Warning! This book is not a how-to guide. It is a novel in ten chapters about the tragi-comic adventures and misadventures of Phil Dechine, a novice in the world of publishing, facing the firsts that compose the modern author’s path: the first time you send someone a manuscript; your first meeting with an editor, with journalists, with readers; your first talk show, first book fair, first nominations for literary prizes, etc.
In other words, the trials and tribulations of a man who chooses to write because he has failed in his career as a super-hero. Literature seems like an honest way of cheating about himself, one that lets him lie with infinite variations. A mosaic of an individual in a mosaic of a text, Phil Dechine soon looks like someone who can only exist in the guise of someone else. Ancient wise man one minute, great writer the next, film actor, mountain guide… Phil lives in a world of off-beat, skeptical or amusing fantasies that pay homage to childhood imagination while at the same time offering him a way to cope with the real world without losing himself in it.
Taken as a whole, the accumulation of funny, affectionate scenes strewn with winks and nods to books, movies and comic books, compose a tribute to the masters of comedy who have inspired the author: Leon Bloy, John Fante, Joseph Heller, Ambrose Bierce, Woody Allen, Pierre Desproges, Greg and Gotlieb.

From vocation to success, a hilarious novel about the writing profession. Or the trials and tribulations of Phil Dechine, a young man lost in the real world, who sees literature as the best way to lie to himself.