That evening, that is to say November 27, Eva Bester received Lola Lafon in her “Grand Canal”, the daily (podcastable) which succeeded on France Inter to “L’Heure bleue” by Laure Adler. And it was good to hear the author, notably of When you listen to this song (Stock, 2022), invited on the occasion of her show “A state of our lives” (at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris , until December 9, then on tour).
Without the news ever being addressed head-on, we hear the emotion on the surface of words sometimes, the fatigue too, in everything that currently hurts and tears us apart. Lola Lafon talks about her “damaged” adolescence. His obsession with definitions: “I want to be able to turn words around and see what they mean to us, to me. » She said: “And their power and their harmful power when they are narrowed, when one must express oneself in few words. A word needs space. »
She would like her show to give food for thought. Says social media violence leaves her “stunned” right now. Adds: “I don’t know how to write reactions. I need distance, a little time, to get away from what I’m writing about in order to write about it. » “In an era of comments, it’s quite valuable,” Eva Bester responds, noticeably moved.
“Sense of nuance”
It will also be about glitter (and their future). On the obligation of joy. By Joyce Carol Oates and Walter Benjamin. Of fear and the fear of being afraid. But now the show is coming to an end. Lola Lafon thanks for this possible conversation. Eva Bester “nods, as she has since the start of the show”. This is the second time that the journalist has received the writer whose “intelligence and sense of nuance,” she later told us, she loves.
For the rest, the journalist admits that (“and Laure Adler warned [her]”) this daily newspaper is a “psychic and physical marathon”. “What I set for myself was quite humble: to offer something beautiful and from which we emerge enriched, curious, enthusiastic,” she continues. A breath of fresh air, in a way – in this sense, re-listening to the very beautiful program she dedicated to the writer Luc Lang – but, she wants to clarify, which is not “so disconnected from current events that that: we talk about it a little differently”: “I try for it not to be in gravity, but in depth. In a society that leaves little room for thought, I find this important. »
And to insist: “It’s not a question of avoiding the news but rather of talking about it while taking a little time so as not to scream in the chaos. » This is what she did by collecting the very necessary words of André Markowicz, an eminent specialist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Anton Chekhov.
