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La Médaille
L’événement qui rassemble aujourd’hui les membres du personnel de l’entreprise Besson est exceptionnel puisqu’il s’agit de la remise des médailles du travail aux meilleurs d’entre eux. Tout au long de la cérémonie, la Direction en profite pour rappeler quelques principes de base : « L’amour est incompatible avec le travail », « La paresse corrompt absolument », « Privatisez votre vie privée », « Foncez et vous réussirez », « Haïssez-vous les uns les autres ! », « La vie au travail, le travail à vie ! ». Les médaillés acceptent leurs récompenses, expriment leur gratitude et répondent aux allocutions de leurs supérieurs. L’assistance applaudit, le protocole semble réglé dans ses moindres détails. Pourtant des désordres vont surgir et perturber le rituel immuable. Car Lydie Salvayre aime le désordre, les discours qui perdent le nord, le rire et les fous rires. Après La Déclaration et La Vie commune, elle poursuit dans La Médaille avec force et jubilation son exploration d’un drôle de monde qui pourrait bien être le nôtre. Lydie Salvayre est l’auteur d’une vingtaine de livres traduits dans de nombreux pays, certains ayant fait l’objet d’adaptations théâtrales. Son œuvre a été plusieurs fois primée : La Déclaration (1990) a reçu le prix Hermès du premier roman, La Compagnie des spectres (1997) le prix Novembre (aujourd’hui prix Décembre), BW (2009) le prix François-Billetdoux. Pas pleurer (2014) a été récompensé par le prix Goncourt 2014.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
1 person is currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Lydie Salvayre
45 books43 followersLydie Salvayre is a French writer. Born in the south of France to Republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War, she went on to study medicine in Toulouse and continues to work as a practicing psychiatrist. She has been awarded both the Prix Hermes and the Prix Novembre for her work.
She won the Prix Goncourt 2014 for her novel Pas Pleurer.
She won the Prix Goncourt 2014 for her novel Pas Pleurer.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 23, 2026
3.5
Here is a very interesting novella that seems to have fallen into a literary limbo. It only has 23 ratings on Goodreads, a tiny footprint when you consider that the author is a Prix Goncourt winner, the French equivalent of a Pulitzer. I looked around a bit when I finished to try to find out why and it looks like it had a few things going against it.
In the US it was published by Four Walls Eight Windows, a small independent press famous for taking risks on avant-garde literature. They went out of business and the book was never picked up for a mass market reprint. The author has been a celebrity in France since the early 90s, but she didn’t become a global name until she won the Goncourt in 2014 for Cry, Mother Spain. Usually, when an author wins a big prize their back catalog gets rereleased. For some reason, The Award was skipped over leaving the 1997 translation as a rare collector's item. Also 1997 was prior to the “ebook revolution”, so the only digital form you are likely to find will be like the one I read, pages scanned by a fan or library.
To the story. It takes place entirely during a medal ceremony at a French car factory, where awards are being handed out to long serving or outstanding workers. The narrative is constructed entirely from speeches given by turns from company executives and the workers being honoured. There is no traditional narration at all.
Management’s speeches are full of hollow corporate benevolence. Executives deliver speeches about loyalty and productivity that reveal a profound contempt for the workers. They offer absurd and dangerous advice on everything from their work life to their sex life. They try to mask a crumbling financial situation and growing worker unrest with motivational mumbo jumbo and forced optimism.
When the workers take the stage, the sunny corporate narrative collapses. Their “acceptance speeches” turn into disturbing confessionals. One worker explains how the job has driven him to beat his wife and kids. Another is represented by his widow who describes how the chemicals in the factory blackened his skin so badly that he killed himself. In spite of their suffering they express a broken devotion to the company. It has so thoroughly taken over their lives that they have no other identity.
I don’t know how many people are going to know what I’m talking about here, but during the executive speeches, I was reminded of the AI in the video game Portal, GLaDOS, the paragon of weaponized corporate cheerfulness.
It’s one part the science of efficiency. GLaDOS views humans as test subjects. The factory bosses view them as biological components of a machine. Both speak in terms of optimization and results while completely ignoring the physical agony involved. Both offer a passive aggressive gift. In Portal, the reward was cake (which even if you didn’t play the game but spent enough time on the Internet you may know was a lie). Here the reward is a medal. A cheap piece of junk meant to compensate for a lifetime of toxic exposure and broken bones. Both are insulting and offered by an entity that doesn’t actually value your life.
And the gaslighting. There’s a scene in Portal where the AI finally just tells you the floor is deadly but go ahead and jump anyway for the sake of the test. Here the executives do much the same thing. They acknowledge the “difficulties” (severed limbs for example) of the factory floor but pitch them as noble sacrifices for the company family.
All the while that the ceremony proceeds in the auditorium, some kind of chaos is brewing outside. Throughout the book reports filter in of agitators and violence in the workshops. This isn’t a play, but the setting of a formal institutional ceremony that gradually descends into chaos, reminded me a lot of the Theatre of the Absurd and especially Ionesco. He loved that kind of enclosed ritualized social occasion where the veneer of propriety slowly cracks and something violent breaks through underneath. Also the use of language itself as a subject. Ionesco was fascinated by how institutional and social language becomes hollow and mechanical. People repeating formulaic phrases until they lose meaning. Which is precisely what happens here with the management speeches. The language of corporate benevolence is exposed as a meaningless ritual, not unlike the way dialogue in The Bald Soprano reveals everyday conversation to be absurd repetition.
Hopefully this will get another run someday, a highly recommended fast read if you can find it.
Here is a very interesting novella that seems to have fallen into a literary limbo. It only has 23 ratings on Goodreads, a tiny footprint when you consider that the author is a Prix Goncourt winner, the French equivalent of a Pulitzer. I looked around a bit when I finished to try to find out why and it looks like it had a few things going against it.
In the US it was published by Four Walls Eight Windows, a small independent press famous for taking risks on avant-garde literature. They went out of business and the book was never picked up for a mass market reprint. The author has been a celebrity in France since the early 90s, but she didn’t become a global name until she won the Goncourt in 2014 for Cry, Mother Spain. Usually, when an author wins a big prize their back catalog gets rereleased. For some reason, The Award was skipped over leaving the 1997 translation as a rare collector's item. Also 1997 was prior to the “ebook revolution”, so the only digital form you are likely to find will be like the one I read, pages scanned by a fan or library.
To the story. It takes place entirely during a medal ceremony at a French car factory, where awards are being handed out to long serving or outstanding workers. The narrative is constructed entirely from speeches given by turns from company executives and the workers being honoured. There is no traditional narration at all.
Management’s speeches are full of hollow corporate benevolence. Executives deliver speeches about loyalty and productivity that reveal a profound contempt for the workers. They offer absurd and dangerous advice on everything from their work life to their sex life. They try to mask a crumbling financial situation and growing worker unrest with motivational mumbo jumbo and forced optimism.
When the workers take the stage, the sunny corporate narrative collapses. Their “acceptance speeches” turn into disturbing confessionals. One worker explains how the job has driven him to beat his wife and kids. Another is represented by his widow who describes how the chemicals in the factory blackened his skin so badly that he killed himself. In spite of their suffering they express a broken devotion to the company. It has so thoroughly taken over their lives that they have no other identity.
I don’t know how many people are going to know what I’m talking about here, but during the executive speeches, I was reminded of the AI in the video game Portal, GLaDOS, the paragon of weaponized corporate cheerfulness.
It’s one part the science of efficiency. GLaDOS views humans as test subjects. The factory bosses view them as biological components of a machine. Both speak in terms of optimization and results while completely ignoring the physical agony involved. Both offer a passive aggressive gift. In Portal, the reward was cake (which even if you didn’t play the game but spent enough time on the Internet you may know was a lie). Here the reward is a medal. A cheap piece of junk meant to compensate for a lifetime of toxic exposure and broken bones. Both are insulting and offered by an entity that doesn’t actually value your life.
And the gaslighting. There’s a scene in Portal where the AI finally just tells you the floor is deadly but go ahead and jump anyway for the sake of the test. Here the executives do much the same thing. They acknowledge the “difficulties” (severed limbs for example) of the factory floor but pitch them as noble sacrifices for the company family.
All the while that the ceremony proceeds in the auditorium, some kind of chaos is brewing outside. Throughout the book reports filter in of agitators and violence in the workshops. This isn’t a play, but the setting of a formal institutional ceremony that gradually descends into chaos, reminded me a lot of the Theatre of the Absurd and especially Ionesco. He loved that kind of enclosed ritualized social occasion where the veneer of propriety slowly cracks and something violent breaks through underneath. Also the use of language itself as a subject. Ionesco was fascinated by how institutional and social language becomes hollow and mechanical. People repeating formulaic phrases until they lose meaning. Which is precisely what happens here with the management speeches. The language of corporate benevolence is exposed as a meaningless ritual, not unlike the way dialogue in The Bald Soprano reveals everyday conversation to be absurd repetition.
Hopefully this will get another run someday, a highly recommended fast read if you can find it.
October 15, 2017
Bleak and bitter all the way through. Salvayre takes aim at the hypocrisy of factory bosses who pretend to honor their workers while literally squeezing them to death. The book alternates between the self-congratulatory speeches of the hierarchy and the testimonies of the medal awardees who recount lives of abominable physical and mental sufferings. A bunch of irate workers eventually disrupts the ceremony and some sort of revolution seems on the brink of taking place, but in the end the status quo prevails. Like most satires, this one doesn't aim for subtlety. This is an angry book well served by the author's great command of language.
March 7, 2022
Tellement génial. Série de discours de réception de médaille du travail. Décapant, ironique mais pas si éloigné de la réalité dans certain cas. Cela fait réfléchir.
J'ai beaucoup apprécié le style de l'autrice, que je ne connaissais pas, beaucoup d'humour, d'autodérision mais en même temps très juste. A lire et à partager à gogo !
J'ai beaucoup apprécié le style de l'autrice, que je ne connaissais pas, beaucoup d'humour, d'autodérision mais en même temps très juste. A lire et à partager à gogo !
partially-read
May 31, 2017I eagerly sought it out, purchased it, awaited its arrival, prepared to love it, and shamefully gave up within a chapter and a half. I dunno. As a lampoon it seemed easy and obvious, not particularly funny, and a bit of a put on. At least at first impression. But maybe I'm in a mood.
Later?
Later?
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews