“I do not write books to settle accounts”

Jean-Philippe Baltel © Éditions Flammarion

Your novels often question the gray areas of your genealogy. In addition, Does this new book extend this intimate impulse?

It took several books for me to understand my obsessive interest in family stories. Nevertheless, Whether on the side of my mother. Therefore, my father, my two families, who come from immigration, are quite shattered [du côté de son père, Vanessa Schneider a des origines roumaines ; et, par sa mère, haïtiennes, ndlr]. There have been a lot of ruptures of links, downgrades … Nevertheless, My mother left her family who resigned at 21. Meanwhile, my father did not know his real father “i do not write books and his mother was an alcoholic. Moreover, What interests me. Moreover, even in my work as a journalist, for example with the series I made with Raphaëlle Bacqué The world [le feuilleton Successions, publié en 2021 puis adapté par la suite en podcast et livre, ndlr], It is the idea that the family is a kind of pot in which a lot of things will happen that will follow us, define us, guide us. In addition, Mine was particularly busy, with romantic characters.

Is your father, a complex figure, was both psychoanalyst, writer, senior official … Similarly, Warm on him, was also to face a section of knowledge or power that intimidated you?

I had known for a very long time that I was going to write about my father. Moreover, Same child, I was aware that he was not like other dads. Similarly, I knew he had a biological “i do not write books father whom he did not know. For example, an alcoholic mother, an enormous siblings and that his family had experienced a very violent social forfeiture, which impacted him. Meanwhile, But I think I could not have done this work during his lifetime. Therefore, It would have been too complicated because there was already this subject of writing between him. Moreover, me, a kind of rivalry as soon as I wrote books rather than articles.

From the first pages of the book. Moreover, there is this very provocative sentence of your father: ” We are the first generation to have killed both the father and the son. What did he mean?

It’s crazy to go out that. In addition, It is a phrase of a shrink. Furthermore, My father loved having final formulas. Similarly, He said that in a Freudian sense. For example, It is as if he assumed the somewhat “i do not write books monstrous side of this generation of boomers. Therefore, who occupied a lot of positions, all the places of power, without wanting to let go. Similarly, I have lots of friends who come from the same seventy-eight culture. Similarly, Our fathers leave little room for their children. However, At the same time. Similarly, they had been raised in an education where family secrets persist, so they needed to free themselves from many things. Nevertheless, But once they freed themselves, they lived a lot for themselves.

You do not ignore your father’s black anger. Similarly, his ordinary misogyny, the fear that he was trying to arouse even in his home and the conflict that opposed you. Nevertheless, How did you find the right distance, without giving in to the idealization or the settlement of accounts?

First, I have a course of action: I do not write books to settle accounts. For example, “i do not write books But I could not write a shot book either. Therefore, because I knew all the facets of my father, including the most terrifying. In addition, I think he wouldn’t have liked it. Furthermore, Awarding him was also telling him in this truth. But I also have great memories of childhood. I admired my father, I loved him. And not falling into an extreme or another was a constant concern. I turned a lot to find the right balance.

Your mother was first erased behind your father’s omnipotence, before freeing it later. Has this gesture of postage of a housewife influenced you?

My mother said to me: “Never find yourself in my situation. »» It was something that guided me a lot. I had to find a job. that I work, that I study, not only to be financially independent, but also to have a fulfilling life in the work that “i do not write books is not linked to family life. For years, my mother’s life came down to children, meals, shopping. This is what is a little crazy in this generation of May 68: in the intimate sphere. women remained in extremely traditional roles.

You brush an ambivalent portrait of their generation in the book …

I am both very admiring what they managed to do and. at the same time, I find this generation very selfish. We still live with the achievements of May 68, whether at university, compared to women’s law or divorce. There have been a lot of progress for employees, paid holidays … but I also note that it is a generation that was blessed by the gods. They escaped everything: war, ecological anxiety … They never had a problem to find work. Additionally, They also quickly converted to the market economy, capitalism, and they did not prepare the future “i do not write books of generations after. They had a crazy chance and they know it. And then. in education, the freedom I had was very precious, but we did not protect the child much, we did not listen to him. In the education I give to my children, I try to be in an in-between.

Your father later nourished a shame with regard to his maoist youthful commitments. and yet he has kept his life all his life of this past …

I think this generation. until the late 1970s, really believed that it could make the revolution, that there was going to be a new, better world. They believed it. It was very hard to have to recognize that they had invested a lot in something that was a form of illusion. that they were wrong. And at the same time. it was a very strong period of their lives, there “i do not write books is also a form of nostalgia. I thought it was interesting to keep this political backdrop. not to make a book on characters only but that we also tell a society.

Your father had an isolated secondary house near the forest, which he kept like a den. He saw himself as a bear. Why did you think this character created?

My father never had the right to be a child. he has always been delivered to himself, without paternal or maternal authority, no presence around. He lived like a little savage. So all this mythology of the bear. it allowed him to find a part of childhood that he had not had.

Between the exsangue hospital and a flourishing funeral business, Hard skin Also gives a dehumanized world to read. What has struck you the most in this crossing of the health system and mourning?

I had published in “i do not write books The world A text on my experience in the hospital with my father. I had a lot of testimonies. The feeling that I have was that we are in a country that knows how to heal people very well. but that we do not know how to take care of this period between stopping treatment and death that can occur for weeks or months later. We are in total under-equipment, with too few means. And what is very worrying is that with the generation of boomers. and there are many of them, we are going to have more and more cases like that: families who will have to fight to try to find a place of end of life worthy [en 2025, la France pourrait enregistrer pour la première fois depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale plus de décès que de naissances, selon les informations que l’INSEE a données à l’A.F.P. “i do not write books en juillet dernier. En cause : le vieillissement des baby-boomeurs et une fécondité historiquement basse, ndlr]. It got angry because we could have anticipated, we knew there was an age pyramid. It arouses a feeling of deep solitude.

In Surname, Vanessa Springora unearthes the lies contained in her surname. The name of Schneider also contains false tracks. What challenges you in this reason for the deceptive surname?

What is paradoxical is that we shouldn’t be called Schneider [la mère de Michel Schneider a fait six enfants avec des pères différents. tous reconnus par Laurent Schneider, son mari officiel, avec lequel elle avait passé un pacte – ce riche industriel était en réalité homosexuel, ndlr]. It is an Alsatian name. In the end, there is nothing Alsatian. But it is a name to which we are extremely attached. so much so that my father disputed it a bit. In a paroxysmal “i do not write books moment, he asked me that I wrote under another name, which for me was crazy.

Family stories meet a strong echo today – My real name is Élisabeth From Adèle Yon. published in February and which sold more than 85,000 copies according to the latest figures arrested in July, demonstrates this. Like this literary school year, full of autobiographical family surveys. How to explain this success?

Everything is so tragic economically. politically, ecologically that it seems difficult to me to inscribe a fiction in a framework which is so moving, as difficult to apprehend, so anxiety -provoking. There may be a desire to return to your history to yourself. And then there is also something of generational: we arrive at ages where we lose our parents. And to write about the dead is to keep them alive.

You have two actresses in your family: your grandmother Anaclara. your cousin Maria “i do not write books Schneider, whose history has been brought to the screen by Jessica Palud (Maria2024). In the light of debates on the representation of minorities. women on the screen, what do you think is the journey of these two women, reified or reduced to certain roles, and the symbolic violence of cinema?

Cinema is like society. In the generics. my grandmother was credited “Anaclara la negress” [elle a notamment joué chez Sacha Guitry, et a été cantonnée aux rôles de servantes ou fantasme sexuel exotique. Vanessa Schneider remonte le fil de son histoire dans La Mère de ma mère, publié en 2008, ndlr]. My cousin Maria Schneider [à laquelle Vanessa Schneider a consacré le livre Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider en 2018. ndlr], She was reduced to the scene of a single film [Le Dernier tango à Paris de Bernardo Bertolucci, qui comporte une scène de viol simulé, tournée sans le consentement “i do not write books de l’actrice, ndlr]. But Maria, it was a cry, it was a character, it was a personality.

For a very long time, women have been denied a whole part of their identity. They were reduced to their bodies, to their beauty. Adèle Yon talks about that in My real name is Élisabeth [enquête sur l’histoire taboue de son arrière-grand-mère. internée de force dans un hôpital psychiatrique et lobotomisée, ndlr] : of all these generations of women who have been silenced, with literal and figuratively, by drugs, by internment … There, we begin to tell the stories from the point of view of women. And it’s great because it creates models for youth.

Hard skin Vanessa tailor (Flammarion)