Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Anne F. Garréta

from memory, and its fault lines are just as intriguing and suited to your project as its peaks.) As a rule, it’s not a good idea to line writers up in a room and entice them to talk. It’s enough to turn you off of literature (your last line of defense against the fierce disgust the human species tends to evoke in you). Your boredom must have been obvious; boredom puts you in a bad mood. A French novelist took offense at your words. At lunch, she sternly reproached you with what she considered to be your outrageously pro-American, dangerously disillusioned, cynically nihilistic opinions. Altogether too many adverbs. In every debate she tried to contradict you. She had a positive outlook, a great deal of faith, in addition to her adverbs. You are only ever skeptical. The idolatry of literature, its alleged eminent virtues, humanism, hyperbolic worship: they’re not for you. Contradiction fortified you; in the abysmal ennui besieging you, it was your only jubilation. It seemed to you that, far from taking these pointless debates for the banal rhetorical jousts they really were, your novelist took them personally, came to believe you despised her and was hurt. You also had not indicated that you had read her works. You had not demonstrated any consideration. You wanted, on the last evening, to repair the perhaps brutal impression you had made and, asking her for a copy of her latest novel, undertook to read it amidst the brouhaha of aperitif chitchat.

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