(Paris) The French writer Michel Houellebecq returned to contact with his public on Friday, dedicating comic strips in a good mood in an art gallery in Paris after what he said was the most difficult phase of his life.
“If I had known, I would not have come,” he joked when being questioned in front of the AFPTV camera. But, despite his notorious phobia of public events, he willingly lent himself to the signing game, with a few fans.
At the end of May and beginning of June, he had engaged in an unusually intense media tour for the release of his story A few months in my life, October 2022-March 2023.
He had to answer difficult questions around a period he described as catastrophic for his reputation and his mental health, after disputes with a Dutch director who is trying to release a pornographic film in which he is an actor, and accusations of Islamophobia.
The film, titled Kirac 27, has not yet been released. The writer, improvised actor, and the director, Stefan Ruitenbeek, must agree on the scenes that can be broadcast.
To date, “there is no agreement,” said Michel Houellebecq, questioned by AFP on the state of the procedure.
Rare
Friday afternoon, in the district of the Marais art galleries, in the center of Paris, the author of Serotonin seemed very far from this concern. If he had come, he repeated, it was out of friendship for the co-author of the comic strip.
Rare are the occasions when the author has made himself accessible to his readers since he became arch-famous with Elementary particles in 1998. Aficionados remember his passage in 2011 in a Parisian bookstore.
After the attacks of January 2015 in France, concomitant with the release of his novel SubmissionMichel Houellebecq was discreet.
But, on Friday, the writer was at the opening of an exhibition and sale of the original plates of the graphic novel adapted from The map and the territoryat the Romero Paprocki Gallery, which runs until July 29.
Released in November, it is the work of Louis Paillard, a drawing enthusiast from the Boulle school, who works as an architect and urban planner.
The map and the territory, the author’s fifth novel, was the event of the 2010 literary season, eclipsing the 700 other titles published. The critics had praised the dose of self-mockery, through a character of a slightly agoraphobic contemporary artist who meets Houellebecq.
“A reader at the start”
Louis Paillard, “he’s a reader at the start”, explains the novelist. “I don’t remember the dates,” he replies when asked when this friendship dates back. The designer will specify that they have been discussing for 12 years.
“I like it, actually. It’s not that much that I trust him. Why do we trust people? I don’t know,” Michel Houellebecq told AFP.
The writer was closely involved in this project, validating the boards at the end and discussing from the start the appearance of the characters, especially the protagonist, the artist Jed Martin.
“The first Jed Martin appealed to me less. […] I had ideas. I saw him more pale than the first character, more pale with black hair, ”he explains.
A graphic novel, according to him, “is a bit like a film adaptation, in fact. It still looks like a lot.”
In The map and the territoryJed Martin paints a portrait titled Michel Houellebecq, writerwhich he offers to the novelist.
In real life, Houellebecq chose the boards of Louis Paillard that he intends to hang on the wall at home: “I have reserved three. Three is no exaggeration.