For more than 30 years, Pierre Bayard has published books with the regularity of a metronome that form a coherent and unclassifiable work, not far from becoming cult among his loyal readers. A section of my library is dedicated to him, where his titles which appear in the very serious Éditions de Minuit are neatly aligned. As he was in Quebec this week for a conference at the University of Montreal, I was finally able to meet this author whom I have been reading for a long time, also a psychoanalyst and professor of literature at the University of Paris-VIII. I brought my favorite books for signings, like a groupie.
It was a joy to meet Pierre Bayard who cannot exhaust my reading pleasure with each of his publications which I receive like a gift. His books are always the promise of a unique literary game, since he has somehow invented his own niche, that of theoretical fiction and interventionist criticism. We must not let ourselves be impressed by these definitions, because his work with its many ramifications is shot through with humor and is truly aimed at all those who are curious. “There is no greater compliment for a writer than to hear that he is unique,” he says. Indeed, humor is totally central to what I do, but not everyone sees it. I am probably one of the rare authors in the humanities who constantly wonders how to make the reader laugh or smile. »
Like many people, I discovered Bayard in 2007 with How do you talk about books you haven’t read?, which must have disappointed those who hoped to find a worldly survival guide, while others frankly laughed at the author’s maniacal rigor towards a seemingly absurd subject. Over time, Pierre Bayard has created a character-narrator who expresses himself as a very serious theoretician, but he wants to make it clear that he is also a paranoid person who draws us into his delirium.
“That’s what’s interesting about paranoid delusions compared to schizophrenic delusions,” he explains. If you talk to a schizophrenic, you can see that things go in all directions. But if you talk to a paranoid person, you must first realize that he is paranoid. It is a very organized speech, which is the speech of conspiracy theorists. What I try to do is give a speech that is extremely organized, but still flawed. To stage it on a literary level, because beyond the study of madness, it is our relationship to the world that I describe. Our cognitive biases. »
And that is the fascination of these readings, because I always end up adhering to the theses of this narrator, as I adhere to the story of a novel. Bayard does not write essays, but fiction in the form of often far-fetched investigations, where ambiguity and paradoxes reign.
I wrote a book about Proust that begins by saying that Proust is too long, and the narrator suggests removing the digressions. It’s absurd, but it’s also true.
Pierre Bayard
Pierre Bayard tells me that he constantly has several files in progress, that he takes years to construct his books, that he always has a title before writing, that his work is a tree divided into seven branches with subcategories and that his manuscripts are almost always 186 pages long. Why 186? ” Why not ? », replies the one who also believes that his trilogies do not have to be limited to three titles. “Each book obeys strict constraints in terms of number of pages and organization,” he explains. I spend my time making my life impossible. This is a Freudian view of the world. The characteristic of the human subject is to make life impossible for oneself and, unfortunately, also to make the life of others impossible very often. I just blame myself. »
What invites adventure in Bayard’s books is the somewhat twisted, yet very logical, intellectual path of his narrator, who “smoked the carpet”, according to him. We want to know how he is going to convince us of his thesis, and Bayard’s whole challenge, when he has found his culprit, is to prove it. His most recent title, Hitchcock was wrongoffers a counter-investigation around the film Rear window, in which he demonstrates that the crime we all know is not what we think. He traveled untrodden paths with How to improve failed works? Or How can we talk about places we haven’t been?revealed that writers of the past have blithely drawn into the future with Anticipatory plagiarism, analyzed the work of the famous Russian author of War and peace And The Karamazov brothers In The Tolstoyevsky enigma and even explored parallel universes while wondering What if the works changed author? Or What if the Beatles hadn’t been born?
I won’t tell you the hours of pleasure I’ve spent there over the years. In addition, as Bayard is a big fan of detective and science fiction genres, and concerned about his readership, he always adds suspense to his writings. But who is his audience? “It’s been very clear from the start, it’s not the academics, even if they read me. It is the public passionate about culture, that of exhibitions, of concerts. This is why I eliminate academic jargon terms in my writing. I speak to my neighbor, to my dentist, to the Balzac enthusiast. »
I have just converted an aunt to Bayard who visits museums, and she wants to borrow them all from me. “It’s a work that escapes me in many ways, it unfolds on its own,” he admits. From the moment you agree to introduce humor and madness into the human sciences, you open yourself up to lots of new issues which did not exist until then, and which no one has studied seriously. I take great pleasure in discovering them. And you are right that my work is consistent, because you should recommend that your readers buy all my books. Buying just one makes no sense. »
Come to think of it, I should have brought all my copies to get them signed.
My three favorite books by Pierre Bayard
- How do you talk about books you haven’t read? (Les Éditions de Minuit, 2007)
- Would I have been resistant or executioner? (Les Éditions de Minuit, 2013)
- The Titanic will sink (Les Éditions de Minuit, 2016)