Little Red Book is a new kind. The hammer and sickle have been replaced by a briar pipe and a razor-cut cabbage, more effective, according to its authors, to overcome capitalism and its accompanying vulgarity. The Chap Manifesto, etiquette revolutionary modern gentleman (Editions of the Equator, 20 euros) calls "the revolution from tweed.The advent of new times where "everyone shall have the right to own a handkerchief scented and bask for hours on couches Persian laudanum absorbing force in the navel of a young Bedouin. It is certainly the natural order of things ". English only - pen name Vic Darkwood Gustav Temple - could dare.
Heirs of Oscar Wilde, PG Wodehouse and Huysmans, the authors of this book stripper, decadent and hilarious managed to marry the spirit of Monty Python than George Orwell. The humor and the absurd. Elegance, loitering and gin and tonic. Here, briefly, the alpha and omega of "Conspiracy of anarcho-dandies" (CAD) in the service of a free world and unconventional.
When Vic and Gustav are found in the 1990s, they barely 30 years. It was love at first sight. Our chaps ("guys" in English) share the same passion for the actor David Niven, the poet Charles Baudelaire, and dark pubs. The first painted with little success, the second dream is a novelist.
Both have time to spare and a taste for a lifestyle as frivolous as subversive. Lazy mornings, breakfasts, long baths vaporous, readings, female conquests, the program is loaded. Not about stooping into paid employment. Penniless and two accomplices have much to do to find their outfits at random from a garage sale or consignment shop: tweed suits, gloves, chamois leather, cuff, brown shoes if you please.
Without forgetting the braces, pipe and hat. One evening in 1999 wettest than others, they imagine a magazine to popularize their philosophy, and perhaps earn some money. The first edition of Chap Magazine "looked like a fanzine done on computer and printed at home," says Mr. Temple, who still laughs.
It is sent to friends and a score of newspapers. Surprise, the press loves, farce is a success. Today, The Chap Magazine released every two months and has sold 10,000 copies. And theorists "chapisme" even if they are cold in the last five years, have managed to bring together a true community.
Each mid-July, they are a thousand good to be in central London, for very special olympics. That day, in Bedford Garden, men and women of all ages and all social classes, at their thirty-one, indulge in their favorite sport drink Pimm's and participate in wacky games. There is the start of cucumber sandwich (be the thing fall to the ground with the least possible gap between the bread and green vegetables), the game umbrella, the slap contest ...
"It is rare in adult life to laugh so much," said Olivier Frebourg, Editions of Ecuador, who, after attending one of these meetings surrealist, decided to publish the Manifesto Chap. Against all odds, the French want more: "Initially, we had taken 1,500 copies," says Frébourg, we are the 5th and run 20 000 copies.
" If someone on the bus cuts the thread of your iPad is that he has read the book. And held, among other "sporadic actions of ordinary courtesy," that of always carry nail scissors for this purpose. Same thing if your brother suddenly engaged in "raising baby" with your last baby, a practice that DAC recommend to those who need to play sports but do not want to "attract the shameful reputation that accompanies such bouts of bad taste.
" And if, in the office, one of your colleagues began to photocopy entire reams of poems by Keats, know that the chapter "Pull to the side: an ethic" multiplies the suggestions of this type to that, "because of gambling debts or pressing a growing addiction to barbiturates, "had to work to resolve.
Mr. Darkwood returned to painting. This morning, this bachelor has agreed to successive loves to get up before noon for our appointment. Umbrella bamboo, handlebar mustache, impeccable suits, he continued the fight. "My only surrender, it is the mobile phone. But look, it's pretty, it looks like he is Bakelite," he said, leaving an older model Nokia teal-like retro.
A few dozen miles away, in the pretty town of Lewes (Sussex), Mr. Temple, if he is always dressed to the nines, can not say that. The boss of Chap Magazine wakes up at 6 o'clock every morning. "The work, he says, and have two children, fans of Spiderman, and Walt Disney, in alternating custody." "The diet is a chapisme, J.
M. Frébourg, an asceticism that demands to sacrifice his time and a constant struggle against a world that evens out the behaviors, thought patterns and dress codes." Email: puny @ bbc. fr. Virginia Malingre Article published in the edition of 18.01.11
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