I discovered it thanks to my best friend, who advised me HAS the friend who didn’t save my life. It’s a wonderful read that borders on the unspeakable and unbearable. And from Hervé Guibert, I really began to be interested in autofiction, which until then seemed almost too academic to me… Discovering the breathless sentences of Guibertwhich can last entire pages without us realizing it, reconciled me with mine, which were very long. I often talk about Crazy for Vincent because I really liked this desperate attempt to confine a man in a book, with little notes, observations, telling oneself that we will certainly not have said everything about this man, but that the images will have been captured when they arose.
And in your books, we also find humor – which was also the case with Guibert, we tend to forget. As evidence My valet and I, For example…
The humor ofHervé Guibert is very black. So even though what I report may give the impression that I’m mean, I constantly try not to be! One of the passages of Badly pretty The most complicated ones to write were the summer with the in-laws. At that moment, I try to describe my husband as a presence, to name him as little as possible, not to overwhelm him because that is not the goal of the operation. When you love someone else and live between the grips of children and in-laws during the never-ending summer, and what’s more you have work at the end of the day, you either want to tear your hair out and scream, or you tell yourself that there is something irresistible there. It’s a laugh so as not to cry. But I believe that when you are a parent, you are saved by humor about yourself.
And by desire, too. Desire, a common thread ultimately still little explored by female authors. There was Marguerite Duras, Régine Déforge…
The Blue Bicycle of Régine Déforge is a model of its kind. Its main male character, François Tavernier, was the man of my life! Which could explain this kind of attraction-repulsion that I had for the men of the right… Because Tavernier is the man of the right incarnate, the bastard full of nuances, you never know how to catch him . But this way of evoking sexuality so directly without being pornographic, I found it in Françoise Rey, a paperback all curled up in my parents’ cellar. I had come across Marcel Facteur, then I read Enjoyment and ecstasyon Anais Nin And Henry Miller. While women’s erotic literature has long been full of metaphors, lexical fields of flowers or animals, in short, very precious, Françoise Rey written as few men know how to do it. That is to say, she is very direct without ever falling into vulgarity. She doesn’t mince her words, she calls a spade a spade. There is a deliciousness to it that has always left me speechless. I wanted to be in the same state as his characters and above all, to write in the same way. So that readers stay on the fire of their own desire for hours, days, weeks. Because erotic literature isn’t about making the reader cum, it’s about making them hard… and thinking at the same time.
It is in the collection of Vanessa Springora that you published your penultimate book, Odile in summer…
