Window on oneself

A reader asked me a few days ago if I was such and such a character in my novel or if, in this other, the story was not autobiographical. Authors are probably smiling as they read this. This question, however obsolete it may be, nevertheless conceals a truth, even if it should not be made a generality either.

First of all, it depends on what you write. We will ask these questions differently if we have in front of us an author who writes successful, suspense, fantastic or, like me, a more intimate story.

I can be described as an author behind closed doors, as is probably my life. I am an author of the daily newspaper, just as my existence seems to be. My novels are entirely autobiographical because I draw most of my inspiration from the cauldron of my experiences, or from what I am told. These stories are all the more mine as I focus primarily on philosophy, in the ritual and religious act of wanting to create a scientific meaning of something that escapes me.

That’s why I get tired of stories where the only purpose seems to entertain or strut with literary finds (I just read such a recently published book). If I was tempted by the bluster, I believe I have managed at this stage of my life to wash away with bleach the slightest pride.

My house, the real one, built with lines of credit, is improving, locking itself comfortably on itself. Indeed, we can look out the window into my mind, which is busy sorting through my desires, fantasies, fears and blasphemies, joys, and futile aspirations. I try to create a semblance of order, parallel to my mind, similar to this slow reconstruction of this building.

I will always be like this. Semper ipse ero. On this only condition can I afford to write: to draw fertile furrows, and bury the seed of who I am.