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PARTISAN REVIEW
MD:
How would you describe your literary style?
MT:
I was watching a television show the other day - a litera ry
show,
Apostrophes
with Bernard Pivot. Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Michel Deon, and Robert Kanters were on . There were two
novelists with opposing points of view: Robbe-Grillet and Michel
Deon, and two literary critics : Kanters and Poirot-Delpech . They
were arguing about how one should write , etcetera.
If
I had been
there and somebody had asked me: "And you , where do you stand
in all of this?" I would have said, "Me , I'm not part of all that , I
don't understand anything about everything you are saying
because I" - what I am going to say is horrible - I wouldn't have
told them, but I'll tell you - "I have something to
say !"
For exam–
ple , in
The Four Wise Men,
I have Christianity, all of Christianity
to discuss, you know? So, I am not going to ask myself questions
about rhetoric . I have a huge subject matter, a tremendous
amount of work to do , and I choose the literary form that is the
easiest, the most obvious for me , and the closest to the Scriptures
since I have a model. I would have told them, "You have ques–
tions that you ask yourselves about construction , all the problems
of the
nouveau roman."
As for me, in the last analysis, I am not really
literary. I don't have much of a literary bent, I think.
MD:
If
you were a critic, what would be the aspect of your work that
would fascinate you the most?
MT:
First, I want to say that there are things that I would criticize.
For example, in
The Ogre,
I am sorry that there is only one
character who dominates the whole . In my opinion, that isn't a
novel. In a novel, there have to be several characters - all of them
important and all different from the author. But there is only one
of him. Then, there is much too much philosophy.
MD:
In
The Ogre?
MT:
Not in
The Ogre,
but in
Vendredi.
It crops up everywhere .
MD:
If
you'll permit me to say so, I think that
Vendredi
is a great
success in the line of Flaubert's
Bouvard and pecuchet. Vendredi
is a
totally abstract work, but you have succeeded in putting enor–
mous charm, lyricism, and a certain exotic spirit into it.
MT:
Thank you. Something that I prefer, perhaps over
Gemini,
is
Pierrot ou Les secrets de La nuit,
because there, really, I succeeded in
infusing the story with the maximum amount of philosophy, on–
tology, Bachelard, matter, color , solidity, smell, biological mech–
anisms, and nonetheless, it remains a story for children .
MD:
Yes, it is a lovely story; that is irrefutable. Now that you have
