The interview at the French Institute could
have been so different. I’d diligently
researched my interviewee, French bestseller, Marc Dugain, in English and
French sources. (French dictionary by my
side.) I discovered he had been a very
successful financier. So successful that
he had then set up his own airline, employing 2,500 people, which he eventually
sold to Air France. He retired (in his
mid-thirties) to concentrate on writing.
Dugain
had already written his first novel, The
Officer’s Ward, based on his grandfather’s experiences in a hospital
devoted to the disfigured in the First World War. He wrote it in 21 days, which, frankly, is
sickening. Especially when it then went
on to win 80 – yes, eight zero - literary prizes and become a very successful
film. Envious? Moi?
He has gone on
to write a wonderfully disparate range of novels and moved into directing film
versions of several of them. He began
with the film of his Une Execution
Ordinaire, set in Russia now and in the early fifties. Most recently he did the same with his, as
yet un-translated, The Curse of Edgar,
about J Edgar Hoover. His docudrama
stars our own Brian Cox as Hoover and Anthony Higgins (who I remember best from
The Draughtsman’s Contract) as Clyde
Tolson. (Dugain is meeting both actors
for a drink as I write this.)
In consequence
of this research – did I mention the word ‘exhaustive’? – I felt pretty relaxed
getting up on stage with him in the French Institute’s lovely first floor
library. We were there primarily to talk
about his newly translated novel, The
Avenue of The Giants (Europa), about Edmund Kemper (the ‘Co-Ed Killer’), a
real-life California serial killer in the Sixties.
It’s a terrific
and terrifically unsettling novel, written in a matter of fact, first person
voice that makes the horrors even more horrific. And Dugain, born in Senegal but a Frenchman down
to his stylish suit and specs, nails hippy California effortlessly.
So there was a
lot to talk about. He dropped a little not-in-the-research
bombshell early on when he said that he had been married to a psychopath (his
first wife) so knew a little bit about how to get in the head of his Kemper
character.
But he saved his
interview-changing remark until my last question about the source of his
writing. Was writing in the family? He laughed and said something about his
sister. He named her but he pronounced
her name so quickly I didn’t catch it.
However, I gathered she was a bestselling writer.
He went on to
say that they both learned to write by writing long, long letters to each
other. It was only when a woman in the
audience asked him a question about that exchange of letters that I heard his
sister’s name more clearly. Fred Vargas.
The inimitable Fred Vargas.
So much for my
exhaustive research. Well, except that, after I first posted this Daniela Petracco at Europa Books and Geraldine D'Amico at King's Place both suggested to me that I'd actually misunderstood him. His parents were Fred's Godparents and he regards her as his sister. Phew, think I've got that right now!
