Estheticon (2014) est le premier ouvrage entierement de fiction de Laurent La Gamba. Meme si les themes chers a l'auteur sont toujours presents en filigrane, il s'agit de dix recits fictifs qui ont tous un rapport avec la chirurgie esthetique. A nouveau, meme subversion du genre de la nouvelle, approche qui lui permet cette fois d'utiliser ce theme comme un embrayeur afin d'introduire certains sujets plus serieux, psychologiques, sociologiques ou politiques. Un psychanalyste qui reve de se faire refaire le nez, un Irlandais deguise en personnage de Teletubbies qui se debarasse du chirurgien...

This is the author's second collection of short stories. La Gamba abandons the New World for the Old and engages with a series of topics close to his heart. Ranging from an impassioned cry against the hegemony of bureaucracy in the arts in France to an amused glance at the reception of Damien Hirst in the Middle East, this intrepid and controversial writer seeks to entertain and irritate in equal measure. A tart reminder of how vulnerable the artist remains in a world which in seeking to exploit creativity only threatens to destroy it.

" Etant tres attache a ma sedentarite et a mon petit confort personnel, je me suis alors dit que j'allais pouvoir, sans trop avoir a bouger de chez moi, conquerir la terre entiere, et faire de ce Monleon qui etait devenu mon nouveau berceau, ce "Hollywood" dont dont je revais tant, bref une sorte de Hollywood a moi, un "Monlywood" en quelque sorte, duquel j'allais pouvoir imposer, au fil du temps, et sans coup ferir, mon art sur la terre entiere." Par l'auteur tres controverse de Bienvenue a Lethargy Land et de The Estheticon."

In this book, Laurent La Gamba mixes autobiography and fiction inspired by the different people who posed as models for him during his camouflage installations. It is entitled Willing Suspension of Disbelief after Coleridge. Each photography is a departure point for a story that always comes back to camouflage in its figurative forms and shapes the narrative. The book is full of surprises, twists and irony and forms a thought-provoking and poetic whole. By the author of A Californian Odyssey, Welcome to Lethargy Land and The Estheticon.

In The Estheticon, Laurent La Gamba mingles absurdity and seriousness in a series of stories about plastic surgery and criticises contemporary society in its many guises: an analyst who dreams about having his nose done, an Irishman dressed up as a teletubby on a mission to murder the surgeon who messed up his mother's rhinoplasty, a Chinese mafia boss scared at the sight of a Miss France's protruding vulva, or yet a divorced man on holiday in Las Vegas shooting tourists with siliconed breasts... A collection of surrealist stories whose central theme is plastic surgery...Apparently nothing...

Apres Monlywood, voici le deuxieme volet intitule Monlywood Encore... Meme sens de la derision, meme gravite...Par l'auteur tres controverse de Bienvenue a Lethargy Land et de The Estheticon."

Reunies pour la premiere fois dans un meme ouvrage, les trois uvres de l'auteur: Monlywood, Monlywood Encore et Monlywood Apotheose."

"Fuck the French Fuck the French et leur education rabaissante, Fuck the French et leur pitoyable petit snobisme, Fuck the French et leur politesse visqueuse..." Par l'auteur tres controverse de Bienvenue a Lethargy Land, The Estheticon et de la trilogie Monlywood. www.laurentlagambabooks.com"

"Being very attached to my sedentariness and to my personal comforts, I then told myself that I was going to be able to conquer the whole world without having to stray far from my home, making of this Monleon which had become my new hometown, this "Hollywood" of which I dreamed so much, in short my own Hollywood, a sort of "Monlywood," from whence, as time went on, I was going to be able to impose my art on the whole world unimpeded." By the controversial author of Welcome to Lethargy Land and The Estheticon. www.laurentlagamba.com"