In a new essay, the writer praises failure. An unexpected, funny and exciting book.
What if only failure made creation possible? This is the question Claro asks Failure. How to fail better an essay in which a writer, translator, and editor invokes Kafka, Cocteau, or Hitchcock to speak with malice and wit of the benefits of failure when he does not enumerate his own failures, in the manner of Sei Shonagon, whom he says “to sulk.” a tiramisu” or “saying the word winner without teasing.’ We revel in his twists on famous quotes, from “For a long time I’ve failed at happiness” to “I’m building a company that has never had examples, and whose failure will only have imitators.” Interview:
Madame Figaro. – Why did you choose to write about failure?
Claro. – In a society where the concept of success seems to serve no other purpose than to humiliate or flatter, it seemed to me that literature, to the extent that it partially escapes the dictates of competition, is associated with failure. The latter is an integral part of the language
because to write is not to “say”, but to say in another way, to proceed with detours, repetitions, deletions, etc. For a long time I was shocked by Beckett’s statement. “Try again. Fail again. Better fail.” This “better failure,” which may sound paradoxical, or be nothing more than an oxymoron, actually refers to the practice of writing itself.
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How do translation, writing, but also reading constitute “schools of failure”?
Failure is not only a lesson in humility, it is above all a slow and difficult learning of a language when you write. We never write what we had in mind, and a published book rarely meets, at least in the short term, the response we envisioned. But all these “failures” are in no way negative, they constitute the strength of the craft of writing, its resistance to modern impatience. Translating and reading are two other activities that are inseparable from writing. Reading a book is above all to discover another language, another language. And translating means constantly facing the impenetrability of languages to each other. Working with language is first of all a way to fight against failure, to tame it.
Is this text also a self-portrait?
I didn’t want to limit myself to literary examples. Also, on a daily basis, I constantly face failures, whether it’s from someone I love, giving up on something, succeeding in klafutis, running without feeling ridiculous, or getting burned by bad books. Even Houellebecq’s book…
Failure is an integral part of language, because writing is not “saying” but saying something else.
Claro
What is your biggest failure?
I would say my inability to enter the distinction game, that is, refusing to appear on literary prize lists. This refusal, motivated by my aversion to the idea of competition but also by my belief that my chances are low, means that I may be depriving my work of a wider response. If we’re talking about existential failure, I think refusing to go to my father’s funeral ranks high.
(1) Making a wife, by Marie Darrieussecq, Ed. POL, 336 pages, €21.
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Source: Le Figaro
