Language taken from life

��douard Louis, 2014. Photograph by Leonardo Cendamo/Writer Pictures

By CATHARINE MORRIS

The name Karl Ove Knausgaard cropped up a lot at this year���s Norwegian Festival of Literature (mentioned in my last post), as you might expect, despite his not being physically present, as far as I know. Admiring comments all of them. The twenty-two-year-old French writer ��douard Louis, who was interviewed by Ane Farsethaas (of the newspaper Morgenbladet) in the caf�� of Lillehammer Art Museum, said that he was not very interested in contemporary French fiction; ���when I see in Norway that you���ve got people like Knausgaard . . . I���m extremely jealous���.

Louis���s first novel, En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (which has been translated into more than twenty languages), is about a boy growing up a downtrodden working-class village in Northern France. Eddy is gay, and is beaten up every day at school because of it. His father describes him as ���the shame of the family���. He wants desperately to fit in, but has no chance of doing so. This is very much a novel from life: Eddy Bellegueule is the name Louis himself had until he officially changed it, formally drawing years of suffering to a close.

The book illuminates the ways in which we are defined by the perceptions and words of other people (���I always had this impression that my childhood wasn���t me���, said Louis; ���it was like two realities mixed together���), and the ways in which we can escape them. As Farsethaas pointed out, it is, in a sense, a work of sociology; part of Louis���s project was to understand the system ����� ruled by machismo ����� that gave rise to his mistreatment. When he was a child he didn't take into account the kind of lives his parents had had ����� ���I would just hate my mum; I would just hate my dad" ����� and he had to learn to suffer on their behalf.

Louis observed that many of those who have written about class struggles in the past have focused on geniuses, people who were born different and do everything they can to break away. ���For me it wasn���t the case ����� I try to show almost the contrary.��� The idea that he was naturally cleverer than his sister or in some way freer than his brother strikes him as ���violent��� ����� ���we can create the differences . . . the difference for Eddy was created��� ����� and as a child he just wanted to be normal. "I absolutely wanted to be masculine, to be the most masculine"; ���my dream was for my parents not to lower their eyes when I was talking���.

He was animated on the subject of the romanticization of working-class life by those who have never experienced it (���It���s a way of telling . . . the people ���stay where you are��� . . . .���Ok, you are starving, but you are so authentic��� . . .���), and the impact of politics on the lives of those who have (���It���s not a question of words; it���s not a question of speeches; it���s a question of meat ����� how are you going to eat tonight?���). He spoke about the folly of mixing love and politics (���I would support the prisoners against the conditions of life but it doesn���t mean I would want to have dinner with [them] every day���); and about writing ����� including his influences (William Faulkner, Marguerite Duras, Toni Morrison). He said of non-autobiographical fiction, ���I just get bored. I don���t feel that I can change things���; and of style, ���You have to say what you want to say. What has not been said in the other books. And if you say different things you will always have a different kind of writing���.

Louis wrote Eddy Bellegueule to bring the French working classes into the public discourse ����� ���they have disappeared, mostly, these last years��� ����� and in particular to reproduce their language accurately, something he thinks many writers shy away from; it���s as if, he said, the process of producing literature requires the exclusion of such language.

���I have the feeling that literature was forty years late compared to art���, he said. ���I was thinking in writing Eddy Bellegueule: OK, stop using this oil paint, just take paper, just take plastic, just take glass���. Some people assume that taking language directly from life is easy, but it���s not, he said; it was the hardest part of writing the book: ���To construct it, to frame it. Which sentence do you choose? . . . How can you find a rhythm?���

Louis���s second novel, which focuses on immigrants in France, will be published in January. It is based on a four-hour conversation with an Algerian man he happened to meet, and it is 300 pages long. ���300 pages based on a four-hour conversation?���, said Farsethaas. ���You���re worse than Knausgaard.���