Constance

It’s 7:35 A.M. in L.A. I’m in the kitchen, in the apartment I’m staying at each time I come here. The apartment is in West Hollywood: an old apartment, in an old neighborhood, with an old TV, an old fridge, old books and DVDs. It has a very specific smell that feels like home now for me. I’ve been coming here for several months, twice a year for the past four years. I have a relationship with this place, L.A., this apartment, the people here, and this thing is strong and expanding.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table. On the table is a Cholula Hot Sauce bottle, a can of Spindrift Blood Orange Tangerine, a gray vape, pens, empty mugs, a Whole Foods receipt, a Tivoli radio, and car keys. I'm facing the three-panels window. I see the edge of the next building wall, off white, six palm trees, some light, white clouds and the early morning blue sky. There’s a helicopter somewhere.

I have to move the car before 8 to not get another ticket. That’s what’s right in front of me. Behind me is my drive to the airport last night to pick up my son. Behind me is the fridge, a good old Frigidaire that sometimes does a strange roaring sound. I like having a fridge here, a real one, and not having one in Paris, where I don’t have a fridge nor a shower, just a single bed, a sink and a desk. Every combination in life interests me.

Stephanie

I want your thoughts on something. I knew a very successful lawyer and he said to me, “I don’t lie.” Something like, "I have one rule in my life and work: that’s it. I never lie. Not in the day to day or in court." I think about this all the time and what it means in all directions.

Constance

I’m not surprised that the person who told you “I don’t lie” is a lawyer. Lawyers don’t lie, as writers don’t lie. Good ones, I mean. I think those two positions, or jobs, or work, are very similar. At least in my experience. At least for me. It’s all about the truth. It’s a quest. And a fight.

The truth lies in the facts, in picking up the relevant facts. That’s what I try to do in my work, picking up the facts and articulating them in the space of one book. If I do it properly, comments are useless.

Do I lie in life? Not much I think. I don’t need to. But I use silence a lot. I don’t feel the need to say to other people how I feel or what I think constantly. I don’t need to communicate a lot with people, except once in a while with the two or three people I talk to regularly. But those people already know what I think, and I know what they think. So the best thing to do with them is to not talk and instead do things.

Stephanie

In respect to that last sentence, I want to try to make this like parallel play. Talking about the thing can erase it. There’s something corny about any interview on writing. Did anything happen yesterday in L.A.?

Constance

Yesterday was: work (emails), swimming with son, groceries at Whole Foods, lunch, work (research), coffee with Gracie, Pilates with son, phone call with Hedi, dinner, Movie (The Land of the Dead, 2005) with son, reading Artaud’s To Pass Final Judgment on God, by Semiotexte, phone call with Hedi, work (digging), two pages of DeLillo’s Underworld, trouble sleeping (sound of the fridge, planned to go to the hardware store to get construction headphones.)

I usually spend my days alone, and usually my days look like swimming, groceries, work, and nothing else, and I love it. But these days, it’s a bit different because my son is staying with me. He stays with me when I’m L.A. and not in Paris where my place is too small. But it’s easy to share space with him because we’re very similar in the way we use our time: he’s driven, and spends hours doing math while I’m in my own work.

He’s also very interested in discipline and doing something with our bodies. So, both of us go from very silent moments using our brain, to moments where we do something more physical together and talk (sport, food). We also have this tradition of movies, especially horror movies, which I find so interesting regarding the representation of evil.

Stephanie

How are the pools in L.A?

Constance

The pools are great in L.A. The outdoor ones, the WeHo public swimming pool, the Rose bowl in Pasadena, the Echo Park indoor pool… In a way, I don’t really care because swimming to me is not about pleasure. It is doing something that is not pleasant but will make me feel great afterwards. It just has to be convenient and easy.

But I have to admit that it’s great here. In WeHo, it’s very close to where I am and it’s good to be outside. In Echo Park, I love the drive, going east on Sunset all the way. I love the very local vibe of the pool, and the drive to the Rose Bowl is beautiful too, with the mountains.

The pools in L.A. are less crowded than in Paris. That’s the problem with Paris, too many bodies in too small a place, everywhere. I never swim in the ocean. I wouldn’t understand it. I need boundaries and limits. Also I have no interest in nature, not the slightest, except from the car or from the plane– especially when I fly over the U.S. The emptiness over the desert, which is not really emptiness, the pure feeling of space: it’s beauty. But the idea of one night or ten minutes somewhere else than Paris or New York or L.A. (or a large city, I guess, but these are the ones I’m familiar with) gives me the freaks.

Stephanie

I’ve been thinking about Offenses alongside work I’ve had to do for this assignment about Bruno Dumont’s Jeanne (2019). The filmmaking surrounding Joan of Arc is its own revealing history of something else entirely. The way Bresson approached his take Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, (1962) was to use trial transcripts. He wanted to avoid theater at all costs, “but to arrive at a non-historical truth by using historical words.” Reminds me of what you say about picking up the facts in one book, and then commentary is beside the point. (The trial parallel is also beside the point.)

Constance

Debré: Dumont and Bresson and The Trial of Joan of Arc and Charles Péguy’s Jeanne d’Arc and Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc were very much in my mind when I was writing Offenses. (I love Péguy, a French writer, Socialist and Catholic, but in his own way, from the beginning of the 20th century who nobody really talks about anymore.)

I feel very close, or at least inspired by those three, writers or filmmakers. I am attracted to their interests (the question of Evil and the question of the Saints), and by their style, especially Bresson, who used to define himself as a Janséniste, which sometimes I think I am too.

In Offenses, I began doing something I did with Protocoles, and will probably do for the next book. It’s something I love, and feel more and more interested in: using raw material from the real world, legal material, about something specific (a legal case in Offenses, and the implementation of the death penalty in the US in Protocoles). In each respective book, I used editing and some writing that I add through the book, which isn’t a commentary or an explanation (which, yes, is, and should remain, besides the point), a broader meaning.

That’s the magic of literature. It gives a double meaning to things, or actions, or sentences, or existences. Sometimes it’s a very literal one (what is said) or a non literal one, which is the literary level.

To me, that’s precisely the requirement that books must have: to hold these two levels together. (I’m talking as a reader, as well as a "book maker.”) If a book lacks the literal level, I can’t read it (when it’s blurry, full of generalities or concepts, for instance). When a book lacks the literary level (when it’s a story and just a story), I can’t read it either.

The literary one is, of course, essential. It makes the world intelligible, understandable. That’s why I think literature matters. Without it, the world and our own existences would be pure madness.

Stephanie

Here’s another strange strand: Artaud plays the monk Massieu in Carl Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928 (also based on the transcripts from the trial). I love how in one of Artaud's letters from Ireland, I think around 1937, he says he’s sending a spell. I kind of like that for this exchange.

Constance

Oh, yes, you’re right. I have totally forgotten about Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc. Artaud: I don’t know his work that much, I've read him a bit long ago (before last night and Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu, I mean, which is very beautiful and interesting). I was so suspicious because of the “madness” and my instinctive fear of it. However superficial the reason, that’s why I don’t know him so well.

Another thing about him, to continue in superficiality probably, is that he is one of the few writers who was also very much a “body" or a “face,” in the sense that his physical presence is strong in our memories. I’ve always been interested in the question of the physical presence of writers: the ones who are or were not embracing it, consciously or not, and the ones who do or did. I don’t even know exactly what I think about that, or what to think of that. It’s probably just that I think that style or personality (same) is something we can see in every manifestation of a person. And it’s rare that a good writer doesn’t have an interesting face/appearance/way to be in the world, as much as the other way round. There must be many exceptions, but I can’t think of a good writer who has no style in life. (Houellebecq, for instance, is very consistent and has a strong style of course, both in his work and life.) I can’t think of a bad writer who has style, I’m not talking about having specific clothes, more about a way to wear any kind of clothes, and a face, and to move.

Stephanie

I love this. It’s funny, I have two documents open on my desktop right now and they’ve started talking to one another. One is titled, “Jeanne” and the other, “Constance.” There’s something about synchronicities showing up or showing themselves that I find comforting, perhaps in the way other people would find discomfiting. Like someone saying that this is the right direction or the right wrong direction because it didn’t click elsewhere. If that makes sense? When was the last time this happened to you? Was there a text or sight that brought up something which felt like a confirmation or directive, or an instinct that felt strong? I like the idea that a story is channeled for a reason, not out of a need to make the next thing, but because the thing just has to be made.

Constance

About synchronicities, and “signs,” confirming something or in opposition: I never thought about that, but you’re right. It’s probably precisely what culture is about. Echoing something we have felt or feel in ourselves, and giving it a form or a representation, and in picking this or that, we make our path.

It’s like a relationship, what matters is not exactly the person you’re having the relationship with (“there’s no [-] relationship”), it’s where this thing between them and you is leading you, which is your very personal quest. Those things are extremely obscure to ourselves, at least to me. Whatever the reasons we can tell ourselves afterwards, we don’t know much about it, I think. The truth is that deep down I have no clue why I’ve done or what I’ve done in life or wrote the books I have written, and I have no clue why I am interested now in specific subjects or forms. As long as I feel interested in something I know is interesting, I don’t need to know more.

Stephanie

Compulsion or repulsion is magic, mystic, which also comes back to Jeanne. I love when Dumont refers to the absurdity of the form he’s working in, international models of moviemaking, by trolling the larger apparatus. The light sabres in Empire remind me also of the Star Wars hoods on the tribunal in Jeanne. Then, the singer Christophe is one of his castings a la Dreyer’s Artaud. Do you see any messiness or alignments between the French and American/English media landscapes?

Constance

For instance, although it’s not exactly your question, I love speaking English. I love spending half of my time speaking in English, although I know it’s not really (American) English. It’s my own French version of it, but it’s such an escape from the French—and from France. You always need to escape, no matter the love you can have for something.

The more I speak English, the more French becomes my working language. It becomes more and more precise, intimate, important, and also perfectly translatable. Seeing my books published here by Semiotexte, spending more and more time in the US, especially in L.A., having, probably, my closest friends here now, has changed my life. It gave me some new fuel. Of course, I was waiting for it. Of course, it came by chance. It’s always both.