"Neither too far nor too close : the distance I need to write". A conversation with Olivia Rosenthal

Abstract

This dialogue takes place in a broader collaboration with Olivia Rosenthal, centered around the preparation of this issue. During the past year, the two of us organized a workshop for senior Bachelor students of the University of Saint-Étienne, coupled with a public meeting in a local bookstore (March 16-17^th, 2022). The following conversation was held via email. It starts with Olivia’s latest published book, Un singe à ma fenêtre (Verticales, august 2022), and emphasizes the melancholy that perspires from the investigation lead by its narrator about the 1995 Tōkyō terrorist attacks with sarin gaz. This project brings back traumas and guilt that were buried inside the narrator herself as much as the witnesses she interviews during her investigation. The historical dimension intersects with a much more personal level, and the list of attacks that each character remembers, in the end, points to an intimate cartography of grief and loss. This conversation aims to reflect upon both the singularity of this last book and the work of Olivia Rosenthal in the long run. Which problematics does it keep coming back to, in its various forms? How does the work evolve in its forms and ambitions, in its discourse too on a more meta level? As it discusses twenty-three years of writing and creating, this interview shouldn’t be read as a conclusion but more as an occasion to stir up renewed questions, and perhaps new ways to think about the writer’s work.

Our warmest thanks to Olivia Rosenthal, who has been a great companion in this investigation.