Why I write

I write to draw what I see, because I am unable to draw it with a pencil.

Since childhood, I have been unable to draw freehand. I was often reproached for it. What might have seemed like a simple childhood difficulty sometimes went much further, as far as mockery and insults.

And yet I had images, characters, situations and stories in my head. I simply could not draw them with a pencil.

So I began to write.

Words became my pencils.

With them, I could finally draw what I saw. Create a character, a face, a street, a landscape, an era or an entire world. And I could do even more: give my characters a voice, a story, feelings, flaws and contradictions.

It was much later that I found another way around my inability to draw. When I had to create designs for guitars, I used tracing paper, cut-outs and assembled elements to produce the images I had imagined.

In the end, I had done with images what I had long been doing with writing: finding another path to give form to what I could see in my mind.

A teacher who opened doors for me

I was 17 when I had the good fortune to meet an extraordinary French teacher.

He had been in his twenties in May 1968 and told us about that period with a freedom that fascinated us.

He also told us about former students on the margins of society whom he had met over the years. Young men and women who had refused the paths laid out for them and chosen a different life. Some had even left to become goat farmers.

Through their stories, he made us understand that there was not just one way to build a life.

But what made him truly different was the way he taught.

He designed some of his lessons almost like cinema screenings.

I remember one day a classmate telling him that the great writers he kept talking about did not appear in Spielberg films.

With another teacher, the remark might have been dismissed. With him, it could become the starting point of a lesson.

That was how he passed literature on to us: starting from our world and taking us into his. Turning words into images, bringing writers to life, and showing us that a book could carry us as far as a film.

With him, a French lesson could become a cinema screening inside our heads.

It was through him, in particular, that I discovered Voltaire, who remains one of my favourite writers.

When he spoke to us about Baudelaire, he could begin with a text that seemed almost impossible to understand and gradually reveal images, ideas and questions behind the words.

He was not merely teaching us to understand a text.

He was teaching us to look behind the words, to exercise our imagination and, above all, to preserve our critical thinking.

I think part of my desire to write began there.

Lucky Luke, Bob Dylan and the western imagination

Since childhood, two worlds that might seem very different have mixed together in my imagination: Lucky Luke and Bob Dylan.

On one side there was the West of Lucky Luke, its dusty towns, exaggerated characters, outlaws, local dignitaries and an humour capable of turning society’s flaws into adventures.

On the other side there was Bob Dylan, his songs, his stories, his characters, his freedom and his ability to make an entire world appear with just a few words.

That combination inspired me enormously.

Without necessarily being able to explain it at the time, the western, characters, music, words and satire were already beginning to meet in my imagination.

Looking back, I can recognise part of that mixture in what I write today.

Satire, adventure and freedom

I also read Boris Vian and listened a great deal to Renaud.

And then there was Astérix, which I have always loved.

Behind the adventures, Romans, fights and humour, I find something that has always fascinated me: a whole population of characters whose behaviour sometimes bears a striking resemblance to our political and social landscape, past as well as present.

Eras change. Costumes change. Empires change.

But ambition, pride, rivalry, struggles for power and human absurdity remain remarkably familiar.

That is the strength of satire: to make us laugh at another world and suddenly recognise our own.

I also love Tintin for travel, adventure, distant countries and the discovery of other civilisations.

Literature, comics and music ultimately taught me the same thing: a story can entertain while saying something much deeper.

Make people smile, sometimes laugh, and then leave a question behind the laughter.

That is probably where my taste for satire and philosophical tales comes from.

Books as journeys

Some books never really leave you.

I particularly remember Les Cavaliers by Joseph Kessel, which was given to me.

That book stayed with me, just as adventure, travel and the discovery of civilisations have always fascinated me.

Discovering other cultures, other ways of living and other ways of thinking helps us understand other people. It also allows us to look differently at our own society.

La Fontaine’s Fables, philosophical tales, Voltaire and Montesquieu are also among my influences.

Some of Montesquieu’s writings, particularly when he discusses trade and relations between peoples, could almost have been written today.

That is something I find fascinating about literature:

centuries pass and settings change, but human behaviour changes much less.

When nothing is left

There have also been times in my life when I had nothing left. Sometimes not even the means to write.

Yet the stories did not disappear.

So I continued writing them in my head.

I carried the books I wanted to write within me, sometimes for a long time, simply waiting for the moment when I could once again put the words on paper.

I was disinherited.

It is part of my story that I recount in Nous étions deux.

When something like that happens to you, you can remain trapped by what you have lost, or you can try to transform it.

For me, turning what happens to me into something positive is sometimes the only possibility left.

There were periods when many things had disappeared around me.

But I still had my stories.

And as soon as I had a pen again, I could begin again.

At times, the pen was the only thing I had left.

Over time, I came to understand that writing could also serve this purpose: to take an ordeal, an injustice, a separation, anger or a memory and try to make something else out of it.

Not to erase what happened, but to transform it.

Into a story. Into a character. Into a few pages. Into a song. Sometimes into a book.

Nous étions deux was also born from this desire: to tell, to pass on and to transform part of what happened to me into something that could be shared.

You can lose possessions, money, a position, or part of what you thought you might one day receive.

But as long as a story remains in your head, it still exists.

And as long as there is a pen, you can always begin writing what comes next.

Politics, an endless source of satire

And then there is politics.

For someone who likes observing human behaviour, it is an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration.

Power relationships, ambitions, promises, contradictions, small acts of cowardice, great certainties and, sometimes, the sheer absurdity of situations form a permanent source of satire.

We can laugh at it. We can be outraged by it. But above all, we can use it to tell stories.

Inventing characters, exaggerating certain situations and moving reality into another world can sometimes reveal things we no longer even notice in everyday life.

That is also where part of the world of Cannibal Western comes from.

An imaginary world, sometimes improbable characters, humour and absurdity, behind which we can nevertheless recognise behaviours that very much belong to our own world.

But writing can also take me somewhere entirely different.

It can bring me back to something far more intimate: childhood, family, brotherhood, separation, memories and what remains in our memory as time passes.

That other journey helped shape Nous étions deux.

Two books that appear very different, but ultimately come from the same place: from what I see, what I feel and my need to tell it.

Writing, travelling and sharing

I have always been drawn to travel, other cultures and, above all, meeting people.

Some countries hold a particular place for me.

I am very fond of Canada, especially because of the Canadians I have had the good fortune to meet in France. Those encounters gave me a particular affection for the country and for the people who live there.

I also love Portugal, a country to which I feel especially attached.

So naturally, the idea that my books can now travel in their turn means a great deal to me.

Knowing that a reader in Canada, Québec, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland or elsewhere can discover what I write gives another dimension to writing.

For a long time, books allowed me to travel.

Today, perhaps my books can travel without me.

And if someone thousands of miles away can enter one of my stories, laugh at a character, recognise an emotion or simply share for a few hours something I imagined, then something has passed between us despite the distance.

That is probably one of the most beautiful journeys a book can make: passing from one imagination to another.

Writing is a permanent journey

In the end, all these influences and experiences come together.

Literature, comics, music, adventure, travel, politics, humour and satire, but also memory, encounters and personal stories, all feed the same need: to look at the world and try to tell it in my own way.

I am still unable to draw properly what I see with a pencil.

So I draw it with words.

When I write, I can return to my childhood, cross into another era, travel to the other side of the world or invent a lost town in the West populated by improbable characters.

And even when I have neither paper nor pen, I can continue writing in my head.

Perhaps that is, ultimately, the freedom writing has given me.

No one can stop me from imagining.

I can take something real, painful, absurd or funny and try to turn it into a story, a character, a song or a book.

I can travel without leaving.

And today, perhaps my books can make the journey in the opposite direction: leave without me and meet readers elsewhere whom I may never know.

If words manage to create the images that were in my head and make them appear in a reader’s mind, then the journey has succeeded.

That is why I write.

Because writing is my way of drawing what I see.

Because, sometimes, a pen was the only thing I had left.

Because I also hope that what I write can make people think, question certain certainties and, perhaps, awaken a few consciences.

I am not trying to tell others what they should think. I simply hope that a story, a character, a situation or a few words can sometimes make people want to look at things differently.

To make people laugh, to move them, sometimes to unsettle them, but above all to leave something behind after the final page.

And because writing is a permanent journey.

The books

Nous étions deux · Cannibal Western

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