Paul Nizon recently turned ninety-two, but his need for description is unbroken.

It is the elixir of life for the Paris-based Swiss, and when his family doctor advised him ten years ago to give up the “principle of writing performance” and do nothing, “take a vacation if possible”, Nizon wrote in his permanently kept journal, somewhat stunned : “Holiday from me?” More than any other living great writer – and this term, which has become anachronistic, is still appropriate for him – Nizon lives from writing.

No, that sounds too financial.

He lives for writing.

Andrew Plathaus

Responsible editor for literature and literary life.

  • Follow I follow

His books were autofiction long before anyone used the term. The debut novel "Canto", published in 1963 and reprinted two years ago, is based on the 1960 scholarship year of the then art critic in Rome and tells the private life of its author anew with hardly disguised frankness, especially his fascination for women. This may sound banal, but Nizon has a psychological empathy that has no regard for himself. Analogously to one of his typically striking terms, which constitute one of the main attractions of reading his books, the "ego bondage" at the moment of writer's block, one would have to from the moment Nizon took up free writing - his position as arts editor of the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" he announced when he started work on "Canto" -,speak of ego unleashing.

In the last quarter of a century of his work, what he calls “journals” have consistently come to the fore. The first volume of journals, "The Inside of the Coat" with entries from the 1980s, had already appeared in 1995, followed in 2002 by the one with the earliest notes, starting in 1961, i.e. when he began working as a freelance writer, and as early as 2004 Nizon added those which bore the title that could rank above all his books: The Screenplay of Love (the entries in it date from the 1970s when Nizon was writing his most famous novel, The Year of Love, but its title is an exaggeration , while Nizon sees his entire lifetime as love years). The journals seemed to capture their writer's attention:In 2005, the last novel to date, Das Fell der Forelle, was published. Since then, the novelist has fallen silent alongside the "journalist," but of course Nizon continued to write in both capacities. A new novel project was started fifteen years ago: “The Nail in the Head”.

germ cell for the theme of life

But that's the name of the latest journal volume, which deals with notes from the years 2011 to 2020, the - one would be tempted to say - the incubation period of the novel.

And a documentary film about Nizon, which was released in Swiss cinemas in 2020, also bears this name.

So there is not much to suggest that the novel will be completed, because the title has now been used up.