"At any given moment, he might be seen on the cover of Paris Match magazine [right wing glamour magazine which sells these cover-ops], in the windows of numerous bookshops, and on several chat shows simultaneously. He and his glamorous wife, the indomitably pouty actress Arielle Dombasle, are the gossip columns' favourite couple. His clothes (open-necked white shirts and designer suits), his friends (Yves Saint Laurent, Alain Delon, Salman Rushdie), his homes (the flat in Saint Germain, a hideaway in the South of France, an eighteenth-century palace in Marrakech that used to belong to John Paul Getty) are endlessly commented on. He is rarely referred to by his full name, and is known instead as a brand: BHL... Lévy's reputation for narcissism is unparalleled in his home country...
Still, it's perhaps not essential to take him quite as seriously as he takes himself. I ask him what it means to be a public intellectual when much of what is public about him is his private life. His wedding to Arielle Dombasle 10 years ago was attended by Alain Delon, Yves Saint Laurent, François Pinault (the tycoon who owns Gucci and Christie's) and, by Lévy's own count, 20 or 30 international photographers. 'That,' he says, 'had nothing to do with my being an intellectual. If Paris Match was interested in my wedding it was because I married an actress.' But they were interested in you before your wedding, I suggest. He smiles to himself a little: 'Yes,' he says, 'it's true...'
Since he thinks no one knows anything about his life, would Lévy say that BHL is a character, a construction?
'Yes,' he admits, 'but a character constructed partly by myself and partly by others. It's a puppet, and there are times when it can turn against you.'
'But is there any of you in it - are you pulling the puppet's strings?'
'Yes, of course. He's not a stranger to me. But I can hide behind him, and through him I can fight - against Islamists, fascists, bad guys. BHL is a good soldier... http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,977512,00.html
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com