My article on France’s answer to the Offbeats — Les Décalés — appears in the September issue of Dazed & Confused:

“In one of his early stories, the French advertising executive turned writer Frédéric Beigbeder imagined Saint-Germain-des-Prés — the ultra-posh heartland of Parisian publishing — overrun by hordes of vandals from the deprived banlieues. It ends with the pope of French letters, Philippe Sollers, dangling upside down à la Mussolini from the local church steeple. This carnivalesque tableau foreshadows the literary revolution that is gaining ground across the Channel…”