La décision de commencer à écrire
Jean-Philippe Toussaint, in the February 15, 2001, issue of the literary journal Bon-a-Tirer, describes the day he became a writer:
J’ai oublié l’heure exacte du jour précis où j’ai pris la décision de commencer à écrire, mais cette heure existe, et ce jour existe, cette décision, la décision de commencer à écrire, je l’ai prise brusquement, dans un bus, entre la place de la République et la place de la Bastille. Je n’ai plus la moindre idée de ce que j’avais fait auparavant ce jour-là, car, dans mon souvenir, à cette journée réelle de septembre ou d’octobre 1979 où j’ai commencé à écrire se mêle le souvenir du premier paragraphe du livre que j’ai écrit, qui racontait comment un homme qui se promenait dans une rue ensoleillée se souvenait du jour où il avait découvert le jeu d’échecs, livre qui commençait, je m’en souviens très bien, c’est la première phrase que j’ai jamais écrite, par : “C’est un peu par hasard que j’ai découvert le jeu d’échecs.” Ce que je sais avec plus de certitude, le souvenir se précise maintenant davantage, c’est que, rentré chez moi ce jour-là, ce lundi-là, je ne sais si c’était vraiment un lundi, mais il me plaît en tout cas de le croire (j’ai toujours éprouvé un petit penchant naturel pour le lundi), j’ai écrit la première phrase de mon premier livre dans ma chambre de la rue des Tournelles, dos à la porte, en face du mur. J’ai écrit la première version de ce livre en un mois, sur une vieille machine à écrire (et, comme je ne savais pas encore taper à la machine, je progressais avec deux doigts, maladroitement : en même temps que j’écrivais, j’apprenais à taper à la machine).
January 5th, 2009 20:40
So here it is in English, roughly:
“I have forgotten the exact hour or precise day that I began to write, but the day did exist, and the hour existed, this decision, the decision to begin to write, I made suddenly, on a bus, between the Place de la République and the Place de la Bastille. I have no clue what I had done earlier that day, because in my mind, this actual day of September or October 1979 when I started to write is mixed up with memories of the first paragraph of my book, which recounted how a man walking in a sunny street remembered the day he discovered the game of chess, a book that begins, I remember very well, it’s the first sentence I ever wrote, with: “It’s just by chance that I discovered the game of chess.” What I know with greater certainty, the memory here is more precise, is that I returned home that day, that Monday, but then I do not know if it was really a Monday, though I like anyway to believe it was (I have always had an innate affection for Mondays), I wrote the first sentence of my first book in my room in the Rue des Vosges, back to the door, facing the wall. I wrote the first draft of this book in a month, on an old typewriter (and, as I did not know how to type, I progressed with two fingers, awkwardly: at the same time I wrote, I learned to type).”
January 7th, 2009 13:08
Later he says that he was actually more interested in film than in books, and that it was probably a book by Truffaut that prompted him to pick up a pen. Truffaut suggested that aspiring filmmakers should write book instead, since it doesn’t cost anything and your imagination isn’t constrained.
January 17th, 2009 05:37
For me there’s been one filmmaker of the genius of the very greatest of artists, & that is Andrei Tarkovsky. He thought that generally film doesn’t exist as the autonomous art-form of itself in its true form; that it tended to be literature visually assembled, to put it crudely. Artists can of course cross disciplines, but the advice is a bit depressing. If someone is truly drawn to film, if we’re talking about a real artist, that stems from a deep source. On the other hand of course film-making is so complicated on all kinds of levels that it seems almost a miracle that the kind of artistic temperament of a Tarkovsky would successfully ‘get to the other side’, as it were.
Short snippet by Tarkovsky on film below if, or even if not, interested.
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=ENrzp_hZNxM
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