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By Root 896 0

has just described in a novel how one fine day he simply decided to stop talking; Jean-Claude Milner and Jacques-Alain Miller, those two precocious geniuses who, in the corridors of the École on the rue d’Ulm, argued about the origin of the concept of “suture”; or Sylvain Lazarus, who hardly left any books, whose work is known only through the constant references to his “unpublished” or “apocryphal” theses (!) made by Alain Badiou, with his strong media presence. I sometimes wonder whether Lazarus exists, like some character of Borges, only in the imagination of a handful of crazy dreamers, still caught up in the leftism of our youth, in fact precisely that of Badiou.

As for television, that permanent show, one of whose symbols I fear I’ve become, perhaps when I’m on it I look less “terrorized” or “bored” than you, but I can assure you that I don’t enjoy it much, and that I do so less and less, certainly less than at the beginning when at least I had the good fortune to be unaware both of the rules of the game and the posturing it involves, and the effects it can have on the rest of your life.

I’ve told you all this in order to say three things.

First, it’s not at all a given that you become what you are, as proved by both your case and mine, in which misunderstandings triumph and reign.

Second, when the idea of leaving that light-flooded stage in some way or another crosses my mind, far from worrying me, it gives me a slight and quite delicious joy. This departure may be forced or voluntary or result from an excess of comedy, as in Gary’s case. Any of these is possible and I don’t mind which.

Third, these tales of celebrity are far more complicated, far more determined by chance and unknown quantities, than generally believed in this post-Warhol world, where the thirst for recognition has reached such a pitch of intensity that everyone wants to be a star and does not doubt for an instant that if they provide the goods, they’ll make it. A word to the wise is enough. And sorry if by saying this I seem to be slamming the door in the face of some of our nasty little terriers …

Now to the next point.

These minor or major secrets of production are always exchanged by two writers—this is a rule that permits no exceptions—once they reach a certain level of intimacy in life or, as here, in a correspondence.

The fundamental question is why (write)?

The eternal mystery, and I mean a real mystery, more impenetrable even than that of “commitment,” is why certain people like you and me, who could be doing anything else, or even—it must be said—nothing, really doing nothing, just lounging about, traveling, dreaming, seeing friends, reading, should choose to spend so much time in what is really quite a strange activity, which consists of tinkering about, modeling, manufacturing, adjusting, overheating, this other material—words.

You could say that it’s more interesting than a normal trade or being a ghost writer, as I was in my early days of “books” by Inspector Borniche or the duchess of Bedford. But we both know that we’re beyond that stage and that this point can no longer be relevant.

You can be flippant, as certain writers are, and hide behind one of the great canonical answers given in 1919 to the survey in Littérature.* The question those three magnificent young people who were Aragon, Soupault, and Breton asked their public was “Why do you write?” “Out of weakness,” answered Valéry. Out of weakness! What nerve! Excuse me for being so direct, but I’ve never heard anything more affected, insincere, tacky, and really weak as that reply.

For me the truth is infinitely more simple …

For as long as I can remember, since adolescence in any case, there have been two things—not three or four, just two—that I felt were worth living for: first, love, and I mean that in the strict sense, in the sense of loving women, and, second, writing, just writing, spending nights, days, and more nights at my word-kit, striving to make the dough rise, to form a shape, to keep my little columns of signs upright, or almost …

The combination