Author Jean-Baptiste Andrea at the launch of his new novel Watch him. Jean-Christophe Marmar
Back Watch himFnac Novel Award winner and Goncourt contender Jean-Baptiste Andrea takes us to 20th century Italye century, with the rhythm of a friendship both powerful and improbable that binds Mimo, the apprentice who will prove to be a brilliant sculptor, and Viola, the heiress of a great family. An interview with a wonderfully talented writer, screenwriter and director.
Madame Figaro. – How was the paradoxical couple of Mimo and Viola born?
Jean-Baptiste Andrea. – The first character in this story was Viola, a young woman trying to emancipate herself in a time and environment where “woman” and “emancipation” don’t go together. She’s my heroine, but I couldn’t see myself slipping into her shoes. I didn’t want to “sound like a liar”. So I took on the role of Mimo, a clumsy young man full of flaws who looks like me and tells us about Viola. These two are yin and yang, they cannot exist without each other. It was when I caught this pair that I knew I had the novel.
Why Italy? ?
It is the land of my ancestors, but I was cut off from it because the Italian immigrants did everything to make people forget where they came from. I have documents about my great-grandfathers, but I don’t know, for example, what year they came. It’s as if part of this story didn’t exist. This division has always frustrated me. Italy is also, and perhaps most of all, the first foreign country I went to as a teenager. Here I discovered the beauty of art. My world suddenly expanded. I wanted to pay tribute to Italy, my family, my training.
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Was talking about sculpture a way of talking about writing? ?
Absolutely. Everything Mimo says about sculpture is what I think about writing and any art form. The further we go, the more we purify our actions, the more we empty them. The less we say, the more this gesture speaks. Average doesn’t matter. A musician, a sculptor, an artist do exactly the same thing.
A musician, a sculptor, an artist do exactly the same thing
Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Prohibition, border, tyranny form the general thread of the book…
I abhor any form of totalitarianism. There are plenty of opportunities to debate in the realm of non-extreme ideas, no need to go crazy. Because what we are talking about is madness, and this madness begins with the rejection of reason and critical sense. Tyranny is a form of plague, and its antidotes are education, beauty, art. Besides, Watch him does not speak so much of tyranny as of all that opposes it, and causes it to fall into a pit from which it ought not to have come. As for boundaries and prohibitions, they are often figments of our imaginations or void-based decrees. My two heroes fight these hydras and don’t always make the right choices.
Source: Le Figaro
