Why do we start writing, drawing, painting, taking photos? What pushes us, one day, to take a step aside? Suddenly, we are no longer just spectators, something in us is triggered, we become the one who makes the film, who builds the plot, who prepares the canvas and the palette. From what inner emotion is a work born? For Laurent Petitmangin, it’s simple: one day, a colleague at work published a book, so he said to himself, I’m going to write too. It’s easy to say, but we guess the inner upheaval and life, always her, which changes with this new gesture. Laurent Petitmangin writes as he runs: knowing where he is going and where he is starting from. Her first novel, What you need at night, published by La Manufacture de Livres in 2020, was met with great critical and public success upon its release. His second novel*, Thus Berlin*, sent to the publisher at the same time as the first, was released in 2021. At Laurent Petitmangin, the rooms are large, bright, and the libraries are tidy. Order and light rule the scene, and for an hour we discussed what it means to throw yourself into writing. Cécile COULON
“Writing is like a marathon, we go through the same states of euphoria and despair” Laurent Petitmangin
What it takes at night, Laurent PetitmanginThe Book Factory, 2020 (Excerpt)
“Believe me, the guys are alongside the workers, twenty years ago you would have been together. They don’t really care what is said in Paris. It’s our area that interests them, they They don’t want to let it die. They’re on the move. They’re fed up with Europe’s bullshit. They receive money from Paris which they redistribute in the area. Here, last Saturday, they re-equipped from the bottom in the roof the house of a little old man who had just been robbed. Whether you like it or not, people don’t spit on it. “That’s how we justified in less than ten minutes hanging out with the extreme right. How one resigned oneself to having one’s son on the other side. Not at Macron, but at the worst bastards. Holocaust deniers buddies, garbage. Fus was calm, almost glad that this explanation was coming. He assumed. A true Jehovah’s Witness, infused with bullshit, with new certainties, who remained amiable. I was ashamed. Now we were going to have to live with that, that was what bothered me the most. Whatever we do, whatever we want, it was done: my son had messed around with fachos. And from what I understood, he enjoyed it. We were in a hell of a job.”
Readings
What you need at nightLaurent Petitmangin, The Book Factory, 2020
So Berlin, Laurent Petitmangin, The Book Factory, 2021
the flight, Laurent Petitmangin, excerpt from the collective collection Our Desirable Futures, The book factory, 2022
Journey to the Center of the EarthJules Verne
Letters to Nelson Algren: A Transatlantic Love : 1947-1964, Simone de Beauvoir
The sources of Laurent Petitmangin
The work of Simone de Beauvoir
The final word
Cecile Coulon: For an hour we talked about where your writing was born, does it have a purpose for you?
Laurent Petitmangin : I think it’s a writing that becomes interesting when you discuss it, once the book is out. I participate in many meetings, in high schools in particular, I really like that. The high school students have a very fresh and very first degree approach with sometimes a strong exasperation about the characters, it’s funny and interesting. On the other hand, when I write I absolutely don’t think about who will read me, it’s my story, it’s first and foremost for me.
Musical programming
Monica ZETTERLUND Waltz for debby (Monicas Vals)
Bill EVANS IBEYI Juice of mandarins
LOMEPAL Decrescendo
