A Life Without End Read online

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  Sapiens meets Dorian Gray

  What does the man who has everything—fame, fortune, a new love, and a new baby—want for his fiftieth birthday? The answer is simple: eternal life. Determined to shake off the first intimations of his approaching demise, Frédéric tries every possible procedure to ward off death, examining both legal and illegal research into techniques that could lead to the imminent replacement of man with a posthuman species. Accompanied by his ten-year-old daughter and her robot friend, Frédéric crisscrosses the globe to meet the world’s foremost researchers on human longevity, who—from cell rejuvenation and telomere lengthening to 3D-printed organs and digitally stored DNA—reveal their latest discoveries. With his blend of deadpan humor and clear-eyed perception, Beigbeder has penned a brutal and brilliant exposé of the enduring issue of our own mortality.

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  Praise for A Life Without End

  “It’s funny, profound, brilliantly researched, and fiendishly artful.”

  Le Figaro

  “A touching and contemplative literary curve ball.”

  Femina

  “Beigbeder has produced one of the most human, touching, relevant, and funny stories about passing time, the acceptance of aging, and the need to love. If you’re looking for something quite unlike anything else to read, then choose this.”

  Le Parisien

  “A call to arms against transience from a Beigbeder who is back in top form, with all his trademark wit.”

  Lire

  “This mad philosophical and biological quest is a life-affirming and intelligent reflection on the meaning of life. Decidedly ambitious, Monsieur Beigbeder!”

  Psychologies Magazine

  “As always, Frédéric Beigbeder knows perfectly well how to seize burning issues. In A Life Without End he captures immortality, the desire it inspires, and its likelihood. A tale falling somewhere between satire and the confidences of a father, a lover, and a writer who wants to live forever.”

  Transfuge

  “Behind this wild pursuit of immortality appears a sharper and deeper reflection than you would expect.”

  Elle

  “An audacious romance, between obsessions and hope.”

  Marie Claire

  “Only a rogue like Beigbeder could pack so much seriousness, cheerful simplicity, and self-irony into such a complex current topic.”

  Basler Zeitung

  “This novel, which spills over in all directions, is also rich with the striking and beautiful observations of a man who is only now learning how to look.”

  NDR Kultur

  “It’s a dark topic, but not a dark novel. Beigbeder narrates with wonderfully black humor and a desire for abysmal considerations.”

  ORF

  “If anyone has breathed new life into literary stardom, it is Frédéric Beigbeder, the most glamorous writer in France.”

  De Volkskrant

  “Although this book may not be able to extend your life, it could certainly change it.”

  Sächsische Zeitung

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  FRÉDÉRIC BEIGBEDER is a French journalist and critic, and is responsible for the literary section of Le Figaro Magazine. Also a bestselling author, his novel 99 Francs both got him fired from his advertising job and established him as a controversial force within French literature. For his other novels, he has been awarded various prizes including the 2003 Prix Interallié and the 2009 Prix Renaudot. He is a regular guest on French national morning radio, and a frequent contributor to El País Icon (Spain), Interview (Germany), and Esquire (Russia).

  FRANK WYNNE is a literary translator and writer. Born in Ireland, he moved to France in 1984 where he discovered a passion for language. He began translating literature in the late 1990s, and in 2001 decided to devote himself to this full time. He has translated works by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Ahmadou Kourouma, Boualem Sansal, Claude Lanzmann, Tómas Eloy Martínez, and Almudena Grandes. His work has earned him a number of awards, including the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes was shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2018.

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  AUTHOR

  “I wrote this novel out of curiosity and anger, as always. Curiosity upon learning in a journal article that the surgeon Laurent Alexandre has promised people will be able to live to the age of 350, and surprise upon discovering that nobody seeks out biologists to actually determine whether a claim like this is rooted in fantasy or illusion. The anger is another thing: I realize I write to rid myself of something, to take revenge, to fulfil a need. Here, in A Life Without End, it’s our crashing into a new digital world which preoccupies and upsets me. I have the feeling that this is a first step toward creating a new mankind—half mutant, half machine. The dream of immortality leads to the disappearance of humanity. Are we okay with that?”

  TRANSLATOR

  “Reading Frédéric Beigbeider is like running into an old friend in a bar that was once a favourite haunt. We share a long history. Fifteen years ago, when still a neophyte, I translated Windows on the World, his harrowing, controversial novel on 9/11. Since then, I have experienced the pleasure and pain of conjuring the voices of Love Lasts Three Years, and sat with him in the Cigar Bar of London’s Savoy Hotel revising the proofs of A French Novel. His voice―acerbic, affectionate, and always painfully honest―has grown and matured through love, fatherhood, and age, but it still rings inside my head the moment I see it on the page. All that remains―a daunting task―is for me to capture his bluff humour and sincere passion, his childlike wonder and boundless curiosity.”

  PUBLISHER

  “This is a delightful book, sparkling with joy and a lust for life, and at the same time offering much philosophical food for thought about the influence of life-prolonging technology on our present and future lives.”

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  Frédéric Beigbeder

  A LIFE WITHOUT END

  Translated from the French

  by Frank Wynne

  WORLD EDITIONS

  New York, London, Amsterdam

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  Published in the USA in 2020 by World Editions LLC, New York

  Published in the UK in 2020 by World Editions Ltd., London

  World Editions

  New York/London/Amsterdam

  Copyright © Frédéric Beigbeder and Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2018

  English translation copyright © Frank Wynne, 2020

  Author portrait © JF Paga Grasset

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed therein are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available

  ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-067-2

  ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-064-1

  First published as Une vie sans fin in France in 2018 by Grasset & Fasquelle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Twitter: @WorldEdBooks

  Facebook: @WorldEditionsInternationalPublishing

  Instagram: @WorldEdBooks

  www.worldeditions.org

  Book Club Discussion Guides are available on our website.

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  for Chloe, Lara and Oona

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  “May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.”

  The Roman Catholic Ordinary of the Mass

  “We love death as you love life.”

  OSAMA BIN LADEN

  “Even if there were nine hundred and ninety-five million of them and I were all alone, they’d still be wrong, Lola, and I’d be right. Because I’m the only one who knows what I want: I don’t want to die anymore.”

  LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE

  Journey to the End of the Night

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  A MINOR (BUT IMPORTANT) DETAIL.

  “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible,” according to Mark Twain. But what happens when reality is no longer credible? These days, fiction is less harebrained than science. This is a work of “science non-fiction”; a novel in which all of the scientific developments have been published in Science or Nature. The interviews with actual doctors, researchers, biologists, and geneticists are transcribed as they were recorded between 2015 and 2017. All of the people, companies, addresses, discoveries, start-ups, machines, medication, and clinical institutions mentioned actually exist. I have changed only the names of friends and family to spare them embarrassment.

  When I embarked on this investigation into human immortality, I never imagined where it might lead.

  The author accepts no responsibility for the effects of this book on the human species (in general), or on the lifespan of the reader (in particular).

  F.B.

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  1 DYING IS NOT AN OPTION

  “Death is stupid.”

  FRANCIS BACON to FRANCIS GIACOBETTI

  (September 1991)

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  IF THE SKIES are cloudless, you can see death every night. You need only look up. The light of dead stars has traversed the galaxy. Distant stars that burned out thousands of years ago continue to project a memory onto the firmament. Now and then I will call someone who has just been buried and hear their voice, intact, on their voicemail. Such situations provoke a paradoxical feeling. How long does it take the light to wane when the star no longer exists? How long does it take a telephone company to delete a corpse’s voicemail greeting? There is a gap between death and extinction: stars are proof that it is possible to shine on after death. Once this light gap has passed, comes the moment when the radiance of a bygone star flickers like the flame of a candle about to gutter out. The glow falters, the star grows weary, the voicemail falls silent, the fire trembles. If you study death attentively, you will see that a dead star shimmers a little less than a sun that is still alive. The halo grows fainter, the glimmering dims. The dead star begins to blink as though sending out a distress signal. It clings on.

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  MY RESURRECTION BEGAN in Paris, in the district of the recent terrorist attacks, on a day when there was a spike in fine particulate air pollution. I had taken my daughter to a neo-bistro called Jouvence. She was eating a plate of salchichón de bellota and I was drinking a Hendrick’s and tonic with cucumber. Since the invention of the smartphone, we had grown out of the habit of talking to each other. She was checking her WhatsApp messages while I stalked supermodels on Instagram. I asked her what she wanted as a birthday present. She said, “A selfie with Robert Pattinson.” My first reaction was alarm. But thinking about it, in my job as a television presenter, I also demand selfies. A guy who spends his life interviewing actors, singers, sportspeople, and politicians in front of the cameras is simply shooting long takes next to people more interesting than he is. And, in fact, when I’m out in the street, passersby ask if they can take pictures with me on their mobile phones and if I gladly accept, it is because I have just done the very same thing on set surrounded by television cameras. We all live the same non-life; we want to shine in the reflected glow of others. Modern man is a collection of 75 trillion cells all striving to become pixels.

  A selfie posted on social media is the defining ideology of our times: what the Italian writer Andrea Inglese calls “the only legitimate obsession, that of constant self-promotion.” There exists a noble hierarchy dictated by the selfie. The solitary selfie, where one appears next to a famous monument or a landscape, means: I’ve been here and you haven’t. This category of selfie is a curriculum visuale, a virtual visiting card, a social springboard. The selfie taken with a celebrity has a more loaded meaning. The Selfist is seeking to prove to his followers that he has met someone more famous than they have. One does not ask to take a selfie with an ordinary individual, unless that person has some physical peculiarity: achondroplasia, hydrocephalus, elephantiasis, or third-degree burns. This form of selfie is a declaration of love, but more than that, it is proof of identity (when he predicted that “the medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan never imagined that the whole world would become the medium). If I post a selfie of me standing next to Marion Cotillard, what I am expressing is something very different than if I were to post a selfie with Amélie Nothomb. The selfie is a means of introduction: see how handsome I look next to this monument, with this celebrity, in this landscape, on this beach—and I hope you feel green with envy! You have a better understanding of me now—see me lying in the sun, resting my finger on the top of the Eiffel Tower, stopping the Tower of Pisa from falling—I’m a traveller, I don’t take myself too seriously, I exist because I bumped into a star. The selfie is an attempt to usurp some greater notoriety, to prick the bubble of aristocracy. The selfie is a form of communism: it is the weapon of the foot soldier in the glitzkrieg. The Selfist does not pose next to just anyone, he wants the personality of the other person to rub off on him. A selfie with a “GOAT” (Greatest of All Time, for the digilliterate among you) is a form of cannibalism: it absorbs the aura of the star. It launches him into a new orbit. The selfie is the new language of the narcissistic era: it replaces Descartes’s cogito ergo sum. “I think therefore I am” becomes fingo ergo sum: “I pose therefore I am.” If I take a photo with Leonardo DiCaprio, it eclipses your selfie with your mother on a skiing trip. Face it, even your mother would rather be standing next to Leo DiCaprio. And DiCaprio next to the pope. And the pope next to a child with Down syndrome. Does this mean that the most important person in the world is a child who suffers from Down syndrome? No, I’m straying from the point: the pope is the exception that proves the Instagram rule of celebrity overkill. The pope has shattered the self-obsessed snobbery instigated by Dürer in 1506 with “The Feast of the Rosary,” where the artist painted himself photobombing Holy Mary, Mother of God.

  The logic of the selfie might be encapsulated thus: Britney would like a selfie with Bono, but Bono does not want a selfie with Britney. As a result, a new class war is taking place every day, on streets all over the world, whose sole aim is media domination, the vaunting of greater popularity, the ascent along the greasy pole of fame. The war involves comparing the number of UMAs (Units of Media Approval) amassed by each individual: appearances on radio or television, photographs in the press, likes on Facebook, views on WhatsApp, retweets, etc. It is a battle against anonymity in which points are easily tallied; one in which the winners snub the losers. I propose naming this war Selfism. It is a world war fought without armed forces, one that is waged permanently, 24/7, with no hope of a ceasefire: bellum omnium contra omnes—“a perpetuall warre of every one against every one,” as expressed by Thomas Hobbes—now fought technologically and scored instantaneously. At the first press conference following his investiture as President of the United States in January 2017, Donald Trump made no attempt to expound on his vision for America, or the geopolitics of the world: he was content simply to compare the size of the crowd at his inauguration with that of his predecessor. Nor do I exclude myself from this existential struggle: I have been only too happy to flaunt selfies with Jacques Dutronc or David Bowie on my fan page which, as I write, has amas
sed 135,000 likes. And yet, for more than fifty years, I have considered myself terribly alone. With the exception of selfies and television studios, I spend little time with human beings. By vacillating between solitude and chaos, I avoid any awkward questions about the meaning of my life.

  There are times when the only way to confirm that I am still alive is to check Facebook to see how many people have liked my most recent post. More than 100,000 likes and I sometimes get a hard-on.

  What I found troubling that evening with my daughter was that she did not dream of kissing Robert Pattinson, or talking to him or getting to know him. She simply wanted to post his face next to hers on social media to prove to her friends that she had actually met him. Like her, we are all caught up in this headlong rush. Short or tall, young or old, rich or poor, celebrity or nobody, uploading a photo has become more important than our signature on a cheque or a marriage certificate. We are desperate for recognition. The majority of earthlings are screaming into the void about their need to be looked at, or at least noticed. We yearn to be contemplated. Our faces are hungry for clicks. And if I’ve received more likes than you, that proves that I’m happier, just as on television a presenter with higher viewing figures believes himself to be more loved than his colleagues. This is the tactic of the Selfist: to humiliate others by maximizing his share of public love. Something happened during the digital revolution: egocentricity mutated to become a planetary ideology. Having lost all sway over the world, we are left with only an individual worldview. Time was, dominance was reserved for courtiers and the aristocracy, later it was conferred onto film stars. Now that every individual is a medium, everyone wants to dominate their fellow man. Everywhere.