Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [113]
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