Book Around the Corner

Today, the weather wasn’t as nice as yesterday and we started our crime fiction fun fest in the rain. Marina Sofia and I attended a conference entitled “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”, according to the famous word by Flaubert. David Young (UK), Ron Rash (US) and Caryl Férey (France) were in this panel as writers of books featuring women as central characters. The journalist in charge of this discussion was Michel Abescat and he was well prepared. He had obviously read several books of each writer and had imagined a series of question around the theme. In my opinion, Caryl Férey and Ron Rash were the most fascinating of the three to describe their creative process.

Ron Rash explained that he started to write Saints at the River with a male narrator but ended up making of Maggie the narrator. He said that after 40 pages into the novel, the man’s voice wasn’t convincing and Maggie’s voice imposed itself. Landscapes play an important role in his books and he confided that he viewed them as feminine. This reminded me of the discussion we had about the quotes by Jim Thompson I published recently.

He also talked about how he writes. He doesn’t find himself interesting enough to be the clay of his novels. He’d rather write about less boring people and he aims at creating memorable characters. The characters are the central piece of his books, before the story. He sees himself as some sort of phone tower that would capture stories that are in the air and that would plug on the right frequency to catch the voices of the characters. His characters inhabit him and express themselves through his pen. He said he’s “feeling, thinking their thoughts” and that he tries to wipe himself away in order to give himself totally to a character. In the end, he writes to understand what it feels to be human, what it means to be in this world.

Caryl Férey is a genuine guy who has a great sense of humor, a lot of presence on stage. He’s the antithesis of PC, which I love. He explained that he now prefers to write scenes that involve women. He also wants to write about oppressed people and since women are often among them, he’s interested in creating strong female characters. He was a bit provocative and said that men are more cavemen and that introducing female characters in his books obliged him to write with more finesse. And since his heroines wouldn’t fall in love with douchebags, he had to draw more sensitive male characters too.

Caryl Férey also talked about his creation process. He travels a lot. People he met through his travels influence his characters. His description was a lot like listening film directors when they explain the choice of an actor or an actress for a role. They often say “As soon as he/she entered the room, I knew he/she was the incarnation of the character”. Férey agreed with Rash about being inhabited by his characters during the writing of the book. He becomes a medium to pour them onto the page. He went as far as saying that he once fell in love with one of his characters, “as stupid as it may sound”, he acknowledged.

About first person narratives vs third person narratives. Both said it is more powerful to write first person narratives. Férey says that he rarely does, he’d rather write third person narratives and alternate narrators. Each narrator has their own style which may be a problem for Férey as a writer. When several third-person narrators meet, whose voice shall take over and tell the scene?

He also said that as a writer, he’s never off the clock. Musicians might think in sounds, painters in colors, he thinks in words and stories.

Both Rash and Férey are fond of poetry and they say it influences their writing. Rash explained that the last editing of his book consists in him listening to the sound of his sentences and polishing their sound, their rhythm. He wants to add another layer to his writing to enhance the reader’s pleasure. Férey pointed out that since poetry is not expected in crime fiction, he likes adding some to the mix.

To be honest, David Young seemed a little off compared to the others. His answers were interesting but his creation process seemed less artistic and less interesting to me.

This was a very good conference and you can watch it on replay on the Quais du Polar website, if you’re interested.

After that, I decided to attend a literary concert about Marcus Malte’s novel, Les harmoniques. This consisted in Malte being on stage with a jazz singer and a guitarist/double bassist.

Sorry, the picture isn’t good but at least, it gives you an idea of the setting.. Marcus Malte is on the left.

Malte told excerpts of his novel and between these excerpts, the musicians played songs related to the book. Les harmoniques, which I haven’t read yet, is deeply linked to jazz music. There’s a playlist at the beginning of the book and part of this playlist was played on stage. What a treat, really. Malte was well-prepared. He almost knew his text by heart and his narration was perfectly in tune with his words, with the music. The music agreed with the words, the words agreed with the music. Being there was a chance, a gift these talented artists gave to the public. It was set in the amphitheater of the Opera, away from the crowd, in a soft atmosphere. Jazz and crime fiction have a long common history and this literary concert was a marvelous experience. I can’t tell you how lucky the public was to attend such a performance, and for free. You can listen to it in replay here. It seems to be a very atmospheric book and I can’t wait to read it.

I rushed to the Chapelle de la Trinité, grabbing a sandwich on my way to meet with Marina Sofia and attend a conference entitled Exiled, locked away, tortured but alive: when pens become one with the wind of freedom. The participants were Víctor del Árbol (Spain), Marc Fernandez (France/Spain), Zygmunt Miloszewski (Poland) and Qiu Xiaolong (Chine)

All write about oppression and the dark corners of their countries. Miloszewski decided to write a book about domestic violence against women. Qiu writes about China. Fernandez wrote a novel about the stolen children of the Franco regime, a similar story to what happened in Argentina. Del Árbol writes about the hidden wounds of the Spanish Civil war and the Franco years. Miloszewski declared that patriotism means loving the glorious pages of one’s country’s history and being ashamed of his dark pages. Nationalism forgets to be ashamed of the dark pages. Del Árbol wants to address the issues that have been swept under the carpet to give the defeated a voice. He says that the vanquished, here the Spanish Republicans, were ashamed to have lost and had to stay silent. They were forgotten. Qiu explained that in China in the 1980s, graduate students from university were given jobs that they had to accept, whether the job was their cup of tea or not. This is why his main character, Inspector Chen reluctantly became a police officer. People have their future stolen by dictatorships or as Imre Kertesz perfectly described it, they became Fateless. The discussion was interesting, never going into actively promoting one’s last book but genuinely building on their work to foster the debate.

This was my last conference of the day. I then went into the giant bookstore. I wanted to talk to Jacques Côté, whose book I’ve just finished. I was glad to have answers to some questions I had about his book. I had books signed by Ron Rash, Megan Abbott and Víctor del Árbol. I bought a bande dessinée for my husband and books to give to other readers. And went home, tired but happy.