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<\/strong>adam biles<\/span><\/strong>
\nI\u2019d like to begin by talking about how this book came to be. Was this your first attempt to write about what your stepfather did to you? Or were there several attempts, whether through fiction or memoir, before you arrived at the form that ultimately worked for you?<\/p>\nneige sinno<\/span><\/strong>
\nI worked on it in fiction, a little bit in poetry. I think both forms actually work on their own terms; they\u2019re just different. People tend to think Sad Tiger<\/em> was a hard book to write because it\u2019s on a hard subject and brings back a lot of suffering. And that\u2019s true, but the opposite is also true. It\u2019s almost too easy when you have that material as a writer. The narrative is already given. Something happened to you. And I think that\u2019s one reason why I was so reluctant to engage in memoir\u2014paradoxically. I wanted my art to come first. I didn\u2019t want to use the framework of my life as an easy way to tell a story. <\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> What changed?<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> I\u2019m not completely sure what happened, or how it happened. When I studied literature, I wasn\u2019t interested in autobiographical genres. I didn\u2019t think that would be the path for me. For some strange and unconscious reasons, I convinced myself, later in life, to do something I hadn\u2019t wanted to do in the first place. And I really think it\u2019s the form that convinced me. For another project, I decided to write in the first person, and I realized that I was stepping into autobiographical nonfiction. I wrote the first pages, and I put them away. Then I reread them. And when I reread them, I realized what I was doing. I could see what the book could become, and I asked myself, Do you really want to do this?<\/em> And I didn\u2019t want to do it, but I was so attracted to the form\u2019s potential that I told myself, I\u2019m going to do it anyway.<\/em> <\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> One of the things that feels radical about the book is that you are interrogating its form page by page, sometimes paragraph by paragraph. And rather than try to smooth out the paradoxes or the inconsistencies, you interrogate them. You write, \u201cThis is a memoir, not a work of great literature, it\u2019s not meant to be polished, that would make it feel like a construction, would impact its authenticity.\u201d On the same page, you also write, \u201cDear reader, kindred spirit, sister, I have a confession to make, but I have no desire to mislead . . . . Don\u2019t ever imagine that this is book is a confession. There is no private journal, no possibility of authenticity.\u201d Did you feel these paradoxes and these tensions as you were writing, and was it a difficult thing to negotiate in the work?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n I wanted the form, the sentences, the paragraphs to take the form of spirals, never reaching closure.\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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NS<\/span><\/strong> If I say that the genre of this book is memoir, or testimony, it has to follow certain rules. It has to sound authentic, for example. But it\u2019s always a construction too. I want my reader to feel the weirdness of the form. Because on the one hand, it is implied that I\u2019m not going to lie. I\u2019m not going to make anything up. But even a confession is a construction, and even when I don\u2019t invent any fact or situation, there is an aspect of creativity, of craft. And, of course, when craft is involved, the confession is polished, though in an unpolished way. I want my readers to be conscious of this paradox. I don\u2019t want them to read this book thinking that they\u2019re just hearing someone tell their life story. I don\u2019t tell everything. I tell the things I need to tell. I write the words I need to use because I want to produce a certain effect. And even an eyewitness account or an article in a newspaper works this way. The act of reading is built on some expectations that the text either fulfills or doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\nBut most of all, I\u2019m a reader. I love that paradox of creating meaning and deconstructing it all the time. I wanted to make the reader concretely aware that she is reading. But I didn\u2019t want to be too theoretical, or too meta, or too postmodern. I wanted to convey the feeling that there\u2019s something raw about this conscience exploring itself. <\/p>\n
AB<\/span><\/strong> There\u2019s something about the form that is particular to what you\u2019re writing about. It\u2019s not like you could take the form you landed on for this book and apply it to another project. Perhaps the only way that this kind of abuse can be apprehended by the reader, if not comprehended, is through the presentation of these paradoxes. <\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> I was trying to tell the story of how my brain works. And my brain works like this because of trauma. There\u2019s no authoritative voice in that head. All these voices are always fighting each other. I wanted the reader to perceive\u2014to feel\u2014what\u2019s going on in my brain when I think about this. How unconcluded everything is. Every time I tried to find something stable, I always saw the other side, and it became unstable again. And I tried to mimic that very strange and unsatisfying process. It\u2019s also an ontological question. It\u2019s the desire to try to understand something that you know you will never understand. I wanted the form, the sentences, the paragraphs to take the form of spirals, never reaching closure.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> There\u2019s been this theory put forward that every time we remember something, we re-create the memory\u2014that our memory is constantly rewriting itself. For you, memory doesn\u2019t seem to work that way. You talk about not having a particularly good memory. But you write that those memories of rape and abuse have congealed in your brain. That they are unchanging. That was really interesting because you had to tell these memories twenty or so years ago at the trial, and you\u2019ve had to retell them in this book. <\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> I have those very detailed memories, and they\u2019re frozen. I can be there anytime, as if I were projected into a movie scene. But I\u2019m also not sure that they actually happened the way I remember them. They\u2019re in my head, for sure, but are they a faithful reflection of what happened? Where\u2019s the truth? I don\u2019t know. My memory of something doesn\u2019t confirm that it happened. In my case, I was lucky that my abuser confirmed some of these things I said. But in lots of cases, for many people, the abuser is going to say, No, she\u2019s lying. It didn\u2019t happen. <\/em>And the problem is that he\u2019s the only other witness. <\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> You write that the most interesting thing is what\u2019s going on in the perpetrator\u2019s head, even as it is beyond comprehension. At first, I was looking for the moment, the sign, the key: This is what made him do it.<\/em> And it\u2019s not there. There are details that one might interpret as contributing factors, but there\u2019s no answer. Did you ever think that, through the process of writing, you might find one? Or was it clear to you that it was beyond comprehension?<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> Well, there is, at some point, an explanation: he did it because he could. And that is at once too simple and too complex to satisfy us. He\u2019s not that different from me. He\u2019s not that different from you. The thing that makes him different is what he chose to do. He\u2019s not a born monster. He probably had his own reasons for doing what he did. But the mystery of evil is in that choice. We are not going to grasp it. It\u2019s one of the great philosophical issues that we can\u2019t come to grips with. I knew this from the beginning. I say this on the first page: I\u2019m going to try to understand better, to make things visible, but I know I\u2019m not going to find that key. And the reader is not going to find that key. But, still, we are driven by the need to find an explanation, which in a way accounts for our fascination with evil\u2014it is what we don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n It is still very mysterious to me how someone crosses the threshold into evil.\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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AB<\/span><\/strong> You just used the word evil<\/em>. It also comes up repeatedly in the book. It has become quite an unfashionable word. And yet I think you give a sense of where its use feels justified. You write that what fascinates us about a monster is that we think they hold the clue to understanding evil. It\u2019s like that Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, who, when asked about obscenity, said, \u201cI know it when I see it.\u201d We might not be able to define \u201cevil,\u201d but we know it when we see it, and we don\u2019t want to go there.<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> There\u2019s a paradox in this too. I don\u2019t want to be like him, so I\u2019m not going to know what he knows. I can\u2019t make that step. I don\u2019t want to experience what he experienced. I want to stay on my side. But it\u2019s strange because I\u2019m attracted to what I think<\/em> he knows, although he probably doesn\u2019t know. No one has the key.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> It\u2019s clear from what you\u2019ve written that your stepfather considered himself a good, moral man. Character witnesses came forward at his trial to say this too\u2014that apart from these things he confessed to doing, he was a good man.<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> It would be so much easier if monsters existed. But any of us could turn into a monster any day. I mention a documentary about people in jail who had all been child abusers. One of the abusers said that if you had asked him five minutes before he did it if he was capable of doing something like that, he would have sworn he could never do it. And then he did it. He became someone else. Every day, I choose not to become that person. If I am choosing, he also chose. But it\u2019s all hypothetical reasoning. It is still very mysterious to me how someone crosses the threshold into evil.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> One way you try to understand what your stepfather did is through books. You spend quite a bit of time near the start of the book talking about Lolita<\/em>, and Nabokov, and what a surprise it was for you to find the articulations of the situation so close to what you experienced.
<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> Every child who is a victim of abuse is conditioned to believe that it didn\u2019t really happen, or at least to doubt the reality of the abuse. Some even have traumatic amnesia and bury the memory completely. It happens in a surreal moment. You\u2019re always alone with him. No one sees it. It doesn\u2019t exist on the same level as the rest of reality. You know it\u2019s real because you\u2019ve been through it. It\u2019s in your body, and you know it\u2019s some kind of violence that has been done to your being. It has some kind of existence. But it doesn\u2019t really exist as the rest of life exists. To read a story of this experience as something writable was strange for me. And the fact that it\u2019s fiction makes it, in a weird way, acceptable to the reader. There\u2019s a sort of safety to reading it. We are able to accept being in the mind of Humbert Humbert. I think I read it as fiction too. As a work of the imagination. It took some time for me to realize that what happened to me had something to do with the story of Lolita.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> Apparently, one way to read Lolita<\/em>
\nis as fantasy, because the dates just don\u2019t add up. I was thinking of that while reading Sad Tiger<\/em>\u2014of the stories that abusers tell themselves. In the case of your stepfather, his story was that he did it because you refused to love him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n The victim is the one who lacks charisma, who is unable to articulate the other perspective. Lolita doesn\u2019t speak.\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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NS<\/span><\/strong> They have to survive too. Their survival depends on living with what they\u2019re doing. Everyone has a different way, but we have to tell ourselves stories that make our lives livable. And how can you make your life livable when, at night, you rape your stepdaughter? He probably had to construct a very strong fiction or a very strange, twisted story to convince himself that he could go on doing this. Humbert Humbert tricks himself. He lies to himself. Which is why, at some moments, it\u2019s like a puzzle. He realizes that it\u2019s a tale he\u2019s telling himself. In one moment, Humbert and Lolita are in a hotel room, and he catches sight of her in the bathroom mirror without her knowing she\u2019s been seen. He sees her complete despair so clearly\u2014he knows what he has done. But then he starts building his story again, because he needs that story to keep his universe from collapsing.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> Often, people present writing their own story as a way of freeing themselves from that story. But that is not what happens in Sad Tiger<\/em>. Instead, we almost feel a suspicion of the story, or a warning against it.<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> I don\u2019t want to work in the same way manipulators do. I don\u2019t want to get into someone else\u2019s head and convince them that my version of the story is better or makes more sense. I don\u2019t want to enchant the reader. I think that\u2019s one reason why there\u2019s a suspicion of storytelling.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> In one moment, you\u2019re talking with your lawyer about your stepfather’s version of events, and she says, \u201cOh yeah, his story was completely mad.\u201d The act of storytelling really strikes the reader here, because to this external person, his version of things is just ridiculous.<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> She said that many years later, after the trial. Most of the time, abusers are good storytellers. He was someone with charisma who could convince you of something completely mad, not because of what he said but because of his position of power. With distance, you retell yourself the story, and you think, How was I able to believe that version?<\/em> But in the moment, and even during the trial, when his guilt was evident, there were people who said that, apart from this, he was a good man. And people believed him. Most of the time, the victim is someone whose language has been destroyed. Whose relationship to truth has been destroyed. The victim is the one who lacks charisma, who is unable to articulate the other perspective. Lolita doesn\u2019t speak. She has no place to tell her side of the story, because her muteness is her place in that story. She\u2019s voiceless.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> You say that you can\u2019t write about something unless you have already \u201cdone the work\u201d in some way. I wonder if that might be a fundamental difference between writing fiction and writing fact. Fiction potentially has therapeutic qualities, even if you don\u2019t know it while you\u2019re writing, whereas this kind of project can\u2019t provide that.<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> Maybe fiction is more connected to the unconscious and to releasing control. But I\u2019m not writing as a way to feel better psychologically. I\u2019m doing this because I think I\u2019m going to write an interesting book. If it were true that writing this book was therapeutic, I would say it, and I would be glad. Why do I feel better now that I\u2019ve written this?<\/em> I could explore that question. Maybe someone else who writes about this for the first time, who makes a story out of a strange and painful magma, could find it therapeutic. It could give them a way to articulate things. But that\u2019s not the case for me. I\u2019m not telling this story for the first time. It\u2019s something that I\u2019ve been telling, and working on over and over, for years. It would lessen the work to think that I\u2019m doing this for myself. I did not write this book to come to terms with my problems. I was just trying to make the best work of art that I could make.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> You write that you wanted the book to exist but hoped it wouldn\u2019t have too many readers. That hasn\u2019t happened. The book has sold a lot of copies. There have been a lot of readers. Has the reception of the book changed your view of it or of its potential?<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> When I wrote this book, I was afraid of what could happen if it were widely read. I knew this possibility existed. My fear was about the consequences of this book finding a large readership and about the reasons this could happen. I totally agree with what David Foster Wallace said in his interview with Charlie Rose\u2014that a writer is often a split being. On the one hand, you are a nerd who doesn\u2019t want to be bothered and who is pretty happy staying buried in the library, but on the other hand, you desperately want some attention, and you dream of writing something that makes everyone drop to their knees. But then you can never know if this attention is for the right reasons.<\/p>\nAB<\/span><\/strong> In the last four or five years in France, there have been a lot of high-profile trials, campaigns, discussions, and books about sexual abuse. Is this a hopeful sign that some of the taboos are falling away?<\/p>\nNS<\/span><\/strong> I would love it if #MeToo really became a revolution for us, if we could see real change in our lifetime, if we could really seize the opportunity to put all this on the table and do things differently. That would be great. But it\u2019s hard to know. It\u2019s too early to tell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n Adam Biles is a novelist, and Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, Paris.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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The writer on Sad Tiger and the stories we live by Joel Saget \/ Getty Images The Yale Review is partnering with Shakespeare and Company, the legendary Paris bookshop, to publish select transcripts from its author events\u2014insightful conversations with some of today\u2019s most exciting writers from around the world. Sign up for our newsletter to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[119,148,735,292,734,736,733],"class_list":["post-4546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-interviews","tag-company","tag-interview","tag-neige","tag-review","tag-shakespeare","tag-sinno","tag-yale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}