Augustin Trapenard receives, Wednesday November 8, in his “Grande Librairie”, on France 5, Leïla Slimani, Goncourt Prize in 2016 for Chanson Douce (Gallimard) and author of Pays des autres, a trilogy (she is working on the third volume) on the Maroc, and Joann Sfar, from whom volume 12 of Le Chat du rabbin (Dargaud, 88 pages, 16.95 euros) is released. The journalist and presenter returns to the meaning of this dialogue (recorded Monday November 6 and which Le Monde was able to view).
I had already interviewed Leïla Slimani and Joann Sfar, but had never heard them together. It seemed interesting to me to bring them together to expose what they have that is different as well as what they have in common. They are also artists who think and reflect on the world.
We tend to believe that writers are disconnected, but I think that we cannot detach a text from the time and place in which it was written, and that literature cannot abstract itself from the tremors of the world. Personally, literature allowed me to learn to live in a world in which I was not welcome, and I mean that very literally. Literature has always been for me a model of intelligibility of life and the world: this is my experience and this is what I try to transmit.
You just have to read this literary entry to realize that it is imbued with the world as it is happening. I believe, I hope, that “La Grande Librairie” allows the emergence of complex words, that it sheds light. France is the country of thought, and, for me, doing a prime-time public service program devoted solely to writers is a form of resistance to pithy words and thoughts.
Precisely because it is the only show that gives voice exclusively to writers. No experts, no politicians, no journalists. At a time when complexity is no longer possible in many public places and in the digital space, the presence of literature is not only necessary but even beneficial.
We know that people under 40 have no or no television at all. So, to reach another audience, we thought with my team about offering other formats that are produced for digital. We can also talk about this “Right in the eyes” which ends each broadcast. A gesture of realization since the author finds himself alone in front of the teleprompter, a gesture of creation (the text is unpublished), it is a format that I thought up so that it could be distributed on social networks. And it works since, for example, Maria Pourchet’s “Right in the Eyes” and Nicolas Mathieu’s have garnered millions of views. But I must say that the issue is not in the figures, but rather that in France, country of Enlightenment, a program like “La Grande Librairie” can exist and be offered free of charge on the public service.
