Four years after his Renaudot Prize (for "Baby Apocalypse"), here is a magnificent text on decadence and resilience in the midst of the rubble, a song of hope for somewhat devastated characters, but in whom life still prevails. Marginalists, as always with Virginie Despentes. Vernon Subutex, the hero of this book * (whose sequel will appear in March), like some of the characters he meets, used and abused drugs. Here he is almost on the street, obliged to squat every day at a friend or a friend left since the days when he was a record store, imbued with rock culture. In search of a roof, money and lost time which he keeps nostalgia. Humanity, suspense, humor and acute social conscience: a masterful novel.
MC: Pornography, drug, social tumble ... Do you still see a bit of blue sky somewhere?
Virginie Despentes: I do not know if it is my look that is selective, or the Parisian reality of this moment that is a little gray, but it is true that when I gather the elements gleaned to make a novel, the whole tends more towards the gray-green mud than towards the blue of a sky in full sun ... I do not stubbornly seek to be pessimistic, it comes to me alone. On this novel in particular, I worked in assemblage, it is a series of conversations, meetings, impressions, scenes seen ... and finally, I admit, it is quite dark. But reality pushes me and I try to keep a little humor, but I do not know if it is perceptible at the end. That said, it is a novel, not a pack of razor blades to cut the veins ...
I think there are also clearer moments. And then there is love, as long as it works, it is still the best thing to make blue, like sex, when one is content with how it goes well, and friendships that do not spoil, others that start well, music on the headphones or live, Internet, which we have the chance to experience the first decades ... and then remain very young people, and we can not be sure that they will let themselves be crushed indefinitely without understanding what happens to them. In my generation there has been a "rabbit in the lighthouses" aspect, but that does not mean that the generations that follow will not react differently. We were disappointed to the fascination of what has happened in the past fifty years, the most pessimistic forecasts have been largely exceeded in the glaucous. But we can imagine that we will be surprised to the contrary by the next fifty years ... I imagine that people do not make children only for the pleasure of polluting the planet to the maximum - there are also in these generations which have a real potential for hope.
" Past 40 years, everyone looks like a bombed city" (p.98) ... You too?
I think my advantage, compared to others, is that at 20 years old, I did not already look like a sunny lakeside. And what strikes me the most, when I see people struggling to stay young, is that sometimes they do it quite physically, but their energy has changed. It is not the complexion that betrays the most age, it is the look. It is rare to meet a quinqua who keeps the enthusiasm and confidence of youth so difficult. One becomes rancid, the look changes - desire, curiosity ... Fortunately, there are also beautiful counter-examples.
"The tenderness of an adult woman whose character is bending before the fragility of the other" . The warrior you are knows how to lower your weapons?
As a warrior, I would rather see myself as someone who is looking for where she may have stowed her last slingshot. Lowering weapons is not a problem; the problem would be to find enthusiasm to take them for good reasons. People often expect me to be a sort of colossus of anger, always ready to tear heads off, but in fact, if you think about it, I create things instead of scurring. Warriors and warriors, we must look for them on the side of people who are deeply involved in the world of work. Not the side of the writers ... As long as we sit down to write, it is already that we admit its fragility.
Since the success of "Baise-moi", which helped you out of prostitution, and your advocacy of pro-sex feminist in "King Kong Theory", has your eyes on sexuality changed?
My eyes on sexuality changes with time, yes ... in any case my eyes on my sexuality changes with time. And on sexuality in general - it is not my gaze that changes, it is the morals that evolve. I think today's young people are asking themselves questions that were not asked in the 80's. Are girls sluts, virgin, porn, guys they are quite muscular - all this has been completely redefined. Sexuality, more than it was thirty years ago, has returned both to the domain of the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the "immutable" - and at the same time has never been consumed so visually, in any case a certain sexuality, that of Internet porn.
I do not see how a 10 year old child today could load a series without seeing thirty windows open 75 year old women open thighs or other taken by animals ... all this without any adult speech that would enable them to decode the images. There is also a hypersexualization of pop icons, feminine and masculine, as well as a return to the most reactionary discourses on what is feminine virtue ... we have never been subjected to such intensive propaganda on the glory of the woman / mother. So sex becomes, for women, only a way of becoming a mother ... my gaze on sexuality changes, yes, in the sense that I feel like we are living more and more in a divided society - I see people who live truly new and creative life experiences, not embarrassed by religious unconscious, and others who head in an obscurantism that would make the Victorian era pass for a moment of full bloom ...
You became a lesbian at the age of 35, and feel that it has improved you as an author. Why ?
It did not improve me as an author - I would like it to be, but I reread myself, I do not see anything fundamentally improved. On the other hand, I actually said that going out of heterosexuality had made me feel much more free as an author. It's a matter of pressure - in any case, I see it like that. There is a contradiction that remains between "heterotic" femininity and power. It is not imposed by an implacable law, so some bypasses it - even if there are exceptions. There are straight couples in which the woman emits more signs of power than man and in which it goes well - at least what can be seen. But in general, this is not the case.
The power - and writing, publishing and being read is a sign of power quite strong - remains an antinomic trick with femininity - it's too much power. A girl who writes is necessarily a girl who is going to shit - and that's the case, in general, everything that implies taking power implies that one has to shit, that one has difficulty keeping silent and to remain behind, to be satisfied with being a stumbling-block. It happens as much in the heads of women, the idea that one sees of what one expects of us, that in the reality of ground - what one makes us feel as soon as one overflows. But in any case, it happens. Power is a source of stress if one identifies herself as a "heterosexual" woman - whereas it becomes again a source of seduction if one comes out of heterosexuality.
And it is easier to move forward knowing that one will be desired for what one does than fearing to be designated as abnormal. It is also a question of desire - I want to write, to write, to interpret - it is a way of getting hold of the world. It's easier off heterosexuality, for a woman, I believe. Writing is a conquering gesture - and one does not blame a girl who wants girls to have an openly conquering attitude - while expecting "heterotic" that they contort in all directions to reconcile the seductive sweetness of the happy imbecile and the conquering power of the liberated woman.
Once they have put their heads down, thighs around their necks and arms tied behind their back to try to please everyone, we look at the "heterotos" who try to get by saying: "You see, they are still less straight than a man." It is not so much the look of men that hinders - it is more integrated than that - it is the look that one learns to wear on oneself as a woman, which is propagated to us all day by the mainstream culture, and it's too complicated to be "heterosexual" in the end. It takes too much effort. I'm glad I can concentrate mine on something else.
* Vernon Subutex 1, ed. Grasset, 19,90 €.
