Following my translation of a Dominique Goblet interview a few months ago, I decided to take on a bigger task: a massive, three part interview with Fabrice Neaud by Sébastien Solielle, originally published on his comprehensive site about Neaud’s work. This is just the first part, and I hope to get to other two parts soon.
Neaud is mostly unpublished in English, but he is best known for his autobiographical Journal series which you might know because it’s been written about in English by people like Bart Beaty. Journal 3 in particular is regarded by many–including me!–as perhaps the greatest autobiographical comic and it’s undeniably a work that has little to do with the sad-sack tropes of autobio in North America. After several years away from autobio, Neaud has said he’s working in the genre again and that the four existing Journal volumes will soon be re-released. So I thought it was a good time to return to his work. – Andrew White
Originally posted on http://soleille.neaud.com/auteur/entretien1.htm
Sébastien Soleille: You have often been unhappy with the reception of your work, with various interpretations and readings; notably, several anecdotes in volume 4 [of Journal] speak to this. Do you think that most readers and journalists misunderstand you? If so, how do you explain this? Have things evolved over time?
Fabrice Neaud: This is a very delicate question. I will try to respond by making several points. First of all, regarding the anecdotes that appear in volume 4, you must remember that this book, published in 2002, is recounting events that go back to 1996. As a result, these events mainly cover, in the parts that you mention, the publication of the first volume of Journal. The reception of my work at that time has very little to do with its reception later on, even if I remain quite unhappy, on the whole, with the latter. The reception of Volume 1 is essential linked to the reception of any first book, and I think that these moments [depicted in Volume 4] reflect the structure around how a first book is received, more than the reception of my book specifically.
The scene with the radio host, for example, is a portrait of very local radio, with its amateur shortcomings and the inexperience of the host in question. If we look closely, we can see that it’s a true caricature of a provincial interview (which indeed it was). The host wasn’t even twenty years old, he had a jacket that completely overwhelmed him, and he had distressingly stupid questions about a work that, in many ways, completely overwhelmed him as well. He reduced everything to provincial specificities, in the most pejorative sense of the word.
Regarding the encounter in the “salon de lecture,” I’m painting another type of portrait: a portrait of even more local adventure that was organized by a friend who thought he was doing good and did not imagine for a single second that it would go so poorly. (He was very annoyed in the end; I think that he even left the salon in question shortly after.) In this scene, what mattered to me was also to denounce a moral conundrum: how could I respond to attacks made by a host who invited me to his salon? I am only presenting a situation that can also be found in other circumstances and that can also speak to questions of power dynamics. In this scene, I wanted to show that the “reading” of my work, by the simple fact that it was this host doing the reading, allowed him to exercise his power over others (the other members of the salon) and over me. This situation prevented me from responding to his critiques and allowed him to display his self-satisfaction and narcissism. I was quite simply taking hostage by a little chef, a “professor” in his domain, who used me just to valorize himself. Even if these two scenes relate my initial encounters with “criticism,” they do not aim to make a global statement on this topic, a statement that I could make today…and our interview gives me a chance, which is more than welcome, to do so.
If space allowed, I could amuse myself by presenting you a panorama of the various readings of my work, a little synthesis with supporting quotations. It would be very funny and very instructive…
Do you think that your books can be assessed as works of fiction? In other words, to what extent do you think that the reader must take the autobiographical dimension into account in order to appreciate your work?
It’s really very difficult to answer questions like this. You’re really asking: from where are we speaking? Who is speaking? But also, who is reading? Who is receiving?
I have the habit, however, of advising–even if this remains a purely academic recommendation–that those who are truly “impacted” by my work should take a deep breath before reading and try to imagine that work as fiction. Conversely, I have more of a tendency to advise others (the significant majority, I hope) to not forget the autobiographical dimension. However, we must redefine what “autobiographical” means today, because this adjective and the noun linked to it mean the opposite.
For me, “autobiographical” means “embodied,” “non-academic,” “inhabited,” as well as simply “recounting the life of the narrator.” The problem is that “autobiographical” often means, for many readers and as a result for many critics, “recounting the life of the narrator from a strictly subjective point of view.” Indeed, by “subjective,” we often necessarily hear fragmented, partial, and therefore ultimately false. In summary, we have as our framework for reading the idea that “all autobiography is false and all that it recounts can only be a false reflection of true or even imagined facts.”
This framework come from a psychologizing distortion of the aforementioned autobiography. If all autobiography recounts the “life of the narrator from a strictly subjective point of view,” it is therefore evident that the psychological prima dominates, with all pejorative prejudices that judge it incapable of producing a sensible, fair narrative disengaged from subjectivity or at least marginally removed from it. It is tragic to realize how much this poor word emprisons those who utter it in a reductive semantic trap. A psychological framework, which today has become the ultimate tool extracted with forceps by those who think of autobiography in this way, leads finally to placing it and its creators into tighty constrained categories of psychiatry. Inevitably, making autobiography means above all else, for many people, being “navel-gazing”, “narcissitic,” “egotistical,” and by the same token “uninteresting” because it is untrue. Packed into the corridors of an asylum for the aesthetically insane, all diarists or autobiographers can be judged, in the final accounting, as mad because their body of work that is no more than therapy. Clearly, those who are interested in this kind of work would be considered mad themselves, or at best as victims of a creator who has succeeded in dragging them into delirium with an alienating system of moral harassment.
It is clear that with such a definition, with such biases, it is difficult to appreciate an autobiographical work appropriately.
My delirium, produced by these perceptions surrounding any autobiographical work, can only be relegated–of course–to this same mental alientation by those who despise the genre. This framework for reading autobiography is therefore impossible to oppose. To illustrate this point, the criticism of one Thierry Smolderen on f.rec.arts.bd is one example of a therapizing reading of my work that seems perfectly clarifying and completely solid. But this is not surprising at all, coming from a fallen former pundit of comics criticism, reinventing himself as a “professor,” who goes as far as to be called Doc (like the guy from Fun Radio) by his disciples.
In short, to return to your question – because I went on quite a tangent to give fuel to the doctors who have long since placed me in an intellectual straightjacket – I would say that after having done a modicum of semantic work on what autobiography or fiction can be, I dare to imagine that a reading of my books can also be seen from a more political than psychological angle. That’s all. Nothing to do with the formal categories of fiction or autobiography, in fact, because no one has known what those terms mean for a long time.
“Like works of fiction” thus has no real meaning, in fact. What is clear is that there is no difference, truly none, between the construction and the work on a diegetic subject, whether it be fictional or autobiographical. In terms of the page, the pacing, the drawing, the architecture of the book and the story, there is rigorously no difference between the approach that should be taken for one or the other. The only difference to my mind is not found in the book but in the people who are at issue, including the author. I have tortured myself, shouting this from the rooftops, since my earliest work. I have not changed my opinion on this question, not by an iota. But maybe this makes me a crazy, rigid psycho – who knows?
That being said, if I can shed a bit of light on the blemished vista of critical nothingness that has paralyzed all Western thought since the existence of mass media, I would say that I have always remained impressed by the relevance of Anglo-Saxon articles and critiques. Whether it be the analysis of Murray Pratt, a professor at the Institute for International Studies in Sydney (How to study heterocentrism) or that of Bart Beaty in the February 2002 issue of the Comics Journal (Fabrice Neaud: Rewriting Our Standards), it is clear that we are facing a completely different level of quality. This is even more admirable when my Journal doesn’t even have an English translation! Certainly no one is a prophet in his own country, but our francophone journalists, those blessed eunuchs in their holy alcoves, have their noses buried deeply into the requirements of their little newspapers, and just as deeply into the shit of their inferiority complex towards authors…I’ll stop there, because I’m giving them too much credit. A finger held high in the air should suffice.
Your books have been the subject of scholarly interpretations on many occasion (notably in seminars at Lyon and at the University of Leicester. What effect did this have on you? Did you think these were pertinent readings?
They were pertinent, undoubtedly. It goes to show that a sharp, academic study of a work is necessary to free ourselves from the presuppositions of basic critical journalism. At the same time, it’s very sad. Does this mean that I am not “accesible to the general public” but only to academics? I don’t think so, and I never had the elitist ambition to only be read and understood by them. This would also disregard the reactions of certain readers that are just as pertinent, sometimes, as those of colloquies and other seminars. Not to mention that academic readings also remain fragmented. Except, in contrast with depraved journalistic readings that eviscerate nearly all works they touch (I don’t consider myself the only “victim,” obviously – but even using this word scares me, in fact, so often am I accused of placing myself in this so-called “role”), the fragmented readings of academics are self-aware, whereas those of the press always present themselves as exhaustive and all-encompassing.
Whether it be at Leicester in 2003, with colleagues such as the well-esteemed Jean-Christophe Menu or the equally esteemed Tanitoc, or at Lyon, thanks to Pierre-Yves Carlot, author of an impressive memoir titled De l’ancrage référentiel [On Referential Anchoring]…After reading the Smolderens of the earth, so ready to pontificate on the “right to their image” of certain former friends who are supposedly “deeply hurt” by my work, the calmness and the level of these discussion were a true breath of fresh air in an atmosphere saturated by the greenhouse asses of ambient criticism.
At the same time, and taking a more global perspective on comics, there was the recent summer university organized by the CNBDI in 2006, and there as well, we were breathing some healthier air. In other words, aside from these rare, lovely moments, it would be enough to put a bullet in your brain. But, rest assured, if that were to happen, I would take a few journalists and other so-called “professors” with me before knocking myself off.
Your books are often considered, notably by some of your colleagues, as among the most important of the last ten years. How do you feel about this?
Well…I would like to hear it in person a little more often…but if they’ve ever told me so and I don’t remember, it’s proof that I’m insane. Lock me up!
What are your thoughts on the reception of your books in non-Francophone countries, whether it be through your participation in gallery showings and signings in different countries (Japan, Russia) or in the places where your books have been translated (Italy, Spain)?
I know very little about the only country where my work is available in translation right now (Spain). I have nothing to say about Italy, where things dissolved after the publication of the first volume of Journal. That sure was encouraging. Once again, I remain especially amazed by the Anglo-Saxon response to my work, even though I’m not translated in English, as I mentioned previously. But this reception has only occurred in a very narrow context, I imagine, which sadly puts the enthusiasm into perspective. Regarding Japan, I don’t know if I can say, because the only work translated there was in the Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators anthology, published by Casterman and conceptualized by Frédéric Boilet. I know that this book was translated into several languages and was very well received, at least on a relative scale given the difficulty of promoting antholgoies. However, as I said, I don’t know to what extent my own work, which is only 1/16th of the book (since there were eight francophone authors and eight Japanese authors), is appreciated. After all, it’s only around 20 pages…
What is certain is that I’ve traveled abroad a fair amount. Even more so in the last few years; I’m very happy about this because I love to travel. But this travel should not be seen as proof of some grand reception, with my work pouring like gold into the ecstatic brains of a million happy readers. Foreign travel is often the result of institutional action. At best, it shows that I am appreciated in certain spheres of cultural “power.” Is this good? Bad? I have no idea…but in any case, it has the benefit of luring me out of my hole and offering a breath of fresh air. It’s a privilege that I love, in and of itself.
In 2005, you published several short comics in Beaux-Arts magazine. How did this come about, and why did it stop? What did you take away from this experience?
I knew of Fabrice Bousteau, the editor-in-chief, from his editorial on Journal 3 in the January 2000 issue of Beaux-Arts Magazine. This remains, up to now, one of the most laudatory pieces of writing on my work. At the same time, it remains the first text that starts to grapple, just a little, with the true questions posed by Journal. I thank him for that. Actually, the relationship between Fabrice Bousteau and myself goes back to a year before that. Describing this background has a purpose, as we shall see. A year before that editorial, to the day, Beaux-Arts Magazine devoted a special issue to comics, including a selection of authors and works that raised the quality of the medium. Except that…Bousteau wrote an editorial that sadly remains well-known in comics circles, that begins with a phrase I will quote, imperfectly I’m sure, from memory: “Just because we’re devoting an issue to comics doesn’t mean we consider it an art” – or something like that. I wrote a firey response to that editorial, that was published in the defunct publication L’indispensable just a few days before the first editorial I mentioned, the one about my work. Fabrice Bousteau invited me to discuss all this over lunch in Paris. He conceded some points on my response (he couldn’t have done otherwise; it was very fair, I think) and I did the same regarding his editorial denigrating comics as art; we found ourselves on firmer ground and he had wanted to get me somehow involved in Beaux-Arts from the beginning.
We found the right approach, according to him, but only four years later at the end of 2004 after I had appeared irregularly in a few issues of Beaux-Arts. The ineffable Vincent Bernière served as something of a liaison between us, sometimes, but the Bousteau-Neaud relationship existed largely without his involvement (and even in despite of him, as we shall soon see). In December 2004, after drawing four pages in record time about the Lucas Carton restaurant and its chef, Alain Senderens, for a special issue, Bousteau offered me a “civil union,” as he called it, and invited me to produce a regular, monthly three page comic on a subject of my choice related to the topic of art. I don’t know what took hold of me in that moment – self-doubt, preliminary caution, or delusional paranoia (apparently I suffer from this affliction, according to those among my detractors who specialize in psychiatry), but I demanded that Bousteau choose the subjects of the columns himself. In fact, on the two or three occasions that I collaborated with him, even if the subjects were very interesting, I found myself strangled by impossible deadlines. If I was able to meet them, it was only when the collaboration remained punctual, when the cadence was actually monthly. From our first and only meeting, I let my kindly editor know that it was in our mutual interest, for reasons of quality and peace of mind, that he give me a subject not just a week in advance, but at least a solid month.
Here, I must explain the difficult of this task. Three pages of comics is very different from three pages of text. Not only does the density of information risk being decreased, even if that is to the benefit of other types of information unique to the comics medium, but also tackling the topic also risks being a much more significant task. Indeed, the topics that Bousteau assigned often made it necessary that I go to Paris (or elsewhere), since I live in Angoulême, and I needed to plan my travel in advance. Taking notes and recording images meant that I either had to draw on the spot, with extreme spontaneity, (which is the complete opposite of my normal approach) or I had to take photographs. I opted for the latter; luckily, I had a digital camera and the ability to get my images quickly onto a computer. But despite all these optimizations (thanks simply to good luck) to satisfy the editors, it’s hard to see how a week, including the time to mail my pages, was a reasonable or even rational deadline. Since I had the sense that Bousteau, as a good journalist used to “handling” this type of situation with a carrot and a stick, might not take these very important factors into account, I deduced that it would be suicidal on my part to add to these difficulties by choosing the subjects of the pages myself. Indeed, you can easily imagine that if I chose the subjects myself, on a timeline that suited me, he would undoubtedly have rejected them, at his own pace, until I found one that pleased him. I tried just one to amuse myself by playing this deadly game, and fatally I found that I was right.
So, at the end of December, after our first meeting…I was waiting for a second meeting to finalize what we had discussed, or even a contract to formalize the agreement. Most of all, I was awaiting any kind of feedback, but received nothing, nothing at all, until the subject for my first assignment arrived, as if a sign of things of come, only a dozen days before the final deadline. I immediately got started without any agreement, any contract, or any of my concerns being taken into account. I was paid, yes, a little late but paid all the same: from 600 euros for the first assignment to 750 euros from the second assignment onwards. Undoubtedly, I had little caue for complaint…and everyone congratulated me for having three pages in a “prestigious” national magazine.
Except, except…nothing had been agreed upon, certainly not regarding what I asked for with more and more insistence: that I be given reasonable deadlines.
Let’s pause for a moment, because I imagine this all remains a little abstract. Picture the following: you’re at your house, and every month you await a “mission,” a job for which you have no guidance, no ability to move forward by any means. The only thing you know for sure is that you must turn in three pages on the 21st of the month. You have no idea what you’re going to do, where they will send you, and even if you’ll be allowed to take photos at the place where you’re sent (as the second strip on the Dapper Museum in Paris shows). All this, only a week before that fatal day on the 21st. But you don’t know whether Bousteau, Mr. National Journalist, will have the good will – one fine day, in a moment of kindness – to let you know your topic on the day after your previous strip was received – that is, on the 22nd, with a magnanimous outpouring of royal generosity – so that have the time to comfortably draw your next three pages. In brief, you never know, up until the last moment, if you’ll be sent on your mission today, tomorrow, the next day, or in ten days. All this without a contract, without any consultation, without any discussion, without anything except the emails that you send off into the winds of cyberspace.
They were understanding in the beginning but became more and more enraged, eventually totally resigned, as I begged for the only condition I’d had from the beginning: to have time, time, always more time. You can easily imagine that in these conditions, you absolutely cannot do anything except wait (at the pleasure of Beaux-Arts Magazine), a fact about which the latter, with its chief and his valets, (led by Vincent Bernière, who was supposed to do a bit of HR work – which he did like someone assigned to sabotage a team of employees that management wants to fire) don’t care at all.
Since I had already been treated in this way following previous assignments delivered “on time” (where I had accepted – wrongly, in the end – these conditions), I gave myself an ultimatum: I would not produce a third assignment for this regime (which was not possible for anyone, except maybe a Sfar, used to tossing off a page in a few hours; and this might have been appropriate for the venue, since I later learned that my Bousteau had already asked Sfar to work with him and that Sfar, no idiot, chose to accept with his own conditions, which did not please our slimy editor at all). Thus, with the third assignment, where I found myself in a completely grotesque situation (imposible to describe its complexity and inextricapability here), I decided to leave Beaux-Arts hanging, only three days before the final deadline. This was an unimaginable violation for the editors; the chief has left for somewhere in the United States, having simply told me that I could call him there (in the US!) if I had a “problem.” So I didn’t have any pages that month. But the story was the same the following month, still without any consultation, without any means to have a concrete discussion with Bousteau, and without a single response to my emails. There was nothing, nothing, nothing; nothing except the same manner of working, of working poorly, of getting anxious, of managing a crisis by myself, of being treated like an intern, worse than an intern, and of asking questions to a brick wall. It is clear that at this pace and after a second purposefully missed deadline on my part everything came to a halt after six assignments, around October 2005, at which point I had never received a contract, another discussion with Bousteau (which would have undoubtedly resolved nothing), or a single word of explanation.
I should say that at the end of this period, totally unable to complete my assignments, paralyzed by an inability to do any other work, with no rights and no regular payment, I found myself one day without a single cent in my bank account.
In your initial question (please excuse me for going so long, but I think this sort of ordeal is worth recounting in extenso), you asked me what I had gained from this experience. I think my account speaks for itself.
The most pathetic part of this story is the this collaboration could have been extraordinary. I had no lack of proposed ideas in the beginning. The subjects and the ideas were extremely interesting. It really could have been something. And, to not be totally negative, given the risk that I’ll be criticized again for “playing the victim,” (it’s hard to deny here that I got the short end of the stick, once again) I would say that I don’t regret any of the pages that I completed, looking at the end product and not the conditions in which it was created. The interviews I conducted, the exhibitions I saw, the places I visited, all of this could have been even more exciting than it was. All the same, I did meet [French philosopher] Bernard Stiegler, who met with me even when I had no choice but to be late for the meeting that had been set by Beaux-Arts, because they had set me another meeting just two hours earlier with the people from the Palais de Tokyo who were much less likeable. The philiosopher didn’t even have the meeting confirmed (I couldn’t call him, because I didn’t have a cell phone – which Bousteau knw) and still waited for me in the locked ICRAM [the Paris-based Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music] building even though he had a flight several hours later. He still met me, as I said, to explain his role and his position at top speed, in less than half an hour, with unparalleled kindness, professionalism, and pedagogical instinct. It was an unforgettable meeting for me. Bernard Stiegler deserved at least twenty pages of comcis for the single half hour he spent with me! On that point, I had proposed doing other, longer assignments, for a later issue or a special issue – an idea that was dead on arrival. I also met Jean Nouvel, who let me visit the Museum of First Arts while it was under construction. I also had access to the Mona Lisa room and the Wedding at Cana room [at the Louvre] before they were opened. This was all very stimulating. We truly could have done incredible things if Bousteau had deigned to hear my complaints, or even my ideas. But there was nothing, nothing, nothing.
Furthermore, I’ve saved you the best for last, and this finale returns to the beginning…it is clear that the destiny of this collaboration was foretold from its inception. I should have seen it myself, since in our very first – and only, I’ll repeat – meeting, Bousteau, sitting me down in his office, called in his head designer; I didn’t know this guy from Adam but I would be working with him. So it was useful that we meet. But of course our Bousteau could see nothing better to do than to introduce the designer to me and say, “This is Machin. He won’t be too involved because he thinks you’re an idiot.”
What did I take from this experience, you asked?
That the press are the most incredible pricks that the world has ever seen and that they act like pigs; they sully everything and everyone they touch. I want nothing more to do with this brood.
You sometimes have very harsh words for the press. Do you think comics is particularly poorly treated compared to mediums like literature, cinema, or music – or are they all in the same boat?
Undeniably. Cinema, music, literature are all treated the same. But I must say that it’s not exactly the same, after all…those mediums are treated very badly but I fear that comics is even more criticized despite the undeniable evolution, in recent years, of its media treatment. Or rather, should I say: yes, comics is just as poorly treated as all the rest. Its treatment has evolved from non-existent or terrible, to just as mediocre as everything else. Is this better? I don’t know. Let’s wait and see…
But I do want to temper my critiques, all the same. No, this isn’t a complete reversal or an indication that I don’t stand by my previous statements; I do. But I’m as biased as anyone. Obviously not all journalists are bad. Obviously not all journalism is bad either. As it happens, not all articles about my work are bad. Obviously some articles are even very good, very laudatory. That’s hard to deny. If I remain angry at the mediocrity of the press, it’s at the press in general, in the majority. If you look closely, there are always exceptions to the rule, articles and people who stand apart from the rest. But that’s the problem, and the worst of it is that the best journalists are often those who feel injured by an attack on the general mediocrity of their colleagues.
I could mention [journalist] Jean-Christophe Ogier, for example. He’s always so active, because he as to be. How can you criticize someone who battles at France Info and at other outlets, trying to defend comics? How could you ask for more from one of the rare journalists who responds to comics publishers? But there is the fact that this doesn’t make his articles or his points of view irreproachable. I have always found him a little lukewarm, a bit in that middle ground that displeases me so about journalism in general. But I would be unfair to criticize him just because he is so visible…he has a difficult job, he can’t be on point about everything, all the time. While I do find him timid in general, I was surprised by the acuity of his perceptions about my work when he interviewed me at the Bastia festival in 2005. This was one of the best interviews (for me, at least) that I’ve had the honor of giving. I also have an excellent memory of the interview that took place in Paris, at the Maroquinerie in 2003, when Journal 4 was published. I have a just as excellent memory of the interview at Amiens most recently, in October 2006, conducted by Patrcik Merliot.
Isn’t this all just a function of the time spent on this or that project? A function of backing this or that horse? Even a function of time accelerating, given the pace of modern society? Undoubtedly. But isn’t it the role of a critic, if not that of a journalist, to do everything in their power to set aside the material concerns that require them to hit a certain word count, and reach the heights of providing real critical perspective on a work? It is clear that all this is a function of quality, and that the apparent quality, that of most active critics, is extremely low. When Christophe Steffan (using the pseudonym Fufu) makes a well constructed critique of a single scene from Journal 3, but uses it to make a moral judgement about the narrator and by extension the author, he’s making a respectable critique. When LL-d-M make his violent critique of Journal 4, even if it hurts me, even if there are two or three questionable points, it is undeniable that we are on a completely different level from the digusting prose of a Joel Rummello from La Provence. It is also undeniable that it’s better than the tepid, false praise that I’ve read or heard, in that vile “Mireille Dumas” style of complacently flattering me while placing me into a box of “painful challenges of homosexuality in rural areas” and “a work without concessions nor false modesty,” and even “his fine, precise black-and-white linework.”
Once again, this is all a function of style. But the style makes the man. The style makes the thought. In a time when professors have become “profs” (suddenly losing two syllables) and speak as poorly as their students, in a time when journalists don’t even hear that they are repeating themselves as they rush to write in a “big league” style, when they spill the beans on the identify of someone like Frantico [a cartoonist working under a pseudonym, now known to be Lewis Trondheim] under the pretext that “everyone knows who it is,” when they never give more than a straightforward reading of a work for readers who they see as idiots, and add one or four stars to “recommend,” or not, the work in question, it’s difficult to even speak about style.
Style is dead. Form has died with it. This comes back to your earlier question about fiction and whether we can read an autobiography as fiction. I’ll answer that here by saying that everything is a function of form or style, of speech and language, of the quality of culture. But it would take me quite some time to go on those tangents…
A deleted scene from Journal 3 appeared in the last issue of Bananas (published spring 2006). Are there other sequences like this that you removed?
Yes, but that one was the most publishable. In fact I have many discarded pages. Except that, often, these are sequences of only three, four, or five panels. So it’s difficult to present them elsewhere, later one; They are often part of a train of thought that I abandoned. So there are very few complete or near-complete scenes that I removed.
This excerpt is especially interesting because it highlights the similarities between your work and music (counterpoint, rhythm, etc). Why did you remove this in the published version of Journal 3? Was it a question of balancing the subject matters in the work?
Yes, you could say that. I said to myself that if I was going to take on music as a theme, as a subject, or even as a “form” that often governs the construction of my stories, I woud need to devote at least sixty-some pages to the topic or integrate the theme into the whole book. This would have complicated, maybe overcomplicated, the already very elaborate construction of Volume 3.
From the beginning, you’ve addressed societal issues in your work; at first, this was related to problems you had encountered personally (exclusion due to homophobia or unemployment, for example). In more recent work, you address politics more directly, whether it be local politics in your book on the Maison des Auteurs (and how it was criticized by local socialists ) or national politics in “J’appelle à un octobre rouge” [I Call for a Red October], where you caricature some of our national politicians. Do you see yourself as a politically engaged author?
Yes. I have consistently said that Journal is an essentially political project. There’s just the fact that, in direct and concrete terms, I know nothing about politics. I vote for the left, even for the far left even though I seem like a far right reactionary to many people. It’s rather funny. That being said, I have a broad view of politics as encompassing the entirety of “people living together.” In the end, there’s always some confusion or equivalence between ethics and politics for me…but if we have to talk about politics concretely, in the strict “media” sense of the term, I think it woud be better to refer to Phillipe Squarzoni and his recent comic Dol [Fraud], recently published by Les Requins marteaux.
You sometimes have illustrations in the press (for example in the regional magazine Actualité Poitou Charentes or in the magazine for [professional rugby team] Biarritz Olympique, Vie Ovale). Is this for fun, for diversifying your work, or for financial reasons? (I must admit that when I see the tenderness in your portraits of the Biarritz Olympique athletes, I have a tendency to lean towards the first hypothesis…)
Well, it’s all of the above, actually. I have very good relations with the folks at Actualité Poitou Charentes…is that because it’s a regional publication (of excellent quality) where the editors don’t have the same heineus personalities as the Parisian press? I don’t know. I have a tendency to think so. The portraits of the Biarritz Olympique athletes are the result of a completely unexpected circumstance, and I have good memories of this work. In short: I was going to do a long comics journalism piece focused on the club but, once again, I didn’t hear anything after a while no one responded to my emails. Is it because the idea of throwing an gay man, an openly gay man who does not hide his taste for well-built men, into the heart of a rugby club ruffled some feathers? I’ll never know. But I think that this adventure could have been much more interesting and more serene than their hysteria implied…
Humor has started to appear in your work, espeically starting with Riche heures and in certain short stories (notably ‘Outrages’), as well as in your drawing style (with ‘cartooned’ characters). Is this related to your mental state in the period you’re discussing or is it a change in your approach to narration?
I have a hard time giving a clear response to this question. I think it was related to my mental state, which I wanted to indicate with a change in style. However, I fear that I have to go back to my previous style and tone. I’m not a very funny person.
You have worked at the Maison des Auteurs [in Angouleme] for many years. What has the studio environment brought you? Comfort? An exchange of advice and encouragement? What have been your notable interactions with Xavier Mussat and Philippe Squarzoni, with whom you share a workspace?
There as well, my presence at the Maison des Auteurs is mostly circumstantial. Since I’m one of the cartoonists who was present at the origin of the project, I was given, like Xavier, an “honorific” place in the studio, since I never had the goal of working in a studio. The experience only confirmed my suspicions. I definitely don’t regret my time in the Maison des Auteurs. I met a few people there with whom I get on excellently. I could mention Phillipe Squarzoni, of course, but also Jimmy Beaulieu and Melissa Beaudry. I stay in touch with them, across the Atlantic, with the secret hope of joining them in Quebec at some point. Lucas Méthé, a young cartoonist from Terrenoire [in the Loire region of France] who published a book with Ego Comme X, arrived very recently. He’s a remarkable draftsperson and an incredibly mature guy, dare I say, for his age. Unfortunately, I no longer go to the studio, but I think we will still see each other frequently.
I can hardly ignore Pili Munoz and Brigitte Maccias who manage the day-to-day operations of this great ocean liner. We’ve always gotten along well. Maybe I was treated preferentially in some ways, I don’t know. But I’ll need to have a fairly clean split, for a while, with this studio where I’ve spent nearly every day for four years. I have to get my bearings again at home.
At the same time, it would be a lie to say that this experience was beneficial for my work. Since I didn’t really “ask” to be in a studio, as I said above, and as is clearly proved by my absence from publishing, which we’ve discussed (I haven’t published a Journal since 2002, which coincides with my entry into the Maison des Auteurs), I have basically not advanced at all on the core of my work since 2002. I would have a hard time explaining why this is the case, or giving a single reason for this crisis. But the Maison des Auteurs would not have helped to motivate me, even if I had not spent four years there. It must be said that unlimited Internet access, which I discovered for the first time in the studio, has considerably altered my production and even my decision-making. It’s a true drug that is truly addicting. I can manage when I don’t have access to it, but I’m incapable of self-discipline when the computer screen is there. Also, although I’ve considerably widened the scope of my work in the past four years (notably, I started a photography project that is not a total diversion), I have also spent so many ineviable moments wandering around the web. So now I’m cursed to wander around like a drug addict. Haha.