I have a relationship with friendship that could perhaps be described as intense. I often think of my friends. I send them flowers and words. It is an opportunity that I maintain as ardently as patiently. With love. It happened more often than not that I forgot birthday dates, arrived late for friendly meetings; I am not a perfect friend, but I am, I believe, a valiant friend. Not all my friends are in literature — I have a friend nannya doctor friend, an architect friend, an HR friend… I also have several writer friends
My friend Kev is nominated for Goncourt, you may know. My friend Kev called on me to proofread his book and this, as you may also know, created a controversy. He was criticized for appealing to what the newspapers called “a sensitive reader”: me.
This is not the first literary controversy I have experienced, but it is certainly the one that has had the most visibility.
That’s right, I reread my friend’s book. With great care. I would even say with a lot of love. Kevin asked me “I would like to have your reader’s perspective”; I gave it to him, I was compensated, of course, but the truth is that I wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t had a pre-existing bond.
I reread Kev’s manuscript, I edited it, with my own sensitivity – Kevin, whom I had already edited, moreover, a few years ago, in a collective that I had directed, Body. This work built in relationability was trapped by a reductive critical lens – we spoke of it as censorship because I am a black person able to have a situated opinion on one of its characters, a black character . A few days before this storm, I had changed my profile photo on Facebook to one of me that Kev had taken at his cottage this summer. I loved my eyes looking at the person taking the picture.
I was invaded by emails from journalists, messages on WhatsApp, on Instagram, on my personal email, on my university email. It was back-to-school week, I had my classes to teach, meetings to go to, manuscript proofs for my own projects to revise. Will people have understood that I have not censored a single line of his novel, that Kevin’s writing will never be self-righteous, never smoothed out? His prose is lyrical, excited, haunted, a little monstrous. I admire him.
I refused to speak face to face with all but one of the journalists. I refused to be made the black person on duty, the sensitive reader on duty. I’ve said no to people I never thought I’d say no to. It was no, that’s all.
I was afraid that all this noise – this noise which nevertheless did not speak of what we preferred in the world, Kev and I, literature – would damage our friendship, make it take on the form of a discourse which does not was never ours.
I asked Kev, who was doing multiple interviews to promote his book and to explain his choice to call on me, if my media silence was inappropriate for him. His answer: no, absolutely not.
Kev asked me if I was angry with him, because the controversy had dragged me into the limelight against my will.
I told him no, absolutely not.
The possibility of speaking truth with someone I love, the beauty and clarity of this not-so-easy conversation in the middle of an international media storm, I keep it preciously within me. I hope that’s all I will remember from this somewhat strange week when I was woken up at six in the morning by journalists who had somehow obtained my telephone number. In the total desubjectivation of the controversy, rediscover the precious subjectivation of friendship, rediscover the gaze of Kev who sees me; a piece of the joy of both of us that remains.