Maylis de Kerangal, writer: “The French extreme right is at the gates of power. "It's a disgusting period."

All the stories collected in the new book by Maylis de Kerangal (Toulon, 1967) have the same protagonist in common: the human voice. The French author, revealed at the beginning of the last decade with two masterful novels such as

Birth of a Bridge

—about the construction of a viaduct in the United States— and

Repairing the Living

—about a heart transplant—now returns with

Canoas

(Anagrama ), a volume that brings together a short novel and seven autonomous stories, although connected by themes such as absence, loss or loneliness. Not by chance, all of them were conceived and written during confinement, as she confessed at the end of February during an interview in a lavish and somewhat decadent room at the Paris headquarters of her French publishing house, Gallimard.

Ask.

In current literature there are not many authors who favor the sense of hearing over that of sight. Why write a book that is, above all, an acoustic experiment?

Answer.

I don't think my case is unique, but it is true that most writers privilege everything that is visual. It is very important that literature is capable of creating and transmitting images, but that visual record has become all-powerful, omnipotent and perhaps a little overwhelming. There are other senses, apart from sight, that an author can resort to.

Q.

You say that the idea for

Canoas

came to you during the pandemic.

A.

I spent confinement in a country house where I didn't have good coverage. I couldn't talk to my children, family and friends by video conference like everyone else did, as the connection was not good, so I spent weeks calling them on the phone at the back of the garden. All my contact with the outside, during those months, was the voices of others. Thus came the idea of ​​giving an acoustic form to literary writing, which is something I had not done before. I had not written stories or signed a book in the first person either, but it seemed to me that after the pandemic I could not continue writing as if nothing had happened, without any changes.

Q.

What fascinates you about the human voice?

A.

I have always been interested in the appearance of our ability to speak in prehistory. From an evolutionary point of view, the fact that we have this faculty today is the result of chance. If our larynx had not fallen to the level of the fifth vertebra, today we would be large macaques without that capacity, as happens to gorillas. There are 7.5 billion voices in the world and no two are identical. It is no coincidence that vocal recognition, and not facial recognition, is increasingly used to guarantee the security of online payments: the great capitalist system has understood that the voice is the only thing that really distinguishes us from our peers.

Q.

In your book, several characters change their voices after a traumatic event. How do you explain it?

A.

Our voices reflect our geographical and social origin, our sex and also our age, but also the accidents of life. I have a friend who changed her timbre and tone when she lost her husband: her voice became cavernous, somber, as if she were buried. The vocal cords absorb and catalyze the bad things that happen to us. So-called spectrograms demonstrate how grief or a painful emotion changes the voice.

Q.

In one of your stories you write that there are studies that show that women's voices have become more serious since the 1970s.

A.

Our ringtones are affected by social and political changes. To access power, women have been forced to speak in a more serious tone, like men. And that change begins with their entry into places of power. In our anthropological evolution, women have adopted the voices of the alpha males of their clan. Those who are dedicated to politics are a good example: Margaret Thatcher or Ségolène Royal took classes to sound more serious. High-pitched voices are still a symptom of hysteria, as if they belonged to people who are not entirely trustworthy.

“The novel is the highest level literary terrain for me, although it is in a process of losing its centrality with respect to autofiction”

Q.

When writing your books you use scientific texts, as if, more than a novel, you were writing an essay.

A.

It is because of my documentary passion. I do not have a literary background, but rather a social science background: I studied Philosophy and History and became interested very early in sociology, ethnology and ethnography. I formed myself intellectually with texts that were not fictional stories, but manuals and essays by specialists. They continue to be fundamental tools in my writing. The more I document myself to write my books, the more fiction becomes emancipated, the more a possible imaginary opens up before me. To manipulate those worlds, I need to know them well. Literature does not have to be a place where one learns something, but I admit that I like my books to be an instrument of knowledge. That was its role growing up: at 12 or 13, I started reading avidly to learn things. My love for literature comes from there.

Q.

Some of your novels are social altarpieces that may recall 19th century literature, that of Balzac or Zola. His books were panoramic views of the entire society.

A.

It's not that it's very fashionable, but I strive to preserve that social perspective, which has led me to describe professional environments in some books, to become interested in the world of work. Today, literature based on autobiography is more popular, a genre in which remarkable texts are published, although its authors also sometimes avoid the structure of society and the mechanisms of domination between social classes. On the other hand, the 19th century novel was very important for me because it allowed me to dissociate myself from what used to be called women's literature...

Q.

In what sense?

A.

Everything has changed a lot, fortunately, but when

Birth of a Bridge was published in 2010

,

there were still those who were surprised that a 40-year-old writer published a novel about the construction of a pharaonic work in California. For me it was a feminist gesture. I wanted to write like those 19th century authors, and not about home, my family or my children. I rejected that literature of interiority. It seemed to me that men had the right to talk about concepts, social classes and political ideas, and women, only about an emotional learning about life.

Canoas

is the first book that I allow myself to write in a different way: all the protagonists are women and a more intimate writing emerges from its pages. But, 15 years ago, I refused to be that kind of writer.

The writer Maylis de Kerangal, photographed at the headquarters of the Gallimard publishing house in Paris, at the end of February.Samuel Aranda

Q.

Would you say that autofiction and other variants of autobiography are occupying the central place that the novel used to have? Does literary testimony gain ground with respect to fictional stories?

A.

In autofiction, the writer speaks into the reader's ear. It's a very direct device that, when used well, can be extremely intense; There are Annie Ernaux's books to prove it. It is true that, if we compare it with autofiction, the novel is losing its appeal. But, in my case, for reasons of temperament, fiction remains my favorite field. In my next book, which will be published in September and will talk about the city where I grew up, Le Havre, I refused to use my memories or my experiences. I wanted it to be a fiction book, because that path always makes me go further and be freer. For me, there is something practically erotic in fiction. The work of imagination that Baudelaire used to talk about, the fact of connecting elements together by finding signs that unite them, I only find in the novel, an artifact that allows infinite possibilities. The novel is the highest level literary terrain for me, although it is, as you point out, in a process of losing its centrality.

“I wanted to dissociate myself from the feminine, to write like the authors of the 19th century, and not about the home, my family or my children. “I rejected that literature of interiority.”

Q.

Your books always receive good reviews, but sometimes you are criticized for being too “worked,” overloaded with information.

A.

I understand these criticisms very well, which does not hurt me, because I know that this inclination towards the documentary is my main fragility as an author. And, at the same time, it surprises me that what is too intense, literary in terms of style or overloaded bothers more than that standardized and globalized writing that has emerged as a product of ultraliberalism. Rather, we should be concerned that languages ​​and imaginations are becoming increasingly similar, and that there is a growing borreguism regarding the themes addressed by literature. To me, that is much more disturbing than an author trying to create something minimally unique. That uniqueness, in any case, is what I pursue.

Q.

She is the daughter and granddaughter of sailors. What mark have those family origins left on her literature?

A.

Since I was little I became familiar with maps, with marine cartography, with the notion of geography. It's advice my father gave me: always familiarize yourself with the geography around you. It's difficult to say for sure, but I suspect that there is also a relationship with absence: my father, but also my grandfather and my uncles, from both sides of my family, spent long periods at sea. The absence or the idea of ​​distance are literary very powerful, as is the return, the story that one tells when returning home, as in the

Odyssey

. Because of my father's job, I think I am seduced by slightly extreme jobs, in which there is a possibility of danger. And in which, often, great silence reigns.

Q.

At times, your imagination has more to do with American literature than with French literature...

A.

Yes, perhaps because, when I was young, I lived for a while in Colorado, from which 'Mustang', the short novel contained in this book, emerged. I was stunned by the size of the sky, the rivers, the great plains, all those enormous spaces that reminded me, regardless of the distance, of my childhood in Normandy. In Paris, the sky never fully shows itself, never reveals its full extent. In Le Havre, on the other hand, you live with the immensity of the sky all the time. It is not surprising that Impressionism was invented there: in front of the city's port, at dawn, Monet painted

Impression, Rising Sun

in 1872.

Q.

What is your opinion of Emmanuel Macron's France?

A.

It is a country that pretends that everything is going well, even if it is not. For me, the extreme right is at the gates of power. I am very concerned. And not for myself, who is a privileged woman who lives in the center of Paris, but for all those who are going to suffer and whose lives are going to change. Instead of creating a strong center-right pole, Macron's Government has been sliding into the territory of the extreme right. The media is also dominated by his ideas. Everything has changed very quickly. Just three or four years ago it wasn't like that.

“We ridiculed the left for being do-gooders, but today their discourse has been replaced by anti-immigrant and anti-poor nationalism. “I am alarmed”

Q.

What is the reflection of that social and political context in what you write?

A.

I do not use writing to exercise political activism, with the exception of a little book that I published in 2014,

Lampedusa

,

about the European migration crisis. I would like to return to that nonfiction work. I have a book project about xenophobia in today's world, about the relationship between the extreme right and the figure of the foreigner. Before we ridiculed the left as do-gooders, but today his discourse has been replaced by anti-immigrant and anti-poor nationalism. There is no vision or horizon. I am alarmed.

Q.

Your narrative is not overtly political, but it does contain a civic dimension. Does he write, to some extent, against the possibility of the far right coming to power?

A.

I do not hide my political opinions, which are present in my books when one pays attention. I dislike political speeches inserted in a fictional story because they tend to seem clumsy and heavy to me, but perhaps it is important to write like this in this disgusting period, in France as in the rest of the countries. That said, I thought things were a little better in Spain... Isn't that right?

'Canoes'.

Majlis of Kerangal. Translation by Javier Albiñana. Anagrama, 2024. 168 pages. 18.90 euros.

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