In the archives of “Libé”
In 1985, the newspaper asked 400 of the greatest authors. A publication that marked the literary milieu and dates back to 1919. Narrative.
the “Good for that” de Beckett has gone down in history. Yet there were others, beautiful answers to this question that Release asked 400 authors in March 1985, “Why do you write?” : “I write to know why I write”, admits Moravia. “If I knew, I surely wouldn’t be able to.”, Bukowski seems to answer him.
Between confessions, introspections and exercises in style, he made a date with this special issue that Freed published thirty-six years ago. And he impresses. 400 authors, therefore, from all over the world, listed in alphabetical order by country, from South Africa by Nadine Gordimer, to Zimbabwe by Dambudzo Marechera. And what beautiful people in this literary atlas: “Those we had chosen are authors who have remained: we would have to count the Nobel prizes in there…” has fun today Mathieu Lindon, then freshly entered the Books department.
It was Daniel Rondeau who had the idea. In the fall of 1984, the future academician, whom Serge July had brought in in 1982 as editor-in-chief of Culture, suggested to his team that they republish the undertaking launched in 1919 by the surrealist review Literature. For three issues (the 10th, 11th and 12th), in this post-war year, this small literary organ with a yellow cover had published the answers of the great names of French literature to this very simple question “Why do you write?” Seventy-five contributions will be collected. Sometimes lapidary (the “Because” of Cendrars or the “Out of weakness” de Valéry), sometimes staggered (“Ask your readers instead, ‘Why are you reading?'”, Radiguet), sometimes ironic (“But after all, I write little, your reproach hardly touches me”, Paulhan), or slightly judgmental (“You will be able to classify writers according to whether their answer will begin with ‘in order to’, ‘for’ or ‘because’. There will be those for whom literature is above all a goal and those for whom above all a means. As for me, I write because I have a good pen and to be read by you… But I never answer surveys”, Gide).
“I no longer knew who to tell stories to”
When he took up the idea with Jean-François Fogel, Daniel Rondeau expanded it. Release was one of the rare newspapers, at the time, to go and meet the writers in situ, the newspaper is at its zenith, the greatest authors lend themselves to the game. We could list the entire table of contents, dizzying. Few literary figures active in 1985 are missing. To quote this one rather than that one is completely arbitrary but let us mention Philip Roth, Jorge Luis Borges, Peter Handke, Günter Grass (“Because I can’t do otherwise”), Georges Simenon, Edna O’Brien, Gabriel García Márquez (“To make my friends love me more”), William Burroughs, Joan Didion, Patricia Highsmith, John Irving, Ray Bradbury (“Because I love dinosaurs”), Joyce Carol Oates, Julien Gracq, Françoise Sagan (“Because I love it”), Marguerite Duras, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco (“My children had grown up and I no longer knew who to tell stories to”), Kenzaburo Oe, Adonis, Jose Saramago, Lawrence Durrell (“To watch over me”), Léopold Sédar Senghor… And again, we restricted ourselves. There are also some authors whose aura will only grow named Rushdie, Modiano or Le Clézio (“I will explain everything to you…”) Artur London responded out of time.
The letters arrive in dribs and drabs until the acceleration of the last few days, without anyone really planning how to translate them. Last night is epic.
114 collector pages, therefore, a special issue sold for 30 francs which appeared in March 1985 on the occasion of the Salon du Livre. Small problem, by launching its nets several months in advance, the Books service omitted a small detail: the translation. For the writers who were releasing a book and whom we were going to meet at home, no problem, “we took advantage of it at the end of the interview to ask them the question”, explains Mathieu Lindon, who had done this for Durrell or Dürrenmatt (“The question is so difficult that it is always answered with a joke.”). But the others, approached by mail, respond in their own language (from Korean to Czech, from Catalan to Zulu) and the letters arrive in dribs and drabs until the acceleration of the last few days, without anyone having really planned how the translate. Last night is epic. In Liberation Days, published in 2015, the same Mathieu Lindon says: “Various translation workshops therefore got under way during the night. With a colleague friend, we tackled the texts in English. There were plenty of them and we translated in succession, in defiance of all the values we defended and with the amusement, sometimes greater than the shame, that this betrayal can cause. In my memory, when there were passages that were too difficult, when we were lost, we jumped – every minute counted. As a good head of department, Daniel had effectively managed to have an adequate chemical response to possible bouts of fatigue. And that’s how I left the newspaper at 9 o’clock in the morning, after nearly twenty-four hours on the spot.
In the bar of Aragon
As for Beckett’s reply, scribbled on a business card, it is perhaps the only one he has ever addressed to a newspaper. A masterstroke that will encourage the newspaper to push its advantage, in 1987, when it comes to designing on the same model “Why are you filming?”, on the grounds that the Irish writer had written in 1965 the screenplay for an experimental short film of about twenty minutes, Film. He will not answer but the cast of this second volume is no less impressive than that of the first.
In 1993, the pocket book will reissue in pocket format the “Why do you write?”, preceded by the preface by Daniel Rondeau which lifts the veil on the real author of the original question. It is Philippe Soupault (director, with Breton and Aragon, of Literature in 1919 and which will lend itself to the game for the 1985 version) which gives him the key. “We met frequently in a bar in the Passage de l’Opéra which Aragon describes in Le Paysan de Paris. But there was always a guy of a certain age, dressed in black, who, without ever saying a word, listened to us and looked at us. One day, a little annoyed, we asked him: “But why do you always have to look at us like that!” He replied simply: “I am watching you because I would like to know why you are writing.” It all started from there. “Why do you write?” it was the idea of the man in black.”