Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [10]
I don’t have a particular affinity with confessional literature; my problem is that I like almost all forms of literature. I have happily wallowed in the writings of Montaigne and Rousseau, but I still feel a delicious visceral shock when reading Pascal’s verdict on Montaigne, the extraordinary insolence like a slash of a whip full in the face: “The stupid plan he has to depict himself.” I have also taken inordinate delight in the absolute antithesis of confessional literature that is fantasy and science fiction; my panegyrics on Lovecraft may at times be over the top, it doesn’t matter, I stand by them.
And above all I have loved, and finally made my own, the middle way, which is that of the classic novelists. Who borrow from their own lives, or the lives of others, it doesn’t matter, or who invent, it’s all the same, in order to create their characters. The novelists, those consummate omnivores.
All the same, a little confessional writing might not be so bad. What do I know, I’ve never really tried it, and I don’t think you know anything about it either. We are so often misinformed about our own vocation (it’s surprising, for example, to think that Sartre may have attached greater importance to his works on theoretical philosophy than he did to Nausea or The Words).
Feel up to it?
*Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker who died in 2008. He was associated with the nouveau roman. C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle is one of his so-called cine-novels.
*Philippe Sollers (born 1936) is an influential French writer and critic who founded the avant-garde journal Tel Quel (1960–1982) and subsequently a journal called L’Infini, which is also the name of an imprint he directs for the prestigious French publisher Gallimard.
*Sylvain Bourmeau (born 1965) is a French journalist and former editor of the influential magazine Les Inrockuptibles.
†Frédéric Beigbeder (born 1965) is a French novelist, commentator, and literary critic.
February 16, 2008
For almost a week, dear Michel, I haven’t managed to reply to you.
There was my day for writing my “Bloc-Notes” article.
Then there was the gathering we organized with Philippe Val, Laurent Joffrin, and Caroline Fourest around Ayaan Hirsi Ali,* that radiant young woman who’s been condemned to death in the Netherlands for having dared to make some statements about Islam, of the kind that seven or eight years ago got you yourself dragged into court. (I don’t agree with those statements: I don’t believe for a minute that Islam is intrinsically hostile to democracy and human rights, but I’m struggling for her and for you to be entitled to express that opinion.)
There was the jury of the French Golden Globes equivalent, which I agreed to chair as a favor to a friend—that took up another day.
There have been the thousand concerns that I found or invented and that, caught up as I was in the madness and bustle of the day, caused me to put off replying to you.
But more than anything, there was the word confession that you ended with. Despite the passing years, I see that it still has the same ability to paralyze me …
Dear Michel, you have to understand that I am one of the few writers of my generation to have written novels (twenty years ago, you’ll say, but in that respect I haven’t changed) in which I consciously sought to create characters who were nothing like me.
You have to understand that in Comédie, which you quote (and which I published in the—oh so dramatic—aftermath of my own film’s release; welcome to the club, by the way, and good luck!), everything was organized, literally everything, up to and including setting up the Great Confession, to give away as little as possible, to hide while appearing to open