“Disruptive, feminist and timeless”. This is how Virginie Despentes (Nancy, 1969) defines herself, who returns to bookstores with the Spanish translation of one of her masterpieces, Baby Apocalypse (Random House), with which she won the Renaudot prize in 2010, one of the most prestigious literary awards in France.
“This is one of my most significant books. I wrote it when I was forty years old and that's when I realized that part of the critics who analyzed my books and many of the journalists who interviewed me were younger than me. She was no longer the punk and crazy Despentes who questioned everything. For the first time I felt that it didn't bother me and that was a pleasant feeling that, luckily, has been with me ever since", the author admits to La Vanguardia during an interview, in which she does not rule out that this book took her away from the margins, allowing her to take their concerns into public debate. “Since then they began to say that she was a cult writer. How things change, don't they?” she laughs.
The novel focuses on the search for Valentine, a missing teenager in Paris. To avoid a scandal, her grandmother hires Lucie Toledo, an inexperienced detective who, in the company of La Hiena, an investigator with unorthodox methods, will try to find the young woman's whereabouts. A journey that will take them to travel to cities like Barcelona, a city with which Despentes acknowledges having a special bond, to the point of considering it “the ideal city to write. Here I have finished my last three books. I don't know how to do it anywhere else." So much so, that he has an apartment in the Poble-sec neighborhood, where he spends long periods of time working with his dog.
“In Paris it is impossible to write and live in general. It is a very aggressive city, even more so than New York. If you leave your house someone will yell at you and if you don't you will yell at someone. It is very strange that you live in Paris and spend a single day without receiving an insult or a bad face. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen in Barcelona, but at least you have the possibility of thinking that you will have a nice day. Luckily I have them all. It is my ideal place”, recognizes the author of King Kong Theory.
In the Catalan capital he wrote precisely this story. “I got down to work right in the middle of Procés. I remember that at that time I understood absolutely nothing about independence, autonomy or nationalism. When you come from France, the concept of nationalism is not the same, for example. It took me a while to understand that something was going on here, but I spent a lot of time reading books and talking to people to try to understand.”
With this background scenario, she began to write Baby Apocalypse, a story halfway between social satire, contemporary thriller and lesbian romance, in which she not only denounces realities such as social inequality in Europe or the destructive hedonism of a lost youth but, also, he takes the opportunity to draw usually invisible protagonists. “I have grown up in a world where the representation of women was dismal. Like many of my colleagues, I identified more with men because it was not possible to find similarities with almost any actress or protagonist of any book.
In this sense, in his book he portrays, among others, adolescents who flee from their world or abandoning mothers. “I am very struck by what many describe as a bad mother. I'm not referring to a woman who wants to kill her children or anything like that, but simply, they are not interested in playing that role. I guess I partly see my mother reflected. She is a woman with whom I have a good relationship but I know that she never liked that role. She had me very young and there were things that interested her much more, like politics or trade unionism. People judged her and asked her to stay at home more. She didn't like that at all and I just thought 'let her be free, it doesn't bother me'”, she admits.
Despentes looks back and regrets that, in its beginnings, “the French literary world was very hard on me. It is with young authors in general. They do not let them advance and many end up convincing them that this is not their thing. They shouldn't listen to them." As a result of her novel, the author also gives her opinion on the reality of many adolescents, “whose controlling parents do not let them live independently. People of my generation don't always understand that their children grow up and that there comes a day when we have to let them fly. Your son is not a Chanel bag or an accessory of your person. Protection yes, but up to a point. And what I see is that new technologies only make things worse. Now you can call your child at any time if you feel distress. Before, we spent hours on the street and no one cared more than necessary.”
On present and future, the French is hopeful. “I don't have a crystal ball, but I want to think that what is to come is a party. It is true that the crisis is looming and that we are facing situations that are reminiscent of those of 2008. But I want to think positively. Look at the Me Too, for example. It is a movement that no one expected and that has come to change everything, as is the Black Lives Matter against racism. Of course, my personal assessment is that there have been a lack of resources for it to end up breaking with everything. However, although there are entities and politicians who want to go back, I think they have it raw. Young people have seen these changes and are more lucid and have more studies and awareness than years ago. Society always criticizes the youth but I put my hopes in them. They are the ones who have in their hands the possibility of creating a better world and, also, of ending the extreme right ”, she assures.
She also values herself and concludes that “I am no longer the young woman I was thirty years ago when I started writing. There is a change, it is evident, but even so I don't think there is a break with my past self, simply experience and breadth of perspectives. I have enjoyed these three decades a lot and I have a lot of gratitude towards life for how she is behaving with me”.
