Interview with LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR translated

INTERVIEW WITH LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR

ABOUT CHAOS BRÛLANT  ( BURNING  CHAOS )

Translated by Robert G. Margolis

  

Le Nouvel Observateur: How do you feel after a year deep inside the head of Dominque Strauss-Kahn? 

Stéphane Zagdanski:  I will not keep from you that 2011 was almost as painful for me as it was for Dominque Strauss-Kahn.  As if the title of my novel had decided to turn my existence into a burning chaos.  To give you only one example, an enormous fire completely consumed a storage facility in Gagny, in which I had some furniture and, especially, irreplaceable archives.  And this is not the worst of what happened to me !  Proof, if such is needed, that certain books magnetize the world around their author, for better as well as for worse.

The Eruption of a Verbal Audacity, A Conversation About "Burning Chaos"

"Une éruption d'audace verbale" (version en français ici) 

Stéphane Zagdanski / Robert G. Margolis,

"The Eruption of a Verbal Audacity"

A Conversation About Chaos brûlant, “Burning Chaos”.

        -To the blessed memory of Charles Mopsik

Robert G. Margolis: Let us begin with the title of your new novel Chaos brûlant, “Burning Chaos”.  The title is used with reference to a sentence by Friedrich Nietzsche, which you also employ as the epigraph to your novel: “Civilization is only a thin film over a burning chaos.”  What is this “Burning Chaos”?  What does Nietzsche and, therefore, do you mean by it? 

Sur la dédicace, dans Marianne

Réponse à une enquête de « Marianne » sur la dédicace de Chaos Brûlant

Durant toute l’année d’écriture de Chaos brûlant, ma vie privée s’est déroulée dans une atmosphère si cataclysmique qu’elle semblait directement inspirée par le titre de mon roman. Pourtant, au cœur de ce chaos branlant, ma petite fille de 3 ans a été une inspiration perpétuelle d’équilibre et de ténacité par son espièglerie, son enjouement et sa grâce. Fidèle en cela à son prénom qui signifie, dans la Bible, « Mon père est en joie ».

The DSK affair is the incarnation of contemporary folly, AFP

Strauss-Kahn sex scandal continues to fascinate

By Rory Mulholland | AFP 

PARIS, Aug 29, 2012

-Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have disappeared from public life but his spectacular and sordid fall from grace is being played out again and again in books, plays, TV shows and movies.

The six-minute sexual encounter between the man who might have been France's next president and a maid in a swanky Manhattan hotel continues to fascinate long after the story fell off the front pages of newspapers.
"The DSK affair is the incarnation of contemporary folly," said novelist Stephane Zagdanski, using the initials by which the former head of the International Monetary Fund is best known in France.
"It fascinates enormously because he was at the summit of the world and he found himself in the gutter overnight, thanks to a six-minute fellatio," he told AFP.

Marianne Interview about Chaos brûlant (Burning chaos)

Marianne: Why does the DSK Affair still fascinate to such an extent?

Stéphane Zagdanski: Probably because on May 14, 2011, DSK became, in spite of himself, the symbol of the insanity of the contemporary world.  A polymorphous madness, become “globalised,” as it is said, with its political derangements, its media deliriums or “economic horrors,” to quote Rimbaud, in which we all—without exception—flounder about at this very moment.  The at once lunatic and exemplary character of the Sofitel incident was clear to me when I learned that the media covered with which it had been favored surpassed coverage of September 11, 2001.

Two Interviews With Stéphane Zagdanski about his new novel Chaos brûlant ( "Burning Chaos" )

Olivier Simon :  What is Chaos brûlant [Burning Chaos]?  A novel?  A fiction? An essay?

Stéphane Zagdanski:  Chaos brûlant is a novel, a genuine novel.  All of it is invented.  I could even say that the novel’s common thread, that is the DSK Affair, itself is invented, since it is re-elaborated by the mind of the narrator, who is a psychotic with the peculiar ability to see, or to believe that he sees, what people think, without their knowing it.