A manifesto for diversity in literature

It all starts with an existential crisis. How do you write when you're in doubt? When the future is uncertain? And when literature has been shaped within certain predefined molds? These are the questions Alice Zeniter asks herself in A whole half of the world.

«Let's just say it's a book and that's that.» With these words, Alice Zeniter ends the preface to her A whole half of the world. If the book is surrounded by a «Flammarion Littérature» banner and written by one of the latest winners of the Goncourt des Lycéens - for the brilliant The art of losing in 2017 - it is not, however, a novel. Nor is it an essay. Rather, a reverie around fiction. A stroll.

So what are we talking about when we take these winding paths? Fiction. And the desire to rediscover and reinvent it. Because - let's not get carried away by polemical and often reductive language - the stories that surround us are largely sexist and conventional. Yet literature has a strength: in the same way that it has shaped our imaginations - sometimes to the detriment of certain groups - it also enables us to create others, with all the richness that promises.

Desiring men

Without calling into question what historical productions have taught her throughout her training, Alice Zeniter takes the liberty of questioning them. And to look to the future.

Since we can't go back over all the points covered in this book, we've selected a few. First of all, the male gauzethe fact that the vast majority of stories take the point of view of a heterosexual man, and assume that their audience will also see things in this way, especially when it comes to female characters.

The author criticizes this reflex, while admitting that she herself has sometimes adopted it in her novels, without even realizing it: «I was ashamed to realize that I'd never created a young, female character who wasn't beautiful, not desirable [...] I had to correct myself, I had to learn from the theory [feminism, especially coming from the feminist movement]. [...] I had to correct myself, I had to learn from [feminist] theory, particularly from King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes] consciously reshapes what was born of practice, which had been formed on truncated models...»

«[This male gauzeAnother immediate corollary is that it limits the image of men, by never presenting them as possible objects of desire, never giving them to look at, never immobile, never languid - never dozing, never stopping on the doorstep for a lover to marvel at seeing them standing there, never making a gesture that isn't out of the catalog of approved masculine gestures.»

Killing lions

Hence the title of the book A whole half of the world. You quickly realize which half of humanity we're talking about. «It sits there like a gaping hole. But Alice Zeniter, with her wealth of quotations and literary and sociological references, doesn't stop at criticizing patriarchy and what it means for women in the world of literature. She tries to identify the reflexes that lead to what she calls the »virile parade«.

This is how she describes a sort of canvas. To be a writer, a real one, is to consume a lot of alcohol, to «kill lions» (like Hemingway), to smoke, to go on adventures and often get into dangerous situations, only to be saved by a band of comrades-in-arms.

From the chick novel to the Real Nanas of Literature

«It's this image of the Real Guys of Literature, the Real Guys of Real Literature that keeps perpetuating itself and keeps coming back to me, to which I sometimes feel I have to measure myself if I want to be taken seriously.» Is this why she can't write without rolling a cigarette? Is it why she sometimes indulges in drunkenness? Alice Zeniter embraces contradiction. The image of the Real Literary Guy is perhaps more represented than lived. Even among these famous «Vrais Mecs».

Beyond the writer's posture, it's also the literary content that the French author dissects. She wants to get away from «novels as usual». A phrase she borrows from Sophie Divry: «[the novel as usual it's the one] that repeats itself successfully, demands a fashionable subject, a plausible and colorful plot, well-defined characters with whom we can identify, a style of digestible readability, something clear, immediately understandable and recognizable.» How do you get out of it? Modulate narrative styles. Remove characters. Put nature/the environment back at the center of the story - avoid anthropocentrism. Here are a few suggestions.

«I like characters with no visible arc, tossed about by situations, like Zeruya Shalev's in Husband and wife or Pain, who start a sentence in a state, hate themselves for feeling it, reflect on it, link to a memory, untangle themselves from it painfully, congratulate themselves on having escaped it and fall back into it, even more agitated than when they started.»

Indulging in scandal

Alice Zeniter is also an advocate of opening up our horizons: «There are always many elements that can be incorporated into the novel». She cites the usual minorities, increasingly in the media spotlight. She also adds nuances. We need women, of course, but also adulterous women. People in difficulty, drug addicts, incestuous people, scandalous people. At the risk of ending up as a big catch-all.

A catch-all? Yes, because the world is chaos. A merry mess. But literature helps to bring some order to it. Joan Didion asserted in Why I writeIf I'd been lucky enough to have even limited access to my own thoughts, I'd have had no reason to write. I write only to discover what I think, what I look at, what I see and what it means.«

Bringing back the collective

Bringing order to interactions, too. What if literature stopped relying on conflict to move a story forward? For the author, it would be a matter of making the elements of a story interact around common issues. It's a way, from time to time, to put aside the fighting and promote relationships. The relationship between people, but also the relationship that readers would have with the book, fiction and what it says about reality.

«What I've been looking for, no doubt, since the beginning of this book, beyond narrative techniques, are stories that allow me to enter into relationships with beings who are unknown to me and will become close to me, just as stories allow them - within fiction - richly complex and fragile relationships.»

But perhaps this would mean that these books are read - and written - outside an economic logic: that is, without us asking ourselves «does this chapter, this element, this page serve a purpose?»

Write to the author: diana-alice.ramsauer@leregardlibre.com 

Photo credit: © Diana-Alice Ramsauer for Le Regard Libre

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Aline Zeniter
A whole half of the world
Editions Flammarion
2022
239 pages

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