the essential
Goncourt Prize and Fnac 2023 Prize for “Watch over her”, Jean-Baptiste Andrea is participating with commitment in the new edition of the Marathon des mots which starts for six days this Tuesday, June 25. The author, who recently signed a petition calling for blocking the National Rally, recounts the whirlwind of the last few months spent meeting readers.
La Dépêche du Midi: How are Mimo, Viola and your book “Veiller sur elle”?
Jean-Baptiste Andrea: They’re going well, the readers haven’t let them go so that’s great! The book continues to live, to meet new people, word of mouth is great, it’s really nice and surprising. I’m going through a whirlwind and I’m a little tired but it’s great because I get positive feedback from each meeting, it’s incredible!
So your credo on the power of fiction does exist?
Yes, but I never doubted that! Basically, someone picks up a book to be told a story. If we take another form of art like painting, we could say that it does not need to represent something, it can be abstract. And I tell myself that it’s much more complicated for the book in fact, probably because it comes from speech, from communication, so we need to be understandable and we have a need to tell something to someone. ‘one when we talk to him. In romance there is the word “novel”, so we shouldn’t wonder too much!
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INTERVIEW. For the Goncourt 2023, Jean-Baptiste Andrea, “the prize is something very precious to shed a little light on a book”
This all goes back to the dawn of time actually…
Yes absolutely! I believe that today’s novel, the written format, is obviously the emanation of a liturgy that had to be created. When we invented fire, we had to fill the hours stolen from the night. We talk, we tell, so indeed the fact of telling something even before the invention of writing is anchored in us. And I find it a shame that we no longer speak. I’m not going to get into political considerations, I’ve done that enough in recent weeks, but I find that we no longer talk to each other, on both sides. However, it is essential.
Was the sequence due to your position difficult to live through?
I still received messages the next day from people who thanked me for taking a stand against all the extremes and who do not have the voice I can following the media coverage of the book. It’s nice to say that around us there are certainly plenty of completely normal people, not ones who are over-the-top. Which is what the big media are responsible for because they are in an anxiety-provoking approach. But we move away from the subject without really moving away since the goal is to find ourselves on neutral ground where we realize that we can talk to each other. We must continue to talk to each other, to talk to people, we must maintain this activism of speech. Let’s talk together ! The word and the book are essential in these troubled times
In another area, why have you also taken a position on the status of the author recently?
I have taken a position a lot, but all in recent years in fact, on the absence of author status. We are always between two statuses, sometimes we are self-employed, sometimes we are an author, it’s quite complicated. All author artists still do not have a status, whatever the government, right or left, since the 2000s in fact and no government for the moment has come up with a proposal for a status aimed at protecting . The last government was to make proposals in this direction but, unfortunately given the context, it looks a little complicated.
You come to Toulouse to speak as part of the Marathon des mots, to readers at the Muret detention center, at the Privat bookstore, at the Théâtre de la Cité…
Ah I love the Word Marathon! I came for my first book “My Queen” and it’s really a very beautiful festival. I only experienced such intense moments at the Montpellier festival during crazy encounters, one at the opera with Akira Mizubayashi and one alone in the modern art museum, and it was truly incredible. And the Marathon des mots organizes these kinds of events in beautiful places.
And that’s what I say in “Watching over her”, when we are exposed to beauty, to gentleness, it’s the best antidote to anger, basically. We can be angry, I don’t want to call this right into question, but what do we do with our anger? Are you angry and you beat the first guy who doesn’t think like you or are you angry and trying to sit down and talk to stop saying that Are we in a dictatorship?
Unlike the usual system, what did you propose to the Marathon des mots?
For me, a book is meant to be read in one’s head, it’s intimate, so from the moment we read it in a room I thought it was necessary to bring something other than a dry reading. And in Paris I had worked during an evening with Léo Dussolier and Lola Malique at the Beaux-Arts, a truly extraordinary cellist — I weigh my words carefully, what she does is really very beautiful — and I asked at the Marathon of Words to reiterate the proposition. I had done a dry reading at the Jacobins convent but I tell myself that for events of this level it is a shame not to offer something. At least if I’m terrible at reading, which I don’t hope to be, people will get fifteen minutes of really nice music!
Have you had time to work on a new project since obtaining the Goncourt?
No, my only job is to tour everywhere to promote the book. I started abroad with Spain, Portugal, Catalonia and, at the start of the school year, I went back to Italy and a lot of countries. Abroad I am an unknown person, Goncourt label or not, we are starting a bit from scratch but it teaches humility that I hope I have not lost.
Going to Italy, the scene of “Veiller sur elle”, must provoke a certain emotion…
I’m quite curious and eager to know how it will be received. And we are currently working on a film adaptation with a director who read the book and loved it! He even said something that touched me: “It’s hard to believe this isn’t written by an Italian.” So that’s very reassuring.
