2024-05-11 03:01:00
This story begins with a clinical death. David Foenkinos He was dead for 40 seconds when he was 16 years old. After that silence rasped by heartbeats, with his mother next to him, he clawed his way back again, breathed again and underwent heart surgery. He French writer and filmmaker talks about that radical experience that changed his life a few hours after his presentation at the 48th Buenos Aires International Book Fair this Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Victoria Ocampo room. Perhaps that early proximity to death allowed him to develop a unique sensitivity to narrate the wounds of childhood and adolescence. Something of that mark of origin appears in her latest novel published in Spanish, Number two (Alfaguara), a lucid tragicomedy whose trigger arises from empathy towards the defeated.
Hundreds of young British people auditioned to play Harry Potter, the young magic apprentice imagined by JK Rawling. Two candidates reached the final and the actor Daniel Radcliffe was chosen, for having, according to the casting director, “that something extra.” Foenkinos immediately felt a connection with the boy who was discarded; So he decided to write about what it meant for Martin Hill, a name invented by the writer, to attend each new installment of the books and films of the saga and the difficulty in being able to escape the memory of his failure.
“Boredom is the best training for writing”says the narrator of Númere two. “Esa is a phrase I wrote in my fictionalized biography of John Lennon. In my childhood I was very bored; Now that the new generations are so subject to permanent entertainment, I believe that there will be no more new writers; “then I can affirm that I am the last writer,” jokes the author of The delicacy (2009), a novel that was a finalist for the most prestigious literary awards in France, such as the Goncourt, el Renaudot, el Medici, el Femina o el Interallié, and which was later made into a film by the author himself and his brother Stéphane. Foenkinos (Paris, 1974), who will turn 50 in October this year, has a solid jazz background, is a music lover and an unconditional fan of Lennon. “Writers have the ability to enrich the world through solitude, but I have the impression that I am never alone. When I write, I’m talking to my head all the time. “We are not that far from madness.”clarifies the author I am much better (2013), Charlotte (2018), a novel that rescued from oblivion the German painter of Jewish origin Charlotte Salomon, who was murdered in Auschwitz at the age of 26, when she was five months pregnant; The library of rejected books (2017), Two sisters (2020) y The Martin family (2021), among others.
–Madness is one of the themes of “Number Two.” Martin Hill, who did not get to play Harry Potter, ends up in a psychiatric hospital in part of the novel. Why were you also interested in exploring the question of fragility?
-Madness is a topic that surrounds me because this book addresses in particular the psychological fragility of a child who lives a traumatic experience. I wanted to be as positive as possible with the idea of having a very violent failure, but one that sometimes has value. It is a book that also talks about the virtue of failure; I’m not saying that you have to suffer to be happy but we can finally find a reason to face our difficulties.
-Did you find out anything about that boy who was number two, or is everything in the novel a fable very well amalgamated with the history of the Harry Potter saga and the movies?
-The beginning is totally real, I found that interview with the film’s casting director, which I reproduce word for word. For several weeks, there was a doubt between two actors. In my book, I tell the life of the one who was not in the casting. And I also tell a part of Rowling’s life, an incredible and romantic life. But I’m not a journalist and what’s funny is that there are people who after reading the novel want to know what is true and what is not. Since the book came out in England and a movie is being filmed (and a play is also coming out), I’m sure I’ll meet number two. I would very much like him to act in the film. I want it to be number one in the movie. My novel is the revenge of numbers two. When I published this book, I was told so many stories of number twos, of people in number two situations in families as well. What is very violent in this type of situation is not only the failure, but also that they cannot spend a day of their life without thinking about the life they could have had. That seems very literary to me.
–¿PWhy does literature prefer the defeated, the failed, the one who stays on the sidelines?
-I don’t know if I’ve ever been in front of a book about happiness or about someone for whom everything is going well. I think it would be an incredible challenge… You’re giving me an idea, the story of someone for whom everything goes well until something happens. I’m already writing another book, so I’m going to put this idea on the queue. When I write, what I like most is to take on a situation that seems extraordinary, such as the casting of Harry Potter, something seems very far away, that has nothing to do with our lives. However, little by little in the book I do everything possible so that anyone can recognize themselves in the story. I love the idea of starting from the extraordinary to go towards the intimate. I’m not saying that this works for everyone, it’s not a recipe, but that in literature we can find a means to think about our own intimacy. I am very excited when I receive comments from readers who see personal things about them in each of my books. Literature also serves to extract one’s own reflections.
-In this novel, Martin’s story begins to change when he meets another number two, Karim. How important is it to meet others who failed?
-When I started thinking about this novel, I was passionate about the tragicomic aspect because I wrote books and movies with a lot of humor, but I also have extremely painful books. I had the feeling that this theme allowed us to address that child’s pain very seriously, because I think it was horrible, but at the same time it is an extraordinary comic theme: someone who tries to escape from Harry Potter and can’t. So I progressively started playing with the idea of the number two. I loved that communion between all the number twos, all those who were rejected, all the actors who were not chosen. I really liked the idea that I could meet another actor who almost got a big role and it slipped through his fingers. As a film director, I experienced this too and had to choose between two actresses.
-And what happened to number two, the one that was rejected?
-It was for my movie somewhat jealousbut luckily that young actress, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, just won a César for best actress. We didn’t cast her because she didn’t look like the main actress and she had to act like her daughter. The wonderful thing is that the one we didn’t choose became very well known; so I don’t have any Martin Hill on my conscience (laughs).
-How does “The Library of Rejected Books” dialogue with “Number Two”?
-The truth is that I am very pleased that you see that parallelism or dialogue. I write very different books, especially after the worldwide success of Lthe delicacy, but I feel that unconsciously one is crossed by the same issues and these two books talk about how to live in the shadows. They have also made a parallel between Charlotte y Lthe library of rejected books. My wish is shed light on people who have been forgotten. And this could be the same with number two. I want to rehabilitate number two; May we not forget the one who was forgotten.
-If an author always puts pieces of his soul into what he writes, what about Foenkinos in Martin Hill?
-I have been number two many times. Before I was so sexy, I had many failures under my belt (laughs). My books didn’t sell for years and years. I was nominated for many literary awards and I was always number two. I was seriously ill as a teenager, I had heart surgery, so I don’t experience failures as a tragedy. And the great success that I can have doesn’t make me take my feet off the ground either. I think I have a pretty balanced relationship with life. I lived a death experience when I was 16 years old, I had a clinical death that lasted about 40 seconds. My mother was next to me; It was right before heart surgery. That changed my life because later I started reading and writing. I said this a lot in France in recent weeks due to the publication of my new book, The happy life, which has death as its theme, a book in which I tell the story of a ritual in South Korea that consists of experiencing one’s own burial. Each country has a different relationship with death and I find that exciting.