only is it rare to find a topic unstudied in the literature, but it lies at the heart of current biodiversity issues: soil health, agriculture… Earthworms and men, Marcel B. By Bushe, each chapter in turn takes the point of view of two characters, Arthur and Kevin. Or two agronomy students and friends gathered with the same question. “What can I do to reintroduce the worms and at the same time save the earth, and why not the world and the planet? Each of these two characters reacts very differently and will encounter all the problems of today’s society on the economic, political and societal levels.
You x-ray social environments stage movements transclasses: anyway…
For me, it was a good novelistic way to have two characters who themselves slowly discover an environment that is very different from where they come from and look at it with honest eyes. On the one hand, a very earthy, even peasant neo-rural environment, and on the other, a very trendy tech environment of start-ups. I know them both, and I wanted to intertwine them to avoid any binary and bring the social fabric to life in all its complexity and diversity. But I don’t like term classes, what about me? Hummus It is not a story of “transclasses”. I’m interested in the evolution of both people who put on a mask because society expects them to, and who play with it. One says he discovered nature, the other says he got there when he came from nothing, but that doesn’t motivate or define them; it’s just how society perceives them. In fact, Kevin lets it happen, he has no real desire to succeed, and Arthur is sincere.
You also wanted to show how ecological Is there a connection between economics and politics?
I wanted to address the ecological problem in all its aspects: economic, political, legal, social, etc., modern and realistic, avoiding stereotypes. I went to agronomists and farmers, like lawyers and businessmen, to look for as many details as possible, because knowing the details makes us fairer and more imaginative. Meeting people who practice vermicomposting gave me ideas that are impossible to find in any book; How could I have guessed that the rats could have devoured all the earthworms saved for vermicomposting? I wanted to paint a large social gap while showing that in these very different environments we still face the same problems, the same doubts, the same selfishness, the same hypocrisy. There is absolutely nothing to condemn or praise in these two worlds.
Did you originally have the idea to deal with radicalization and green terrorism?
The issue of violence and civil disobedience arose several years ago How to Sabotage a Pipeline By Andreas Malm, who is an old-school Trotskyist rather than an anarchist like Arthur. The general public became aware of this in cases such as Saint-Saulin (which saw four anti-basin environmental activists convicted of “grouping to prepare violence” – hit by drought in the summer, Editor’s note) The latter actually exploded when I finished Hummus. This seemed like a logical direction to me, so one to follow, while realizing that the novel genre also allows for pushing things a bit further…
The environmental concerns of your characters are also yours.
Everyone has their entry point when it comes to environmentalism. are you aware of the scale of the disaster? In my case, it started when I traveled across Europe on horseback (an enterprise that chronicles Our freedom to roam, riding in Montaigne’s footsteps, Editor’s noteIt’s hard to emerge as the perfect city person from this experience of traversing multiple landscapes on the back of an animal… But my real entry point is the question of lands.
In other words.
Geology is recent. From predicting the passage of comets to sending rockets into space, mankind has always dabbled in the science of the heavens, while the earth is literally virgin land. A spoonful of soil contains billions of microorganisms about which we know nothing. There are five thousand species of earthworms, about which we also know practically nothing, although it is absolutely important. Extinction of earthworms in conventionally cultivated soils leads to soil collapse, landslides and soil infertility unless oil or gas is added. We clearly see that this system is unsustainable, regardless of animal welfare or carbon…
Hence the title of your novel… What exactly is hummus?
What is Kevin making and what is Arthur trying to recreate in his field? The term means a thin layer that envelops the earth, it is about one meter and it is etymologically the root of man. In all religions of the world, from Buddhism to Catholicism, man is born of dust, comes from the earth and returns to it… However, the numbers are staggering; 85% of cultivated land has lost the ability to regenerate through it. Although it is a cycle that works perfectly thanks to nature, Darwin makes the earthworm, to which he dedicated his last scientific work, and whose role as a plow he perfectly understood as a central animal in this process… ●
Source: Le Figaro
