This text corresponds to the transcription of part of the interview above. Click on the video to watch the interview in full.
Jean-Baptiste Marteau: How did you react when you learned that you had won the Goncourt prize? Were you at your publisher?
Philippe Jaenada: It was very strange. I was at my publisher's. Last week, I was absolutely calm. I said to myself: in any case, either I have Goncourt and I'm happy, or I don't have it and I continue my life normally, everything is fine. And then, over the last two days, we've received dozens of emails from everyone we've known for 40 years: "Fingers crossed, you'll get it, I'm sure of it." And despite that, we become artificially tense.
You said, in your first reaction, that it was funny and that it felt good.
It's a kind of race. I'm a racing enthusiast, I love racing. It is a game that takes on importance and gravity, more in the approach to the public. This is the finishing post.
A game that will change your life. Your book is already very successful: it has sold 60,000 copies. You may reach 600,000 by the end of the year.
We'll see. I don't know, we'll see. But, in any case, yes, it’s nice. I can't say anything other than it's joyful, it's nice. So, funny... No, today, it was tense this morning. But this is fantastic news.
This is your thirteenth novel and it is an investigation into the death of an unknown woman, but not that much. We know her name very quickly: her name is Louise Cansot. We know she was killed. She is a young Breton woman who died on the Quai de Javel, in Paris, in 1949. But, in reality, she is unknown because apart from her name and her photo, we know nothing about her. You will find its trace, trace its history. It's a real investigation.
It's an investigation. That is to say, people who read the book must say to themselves, on page 12, when she is already identified under the name of Louise Cansot: "What is this title?" Ten pages later, she is no longer unknown.
We have all the information about her from the beginning of the book.
This is also the case for me. I try to fight against the illusion, to remain humble and lucid. I want to fight against the illusion that after months, years of research on her, during which I obtained all the information possible, I could think that I know her. I don't even know the sound of this woman's voice, nor the light in her eyes. So, for me, she remains an unknown. I know as much as possible about her and I try to pass it on, but I have to say to myself: I don't know who Louise Cansot really was.
It is therefore an almost journalistic investigation that you are carrying out and that you are telling us over more than 500 pages. You have a model for this: Maigret. You have read all 75 novels in the series.
When I discovered this news item, I had the impression of reading the beginning of a Maigret. It's really almost an archetype of news item, symbolic. I told myself I was going to read all the Maigrets. At first it was just supposed to be a sort of comedic twist. I told myself that my narrator, who is a bit like me, was going to think he was Maigret, who doesn't exist, and was obviously going to come up against reality. This would give rise to ridiculous, funny situations, and would lighten the book a little. It still helped me, especially thanks to the advice. While reading the 75 Maigrets, I noted all his reactions in this or that situation, faced with this or that problem. I obediently followed this and it led me, I think, to the culprit.
What is also surprising, without being able to reveal the ending, since you most likely have the name of the culprit, is your style. You challenge the reader, you criticize him sometimes, you even insult yourself at a certain moment. You have a sometimes disconcerting style.
My character is a slightly clumsy, slightly unlucky version of myself in this book. I'm not just that, I hope, but it serves to bring the reader with me and above all to lighten, as I said, the drama, the tragedy of this young woman.
This young woman, in fact, you are rehabilitating her. We won't reveal the ending, because there is a very beautiful scene and, in fact, we don't want to reveal anything. Have you thought about her? You obviously never knew her, since she died in 1949. Did you think of her when receiving this prize just now?
Of course. Among the first responses I made, when a pack of journalists rushed at me, I first thought of my editor, my first editor, Bernard Barrault, who died at the beginning of this year. The last thing he said to me, during our last lunch, was: “Go to your destiny.” My destiny is here, now. And then, obviously, I thought of her, but not only of her: of all the young women of the time who looked like her, as well as the young women of today who must look like her and who must face a lot of obstacles, injustices and constraints. So yeah, I thought about her, and she's pretty similar.
This Louise Cansot was murdered at this location, perhaps 50 meters from here, from France Télévisions, on the Quai de Javel. You were predestined to come on the 8 p.m. set.
There I am now. That was it, it was a written story.
You like these dented characters. It’s what guides you, inspires you. What's special about them? Why this person?
It's not the fact that they're dented, because it wasn't originally, it's the fact that they were dented. That is to say, what really propels me, revolts me and drives me, is injustice, in whatever form it may be. I'm very interested in the post-war period, so my latest novels take place in this period. The people who had problems, who suffered injustice and constraints, were often young women. So that’s what touches me about them.
We need to talk about artificial intelligence. Le Goncourt was obviously shocked by this new technology, particularly with Thélyson Orélien's book, "It was that or die". What should be done? Ban AI, check that each book was not written with it or, on the contrary, as you do and say openly in this book, use it sparingly for research?
AI should not be banned. It's like being on a beach and there's a tsunami and you're saying, "No, I don't want to get wet." We can't. AI came along very quickly, but we cannot ban it. What is necessary, at my very modest level, is, I think, to tame it, to domesticate it. It must be a tool, it must be useful to us and above all it must not replace us. But we can't pretend it doesn't exist. So, in the book, in a somewhat humorous way, I hope, I talk about it, I use the AI, I talk about it, I make fun of it or of him for that matter, I don't know, from time to time. But, in any case, I think you really have to own it and be honest.
