De l’écriture, Georges Perros (extrait du Black Herald 2)

Bien écrire, ça ne veut rien dire. Aujourd’hui, on ne peut que souhaiter la rupture totale. Ce n’est pas facile. Il ne faut pas le faire exprès, mais vivre. Ce que j’aime chez un écrivain, c’est ce qui lui échappe, à partir d’une élimination. La littérature n’a de sens que monstrueuse. Écrire, c’est Balzac, c’est Hugo, c’est Proust. Dragueurs en folie.

On Writing, Georges Perros – Translated from the French by John Taylor (excerpt from The Black Herald 2)

Writing well is a meaningless notion. Today, you can only hope for a total rupture. This is not easy. You mustn’t do it intentionally, but rather live. What I like in a writer is what escapes him, after he has done his eliminating. Literature makes sense only when it is monstrous. Writing is Balzac, Hugo, Proust. Dragnet fishermen gone mad.

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The three volumes of Papiers collés (Gallimard, 1960, 1973, 1978) by Georges Perros have long enjoyed a cult status among French readers (and especially writers). Literally, “papiers collés” refers to “glued bits or scraps of paper” forming a collage. Perros also puns on the word “papier,” which alludes here to the reviews and personal essays that he wrote for literary magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. Paper Collage in fact gathers short prose writings of several kinds, including maxims, a genre in which Perros excelled. With typical modesty, the author called himself a “journalier des pensées,” a day laborer who tills thoughts.

— Georges Perros, Papiers collés 3, © Éditions Gallimard, 1978. [French original reprinted with permission.]