HAVING BEEN LARGELY COLD-SHOULDERED FOR A COUPLE of decades, G. made a triumphant return to the literary scene in 2013 when he was awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot for his most recent book-length essay. People I respected were eager to appear on television to acclaim publicly the indisputable talent of this major literary figure. So be it. That wasn’t really the issue. My own personal experience prevented me from objectively being able to judge his work, which repulsed me. In terms of its significance, however, I would have preferred the reserve that had been increasingly expressed over the previous twenty years, in terms of both the way he carried on in his private life and the ideas he espoused in some of his books, to continue, and to go further.

There was a disappointingly low-key controversy when the prize was awarded. A few journalists (young, for the most part, of neither his generation nor mine) spoke out against him being awarded this honorary distinction. G., meanwhile, in the speech he gave at the prize-giving ceremony, assumed that the prize was not for one book, but for the whole of his oeuvre, though this was not the case.

“To judge a book, a painting, a sculpture, or a film, not for its beauty, or the power of its expression, but for its morality or supposed immorality, is a spectacularly stupid thing to do; but on top of that, to promote the toxic idea of writing or signing a petition as a way of expressing outrage at the positive reception that people of taste have given the work—a petition whose sole purpose is to cause pain to the writer, painter, sculptor, or filmmaker—is simply despicable,” he protested in a newspaper.

“Simply despicable”?

And going abroad to help yourself to some “young asses,” paid for with the royalties you accumulated with descriptions of having sex with schoolgirls and publishing photographs of them on the internet without their consent and under the cover of anonymity—how would you describe that?

Today, I work in publishing, and I find it very hard to understand how some of the most renowned editors in the literary world could have published G.’s diaries, complete with first names, places, dates, and enough detail to make it possible at least for those who know them to identify his victims, without first having offered a minimum of hindsight in terms of the books’ content. Particularly when it is explicitly stated on the cover that this is the text of the author’s diary and not a work of fiction behind which he might cunningly have concealed himself.

I spent a long time thinking about this breach of confidentiality, particularly in a legal area that is otherwise strictly controlled, and I could only come up with one explanation. If it is illegal for an adult to have a sexual relationship with a minor who is under the age of fifteen, why is it tolerated when it is perpetrated by a representative of the artistic elite—a photographer, writer, filmmaker, or painter? It seems that an artist is of a separate caste, a being with superior virtues granted the ultimate authorization, in return for which he is required only to create an original and subversive piece of work. A sort of aristocrat in possession of exceptional privileges before whom we, in a state of blind stupefaction, suspend all judgment.

Were any other person to publish on social media a description of having sex with a child in the Philippines or brag about his collection of fourteen-year-old mistresses, he would find himself dealing with the police and be instantly considered a criminal.

Apart from artists, we have witnessed only Catholic priests being bestowed such a level of impunity.

Does literature really excuse everything?