“The Begbeder Collection,” this new project that starts six months later, is a kind of selection of works by French writers. And you yourself act in it exclusively as an organizer and editor. A series of books is supposed to show the French approach to timeless issues. What are these questions?
“I will simply present my favorite works of the past ten years.” About today, about the world, about swift and bizarre changes in it. We are working on a list, on translations. Not everything has been chosen yet, but I am very happy and consider this a great idea. We need ideas to bring our two cultures closer together. In the XIX century, France and Russia were very close. Now - not to that extent.
- We are two crazy nations ...
“Yes, two crazy ways of thinking.” We always criticize everything and express dissatisfaction. We love to walk, wrap around, seduce ...
- Both French and Russians love beautiful women. But do I understand correctly that in this new project the authors will be only French?
- Definitely, I can’t say this, because the work is still in progress. But I hope that there will be two American works that I recently read with pleasure. The problem is that we still have not signed the agreements, and perhaps the rights to the books that I would like to translate have already been sold to another publisher.
- What makes French literature French, apart from language?
- Pleasure. That we like a certain lifestyle. We do not want to work all day - rather, we like to find time to sit at food and drinks, carnal joys ...
- Cheeky sarcasm ...
- Sarcasm, irony. Well, you know, criticism of the authorities. Authorities of any kind.
- That is, this is a complete rejection of the taboo?
- That's right. The struggle for freedom. You know, in our world that is changing so fast, France may be one of those countries where they are trying to resist these changes in order to maintain a certain quality of life.
“I am watching everything that happens after Charlie Ebdo, after Bataclan.” When something like this happens, no matter how safe you feel later, life will never be the same. But somehow the French (in your person) managed to maintain their usual way of life. Many others would become more closed ...
- It's right. And very interesting. Moscow is changing. I have not been here for a long time and now I have seen real changes. It was a grand city holiday. Beautiful, sunny weather, and everywhere a lot of people, and not only at concerts. There are many cafes with street verandas in the city, and people, having bought a glass of wine, settled down there.
Twenty years ago this was not. I don’t remember seeing Russians sitting like this; so that there are tables and chairs on the street, and people sit and slowly drink wine from a glass. What do I want to say? The Parisian lifestyle has now become Russian. This is cool.
And this is very good news, because it was such a way of life that was attacked in Paris in November 2015. It was an attack not only on spectators at the Bataklan Theater, but also on people just sitting at a street table with a glass. Some consider this lifestyle a crime and want to kill for it: "Sitting with a glass - you deserve to die."
- © RTD
If in Moscow they sit in street cafes over a glass of wine, this is a kind of political gesture. Resistance. This is a cool and pleasant pastime, but I want to emphasize that it is also very important from the moral side and from the political side.
- When you write books or compile a selection of French authors for your almanac, how do you make the distinction: where is true French, and where are only stereotypes about the French?
“I'm not so sophisticated.” I just choose the book that made me laugh or cry, made me indignant, or even shocked me - that is, it caused me a reaction.
I don’t think whether such a book will please the Russian or French readers, but I react to it like this: “What a fine fellow author. Cool wrote. This must be translated in order to infect him with a book of foreign readers. Why not?"
You asked a great question, but maybe you are reasoning too intellectually. For me, literature is very simple. I sometimes cry over Dostoevsky and don’t think about why. Indeed, Raskolnikov, with all his contradictions, is undergoing terrible internal torture, and in the end receives some kind of deliverance.
And we, the French, believe that all Russians are like this: they are people who experience torment, and then find a solution to problems.
Or they drink too much or gamble, but finally, perhaps, they find a way out. Say, because they come to God. I am now greatly simplifying, of course.
Reducing Dostoevsky to one sentence is not so simple. If you're a foreigner, then look at the Russians like this. You think: “These people go through numerous and varied temptations - there is money, fame, beautiful girls, or a desire to ruin their lives with drugs and alcohol. But then they turn in the direction of something more attractive. It can be nature or a family, or a god, or, I don’t know, Putin. ”
In any case, it’s good when literature is a journey. And by the end of the book you are no longer what you were when you started reading it.
- As an editor, would you choose yourself?
- Would I recommend publishing myself? Well, the question. I should think. I always find fault with myself. And, probably, he would say: “What kind of insolence and upstart is this?”
What I do, I always do not like. You always want to take and rewrite your old books. I reread myself, and I feel ashamed. I don’t know if I would publish myself or not.
But it is important to be able to admire others. When you write, you do not start from scratch - there is always a starting point: love for wonderful books that I read in childhood or adolescence. It is important for me to be able to admire new, young authors, but to myself I am very, very harsh.
- Do you think that today books and writers are required to tell people how to live? What do you do, and generally literature, dictate the truth?
- Now there is a certain propensity for "guidelines for self-development." Many writers and readers believe that literature is a “user guide” and should show and tell how to live. I don’t like that.
- Frederick Begbeder
- © @beigbedersays
Literature has a mission, but not quite that. Reading millions of stories helps you understand how to love, how to accept aging, how to behave if something terrible happens. After all, you read all these stories and you can already be internally prepared for the death of someone you love, for catastrophic events. And I think that here, after all, is not “self-development": the writer does not tell you how to live, but in some other, strange, mysterious way teaches life. Differently.
I see in works of art and another mission. In the world in which we live, there are many images - on TV, on the phone - and there is not enough time for ourselves. And when you read a book, turn off the computer, smartphone, TV and find yourself alone with the author’s soul. A miracle happens.
This, I believe, is very important and happens only with books - with nothing else. And today the world is getting dumber every day, because people read less.
- You claim that you are extremely critical of your works. But his own book was called Eternal Life. Why did you find out about immortality that all these philosophers, writers and scientists did not talk about before you?
- That science is now close to truly changing humanity. This has never happened before. Now the situation with our species, Homo sapiens, is such that some scientists, some doctors: in China, America, Russia - everywhere are working to improve us as creatures. This is new and very strange.
Immortality and eternal life is the oldest topic in literature. The first discovered work, which seems to be five thousand years old, is The Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of a man who does not want to die. Jesus spoke of eternal life. And hundreds, thousands of books have been written: here is the Portrait of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, and Dracula. Many books talk about this. For my little work, I met and talked with a number of scientists from around the world who are working to ensure that people live longer.
“Would you like this for yourself?” If you had to choose: either Frederick Begbeder, healthy, attractive, happy, who has a family, will gradually grow old and watch his children grow up, or ...
- ... or will live five hundred years? To live to one hundred and fifty to us and now, probably, within our means. Jeanne Kalman has almost reached this age, although there are disputes about her.
In the book I answer: if it is possible that everyone I love should be alive, and I myself will be healthy and in good shape, then why not? Why refuse? We have already become different. In the Middle Ages we would not have survived to our present years. Then they died after twenty-five to thirty.
Today you can live sixty, seventy, eighty years. That is, life expectancy has doubled. And you can double or triple it again - and, probably, we would like that. But under what conditions? At what price? This is the question I ask in the book.
“If you think about it, the thought of immortality never left humanity.” And she was the driving force in everything: in literature, philosophy, technology, science.
- Yes. "Defeat death."
“And if we achieve this, then there will probably be no evolution.” We will become a different kind. No longer people ...
“Exactly, here you are.” The problem is that if we succeed, we will no longer be human beings.
“And it doesn't bother you?”
- What are you, just very worrying. I like to be human. A person who has his limits and unrealizable desires. Talking with scientists, especially from Harvard Medical School, I realized: if, to become eternal, we need to partially turn into robots, into mutants - creatures from superhero films a la “Iron Man” - then I probably don’t want this . I do not want to turn into an algorithm, into Siri artificial intelligence.
- You noted that people read less. You have three children. You said somewhere that they do not like to read and mostly chat with friends on the Internet.
- Well, not the youngest - they have not yet grown to mobile phones. And I will fight. I hope not to give up. I completely lost the battle with my twenty-year-old daughter when she was thirteen.
“Doesn't it seem to you that you are from an endangered breed, because people will no longer read?”
- No, she reads. That's just not what I advise her. And this is normal. But reads. Young people use the language and write in a new way: they spend a lot of time on social networks, but at the same time they write.
There are texts, even if they are overloaded with emoticons. Not sure if I understand the next generation. And this, perhaps, is natural: I am an old man.
- And what fate awaits books and literature, given the visual presentation system? Previously, when Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers, a chapter appeared a week, and people eagerly awaited new ones. And now - HBO, Netflix ...
“It's the same with them.”
- Good films - like new literature. Don't you think that they replace you?
- I completely agree. And you know, we, as writers, cannot compete with such a good job. All hope that literature will be able to become interesting in a new way is no longer through storytelling. The plot, as such, is much better served by a television series, such as Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones - the effect will be much greater.
Literature has other ways to attract and carry away: style, emotions, something deeper - like meeting with someone who is experiencing the same problems as you, or with utmost honesty and without haste talks about his life.
I said that you need to turn everything off, to be alone with yourself. You sit in an armchair - maybe with a glass of old whiskey - and suddenly in silence and loneliness you get access to something higher, before which the cinema and television (even excellent films) fade. It is something else that makes you feel human. That's what I'm fighting for right now.
- But somehow this should influence the presentation of history, since it is reflected in the language ...
“I don't think we will read books for the sake of stories.” We will read for the sake of something else. One of the books that I want to translate into Russian takes place at a gas station. The work itself is called “Gas Station”. For two hundred pages you do not leave the station.
- French writer Frederick Begbeder autographs
- © Vladimir Trefilov / RIA News
The person at the checkout writes something, looks at customers, at cars, smells gasoline, burns gasoline, which kills the nature around. Just taking notes. There is no history as such. Just observing everyday life - how people come to this gas station. It seems to me that such works are the future.
- As you once said, to write a book, you need some kind of dark streak. If all is well, I would like to go to a cafe. But is it? Stephen King said that life should not be a supporting system for art, but rather ...
- Very often great poets, geniuses of art in general, are sad people. The young man has problems, the girls don’t want to kiss him, and he decides: “I will show my genius!” It happens. And then, when you become mostly satisfied, a problem arises.
I noticed: some of my last books, written when I was happy, are very sad. My life is happy, but at the time of writing I am again immersed in depression. This is strange.
Writing is generally a strange thing. I am returning to a state where I was an upset and angry teenager.
I return to the hatred that I had. Although, rather, not to hatred, but to rage. To the indignation, to write this sentence on paper.
“You say that now you are mostly happy.” Imagine that you have a choice: to live happily and not write a single book anymore, because in this state you cannot write or become unhappy and create a masterpiece ...
- First. I choose happiness. Of course, happiness. No no no. I do not want to return to torment and melancholy. But maybe when I get drunk hard, is it all because I’m looking for that very state? And I often write very late when lonely and empty. Maybe this is the solution? Over measures to drink?
See the full version of the interview with Frederick Begbeder on RTD.