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In the in-between, uncertain ones, the minor or second-tier writers, or in those books by great writers that half failed or half succeeded, death and life mingle; there are areas that stand up and others that fall flat. In the same chapter, the same page, sometimes even the same sentence, you can find a mix of living flesh and dead meat, burning coals and embers, a part that still shines and a part that has faded, the sparkle of literary matter versus the black hole of words that have self-destructed.

Carry out the test.

Carry out this test of “living” or “dead” on the books you love and those you hate.

Do it with your own books, when you’re in doubt.

I do it sometimes. It’s the only test that doesn’t let you down—you’ll see.

*Littérature: review edited by the Surrealists Louis Aragon, André Breton, and Philippe Soupault from 1919 to 1924.

*Haider: Jörg Haider, controversial Austrian politician famous at home and abroad for xenophobic and anti-Semitic comments. He created a new political party and led it into parliamentary elections but died in a car crash shortly afterward.

June 3, 2008

As it happens, dear Bernard-Henri, just before your letter arrived I received an invitation from Matthias Vincenot, who organizes a poetry festival every August in Corrèze; and I almost accepted. I felt a distressing yearning, a brief, pathetic illusion, as though I could go back to the years of my youth when I was known as a poet, and only a poet and only by those interested in poetry in this country. To know again these modest little events, organized by some local council, with the support of some departmental council or a local branch of the Crédit Agricole. To go back to the days when, actually, I was happy.

But of course you understand the difficulties. My notoriety would make the situation awkward not only for me, but also for the other participants and for the whole event. Joys like this are forbidden to me now. And there is another thing, something that is perhaps worse; it is difficult for me to imagine taking part in a public reading in France now. For a long time, I avoided paranoia, in particular, I think because I read Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker when I was very young and was terrified by the growing madness one can feel worsening page by page; I swore to myself that I would never fall prey to it. Today, I have to face the fact that I have not come through completely unscathed. I recognize the symptoms, the tachycardia, the mind racing, the mental block.

Of course, I’ve got my reasons; if anyone in France right now has the right to be paranoid, it’s me.

Rousseau had his reasons too.

When you say this kind of thing, at best, people give you a knowing, mocking look. I remember the interviews with Kurt Cobain where he said he was happiest when he and the band could tour in their camper van playing small venues without attracting the attention of a single journalist. People say, what, you’re rich and famous now, what the fuck are you complaining about? It usually isn’t long before they start accusing you of biting the hand that feeds. Usually you have to put a bullet in your head before they realize you were serious.

So you see, Bernard-Henri, the extent to which it resonates with me when you talk about “local, tiny fame”; because I had that kind of fame; for years, that was my life. The sort of fame where you are read and recognized by your peers and almost no one else.

Not only have I experienced that fame, it still exists. A few months ago I received an anthology of French poetry that Jean Orizet* compiled for Larousse. In the biographical note he writes about me he mentions, almost in passing, that aside from poetry I have published a number of novels that sparked a lively controversy.

Please understand, Bernard-Henri, this is not some affectation, some pose. In Jean Orizet’s universe things other than poetry do exist, but their existence is tangibly less important.

Another time, I ran