“Nuits”, by Pierre Deram (Editions Grasset), is the story of a man who plunges into the night. The night with all that it entails of solitude, melancholy, wandering, perdition, dark little streets, little bars. From Nice to an imaginary country via Toulouse.
“Somewhere between the ages of 15 and 25, my life went off the rails, and I meditate every day on those tiny steps that, added together, gradually push you away from the path of the majority.” (Extract)
“Nights“, by Pierre Deram (Editions Grasset), is the story of a man who plunges into the night. The night with all that it brings in terms of solitude, melancholy, wandering, perdition, dark little streets, little bars…
“From the time I came of age until I was 24, alcohol was the only remedy that could get me out of my shyness. I had a reputation as a drunkard that preceded me everywhere. All I had to do was play the conventional role of the man in a relationship with my bottle.”
A life as a prowler in the kingdom of shadows, make false encounters without a future from Nice to an imaginary country via Toulouse: “My thirst was whipped by the terrible heat that reigned in the Pink City and had ended up merging with it.” These favorite bars: the Esquile, rue du Taur and the Café des Thermes, boulevard Carnot.I loved those old tubs, all lights on, stranded on the shore of the dirty streets, and which shone like lighthouses in the night..”
It’s three o’clock in the morning, the hour when drunks are cold, the hour when drunks are alone.
He drinks more than is reasonable, and becomes disgusted: “between my glass and me, the trust was broken“But the night continues, the little streets dark…”It’s three o’clock in the morning, the hour when drunks are cold, the hour when drunks are alone.”
The narrator seeks comfort. He finds it among prostitutes.Was it a coincidence that these creatures of the night had chosen to lie in wait, precisely, on the path that led from the bar to my bed?”
A headlong flight, one step closer to perdition. Ashamed of this bad life. The narrator tries to understand how he could have gotten to this point. By going back and forth between the past and the present, his life becomes clearer… a little.
Why is he not able to access this simple life to which he aspires?How many suitors have I discouraged by running away from them?”
His great love story with Nathalie“the first woman who gave herself to me without me paying for her,” the plot of this novel is a failure. He can’t love it.
The narrator goes into the night…
Book. “Nights” by Pierre Deram
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© Editions Grasset
Pierre Deram, born in 1989 in Pas-de-Calais, is the author of a first notable novel, Djibouti (Buchet Chastel, 2015). Nuits is his second novel.
Night, alcohol, prostitution, the narrator is completely adrift. And yet, for him, isn’t night above all a deliverance?
I decided in the background this disgust he has for the day. We do not know explicitly the reasons for his marginalization. There is a side to the night seen as a refuge, a kind of escape, a parallel universe with respect to a society in which he would feel unsuited.
And the night actually offers this opportunity for solitude that is hard to find and for irregular encounters, for new conversations compared to what one can exchange on a daily basis with colleagues, family, everyday people. This space of freedom that the night represents allows him a kind of deliverance and refuge. And at the same time, it is a place, in searching for himself, where he will end up getting lost.
He says it himself, he disgusts himself: “it’s a fight between me and myself”
We can’t say that the narrator really loves himself. He does feel disgust for what he does sometimes and at the same time it’s an irresistible attraction. But this theme of disgust is indeed very important in the book.
This novel is also a great love story with Nathalie, but a failed love story. Why?
The whole book is a bit on the theme of failure. First of all, a love story is complicated the way it works, we don’t have much to say to each other. And I have before me the point of view of being able to idealize this love story either before it exists, or once it is over.
For me, it is important to place this drift after this love story, it is a bit of the ultimate disillusionment knowing that he overinvests, idealizes this woman Nathalie. It was for him a way to save himself from this dark universe that he had known previously.
This breakup, this failed love is the trigger for the narration. The fact of not having described it but having created this love story as a sort of sun around which the chapters revolve without us really being able to look it in the face, allowed me to keep this ideal of love since the character in the background is a failed idealist who chooses in order to rise, to descend.
He is disappointed with everyday life. He marginalizes himself alone and some readers will be able to recognize themselves in this desire to leave everything which is a bit of an impulse that each of us has at certain times.
With Nathalie, he is nevertheless on the run
He has an attraction to failure. Even when I tell scenes where they are already a couple, he knows that one day or another it will end badly. It was an effort for him to access this happiness that he thought he did not really deserve or at least repressed in a part of himself, a somewhat dark part that he then explores. Indeed, this breakup seems to him a kind of fatality, a relief but at the same time a great heartbreak because suddenly he realizes that he has wasted the chance of his life.
Deep down, he is disappointed with everyday life. He marginalizes himself alone and some readers will be able to recognize themselves in this desire to escape, to abandon, to disillusion. This desire to leave everything behind which is a bit of an impulse that each of us has at certain times. In him, there is a desire to abandon that would come from a disillusion.
The narrator is fascinated by the night. And you?
I have always had this fascination with the night for a long time. The end of the day, the night falling, these are moments that I love. It corresponds to a kind of freedom, freed from all the obligations of the day and we have a few hours in front of us where no one will come to disturb us where we really do what we want. I am rather a night owl and even in my writing routines, I am rather an evening writer.
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