{"id":124046,"date":"2018-04-10T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=124046"},"modified":"2018-04-09T17:56:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T21:56:04","slug":"monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/","title":{"rendered":"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Raymond Radiguet and Jean Cocteau.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the spring of 1923, the young married artists Jean and Valentine Hugo began inviting people to s\u00e9ances at their Paris apartment. A new mood of occultism, influenced by Freud and the early Surrealists, was in the air. And raising the dead was in Jean\u2019s blood: while his great-grandfather, Victor Hugo, was in exile in the 1850s, he presided over frequent \u201ctable-rapping\u201d sessions on the Channel Islands. As Victor Hugo recorded in four red notebooks, his \u201ctalking table\u201d conducted conversations with such eager spirits as Jesus, Moses, Dante, and Shakespeare\u2014the last of whom, obligingly, concurred with Hugo\u2019s assessment of himself as the greatest writer of all time. Jean and Valentine\u2019s gatherings, however, elicited messages so chilling that the group, spooked, abandoned the practice after only a few tries. It wasn\u2019t an overreaction; before the year\u2019s end, the omens they\u2019d received in their s\u00e9ances were borne out.<\/p>\n

In a pink velvet-lined anteroom, the Hugos and their friends, including the artistic polymath Jean Cocteau and the avant-garde composer Georges Auric, encircled a wooden pedestal with a tripod base and tilting round top, a type of table reputed to encourage spiritual communion. Placing their hands on its surface, which was lacquered black and painted with flowers, they asked questions. The table tapped out answers on the floor (one tap meaning the letter a<\/em>, and so on), which Jean Hugo wrote down. Over the course of these sittings, the clearest messages were intended for the youngest guest: the nineteen-year-old Raymond Radiguet, Cocteau\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and lover, who had just published his scandalous debut novel, Le Diable au corps<\/em> (The Devil in the Flesh<\/em>). \u201cUneasiness will grow with genius,\u201d claimed the \u201cspirit.\u201d Radiguet, the spirit said, \u201cshould love me for he loves nothing.\u201d It warned: \u201cFame does not replace love even in death and I am death.\u201d The following week came death\u2019s final declaration: \u201cI want his youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Raymond Radiguet<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Radiguet\u2019s publisher, Bernard Grasset, had also wanted the writer\u2019s youth. Eighteen months earlier, Cocteau had taken his young friend to Grasset\u2019s office in the rue des Saints-P\u00e8res. (\u00c9ditions Grasset still occupies the same building, number 61.) Radiguet sat silently as Cocteau read aloud from the manuscript of his novel. Grasset, then a forty-year-old seasoned editor, thought Radiguet looked \u201clike a schoolboy at his first interview with the headmaster.\u201d Among other career triumphs, Grasset had published the first volume of Proust\u2019s \u00c0 la recherche du temps perdu <\/em>after a competitor rejected it. He genuinely admired Le Diable au corps<\/em>, but he prized the boy\u2019s precociousness as much as his talent, at least when it came to publicity. While Radiguet revised his novel and rewrote the ending, Grasset paid him a monthly salary of fifteen hundred francs (the equivalent of over three thousand dollars today) and planned the most aggressive book-marketing campaign France had ever seen.<\/p>\n

Posters, flyers, and bookstore displays\u2014even cinema newsreels of Radiguet signing his contract and accepting an advance check for a hundred thousand francs\u2014all emphasized the astounding youth of this new literary sensation. The media responded with exasperation at such blatant and unseemly hype. \u201cI don\u2019t care whether the author is seventeen or a hundred and seven,\u201d wrote one reviewer. \u201cIt is the book we have to judge, not the birth certificate.\u201d But the tactics worked. In its first month, Le Diable au corps<\/em> sold forty-six thousand copies, ushering in a new era where the \u201cno such thing as bad publicity\u201d axiom applied even to the rarefied endeavour of literature. In the words of Cocteau:<\/p>\n

Before Radiguet, publicity was a very discreet affair, with the author pretending to be totally unaware of it. Radiguet was the first author courageous enough to take a long chance by launching a campaign that might have alienated immediate buyers, but thanks to which, within two weeks his book was in the hands of buyers who formerly might not have known about it for years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Judged on merit rather than manufactured hoopla, Radiguet\u2019s daring plot and spare, controlled prose only served to magnify the shock value of his age. He had written, argued an impressed critic, the most immoral novel since Les Liaisons dangereuses<\/em>. The gay poet and painter Max Jacob, one of Radiguet\u2019s friends, told him he hoped his second novel would be \u201cless cruel and more chaste.\u201d But the novelist Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac, who reviewed Le Diable au corps<\/em> on the front page of Les Nouvelles litt\u00e9raires<\/em>, saw no point in \u201cfulminating\u201d against the tale\u2019s transgressive nature. Instead he praised Radiguet\u2019s restrained and original technique, which seemed to him, remarkably, to betray no literary influences whatsoever.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI am sure to incur a good deal of reproach,\u201d goes the dynamite first line of the book. \u201cBut what I am to do?\u201d The unnamed narrator, looking back on his years as a clever, stealthily rebellious adolescent, recounts an illicit wartime romance with Marthe, a local girl a few years his senior. With Marthe\u2019s soldier husband off fighting in the trenches, she succumbs to a passionate affair with the boy, who is only sixteen but, in Radiguet\u2019s finely shaded and convincing portrayal, years ahead of her in guile. After their first kiss, Marthe weeps and tries to send him away, saying she is too old for him. For our fledgling sadist hero, this marks a pinnacle of joy. Nothing, he reflects, \u201ccould be quite like the delightful feeling at seeing a nineteen-year-old girl cry because she thinks she\u2019s too old.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Marthe gets pregnant, the narrator\u2019s childish amazement that his actions might have consequences mingle with pride, horror, and resentment at the prospect of pleasure curtailed. \u201cI wanted to have as much as I could of Marthe before motherhood spoiled her.\u201d Later, he berates himself for sullying a cherished possession. \u201cWhen I thought how I had spoiled Marthe\u2019s graceful beauty and how her belly was swelling, I regarded myself as nothing better than a vandal.\u201d Worse is yet to come. Caught in the freezing rain one night in Paris, after her nervous lover balked at getting them the hotel he\u2019d promised, Marthe catches a bad cold. She dies soon after giving birth. The narrator\u2019s reaction epitomizes the novel\u2019s singular style: aphoristic and brazen, at once astute and artless.<\/p>\n

My jealousy pursued her to the grave and I hoped that there was nothing after death. In the same way we cannot bear the person we love to go without us to some gathering where there will be a lot of people. My heart was at an age where one does not yet think of the future. Yes, what I wished for Marthe was oblivion, rather than a new world where one day I might join her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marthe\u2019s premature death, the predictable fate for a fictional scarlet woman, was a literary flourish introduced after Grasset requested a less open-ended denouement. Otherwise, the story is drawn from Radiguet\u2019s own teenage affair with a married woman, a teacher named Alice. (Decades later, Alice\u2019s husband claimed that the book had ruined his life and accused Radiguet of plundering Alice\u2019s diary. A string of salacious headlines ensued.) Radiguet, by nature elusive and inscrutable, publicly stated that he hadn\u2019t written a confessional, but a \u201cfalse autobiography.\u201d Nevertheless, many readers conflated him with his protagonist, castigating the author as a petit voyou<\/em>\u2014a little thug\u2014for seducing a woman whose husband was off risking his life for France. When Radiguet won the Prix du Nouveau Monde, a short-lived but lucrative literary award (with Cocteau on the jury), the Association of War Veteran Writers protested, saying that the work had \u201cdeeply wounded the feelings of all war veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Boronia Pelmutter, one of Radiguet\u2019s lovers.<\/p><\/div>\n

None of this mattered in the slightest to Radiguet. \u201cHe was hard; it took a diamond to scratch his heart,\u201d Cocteau would later reminisce. At just nineteen, Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9, as people called him, was rich, famous, and feted by the Parisian avant-garde. Picasso and Coco Chanel were among his doting friends. He moved into the upscale H\u00f4tel Foyot by the Luxembourg Gardens, spent freely on expensive clothes and lavish meals, drank heavily, and smoked opium. He also dallied with various women; his conquests included Picasso\u2019s on-off mistress, Ir\u00e8ne Lagut, and the eccentric poet and one-time Modigliani muse Beatrice Hastings. \u201cB\u00e9b\u00e9 est vicieuse,\u201d a jealous Cocteau supposedly remarked to Hemingway. \u201cIl aime les femmes.\u201d (In French, \u201cvicieuse\u201d\u2014Cocteau employed the feminine form for added bitchiness\u2014carries more of the original meaning of vicious<\/em> in English: depraved, perverted.)<\/p>\n

For his part, Radiguet chafed at Cocteau\u2019s possessiveness. Eleven years his senior, Cocteau was both ardent paramour and godfather-mentor. To avoid ending up, as Radiguet put it, as \u201ca forty-year-old man called Madame Cocteau,\u201d he contemplated marriage to seventeen-year-old Bronia Perlmutter, a strikingly beautiful Eastern European model who lived with him at the H\u00f4tel Foyot. According to Radiguet\u2019s biographer, Monique Nemer, Cocteau threatened to have Bronia deported along with her sister, Tylia, whom Radiguet had also bedded.<\/p>\n

Yet Cocteau and his young tormenter, whose creative genius he nurtured and revered maybe even more than his own, had an emotional and intellectual codependency that withstood all the rancor. They wore matching rings, a triple band of white, yellow, and rose gold that Cocteau commissioned from Louis Cartier to represent the three rings of Saturn. (The trinity ring, one of Cartier\u2019s most successful creations ever, is to this day a traditional wedding ring in France.) And they spent the summer of 1923\u2014Radiguet\u2019s last\u2014together at the unspoiled coastal village of Piqu\u00eby, their regular retreat from the hectic pressures of Paris. In the company of the Hugos and other visiting friends, Radiguet worked on his eagerly awaited second novel, Le Bal du Compte d\u2019Orgel <\/em>(Count D\u2019Orgel\u2019s Ball<\/em>), and, to some degree, put aside his habitual debauchery. He slept more, drank less, swam in the sea, and sat in the sun. Sometimes, in the evenings, he and Cocteau had story-writing competitions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Raymond Radiguet and Jean Cocteau on the beach.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mortal danger intruded into this calm in the unlikely form of a batch of oysters, which, as far as anyone could tell, infected Radiguet and Valentine Hugo with typhoid. Though at first their symptoms were fairly mild, in December Valentine developed severe abdominal pain and was rushed to the hospital for peritonitis surgery. Luckily, she made a full recovery. At around the same time, Radiguet became wracked with chills. Initially, he was misdiagnosed as suffering from pneumonia, then another doctor recognized the symptoms of typhoid fever and he was taken to a clinic.<\/p>\n

As Cocteau mentioned in his 1964 Art of Fiction interview<\/a> with The Paris Review<\/em>, he sat at Radiguet\u2019s sickbed while the delirious patient forecast his own demise. \u201cListen,\u201d he implored, \u201clisten to a terrible thing. In three days I shall be shot by the soldiers of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cocteau, fighting back tears, protested that the doctors were optimistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour information is not so good as mine,\u201d Radiguet replied. \u201cThe order has been given. I heard the order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three days later, in the early hours of December 12, 1923, Radiguet had a heart attack and died. He was twenty years old. The voice of death, as channeled by the Hugos\u2019 talking table barely eight months earlier, had made good on its claim. Cocteau took to his bed with an incapacitating grief, leaving Chanel to take care of the funeral arrangements and medical expenses. All of artistic and literary France turned out for the funeral: Picasso and his wife, Olga; the pioneering sculptor Constantin Br\u00e2ncu\u015fi, who was once Radiguet\u2019s lover; and \u201cso many celebrated people,\u201d the painter Nina Hamnett later recalled. \u201cRadiguet\u2019s death was a terrible shock to everyone.\u201d Since he had died so young, the coffin, flowers, hearse, and parade horses were all white, as for a child\u2019s funeral. On a wet and foggy morning, a procession of mourners followed the wreath-laden carriage from the church of Saint Honor\u00e9 d\u2019Eylau to P\u00e8re-Lachaise Cemetery, where Radiguet was laid to rest alongside Moli\u00e8re, Balzac, Oscar Wilde, and Proust.<\/p>\n

Shortly before he got sick, Radiguet had, with the help of one of his brothers, organized his messy papers and manuscripts. This decision, in conjunction with his relative virtuousness that final summer, casts an eerie slant on a passage toward the end of Le Diable au corps<\/em>:<\/p>\n

A disorderly man who is about to die, and does not know it, suddenly begins to put everything around him in order. His life changes. He files his papers. He rises early and retires early to bed. He gives up his vices. His friends are pleased with the change that has come over him. As a result, his sudden death seems all the more unjust. He was going to have a happy life<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In lieu of a happy life, Radiguet\u2019s fate was the fixed-in-amber glamour and notoriety of the young dead celebrity. A permanent wunderkind who never had the chance to fall out of literary vogue, Radiguet is still published, read, studied, and gossiped about. He looked forward to being old, apparently, so writerly immortality may have struck him as a dubious exchange. But he\u2019d surely be thrilled that his trademark hard-edged amorality\u2014the \u201cfiendish precision\u201d of his observations, as Andr\u00e9 Aciman once put it\u2014has lost little of its power to shock in a world grown, over the course of a century, all but unshockable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emma Garman has written about books and culture for <\/em>Lapham\u2019s Quarterly Roundtable, <\/em>Longreads, <\/em>Newsweek, the<\/em>\u00a0Daily Beast, <\/em>Salon, <\/em>The Awl, <\/em>Words Without Borders, and other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In the spring of 1923, the young married artists Jean and Valentine Hugo began inviting people to s\u00e9ances at their Paris apartment. A new mood of occultism, influenced by Freud and the early Surrealists, was in the air. And raising the dead was in Jean\u2019s blood: while his great-grandfather, Victor Hugo, was in exile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1048,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[33670,33671,33672,3450,33667,33668,11825,19941,33669,33666],"class_list":["post-124046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-beatrice-hastings","tag-bronia-perlmutter","tag-francois-mauriac","tag-jean-cocteau","tag-jean-hugo","tag-le-diable-au-corps","tag-max-jacob","tag-raymond-radiguet","tag-the-devil-in-the-flesh","tag-valentine-hugo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMonsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The seventeen-year-old took Paris by storm with his racy, amoral first novel. Shortly thereafter, a s\u00e9ance predicted his untimely death.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet by Emma Garman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 10, 2018 \u2013   In the spring of 1923, the young married artists Jean and Valentine Hugo began inviting people to s\u00e9ances at their Paris apartment. A new mood of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-10T13:00:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"837\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Emma Garman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Emma Garman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Emma Garman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb\"},\"headline\":\"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-04-10T13:00:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\"},\"wordCount\":2341,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Beatrice Hastings\",\"Bronia Perlmutter\",\"Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac\",\"Jean Cocteau\",\"Jean Hugo\",\"Le diable au corps\",\"Max Jacob\",\"Raymond Radiguet\",\"The Devil in the Flesh\",\"Valentine Hugo\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\",\"name\":\"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-04-10T13:00:10+00:00\",\"description\":\"The seventeen-year-old took Paris by storm with his racy, amoral first novel. Shortly thereafter, a s\u00e9ance predicted his untimely death.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb\",\"name\":\"Emma Garman\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Emma Garman\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/egarman\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet","description":"The seventeen-year-old took Paris by storm with his racy, amoral first novel. Shortly thereafter, a s\u00e9ance predicted his untimely death.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet by Emma Garman","og_description":"April 10, 2018 \u2013   In the spring of 1923, the young married artists Jean and Valentine Hugo began inviting people to s\u00e9ances at their Paris apartment. A new mood of","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2018-04-10T13:00:10+00:00","og_image":[{"width":837,"height":500,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Emma Garman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Emma Garman","Est. reading time":"12 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/"},"author":{"name":"Emma Garman","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb"},"headline":"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet","datePublished":"2018-04-10T13:00:10+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/"},"wordCount":2341,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg","keywords":["Beatrice Hastings","Bronia Perlmutter","Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac","Jean Cocteau","Jean Hugo","Le diable au corps","Max Jacob","Raymond Radiguet","The Devil in the Flesh","Valentine Hugo"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/","name":"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg","datePublished":"2018-04-10T13:00:10+00:00","description":"The seventeen-year-old took Paris by storm with his racy, amoral first novel. Shortly thereafter, a s\u00e9ance predicted his untimely death.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/jean_cocteau_raymond_radiguet.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/monsieur-bebe-the-brief-strange-life-of-raymond-radiguet\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Monsieur B\u00e9b\u00e9: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb","name":"Emma Garman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Emma Garman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/egarman\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124046"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124071,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124046\/revisions\/124071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}