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The Nouvelle Cuisine of French Crime Writing: A Conversation with Virginie Brac

2012; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 86; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2012.0015

1945-8134

J. Madison Davis, Virginie Brac,

Crime and Detective Fiction Studies

May–june 2012 9 F rench writers have long had a distinctive and powerful influence on crime writing, let alone literature in general. At the beginning of the mystery genre, the fanciful memoirs of Eugène Fran- çois Vidocq, erstwhile criminal and founder of the Sûreté, inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.” In 1864 Émile Gaboriau serialized what is often dubbed the first full-length detective novel, L’Affaire Lerouge, with his Vidocq-like character Monsieur Lecoq. Later, there was Gaston Leroux, most known for The Phantom of the Opera, and Maurice LeBlanc, who created Arsène Lupin. As the twentieth century continued, writers like Georges Simenon and Léo Malet took the French crime novel beyond the Fantômas-like hyperbole of the earlier years and into the psychological darkness. French films dealing with crime have influenced world cinema as well, with classics such as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les diaboliques and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur. The internationally popular “noir” is, after all, a French word and has come to mean much more than the traditional black covers of mystery/thrillers in France. It is a crime-writing tradition and craft equal in importance to that of the British and American traditions, and yet, other than Fred Vargas, few French mystery authors are translated and sold in America today. One of today’s best practitioners of the craft is Virginie Brac, whose novel Double peine (Double jeopardy) tied with Les silences de Dieu, by Gilbert The Nouvelle Cuisine of French Crime Writing A Conversation with Virginie Brac Crime&Mystery international j. madison davis My father was reading Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Hadley Chase. I came across the French translation of The Catcher in the Rye and decided it was my kind of beauty. photo : gilderic photography 10 World Literature Today Sinoué, for the Grand prix de litt érature policière (best crime novel) of 2004. Brac has also established an international reputation as a television writer. None of her books has been published in English (though German, Japanese, and Dutch rights have been sold). Yet when I asked her why more French crime novels aren’t translated, her answer was surprising : “French crime literature,” she said, “is not going through a good phase, which is probably why French authors are not translated.” “But who else,” I asked, “besides yourself, among current French authors do you think should be translated and read?” “Jean-Claude Izzo, maybe. He died young but left an interesting trilogy set in Marseille. But I can’t think of anyone else in particular.” And Izzo, whose father was Italian and whose mother was the child of Spanish immigrants, is cited more often as an influence upon Mediterranean or Italian noir, rather than French. So much for the legendary Gallic egomania! But, then, Virginie is a unique person, regardless of nationality. In 1976, she received a BA in psychology at Boston University and at one point considered living in Wewoka, Oklahoma, on a cattle ranch. Our loss! She returned to France, receiving further education in psychology at the Sorbonne, and in 1982 published her first novel, Sourire kabyle (The kabyle smile). The title is a Franco-Algerian term for a gruesome mutilation similar to the “Colombian necktie” or the “Glasgow smile.” How did she end up taking on such a subject? “You never really know why you become what you are, do you?” she answered. “I was born in Algiers at the beginning of the war of independence (1954–62), and I grew up in the violence of that war. I used to tell stories to my brothers and sisters so that we would forget the bombing and the fear. We were also very isolated in school (even after the war) because although we were French and Catholic, my parents were on the side of the Algerians. Therefore our own people hated our guts, and the Algerians did not really know what to do with us. It was an awkward situation for a child, and somehow I choose to live in a world of fantasy.” “Obviously, the fantasy must have been...