Drôme

The Drôme is remembered as the setting of a formative interlude in Emmanuel Carrère’s youth: on an isolated farm in southern France, his life took a sharp turn from bookish adolescent ambitions toward the freedom and countercultural pleasures associated with Muriel. The account gives no town or more precise address, making the farm’s isolation, rather than a named landmark, central to its significance.

Setting and remembered episode

Carrère recalls arriving at the farm at the end of an adolescence spent reading right-wing writers from the interwar years and imagining a future visit to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. The farm offers a contrasting scene: he smokes grass, listens to John Coltrane, and throws the three coins of the I Ching onto frayed kilims. The memory also links the place to his relationship with Muriel, whose hippie way of life had, in his account, made him a hippie as well. Its remoteness gives these activities a setting apart from the formal ambitions of his earlier life.

Narrative significance

The Drôme episode marks more than a change of scenery. It gathers a personal and cultural conversion into one remembered place, where Carrère’s former tastes give way to music, countercultural practice, and intimacy. Looking back, he describes the experience at twenty, given his background, as the best thing that could have happened to him. The farm thus remains significant less for its geography than for the decisive change Carrère associates with his time there.