I wanted to translate this interview because it occurred at an interesting time in Goblet’s career, around the time that her book Souvenir d’une journée parfaite [Memory of a Perfect Day] was first published. Faire semblant c’est mentir [Pretending Is Lying], her most prominent book certainly in English and arguably in French also, is years away from completion; this is the project that she describes as sitting in a drawer during this interview. – Andrew White
Conducted by Pierre Polomé, Brussels, July 2001.
Originally posted on https://www.fremok.org/site.php?type=P&id=123
Your book initially came out of your participation in the Workshop on Narrative Exchange [Atelier de l’Echangeur Narratif]. How did this experience go for you?
I had been asked by Freon [the publisher that later merged with Amok to become Fremok] to participate in the workshop. Next, the groups for the workshop were formed. But I’ve always had a certain kind of relationship with the editors at Freon; a relationship of, I think, strong mutual admiration. I guess they think highly of my work, because otherwise they would not have supported it. At the same time, we have a beautiful relationship that mixes friendship with differences of opinion, of behavior, of misunderstandings…I don’t know exactly, but certain things made it so that there were clear tensions. My rampant paranoia also played a role in that. But I think there was a desire to work together, on both sides, and at the same time a desire for separation that was just as mutual. It’s strange.
In which workshop did you participate?
The most recent one, in September, where Frédéric Coché was among the notable participants. At first, I went to work at the studio, and there was always that difficult relationship I mentioned. However, I had previously been working alone at home for months. I decided to go back to working at home, which let me save time commuting and avoid these tensions. Moreover, I didn’t need to “immerse myself” in Brussels like the other cartoonists who didn’t live in the city.
Did these working conditions influence the creation of this story?
Yes, in the sense that they made me very independent. Beyond that, I was making limited progress at first in constructing the story. I spoke about this with Thierry Van Hasselt, who guided me towards a few paths that were helpful to me. I made eighty percent of the book at home, and the fact of the matter is that, at a certain point, I brought them [Freon] the finished story.
The Workshop on Narrative Exchange led to the creation of both short stories and full books. At what point did you decide to make a longer story, a real stand-alone book?
It was once again Thierry Van Hasselt who, upon seeing the fifteen – or was it more? I can’t remember – pages that I had drawn, suggested that I add a few more to arrive at a book. I responded, “Sure, no problem!” One thing led to another, and the story became longer.
We see your tendency towards autobiography in this story.
Yes, once again from my personal approach where the story tried to distance itself from autobiography, which in fact brought it closer. I don’t think that I’ll ever manage to make real fiction. If I was doing fiction, it would still be quite nourished by what I see and hear. It’s very rare that I write about complete fabrications. In this case of this story, it’s a real interchange between something that wanted to be fiction and became autobiographical and something that wanted to be autobiographical and became fiction. It’s the first time that I’ve worked like this. At present, I’m aiming for simplicity in my stories, but that isn’t really the case here.
What do you mean by “simplicity” in the story? In what form?
Take for example ‘Reprends ta saloperie,’ a story published in Frigobox 09 that was a turning point for me in terms of my technical approach, even if the plot had some weaknesses. The story is something that I experienced, more or less autobiographical, and undoubtedly more difficult to recount than a fictional story because I really had to immerse myself in that experience while making it. I don’t think about readers when making this kind of story. It’s on that level, the level of whether someone would understand the story, that I came to a “linear” approach, based on the history of comics. I’m also happy to have worked with l’Association and its cartoonists who often have a very comics-focused background. Having to work in the most straightforward way possible is a magnificent constraint. Recounting difficult topics in an intelligible way. As a result, I was able to make the story published in Frigobox 10 that is a parody of Franz Kafka’s Chateau as adapted by Olivier Deprez. I didn’t have enough time, but in that case as well I tried to produce a very, very clear modern version.
There is also the danger of being too straightforward…
Indeed. I don’t want, for example, to fall into the “manga” style, these comics that I come across occasionally and that I have an incredibly hard time reading, even with manga that someone has told me is “good.” On the other hand, I find that there is something very contemporary in the idea of decoding; working towards something that can be read very quickly is also a critique of our consumer culture. We no longer take the time to read or listen. Instead, we try to learn what we should say about Proust or we read Les Inrocks [Les Inrockuptibles, a weekly music magazine] to be able to talk about music. Culture is becoming too large for us to still have the time to create culture.
Regarding l’Association and autobiography, I believe that you’ve started a long project about your parents…
This project is still in a drawer for now. There are about 25 pages. I didn’t realize this right away, but “coincidentally” the only panel that I’ve worked on from the most recent page is also the first panel where my mother appears. After that, I haven’t been able to work on it. It’s not even a question of my desire of whether to continue the story, because I have a lot of ideas. In fact, this story centers around a particular event onto which many other elements could be attached. But I can’t do it any more.
Why does the action in Souvenir d’une journée parfaite start in a cemetery?
I wanted things to begin there, in this case at the Uccle cemetery which is really the Saint-Gilles cemetery. My father was buried there. I went there a few times hoping to find my father’s name. I met the cemetery guards, unimaginable people who clearly had a lot of stories to tell. For example, stories about fights during a funeral or about people discussing inheritance before the coffin is even lowered into the ground. A thousand other mind-blowing things, all of which they said in passing.
The choice of a cemetery in the context of the ‘story of a city’ project (the pretext for the existence of the Workshop on Narrative Exchange) is somewhat surprising…
I said to myself that a story about a city should consider the city as a dispersal in the form of a gathering, an aggregation. In the end, a cemetery represents the aggregation of the city. People live in different parts of a city and they all end up at the cemetery. It’s a city within the city, with its own roads, avenues, alleys, and addresses. It seemed to me that the places where people end up are the best representation of cities.
To go back to my story, I had tried to find my father’s surname without success. I went back a second time when I started the story. I read out loud, without anyone around, the names of all the people who were cremated. There were about twenty stone tablets, each inscribed with 130 names. Reading them created a rumbling rhythm, all of these names spoken aloud dispassionately. Who still says these names? Who still gives these people life, even by speaking their names? It was a strange feeling.
I stopped at certain names, not knowing why. A name that touched me, a name that I liked, a funny name. A father and son, with their dates of birth and death. Unavoidably, the imagination is actived by these names. How did they die? Why? What were the joys and the conflicts of their lives?
Is that the point where you imagined the person behind one of these names?
That was the idea; starting from this search for my father’s name, arriving at a real name that launched me into fiction. What could have been the life of this person, in this case a man by the name of Mathias Khan? That sends us into the realm of fiction, with repeated interruptions by real views of the cemetery during my visit and my thoughts in those moments.
I wanted to mix those two levels, without really knowing how, and that’s once again where Thierry van Hasselt helped me. All of the cemetery scenes, drawn in a very realistic way, without people, are purely autobiographical. All of the scenes that show a character are fictional. But the truth is that it’s a fiction nourished exclusively by my life. In fact, the more we try to imagine a character, the more we simply project our own reality onto them. Even more so when we’re thinking of someone who is dead with their name carved into a gravestone, we can imagine them going about some activity but only in relation to things that we have experienced ourselves. The truth is that the life of this person is my own life.
Moreover, when I read an autobiographical story, I always ask myself to what extent it is “fair.” What are the fabrications in the story? But we rarely pose this question about fiction, especially a fictional narrative that resembles reality. This problem interested me, the idea that fiction is only a reproduction of one’s own reality. My story is therefore an intersection between a fiction that is in fact reality with a reality that isn’t really much at all.
You often use mixed media, collage, ballpoint pen, etc. What was your technical process for these pages?
I knew I would be working in black and white. So I chose a fairly greasy black pencil, which I sometime blend with more grease to create smears. This greasiness gives the pencil more intensity and adds some grays and yellows as the drawing ages. It’s possible that the book might be printed in duotone. I would be happy if it did.
Is this technique linked to the subject of the book, or did you come to this approach more intuitively?
You could find hints of a connection, but at the same time I wasn’t going to do this kind of story in watercolor or pencil. Here, the blacks are black and the whites are truly white, with an incisive relationship between them. I didn’t hesitate for long on the question of materials; instead, I tried to find materials that I wouldn’t be too tempted to play with [on a technical level], but where there was still a bit of texture, a bit of “slippage.”