Hello, the French Institute.
Thank you for the question, 
thank you for this interview.
So, the question of the ‘trilogy’.
It’s a good question.
Yes, Exposition, 
Suite for Barbara Loden,
The White Dress, 
do form a trilogy.
But I didn’t know that.
At least I had absolutely 
no idea when I started,
it wasn’t a plan, 
it wasn’t my plan.
It’s something 
that became apparent,
almost ferociously,
in the course of the work.
And today I think
it is indeed a triptych,
a triptych that is turned in 
on itself.
It’s a triptych both 
in terms of intention,
and in the formal sense,
in the form that I was able 
to give
I was going to say that I chose 
to give, but it’s not that,
that I was able to give to 
this intention.
My intention was, 
basically, today
I would say it was
to try to rescue the words
of a woman who couldn’t 
utter them herself
- my mother.
It took me three books,
not to speak in her name,
but to speak for her,
which is not the same thing 
at all.
The form I gave her words
in each book is structured 
in the same way
 – the necessity to talk about her,
to talk about me,
and to do so by talking 
about another woman:
The Countess of Castiglione 
in Exposition,
Barbara Loden in 
Suite for Barbara Loden,
and Italian artist Pippa Bacca 
in The White Dress.
And it’s very important to me
that I articulated her words over 
the course of these three books.
In order to get to The White Dress
I had to feel my way, snake my way 
through these three books,
 with the help of these three women,
so that eventually I was able
to say what had to be said.
The White Dress.
You’re asking about 
book’s structure.
I have this memory
of a moment
that was almost perilous 
while I was writing.
I’d discovered 
the story of Pippa Bacca,
who is at the heart 
of the book,
by chance.
I was on the examining board 
at an art school,
and one of the students 
had made a documentary
about this Italian woman,
this young Milanese artist
who had decided to travel 
from Milan to Jerusalem
in a white dress,
hitchhiking
to transmit a message of peace
to countries at war.
And after I’d seen 
this student’s film,
I knew it was a story for me.
But at the same time 
I found it incredibly difficult.
What had this girl 
wanted to do?
Was it about sacrifice,
was it a dramatic artistic gesture?
The story haunted me.
But what was the link 
with my mother?
It took me a long time 
to work it out.
And I also spent 
a long time afraid
to tackle a story that 
had been told so well
in this student film.
I wasted two years 
on this question.
After two years I realized
that he’d made a film,
and I was going to write a book.
So I gave myself permission
to grapple with the topic.
Anyway, the topic interested me
only on condition that 
I could talk about my mother.
But what’s the link?
It might seem obvious, at least 
it seems obvious to me today,
but it took me another two years 
to work out the link between
this young Italian artist 
and my mother.
And the link is this object,
so significant in anthropological,
artistic, aesthetic terms.
The wedding dress.
It’s really the central theme 
of The White Dress.
What does this dress,
one of the great symbols 
of virginity, engagement,
promise,
hope,
sometimes disappointment,
in any case promise,
what does this robe
have to do with our lives, 
my mother’s, mine, ours,
and also with the work of artists?
That’s when I discovered a world,
because the wedding dress
is an object that artists, 
particularly female artists,
tackled throughout the 20th century.
And they made wonderful things.
The White Dress is also about that.
Exposition.
You say it’s just the right word.
The title of the first part 
of the trilogy,
you say it fits.
No doubt, yes.
It fits the whole trilogy,
I think you’re right.
It’s as much about 
revealing oneself
as it is about 
concealing oneself.
It’s as much about talking 
about oneself
as it is about creating a character,
several characters,
who talk about oneself, 
about me,
but also about the world.
I’ve always found writing 
about myself
rather tedious,
and that turning it into fiction 
is more interesting,
as long as there’s disruption, 
of course.
This question of exposing 
and concealing
is really what’s going on 
in all writing.
Or one can generalize further,
those who think they are writing 
pure fiction
are probably closer 
to themselves,
and it’s definitely true
that when someone says ‘I’
one can be as distant 
from oneself,
and truly hidden 
as it’s possible to be.
In any case,
I’m very interested in 
what you said,
the idea that the title ‘Exposition’
could be used for all my work.
I’d say the work of 
every writer,
even the whole project 
of literature
– that’s putting it a bit strongly 
perhaps. Anyway,
that’s what it’s all about.
You also asked 
how my family, 
how Pippa Bacca’s family
 – I don’t know about 
Pippa Bacca’s family, 
because I’ve had 
no news of them, 
and I decided, 
after wondering whether 
to contact them, 
not to do it. 
I wanted to feel 
completely free. 
Above all, as I say 
in the book,
I thought it was difficult, 
given that I couldn’t help 
clarify anything 
– it was already clear, anyway – 
I couldn’t help the family 
deal with their grief. 
Because that’s what it was.
The story of Pippa Bacca, 
this Italian artist, 
who had gone on 
this big trip 
in a wedding dress 
on Europe’s highways. 
This story belongs to us all. 
What I did in the book 
doesn’t belong to her family. 
I find it interesting that 
there was no contact 
between us. 
As far as my family is 
concerned, 
I don’t know. We’re a very 
close family, 
everyone has always 
generously supported my books. 
As for my mother, 
who died soon after 
The White Dress came out,
 I just had time to read it 
to her, 
and she just said one 
important thing to me
as I closed the book 
she said to me: 
“You saved me.”
Yes, what she said was 
important.
Photography in Exposition, 
the cinema in 
Suite for Barbara Loden, 
and in The White Dress 
I wanted, 
even before I heard 
the story of Pippa Bacca, 
I wanted to write about 
performance art, I’m not sure why, 
but I had the impression, 
which I confirmed was the case, 
that performance art has 
something to do with fiction. 
But with the proviso, 
most importantly, 
that there wouldn’t be any text, 
any photogram, 
that there’d be no image 
of any performance 
alongside the text of 
The White Dress.
That didn’t interest me at all.
It’s precisely the opposite 
that interests me. 
In other words,
to let writing alone bring to life 
her photographs, 
her films, but more than just 
the film, the process of filming, 
Pippa Bacca’s photos,
The whole world 
she documented, 
the performances for 
the white dress, 
to bring all this to life 
in writing alone.
What I found 
very interesting was 
the pure description
of the many performances 
that I think are important, 
and that I find interesting, 
in The White Dress.
What I wanted to do 
was to string together 
one line about each work, 
each performance, 
into a single paragraph,
one line on each performance,
it was something 
that interested me,
but maybe would be 
a bit tedious for a reader, 
but I was very surprised 
to discover that 
it was a section that 
many readers mention to me. 
I found that interesting.
In a way it confirmed 
this idea that after all, 
literature is there 
to make us aware 
of the world, of art, images, 
every image, everything.
Writing in fragments isn’t 
really a decision 
it’s not a project, 
it’s like breathing, 
for me the blank space is 
as important as the fragment,
I think anyone who 
writes in fragments 
feels this. 
I’d like not to write 
in fragments,
and every time I start 
a book 
I hope, maybe I’ll do it 
one day, 
to write in one go, 
but it’s such a joy 
to write in fragments 
because you have to 
use ellipsis, 
and I find in 
the experience of writing, 
that the ellipsis makes it 
possible to work on 
oh I don’t know, 
yes on these splinters 
of thought, the sentence, 
fundamentally 
that interests me most.
If I have an ideal of writing 
it’s more about 
the sentence itself, 
for the sentence, 
issues of syntax, 
the rhythm of the prose, 
poems, 
than about writing in fragments.
Nothing simply comes to me.
If I have a model, 
in terms of the fragment, 
it’s more poetic writing 
that interests me.
But in terms of my work 
it only interests me. 
With the proviso that I can 
combine it with prose, 
which can be quite difficult, 
because there’s quite 
a tense relationship 
between form and narrative, 
by which I mean 
between a form of abstraction 
in the language, 
an abstract prose style, 
the abstract shape of 
the sentence, 
but also the desire, 
choice, challenge 
for it to be very prosaic, 
to tell a story. 
And this relationship between 
the form of the work 
and the requirement to tell 
a story in an efficient way, 
I think concerns many writers.
Yes I do have influences, 
Beckett of course, 
after all I wrote a book 
about Beckett, 
my first book, 
it was also fragmentary. 
Vila-Matas too, 
he considers this a lot 
particularly in his book 
"Chet Baker piensa en su arte", 
and many others, 
Henri Michaux, 
a whole library of authors, 
who, 
between prose and poetry, 
haven’t stopped thinking 
about it since Homer, 
we all think about these questions.
