Wednesday, October 15, 2014
10:00 p.m.
I have just returned from a round trip to Montpellier, two hours away. I made the drive early this afternoon to see Emmanuel Carrère, author of La Royaume, a well-received tome divided into two very different parts. The first is about Carrère's life as a fervent Catholic thirty years ago and his eventual loss of faith. The second part is a history of the early Christian church, focusing particularly on Paul and his acolyte, Luke, author of one of the Gospels.
Carré, who is fifty-six, has the face and physique of a lightweight boxer who has seen better days. His eyes are rather close-set, and his face has deep furrows around sunken cheeks. His large paunch --which contrasts with his slender build-- suggests a man for whom physical exercise is not high on the list of priorities. His mother is a historian and a member of the Academie Française; his father was an insurance broker. Carrère was born to, and continues to enjoy, privilege: one reason why, at the end of La Royaume, he says "I will never be admitted to the Kingdom.". In person, he is very soft spoken and thoughtful, as I found when I met him at Librarie Sauramps, the marvelous --and enormous-- bookstore off the central square in Montpellier, place de la Comedie.
The book uses all sorts of anachronisms --likening some historical figures to Ché Guevara and Vladmir Putin, for instance-- to render its subjects compelling, a technique which serves what Carrère admits is a pedagogic purpose. Despite having long ago lost the desire to participate in Christian religious services, Carrère still has an enduring fascination with Christianity, which he describes at one point in Le Royaume as a kind of science fiction. He also retains a great respect for many practicing Christians he has known personally, including his godmother, who died fifteen years ago. He mentions that whenever he saw her, a fervent Catholic and a composer of sacred music, her first question was always, "How is your soul?"
Not always very well, when he was young, is the answer. Using religious practice as a way of organizing a troubled psychic life, Carrère became rigidly observant. No one event led him to lose his faith, but perhaps greater emotional maturity --and the ending of an unhappy early marriage-- left him feeling less dependent on the rituals of the Mass to prop up his psychic state. Those things and five bouts of psychoanalysis.
Even as a secular fifty-something, Carrère is scrupulously conscientious intellectually -but never boring. For instance, in the second part of the book he admits to a fondness for pornographic films.
He does not, however, make the observation in passing, detachedly. He describes, instead, coming upon a pornographic snippet --of a young woman masturbating-- on the Internet. He tells us that, upon seeing it, he was enchanted --and absolutely convinced that the young woman was not a professional. Which leads him to observe that certain devotional works of Marian art are caricatures of Mary; and a few --like Caravaggio's, for which his mistress modeled-- teem with life. So, continues Carrère's argument, in pornography, just as in sacred art, the same questions of authenticity arise.
The passage is dropped into the book like a depth charge.
Which is why I want to ask him about it. I get my chance at the "Meeting With" held after the book signing --it's why I drove two hours to Montpellier, and will have to drive two hours back. "Yes!" --Just as I was the very first person to have my copy of "La Royaume" signed, I am the first person picked to ask a question, which I have written down.
The event is held in the auditorium of Montpellier's Mediatheque, and there is also a simultaneous transmission outside the auditorium, as the hall fills completely. I am nervous, but I have my script. I read out in French:
Perhaps because I am not capable of expressing my intimate desires so publicly, I was struck by the pornographic episode in "La Royaume".
At first reading, I thought it was your way of saying "I'm a sinner."
However, I heard you speak at another event and say that it was only a way of making the point that in the profane sphere, as well as the sacred, the same questions of authenticity arise.
My question remains, though. You have lost your faith, but have you abandoned the idea of--
THE PEACH!
The minute the words are out of my mouth, one half of the audience, cries out
"LE PECHÉ!"
That half is the censorious half of any group of people in France, without which the group would not be French. I have committed a malapropism, ending my question using the word for --a peach-- a feminine noun --instead of le peché, the masculine noun and the word for "sin".
The other half of the audience laughs. (I can only imagine that the audience outside the auditorium, mostly young -much younger than the senior citizens in the auditorium-- must have found my gaffe hilarious.)
Emmanuel Carré, however, just takes my question. He kindly elides the gaffe on which the audience focused:
I agree with your analysis of my purpose in inserting the story in the book. As to "sin", however, I wanted to stay away from that idea, which is so unproductively loaded with guilt. I do, however, recognize --and I know the emotion well-- the existence of feelings of culpability. I don't, however, think there is anything wrong with watching pornography on the Internet.
I am exhilarated at having articulated my question cogently, if not in perfect French. I drive through the night in a state of exaltation, Radio Classique keeping me company, the cool air pushing me forward towards Caunes, where I arrive about 9:45 p.m.
The village is absolutely quiet. The contrast between the fervent intellectual life of Montpellier and the sleepy rural village could not seem greater.
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