Dominique Noguez's Autobiographical Memoir of Love and Writing

Dominique Noguez's autobiographical book "Un bouleversement de tout" (published by Flammarion) recounts his passionate and painful relationship with a young man named Cyril, whom he met in late 1993 at a conference. Noguez, then 50, describes his immediate infatuation with Cyril, whose beauty was matched by a seemingly light and unkind soul. The affair lasted several months, though the relationship only ended in 1999. During this period, Noguez traveled to Japan (Villa Kujoyama), Seoul, and Bangkok, experienced alternating periods of chastity and physical encounters, and wrote extensively in his journal. The book, written twenty years after the meeting, explores the duality of love—both luminous and nocturnal—and the difficulty of truth in autobiography. Noguez cites Flaubert's "Sentimental Education" to illustrate love's first face, then describes its reverse: the pain of unanswered curiosity. He reflects on the passage of time, the generational gap between himself and Cyril, and the act of writing as a preparation for the definitive shedding of the self. The work is as much about the writing subject as about the love object, with Noguez questioning the transparency of immediate confession and situating his narrative in the tradition of Rousseau while also mocking it.