Weekly Books : Can we say that Psychopomp is an atypical work in your work?
Amelie Nothomb : On the one hand, it is completely true, but it can be said of others of my children. I am a very large and diverse mother.
Is it autofiction?
I’m not very comfortable with these literary categories. The only thing I’m aware of is that this album is the third in a trilogy, with Thirsty (2019) and first blood (2021): the Son (the Christ), the Father (mine) and, there, the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit, nobody knows what it is, and neither do I, but this psychopomp, often represented in mythologies by a bird, is me. The bird has always obsessed me, and I identified with it very early on.
You still write four novels a year, and you only submit one to your publisher. Were the other three in the same register, and did you hesitate to choose?
The others had nothing to do with Psychopomp. And I had no hesitation. But my trilogy was not at all conscious, even if the book on Jesus comes from very, very far.
Do you still have to write about your mother, the Virgin Mary?
I will indeed have to talk about my mother one day, but it was anything but the Virgin Mary!
In Psychopomp, you come back to your childhood as the daughter of a diplomat, tossed about by your father’s assignments in different countries. You didn’t really enjoy it, except in Japan. You talk a lot about birds, and death is omnipresent.
I wrote my avian autobiography. Death, it imposed itself everywhere. As for my life, my father was a brilliant aristocrat who entertained a lot, but the ambassador of a small country. We weren’t doing great.
The psychopomp is the writer, who can pass from the world of the living to that of the dead. How do you live it?
I don’t explain it, it’s not an act of faith, it’s stronger than that, it’s an observation. I have never communicated so much with my father as since his death. Apart from his profession, he was a mysterious, taciturn being. After her death and because of her, in 2020, I started writing first blood, which is really my father’s book. He was always in my head, then in my heart. Since this book came out, which he dreamed of, he had entrusted to me, and with which he was very happy, things have calmed down a bit. But for example at the restaurant, when I am about to order six oysters, he says to me: “Take twelve! »
first blood earned you the Renaudot in 2021. What was your reaction, did you say to yourself: ” Finally “ ?
Not at all, it couldn’t have been better. My father knew it, and he was very sensitive to honors. The first thing I did was to exclaim: “Dad, we got it, we got it. »
Has your book benefited from a “Renaudot effect”?
Long live Renaudot! It about tripled my usual sales, usually around 100,000 copies.
And the Goncourt, do you dream of it?
I refuse only beatings! But I am already a fulfilled writer. With a success that, for thirty-two books, has never wavered. A kind of miracle.
However, your beginnings in writing were not easy…
Indeed, before I dare to send Assassin’s Hygiene to a publisher, Albin Michel, and for it to be published in September 1992, I had already written ten books without knowing why, like attempts to steal. I was not convinced enough to have them read or published.
You never wanted to after?
Never. No one will read them. After my death, they will be cast in a block of resin, like all my manuscripts − I still don’t have a computer, or even a cell phone. The one I’m writing at the moment is the hundred and seventh.
Arman could have made a sculpture of it, alas he is dead…
Absolutely. I wonder what we’ll do with this block of resin. And I may have an idea: on June 23, I will be received by Pope Francis, thanks to my friend Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, who offered him Thirsty. It seems he didn’t quite hate it! So maybe I’ll bequeath the block to the Vatican!
Your journey, over all these years, is exceptional.
I am satisfied, I tell you! From Stupor and tremors (1999), my books are truly bestsellers. Each has found its audience. Even Sulfuric acid (2005), perhaps more difficult for critics, is the favorite title of teenagers!
When you think you almost became a teacher!
Indeed, I am aggregated in classics. What did I do well not to become a teacher! I didn’t even try.
However, when you are seen with your audience, often young people, you seem happy to convey something to your readers.
It’s true. The individual contact with young people between the ages of 15 and 18, boys and girls, is extraordinary. After, at the university, they undergo a standardization. All institutional frameworks please me much less.
You receive manuscripts, what do you do with them?
I read them, but I have no editorial function at Albin Michel. I’ve never been able to get anyone published.
In Psychopomp, you recount your physical experience with writing. Dangerous?
Indeed, the writer is Hermes, the intermediary god. Even if I’m not crazy enough to compare myself to him, death isn’t that far away. I am a cheerful, joyful person who loves champagne, speculoos and petit fours, while having affinities with loved ones who have passed away. When I was young, I almost died of anorexia. I kept the memory of a borderline experience, the same as with writing. When I write, four o’clock every morning, my temperature drops, I shiver, I can’t hold on any longer. That’s why my books are short, no more than 150 pages. To write, for me, is to put myself in danger each time, more and more. My books are perilous exercises.
How do you choose “the one of the year”?
The only criterion: my desire.
Nobody reads them, advises you, not even your lifelong editor, Francis Esmenard?
Absolutely nobody. But Francis still refused me three texts. Mon “immoral”the other ” illegal “the last “depressing”. And he was right. I have absolute confidence in him. On the other hand, if he wanted to change even a single word of my text, I would not publish it. I write in one go, in a trance, as if under the effect of ayahuasca, a hallucinogen I experienced in the Amazon rainforest. And after that, I don’t touch it anymore. Leaves to destabilize the reader. Destabilizing the reader is not bad.
Could there be a return without Amélie Nothomb?
Nothing obliges me to publish every year. Pleasure is not an easy experience. And what is easy is not a pleasure. Writing is asceticism. But after freezing, a nice hot bath, like in Japan!
Is Japan your second home?
My father, who had become an immense Noh singer, felt a mutual crush on this country. I inherited this passion. I go back to Japan all the time, for fun.
The Japanese have a very close relationship with death and the deceased?
Absolutely, they have this cult of death, and dialogue with the dead, like me with my father.
Caring for one’s appearance is very important in Japanese culture. Did you adopt him?
In private, I am a hypershy person. When I have to appear in public, I therefore need to create an appearance, including exuberant, extravagant. This theatricality helps me, gives me the means to triumph over my shyness. And the public Amélie Nothomb is not false.
Amelie Nothomb
Psychopomp
Albin Michael
Edition: 200,000 ex.
Price: 18.90 €
ISBN: 9782226485618
