Hear me out, Tess Ganti signs the Great American Novel

In listen to me till the end The first novel that made her the youngest winner of the National Book Award since Philip Roth, Tess Ganty introduces a cast of characters as eccentric as they are endearing, from a man who likes to douse himself in fluorescent liquid to a Hollywood actress who wrote his own. obituary to a mother horrified by her child’s eyes. It centers on blond and blonde, radiant beauty Blandin, who finally fulfills a mystical dream (that of leaving her body) except by being stabbed… Genre-mixing (one chapter is completely drawn) and masterful acting. With visions, Tess Ganty goes back in time, reconstructs the puzzle to reveal the events that led to this bloody denouement. And brings to life a formidable narrative mechanism that shatters the American dream while paying tribute to the sacrifices of a nation left behind.

In the video, The hill we climbPoem by Amanda Gorman

Madame Figaro . – How would you describe your heroine?
Tess Ganti. – Like a young girl who dreams of being a mystic when she has no faith. Robbed of the post-industrial environment in which he thrives, Blandin doubts everything but remains determined to achieve a form of divine ecstasy, not for spiritual or religious reasons, but because he is a trapped animal; he wants to leave a foreign body. An orphan, she went from house to house and was subjected to many abuses because of her gender and her vulnerability. For him, the mystics of the Middle Ages are the way out. It is impossible for him to leave the city of Wakka Vale. he has no money, no degrees, no family, no connections, but he can escape thanks to his spirit. Hildegard of Bingen then becomes his model; while other mystics adopt a posture of submission, Hildegard had a form of authority. He had confidence in his mind and displayed an insatiable curiosity, interested in mathematics, medicine, music, biology…

If Blandin didn’t graduate, it was because of an affair he had with one of his teachers in high school…
It was very important to show how this story destroyed his life. I wrote this part of the text in the MeToo era, thinking about all the relationships that both parties supposedly consented to, and which nevertheless had disastrous consequences for the life of one of the parties, always even… It can’t be. an imbalance of power between the student and his teacher, whom he sees as a mentor. It destroys Blandin’s sense of worth, his self-confidence, his faith in the education he received. He drops out of high school and continues his education, but no longer trusts anyone to tell him what to think.

There can be no power imbalance between the student and his teacher, whom he sees as a mentor.

Tess Gantt

Why did you choose this polyphonic structure?
I thought of some novels by George Eliot, James Joyce, or, more recently, David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith, who believed enough in their reader to allow him to create his own experience in a complex and diverse ecosystem. And as in any healthy ecosystem, every life form is essential, I wanted each character to enrich the book as a whole, without necessarily having a role in the plot. It was also about the fact that American capitalism strongly encouraged the abandonment of the individual center; During the Cold War, the CIA infiltrated writing programs to eliminate collective narratives for fear of communism. This has implications for American literature, and if you add to that the rise of social media and other platforms that push people to stay locked into one perspective, I’d say playing with multiple perspectives; Listen to me until the end it was also a way to fight against all that.

“The Internet and Social Media Really Only Reinforce Isolation”

All your characters have one thing in common: their loneliness…
It works. Loneliness, which is not new, but aggravated by new realities. Today, much less emphasis is placed on the concept of community. people move, lead a nomadic existence, change jobs, leave their families… Moreover, the Internet and social networks, which claim to expand your circle of relationships, actually only reinforce your isolation. Finally, the environment of this city in crisis that is Vacca Vale has extinguished all hope among its inhabitants. They were born with promises of safety and comfort that were betrayed.

Do you come from a city comparable to the one you described? Are you inspired by it?
I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, where the Studebaker car company played a key role, and the story of the Zorn company in the novel is very close to Studebaker. Like many cities, South Bend was born out of automotive economic activity and began to die when this industry left it. Studebaker, like Zorn, provided a prosperous existence for all for a century and was a source of pride and an important pole of attraction. It then closed in the 1960s, and even though I was born thirty years later, its ghost continues to haunt the town, giving the sense that we live in an otherworldly way. The economic devastation could be seen in the expressions on people’s faces, in the way people make decisions, in violence, poverty, crime, far higher than the rest of Indiana or the national average. When I was in high school, I saw that South Bend was on the list of the top ten dying cities in the United States… Every city has its own way of experiencing this despair, but as I write about it, I’ve come to see it as a pattern, a phenomenon that was occurring throughout the Rust Belt. And although millions of people live in these regions, they remain invisible. no art reflects them, and when no movie, no book, no series talks about what you’re going through, you get the impression that your stories and your life don’t matter. . You do not exist, including politics.

The internet and social media seem to be another common theme in your novel…
Most of us spend more time on our screens than in the real world… I wanted to witness the effects on our brains, communication, behavior, sense of humor. It is a grave mistake to imagine that it is a neutral technology that can be used for good or bad. The way it was developed – the way it was promoted, the layout of the content, the way it was configured – showed that it was primarily about making money through advertising or collecting our data. Its growth has had a detrimental effect on mental health, especially among young people, but also on democracy. we know that algorithms value the most radical and provocative content. we’ve learned to debate via Twitter without nuance or real listening… technology.

Listen to me until the end, by Tess Ganti, Ed. Gallmeister, 560 pages, €26.60. Translated from English (US) by Jacques Maillos.