Deborah Levy. “No matter how many books we read, we realize that love will not last.”

We meet him one afternoon in May, at the Hotel Saint-Germain-des-Prés, late in the afternoon. Deborah Levy’s day, which she describes in detail, is already busy. In Paris, where he has a studio, he spent his morning writing, then cooked lunch listening to the radio to learn a few words of French; “Sometimes I also sing your songs.” He shared his dinner with a screenwriter friend. together they talked about life, cooking and swimming pools, as well as the annoying tendency to forget these plug adapters when traveling abroad. But also to write. “My friend asked me what to do when he can’t get a script to go on. I told him it was all about hiding and revealing.

A five-minute conversation with Deborah Levy is a snapshot of her work; an abundance where the intimate mingles with the universal, from material matters to literary or existential matters. A novelist and playwright, the 63-year-old British writer of South African descent recently found success with an autobiographical trilogy he wrote almost “to live“, connecting with the present time. What I don’t want to know, Cost of livingAnd Game statePublished by Éditions du Sous-sol in 2020 and 2021. Deborah Levy discusses the pain of divorce after a long marriage, the financial worries that divorced women experience, her relationship with her daughters, her work as a novelist. But also the simple joy of zipping down London’s hills on an e-bike. He is posting today The Spoon Position (And Other Cheeky Delights) (1), a collection of texts in which he pays homage to authors and artists who, from Lee Miller to Virginia Woolf to Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, or J.J. Through Ballard, inspired the woman and writer she became. He also signs the pages of seemingly insignificant moments in his life. Always reaching the heights of simplicity, wry humor and fantasy.

In the video, “On the Page” with Karine Tuil in the movie “Kaddish for Love”.

Writing rituals

Madame Figaro: Spoon position is a collection of texts that will be published for the first time in France. Do you have a special connection with our country?
Deborah Levy: Yes! We can build ourselves through literature from around the world, and I grew up with yours. I grew up with Colette, always wanted to have her childhood. I would have loved to have been born in Burgundy, until my knees were bent, for my mother to make me hot chocolate and then draw my attention to the screeching of an owl or a flower or a spider. But I grew up in the suburbs of London. we had a little garden, a little apple tree, some daffodils. Still, I thought to myself that I needed the warmth of Burgundy. I was already building a different life.

Were these lyrics written in the tiny cabin you rented? At the bottom of a garden in London, and which you describeCost of living ?
You know what? This house is sold, I no longer have a cabin. I want another one, that’s what I want most in the world right now.

So where do you write?
I am writing in my flat in London. I live with my daughter, who just graduated from university. It’s very noisy because her friends visit her and I love talking to them, finding out what’s going on in their lives, finding out what makes them happy or sad, listening to gossip, looking at their clothes… So when I have to, I retire. a room in my apartment. Now I also rent a studio in Paris. If I have something specific to write, a specific idea to think about, friends to see…or all of the above, I come here. And I like to write early in the morning, around 7 o’clock.

Get a seat

What connects the female authors you write about? Spoon position ?
These are women who all had to create a place that was not written for them in society. They had to build and write their lives. Virginia Woolf is an interesting example. She was a middle-class woman who educated herself through books from her father’s library. His brothers, they had the right to go to university, to Cambridge. He was ashamed that he didn’t study, but still he became one of the world’s greatest authors. I often think of his novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The story takes place in 1923, the book was published in 1925. Virginia Woolf witnessed World War I and the Spanish Flu. Important, historical moments. We have just gone through an epidemic ourselves, and that is why it seems to be dying down, rather than a war in Ukraine. I suddenly understood why Virginia Woolf began her novel with Mrs. Dalloway buying flowers. It may seem frivolous, light; but it is a very fair testimony to the manner in which he conducted his life through these great events. I also have a passion for Marguerite Duras because in her books she can do whatever she wants with her time. In The lover, he awakens his face when he is already old. And suddenly he takes us back in time, on a ferry crossing the Mekong. He taught me everything I know about timing, structure, and the subjectivity of storytelling. All these women had to make a life for themselves. A life they wouldn’t have otherwise given.

Marguerite Duras taught me everything I know about timing, structure, and the subjectivity of narrative.

Deborah Levy

All of them have experienced heartbreak, a wound that forced them to rebuild themselves, to create something else. Is this also your case?
Yes, but not so extreme. After a long marriage, I went through a divorce. We had to live in separate houses, find another way to live. This experience, many share it. But you can also find pleasure in it. building a new life around friends, a new family. Cooking, riding bikes, enjoying your kids growing up. Everyone thinks love will last forever. And no matter how many books we read, we understand that this will not be the case. You have to know how to mourn it, live with it. All of these topics are topics I cover in my book.

Do books help to live?
I want to give you a clear answer, but I don’t have one. Maybe it will come in a few years. In my books that have me as the main subject, I have created a narrator who speaks in the first person, who is very much like me, but not exactly me. What was important to me was to hear a female voice that could be both strong and powerful and fragile and lonely. Because we all are. we don’t have power all the time, but we don’t have to be broken all the time, but neither do we. We can be all of those at the same time, and that’s what I tried to say through this narrator. You should come back to see me in three years and ask if it helped me. What I do know is that as women, we need to speak loud and clear about what we want in this world, the connections we want to make, and the joy we find in everyday life.

Strong, powerful, but also fragile and lonely, that’s what we all are

shoes and lemons

There is a lot of humor and cheekiness in your books. Is humor a muscle you have to work on all your life at the risk of losing it?
I don’t think you’re more of a comedian. I believe that humor is part of tragedy and that it is part of real deep thought. If you don’t have a sense of humor, it means you don’t think enough.

You also often write about subjects in: Spoon position you devote a chapter to the Creepers, these shoes As a teenager, you carried the lemons you love to have in your kitchen… Why are they so important?
Because they are part of our world. We put a lot of emotion into objects. It starts from childhood when we bring our toys to life. The same mechanism occurs with objects. Sometimes they are just aesthetically pleasing. I like to have something in my house that I like to look at. It can be small, very simple, as long as it pleases the eye. Objects contain our emotions, our memories. Sometimes we just love their designs. But writing is also design.

(1) The Spoon Position (And Other Cheeky Delights)By Deborah Levy, 208 p., Editions du Sous-sol.

Line Papin wrote in the video After love turning pain and sadness into creativity