Chantal Thomas in Toulouse: “The atmosphere of the Word Marathon is festive and lively”
Recently received at the French Academy, Chantal Thomas will be very present at the Marathon des mots, where she will be awarded the Marguerite-Yourcenar prize.
A historian specializing in the 18th century, Chantal Thomas made herself known to the general public in 2002 with the novel “Les adieux à la reine”, successfully adapted to the cinema as another of her fictions, “L’Échange des Princesses”, published eleven years later.
This is not your first participation in the Word Marathon. What do you like about this festival?
The fact that it is located in the city, which allows beautiful walks from one place to another, and that it benefits from the very enthusiastic and warm participation of the inhabitants. The atmosphere is festive and cheerful. In the best of cases, hearing texts, making people want to read them… or buy other works by the same author.
Do you read your own texts aloud after writing them?
Never. I write in a kind of inner silence. The musicality of words, I therefore feel it within me, in a logic linked to my relationship to language, to speech.
Which reader are you?
My selection of works takes place automatically during the time when I am inhabited by what I am writing. Books and phrases come to me that go in the direction of the current project. Otherwise, I always reread certain texts that are essential to me, such as “A Room of One’s Own”, by Virginia Woolf, which, each time, revives me and gives me the desire to write, to travel.
You will receive the Marguerite-Yourcenar prize in Toulouse. What place does it occupy in your literary pantheon?
Of course, I was marked by “Memoirs of Hadrian”, a brilliant book which guided me towards the historical novel. I know Marguerite Yourcenar’s work well, but I’ve never had the opportunity to meet her. I just ran into her once in a hotel bar. I saw her but I didn’t want to approach her: I didn’t think it would make her happy.
You “find” her at the French Academy, where she was the first woman to sit, from 1980 to 1987. How was the reception ceremony last Thursday?
I was happy to be received by Dany Laferrière. He delivered a very beautiful speech, close to a fairy tale, referring to “Alice in Wonderland”. As for me, I paid tribute to my predecessor, Jean d’Ormesson, whom I did not know but whose talent and personality I wanted to evoke as closely as possible.
In Toulouse, you pay tribute to the American author Joan Didion (1934-2021). How would you define it?
From her I especially knew “The Year of Magical Thought”, her most famous book. I had also been moved by the story “The blue of the night”, written after the death of his daughter. With the posthumous collection “Pour tout vous dire”, of which I signed the preface, I discovered his entire career, from 1968 to today. And his way of experiencing journalism as a literary adventure and a very personal work of writing. The information is there, clear and verified, but, from California to New York, she invests herself subjectively in a lucid and meticulous vision of the United States.
Your news is also a “Swimming diary” in which you tell your passion for swimming…
After “Memories of the low tide” and “Sand and snow”, I close a kind of trilogy. I tell what I experienced after the two confinements, namely the return to an undifferentiated state between body and mind. In a sensitive approach where I take memories as present moments, I try to give all their intensity.
A week of meetings and readings
After two years disrupted by the health crisis, the 18th edition of the aptly named Marathon of Words has regained its marks and its legendary proliferation. The festival opens this Thursday, June 23, with no less than 170 conferences, meetings and concerts for eight days, in around fifty municipalities in the Toulouse conurbation and the region.
How to organize to make the most of it? “The easiest way, advises the director of the event, Serge Roué, is to download the program from the site, or get the paper version from the Toulouse Tourist Office or from partner bookstores. Find the events that interest you, the themes that interest you. The meetings, which are free, take place in bookstores and the readings (free or paid) in performance halls. Book if you want to listen to the great figures of the festival, and let curiosity guide you”.
World news resonates in the stories of French and foreign writers that the festival honors, such as the American Joan Didion, journalist and writer who died in December, author of “The Year of Magical Thinking”. Six actresses presented by Laure Adler take hold of her work, a masterful chronicle of the American counter-culture” (read the interview with Chantal Thomas next page). The Word Marathon is very cosmopolitan. It hosts several Irish writers, such as John Boyne; the great Italian actress Laura Morante who read her first collection of short stories “Some indelicacy of destiny”; Max Porter, major figure in Anglo-Saxon literature, author of “Pain wears a feathered costume”, text read by Christophe Montenez of the Comédie-Française; black writers from the United States of Africa and Europe, including Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Prix Goncourt 2021 with “The most secret memory of men”; two other winners of the Goncourt Prize, Atiq Rahimi (“Syngué sabour. Pierre de patience” 2008) and Nicolas Mathieu (“Their children after them” 2018); three representatives of the new Hispanic literature: Elena Medel, Miqui Otero, Irene Solà… Among the novelties of this edition, a series of readings on pop culture, love, and surfing for supporters of the spirit of slip.
“This event, said is a moment of sharing with the public eagerly awaited by artists and writers, saw Serge Roué. They are happy to be part of the happy band of the Marathon des Mots. This invitation rewards their course of the year”.