Interview with Laurent Binet

Abstract

Phil Watts and Richard J. Golsan: One of the most intriguing aspects of your novel (along with the title, of course) is its blending of genres. HHhH includes an elaborate historical narrative, an adventure story, autobiographical moments, a poetics, etc. Could you tell us a bit more about how you composed the novel and about the importance of speaking in the first person? Laurent Binet: The use of a fictional narrator has become standard, but I find it to be a method that in many instances is not very productive. One of the hallmarks of postmodernism is the elimination of the old academic distinction between author and narrator. Although I did not anticipate the use of different levels of narration, it imposed itself as soon as I started writing the first chapter. Without realizing it, I promptly posed the central question of the book, which is (I realized this years later, after the book's publication), how to tell a true story? As for the question of the blending of genres, I think it has to do with a distinctive characteristic and one of the strengths of the novel, namely, its ability to incorporate all other genres, not to adhere to any kind of prescriptive poetics. The strength of the novel lies precisely in its being a hybrid genre. PW and RJG: The narrator plays an important role in your story: his research, his relationship with those close to him, his work, those who have assisted him, his hesitation and doubts. This narrative technique is very effective, and it also seems to fulfill an ethical imperative (at the beginning, for example, when you thank the woman who provided you with a valuable document). Could you expand on your decision to organize the novel in this way? LB: For me, historical material and fictional material are two different things. Dealing with historical material certainly involves more responsibility. Similarly, I do not approach a real character--dead or alive, whether I knew him or not--and a made-up character in the same way. I felt I had to be faithful to all these people on the one hand, and to historical truth on the other. That being said, I have nothing against historical fictions. On the contrary, I really like uchronias like Fatherland (a 1992 novel by Robert Harris) and Inglourious Basterds (a 2009 film by Quentin Tarantino, discussed in this issue by Susan Suleiman). Through uchronia one can broach a number of interesting questions in a playful manner. I also very much like Dumas's approach: inserting the narrative into the gaps of the historical record. Recently, for example, I really liked X-Men: First Class (a 2011 film by Matthew Vaughn), in which a whole scenario is created about mutants involved in the Cuban missile crisis. As a matter of fact, I wrote an article about it, entitled Arendt and the X-Men (Hannah Arendt chez les X-men). (2) Conversely, I dislike authoritarian fictions (3) (romans a these) that resort to fiction to prove something: I consider this to be truly manipulative. PW: You cite Milan Kundera on the first page of HHhH. What role did his work play in your own writing? LB: I really like Kundera, even though, on the whole, he writes the type of novel that I hate: realist and psychological. It took me a long time to understand this: Kundera is a master in the art of metalepsis, the intervention of the author in the story. If I owe him anything, I presume it is this. PW and RJG: With regard to Reinhard Heydrich, you say that he was un porc malefique et sans pitie mais ce n'etait pas Richard (an evil and ruthless pig, but no Richard III). This sentence seems to refer to Hannah Arendt, who says more or less the same thing about Eichmann: Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain' (Eichmann in Jerusalem 287). It seems clear that you do not subscribe to Arendt's thesis about the banality of evil, and that Heydrich is, if not intelligent, at least crafty, ambitious, and conscious of the suffering he is causing his victims. …