Public Enemies (33 page)

The conflict between these two is my everyday routine when I’m writing books (or, to be exact, when writing novels),
this negotiation with lucid consciousness. And with a film it’s worse, you need to be entirely aware of what you want because you have to explain it to your collaborators—and to make yourself understood, you have to spell things out. Not to mention the worst of the worst, the
clashes of power
, which require not only lucid consciousness but tactical intelligence, as Patrick Bauchau
^*
warned me early on, with the overused expression “Directing is politics.” All of these things—lucidity, politics, tactical intelligence, war—are the antithesis of rapture. So you will understand my joy when I have the opportunity to return to the source, the deep source.

Deep, yes, but I don’t want to give the impression of its being overly mysterious. It’s easy to laugh at Joseph Beuys’s naïve idealism, his crazy projects for social revolution, but it doesn’t change the fact that his assertion “every man is an artist” contains a great truth. Because every man experiences moments when he is capable of creating magnificent artistic works, in which his reason plays no part. He experiences them every day, or rather, every night. Put simply, every man
dreams
.

(And even certain animals dream.)

The Surrealists did not invent this deep relationship between art and dream; the first Romantics said exactly the same thing. And all those who have worked in an artistic field throughout human history have known it, even if the Romantics were the first to be forced to defiantly say as much because they came after an eighteenth century of suffocating elegance and rationalism: there comes a moment when things write themselves, beyond the control of reason. This moment may be prolonged, though certainly not by the use of
drugs (here I can only confirm what Baudelaire says on the subject). All you need do is put off the moment of true wakefulness. When critical consciousness, rational judgment intervene, it is time to stop; to go take a shower. In short, it is time to face the day. You can deal with administrative matters, talk about business, go clubbing, whatever you like; or you can get drunk to get back, as quickly as possible, to sleep; this is the option I have chosen.

Since we began writing to each other, you’ve talked to me a lot about the writer’s body and I confess I have not said much on the subject. But the only thing I can say with certainty, when I think about it, is that for me, it always means a body only half awake. Which of course does not exclude the possibility of having a hard-on. In fact, the point when I’ve always preferred to fuck is in the early hours, half asleep (
PERSONAL INFORMATION!!!
). Perhaps certain people have made love in a state of complete lucidity; I don’t envy them. The only thing I have ever managed to do in a state of complete lucidity is balance my checkbook or pack my suitcase.

That said, I do not adhere to Flaubert’s injunction, his sort of phallic maxim: “You have to have erections! You have to have erections!,”
^*
combined with his Stakhanovist corollary: “But your vagina must remain the inkwell.”
^†
Shit, you do what you like. There are dreams that are not erotic. Of all the
criticisms leveled at me, the one that I have put
too much sex
in my books is the most serious, the most universal; it is also the most curious. This is 2008 and it seems to me that Western societies have decided to brush the subject of sex under the rug; and they do not want, really do not want, anyone lifting up a corner of the rug. In 1994, with
Whatever
, I benefited from the element of surprise; since then, people have had time to get organized.

I have a number of honest adversaries, and amid the concert of horrified reactions that greets the publication of each of my books I have a certain fondness for the editorials of Marie-Françoise Colombani.
^*
I remember that when
Platform
was published she wrote, substantially, “You have to keep telling yourself it isn’t true, life isn’t like this, that it’s like some horrid story you might tell children, you have to read this book the way we play at scaring ourselves.” I understand that a world in which some men her age go halfway around the world in search of a few minutes of sexual pleasure is hardly likely to delight her; and the fact that some women her age do the same thing is not likely to improve her mood. I understand that this is not the world as she would wish it, I understand all that, I am not writing in order to upset her (and yet, I manage to do so).

After all, her interpretation holds up; because it is true, this is fiction, I’ve never said that it wasn’t. Maybe, like Lovecraft, all I have ever written are
materialist horror stories
; and given them a dangerous credibility into the bargain. I could have chosen to portray senior citizens involved in humanitarian works, fighting racism by surfing the Net, living in the bosom of a loving blended family but still capable
of having a weekend away with their lover in the Lubéron thanks to their two-for-one senior citizen rail pass. I might well do so, if I’ve got five minutes to spare.

One of the readers’ e-mails that gave me the most pleasure in my life was one where some guy started relating (not without talent) different anecdotes from his personal life; then he realized that that wasn’t enough, that he should have sketched out his main themes, set out his principal characters, marked out the social boundaries, a whole bunch of things that he was happy for me to do in his place, and concluded with this sentence, which was exactly what I had wanted to hear for a long time: “Thanks for all the hard work.”

This man’s life was very different from Marie-Françoise Colombani’s; but both of them, deep down, reacted as
readers
. I have considerably less respect, in fact I have a serious contempt, for those who give themselves over to some sort of
reductio biographica
and there is little chance that I will forgive their accomplices in the media. The conflict here is simple and brutal. I hold a mirror up to the world, but the world does not find its reflection beautiful; it turns the mirror around and argues, “It’s not the world you’re describing, it’s yourself.” I turn it back again and state, “The pitiful articles you write are not about me or about my books; all you are doing is revealing your shortcomings and your lies.” The real front line here is not intellectual but moral. Aude Lancelin,
^*
for example, whatever else one might think of her, is capable
of admiration, whereas Marie-Dominique Lelièvre
^*
is not, and all she sees of the world, her “vitriolic portraits” in
Libération
, bear in every word the colors of her inadequate soul. I could give more examples, but what I am trying to say is that all mirrors distort, and that this distortion still makes it possible for an image to form. Some are also dirty, pockmarked, and here it is more serious because at that point they no longer reflect much of anything. In your last letter, you quote a stupid remark of Gide’s; there is another one, even more well known; the famous “fine literature is not made with fine sentiments,”
^†
which is immediately interpreted as a call to use vulgar sentiments. The truth, of course, is that fine literature can be made with any sentiments you like, the finest and the worst, and that one is entirely free to choose the dosage. The problem, I believe, is not resentment, nor sad passions, since what man can entirely avoid them? The problem is the absence of elevation, of enthusiasm, of joyous passions. When all these things coexist in a single soul, it is—from a literary point of view—saved. Or, to put it in more concrete, more immediate terms: I think the point when I really have to worry is the day I stop being bipolar—the day the surface of the mirror starts to tarnish. Or—the other danger—the day it begins to crack, then shatters into pieces.

In this war of mirrors, you were right to note, my victory is guaranteed. Historically, it’s a rout. There will inevitably come a moment when the reaction to my books is considered
to be a
symptom
. Some have already chosen to speak of me in a fictional mode. I have never had a problem with appearing as a character in a novel; I have no choice given that I have become a sort of
public figure
; but the decision still surprises me. And actually, it’s only been done by mediocre writers, with the exception of Philippe Djian (in
Vers chez les blancs
). But to make the novel more interesting, Djian had to deviate quite a bit from his model—and the episode with Madonna is very funny, but really has nothing whatever to do with me. The obvious conclusion: as a fictional character, I’m not very interesting.

It is probably a pity, on the other hand, that no one has had the idea of writing a book about the critical reception of my books. I’ve just spent a week in Poland during which there were exceptionally heated debates, mostly focusing on sexual morality between Catholic conservatives and liberal progressives. One of the most interesting moments was a long conversation I had with a young girl in which she explained how both camps were trying to use me. Interesting to me, I mean; for her, meeting me in person was entertaining, nothing more. Her real subject was not me, nor even books; it was Poland. She managed to shed on the subject the detached, composed light that sociology brings to bear when it succeeds in dissociating itself from immediate ideological issues.

This vaguely Christlike turn my destiny has taken (“I have not come to bring peace, but war”;
^*
“they will tear one another apart in my name,” etc., etc.) does not exactly plunge me into the depths of joy. All this is distressing, gloomy, tiresome. But what can I do? The die is cast.

The official version, therefore, is that everything is fine, that things are getting better and better and that the only people who deny this are a bunch of neurotic nihilists. Whose existence can easily be explained away by some painful family history (raped by his father, abandoned by his mother … you get the picture, heavy shit). From this point of view, my mother’s reappearance was quite a coup, I have to admit. Visually, she was perfect—a complete nightmare. As soon as she opened her mouth, things went downhill. Her “conversion to Islam,” which had given secret agent Assouline food for interpretation, quickly turned out to be a farce; moreover, it soon became obvious that she and I barely knew each other; that we had run into each other once or twice, no more.

When Nietzsche uses Schopenhauer’s poor relationship with his mother to explain away his misogyny, he is committing an intellectually terrible act, one that prefigures many others; but at least he has the excuse of plausibility. It is possible to imagine that someone who spent his childhood and adolescence in daily contact with a mother he despised would be unlikely, later in life, to appreciate a woman’s qualities. But what about someone who barely knew his mother? One might imagine he would be particularly determined to seek out the company of women; that he would try with all his might to be reunited with this thing that, to him, will forever remain a mystery.

Does this mean I should be a
sex maniac
? Looking back over my life, I have my doubts. I have certainly been one at times, but at other times I find I have been inexcusably offhand. I think that in this, as in everything, I have been bipolar.

And if I am an author (because I am; on that it is too late to have doubts, in fact it would be a little ridiculous to affect
false modesty
at my age), it is, I believe, for a number of fundamental reasons that on the surface seem slight: my way of being half-present, a capacity for stupor, perceptions that are organized in such a way that they can easily crystallize into rigid forms; a neotenic weakness that makes it necessary for me, every morning, more than for others, to relearn how to live.

It is with no pleasure, dear Bernard-Henri, that I see our correspondence coming to an end (but that’s how it must be, it is to be published and time is needed to create the object). I have discovered many things that I have not even reevaluated while we were discussing them because they settled in with the serenity of obvious facts. I now think I understand why I have always felt, though nothing in my life story could explain it, that I was “on the side of the Jews.” I have also accepted philosophy as a genre of literature, and have come to realize that I like it like that; I have given up classifying it alongside rational certainty and placed it next to interpretations and narratives. Mathematical signs have their domain, textual signs have theirs, I accept that. On balance, I am happy now to see Schopenhauer and Plato not as masters but as
colleagues
.

I have sidestepped certain issues that might have caused conflict: Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, because I have rather a good impression of him. I don’t get the impression he’s a cynic, he’s doing what he thinks is best for France; more important, he is implementing the program on which he was elected. It’s curious that, in a democracy, this simple fact can provoke astonishment; clearly, before him we must have been governed by real crooks.

If I avoided the subject of Sarkozy, it certainly wasn’t to
avoid confrontation. It’s mostly because, among my friends, those I have left, a lot of them despise Nicolas Sarkozy much more than you do and I confess that, when I can talk about something else, it’s restful. And on that subject, you can have the last word.

For the most part, we have talked about literature. It’s not a bad thing, from time to time, to get things clear in one’s mind on the subject. And never before these letters have I felt as strongly how viscerally, primitively, I am attached to poetry. Never had I realized so clearly why I was so proud of having, in the third part of
The Possibility of an Island
, to quote the words used by Sylvain Bourmeau in his review, “brought victory to poetry in the heart of the novel.”

We have also talked a little about ourselves. On several occasions in these letters, I have recounted personal memories; I enjoyed doing so in the course of the conversation. Three years ago I made a more systematic attempt at autobiography, the first fragments of which I published on the Internet; the fact is, I gave up quite quickly. For certain authors, the self, the miserable everyday self, is a privileged means of accessing the universal: I am not one of them. I will never have the serene indecency of Montaigne (nor the less serene one of Gide). I will never write
Les Confessions
, or
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
, or even
Un pedigree
. This is neither because of nor in spite of my esteem for these books and for their authors. It’s simply that my natural bent does not tend that way. Rather than dig within myself for some hypothetical truth, I prefer to feel characters being born, developing inside me; I like to feel, between them and between me and them, admiration, hatred, jealousy, fascination, desire. I don’t know why, but I need this other life.