Thirty-nine ninety-nine

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Thirty-nine or 39.90 (original title: 99 francs ) is a novel by Frédéric Beigbeder published in 2001 , translated by Brigitte Grosse and filmed in 2007 by Jan Kounen . The novel and film have autobiographical traits.

Emergence

Michel Houellebecq asked Frédéric Beigbeder, when he was employed by the advertising agency Young & Rubicam , to write a novel about what goes on behind the scenes in advertising . Beigbeder wrote this novel with inside knowledge and with the firm intention of being terminated. The title 39.90 stands for the retail price of DM 39.90 for the German first edition. As a paperback ( ISBN 3-499-23324-X ) it was then sold for EUR 9.90, whereby the 3 on the title is only gray, so that 9.90 in orange stands out as the sales price.

content

The novel tells the story of Octave Parangos, who is active in the advertising industry as a creative person - he calls himself a "polluter". Octave describes his feelings against the consumer world and especially against the irresponsibility of the advertising he produces. The first-person narrator does not want his text to be understood as an accusation of today's capitalism , but as a confession through which he hopes for indulgence. Octave repeatedly goes into his supposed dream job, which he can only endure through excessive cocaine consumption , love for sale and cynicism . He neglects his pregnant wife Sophie until she abandons him and finally kills herself.

Ultimately, despite his provocations, Octave fails to get fired. On the contrary, after the death of his superior Marc Marronnier, he was even promoted. He also won the Golden Lion in Cannes with a commercial . While filming the commercial in Florida, Octave and his colleague dangle through the Miami nightlife. Out of boredom or weariness, they finally break into the villa of a pensioner, torture and kill her - allegedly because she is the "owner of a pension fund ". The murder is filmed by surveillance cameras, the perpetrators are identified and finally arrested at the awards ceremony in Cannes. Octave's story ends in jail, where he mourns the suicide of his ex-girlfriend.

In the last chapter the reader learns that Marc is not dead, but has only fled to the Caribbean. He lives there with Sophie and her daughter on an island of dropouts. Marc Marronnier is the hero of the Beigbeders novel trilogy .

analysis

In six chapters, the first-person narrator examines the advertising industry and denounces the associated decadence of the business. The plot of the book is in the background. In each chapter (I, You, He, We, You and You) the narrator shows the advertising industry and its relationship to society in a different grammatical person and thereby changes the perspective for the reader - the consumer . He tries to make it clear that today's advertising industry functions according to the mechanisms of the propaganda of totalitarian states. To prove this, the narrator picks up on the effects of real advertising campaigns and compares them with propaganda, e.g. B. National Socialism , and cites Goebbels , whose strategies of influencing the masses are also used in today's advertising. The language of the novel is direct, sensational and eye-catching, like advertising itself: Consumers or society, for example, are referred to as “ Mongoloid under 50”. The protagonist Octave, who as a former idealist has become a frustrated observer of the advertising industry, fades into the background in the course of the novel and one experiences him only as part of the machinery.

filming

The director Jan Kounen filmed the bestseller in 2007 under the same title 39.90 with Jean Dujardin in the lead role, which was released on July 31, 2008 in German cinemas.

Others

99  francs correspond to € 15.09 and DM 29.52  . In France, the book is now also sold as 14.99 euros .

literature

Frédéric Beigbeder: Thirty-nine ninety-nine: 39.90 . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2001. ISBN 3-498-00617-7

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