Châtelet – Lilas, by Sébastien Ortiz or the Labour of a Tender Narrator/Subway Driver

Abstract

The author analyzes Châtelet – Lilas, Sébastien Ortiz’s “mythological novel”, which combines features of the social novel and “constrained writing” in the context of the protagonist’s double labour: a subway driver transporting passengers through the Parisian underground and a “tender narrator” (Tokarczuk) who transforms their silence into a story under the influence of “empathetic unsettlement” (LaCapra). The difficulty of this labour, analyzed from a mythocritical and sociological perspective, confronts us with the dilemmas of contemporary prose situated at the intersection of “intimate voices” and “social voices” (Martin-Achard), aiming to “re-enchant the world” (Maffesoli).