If one day Virginie Despentes has defined herself as a "prolot of femininity," she has never been seen as a proliot of literature. His poet Laurent Chalumeau, the author of polars - "a boyfriend of girls," she says - assures that one day she will have the Nobel Prize. In view of his eleven published books, it could well be. Initially, there was Fuck Me (2), a novel that stinks sex, beer, rage and trapping, literary birth certificate. Then King Kong theory (3), crouching in the face of a feminism confit in the formal, bible of a generation, proof, for those who doubted, that Despentes is an intellectual. And finally the trilogy Vernon Subutex, or the strolls of an old record store.

Volume 3 came out a few days ago. This series, which is being adapted by Canal , is addictive. It is beautiful and sad, idealistic and pessimistic, cruelty is there in the fresh ray, with brotherhood. Meeting at the ex-punk des eighties, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, near the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, a character of Vernon Subutex. Tutoiement of rigor.

MC: You wrote Vernon Subutex 3 in how long?

Virginie Despentes: In two years. I started in the summer of 2015. After the 13th of November, I stopped for quite a long time.

This third volume is the story of a group. It's a miracle, a group that works?

I believe in group stories, just like stories of friendship or love. That is what we lack most today. The newspapers were great stories of groups. The company too. My mother was working at the Postal Check. I never saw her go to work with the knot in the belly. She could get up early in the morning to make quiches because Machine was celebrating her birthday. In the book, I like the idea that the characters try, have this pleasure to be together.

Vincent Desailly

Vernon Subutex is also the story of old people who were young. Do you feel like your age?

It is a super strange experience to go to the fifties. An astonishment more than an overwhelm. What overwhelms me is the crucial political battle that has been lost, that of the ideas in which I grew up: access to care, education for all, the possibility of social mobility. I live in Barcelona half the time. People work forty hours a week for € 650 a month. To get 1,000 €, they need an extra job. They live four in apartments for two. In France, it is a possible future.

When we had met a few years ago, the idea of ​​precariousness terrified you.

It has not changed, even though since Vernon Subutex I have a reserve of two years. For the first time, I know I can have breast cancer, cure it and not lose it all. In ten years, we will no longer be in the same care system. If I lose readers and I get three bullshit in a row, it can go fast.

For the past year, you have been a member of the Goncourt jury. The gentrification of Virginie Despentes, is it?

I got a lot of gentrification, that's for sure. I eat at Drouant's, I do not feel at all displaced. Thirty years ago, if you had sent me there, I would have shed tears of blood. If you are 50 years exactly like 20, a keupone, it does not have the same taste. At about age 30, I learned that if you want to live old, you can not put yourself in so much danger.

Generally, we calm down later.

I felt like a Viking. My life at 27 was: I can not stop drinking even when I do not want to drink, I take cocaine, it's more festive at all, but I can not help myself, like to put me in very painful stories. I did not control at all. Fuck me, it was violent: you're a girl, you're talking about sex and it's called Fuck me. People think it's normal to get screwed, because in their heads, that's what you came to look for. I was too aggressive, too angry. Before, I was pretty happy. Like a truck baffled, but happy. And suddenly, the anguish devoured me.

Has success helped soothe anger?

It is love to write at this point that brought me there. I was interested in seeing which book I would write without drinking. What books you will write in twenty years if you give yourself the means to write them, whereas if you continue in this life you will not be able to write any more. It was like curiosity.

In Vernon Subutex 3, you come back to rape.

It's not unusual rape. I am wrong or not, but I believe that the possibility of rape is central in masculinity. But serious studies in psychology have not been conducted to know how you feel ten, twenty, thirty years later. This would allow for the definition of recovery strategies. In the 80s, what was happening to you, you were all alone with. For very young girls, it will certainly be different, they can go on the Internet.

Are you angry with men?

No, but wake up the guys. At the time of the Polanski affair there was an article in La revue du jeu, which began with: "Apprehended as a vulgar terrorist. "What is a guy who is violating, if not a terrorist of masculinity? It imposes masculinity with a violence evidently less appalling than a kalashnikov blow in your mouth, but still. The guys who feel good on the street, super-powerful, great chefs, that counts in the process of terror. Because we all know we can be raped. With the attacks we found out that we are not safe anywhere. We girls always knew we were safe nowhere.

You did not want any children?

I thought of it around 30 years and stopped thinking about 35. I am very glad I did not have one; doing nothing is really the activity I prefer, and it rarely happens when you're a mom.

Your tattoo on the arm is new?

Yes, I just did, my girlfriend is tattoo. I wanted the same as that of Lemmy (Kilmister, ed), Motörhead group. I did it when I finished Vernon Subutex 3. I loved Lemmy, I listened to it a lot. It's like (Charles) Bukowski, a buddy. Lemmy and Bukowski, it's an attitude: I'm not the best, not a spinner. Motörhead is the music of losers, as Bukowski is literature of losers. The losers are their people.

Do you have any more tattoos?

Yes, I have more and more. I did one at each end of the tome. I try to manage, because when you live with a tattoo artist, as soon as you have an idea she takes out the machine.

On Radio Nova you said you wore dresses.

I thought of it recently when I ordered boxes of clothes. I've got plenty of it, and I've been practicing it for five years. In Paris, I do not like taking the subway in a robe, not sitting in a bar alone.

And the heels?

So that's in the book and it's true. Since the 13th of November, I have twice put heels. Since that day I do not want that horrible thing happens to me because I can not run. But I like the heels, it gives an attitude, it makes big legs ... I like everything.

In your book, there are plenty of sneakers, you have something with the sneakers!

Before, it was the handbags, now it's the sneakers. I love it, I have seven pairs. I had an obsession for the bags. One of the only tricks in which I put money, a girl thing. There, look, a Marc Jacobs that cost me a fortune. It must have said something about the lady, I do not know. That's shit. In addition, I went from the bag to the sneakers. What's going to be my next obsession?

1. Vernon Subutex, 3, ed. Grasset (volumes 1 and 2, ed. The Paperback). 2. Ed. The Paperback. 3. Ed. The Paperback.