Bibliotopia 2024 | Interview with Emma Becker

[Music] hello everyone hello Emma Becker I wanted to ask you questions often when I meet writers they say I've always wanted to write when I was a child I knew I would write but I doubt that any 10-year-old would think I'm going to write erotic novels so how did this happen for you did you know you wanted to write and then you HED in on erotic literature or did that come later well I'm might be disappointing you but uh I'm a person who has always written uh not always the same caliber writing but and my wish to write started very young wrote I read a book by the American writer Nicholson Baker who published a book called P dog in French 1996 which had a lot of erotic scenes in it I wouldn't call it an erotic novel but it it had erotic scenes and I remember reading it and having feelings I'd never had before and from then on I wanted to write the same kind of book and uh give people the same kinds of Sensations and feelings it was quite extraordinary this desire that I felt that's how I started out what way is ero erotic literature are special compared to traditional or conventional literature or other genres well [Music] personally I have found a sort of contemplation in it which has become my language I've always found it interesting to unbundle desire the spark that makes you want to be in physical contact with someone when we talk about desire and eroticism the subject is much broader than we think it's about the he immense Solitude that every human feels in his or her existence and this desperate and touching desire to lessen that Solitude by getting closer to another being it was also a vice well or should I say my own little guilty pleasure I create an entire world an entire universe and for me it's always been a very joyful exercise and it's new every time I start a new book do you have any other influences you'd like to mention apart from Nicholas bakerson Nicholson Baker sorry uh yes I started with him and then I read all of the major erotic writers most of them men and I was very interested in when I was 134 the Blue Bicycle was one of my major erotic experiences of my teenage years then I discovered fris an erotic writer that people were talking a lot about in the 1980s but not so much now her language was something I found very touching because it was very far removed from the language that women are usually uh allowed to use in erotic literature women are often limited to paraphrases and metaphors in Fr Ray had a very direct style uh there wasn't all this uh fluff around her narrative which is often the case in women's uh or erotic literature or erotic literature written by women so I was marked by uh her and also by comic uh book authors I often write uh I often wonder how what would this look like in pictures when as I'm writing so you have images yes I have images that come to me uh smells as well I grew up with a lot of comic books uh always around me and I always wonder what would this look like if we had the dialogue bubble um much more so than trying to put it in a film form and these images are very valuable for me so why don't you write a comic book then I'm not a very good artist well what about uh you could you could uh work with somebody else yes I know I have plans I should really put these into implementation it's always been my dream to write a graphic novel let me come back to the previous question Nicholson Baker is a pseudonym isn't it uh was uh that something that came from Nicholson Baker no it came from my grandmother my grandmother's name was panon Becker and I decided to shorten it and just call myself Becker so Becker Baker it's an interesting coincidence yes maybe didn't realize that uh there was this connection OD Le is your fifth novel and in fact it was commissioned it was a commission in what way did that change the writing project well it changes it a great deal because before I wrote odil I had never signed a contract before I had a book to put on the table this was the first time that I had pressure to find my story in a given time frame and I found it uh very energizing it forced me to get to work sit down every day and come up with an idea that was going to turn into a book The Collection created by Vanessa springora is aimed at uh erotic literature uh removed from the male gaze where the male gaze is not present and this gave me the opportunity to talk about something that I never talk about this was a huge part of my uh my experience as young as a young woman who experiences in relationships with women when I was younger uh very young and during my adolescence and when I thought about those past experiences uh I thought that they were so fluid and so smooth why did I absolutely want to have relationships with me since I started having relationships with me I have a very clear image of adversity and power struggles and the relationships are very much less smooth than the relationships I've had with women so this made me wonder whether this attraction I have for men is something that I learned that was nurtured or formatted into me or is it an un an irrepressible taste uh and what is the role of the gays of men for me so the The Collection that Vanessa spring uh started is called Troublemaker what do you think do you think you're a [Music] troublemaker I've asked other colleagues who write erotic literature I don't think we're writing about ticism to be subversive or overturn the apple cart I think however that very often this is what we're associated with women talking about their sexual sexuality and their sexual imaginings uh is considered as subversive in fact often the subversion is in the eyes of The Spectator and not in what the author actually wrote and I think it's very interesting having said that to have uh you coined this term Troublemaker in the feminine to talk about eroticism without necessarily talking about men to see what happens when you take men out of the equation what is female eroticism but there's no there was no intention to cause any disorder or upset the established order I think that feminists literature uh the the aim is to bring peace to the relationships between two Sexes but at the same time giving their women back their agency their freedom their access to their own desires uh and allowing them to figure out where their desire comes from in the in female fantasies we often find a recurring theme uh around things which are a million miles from what feminism dictates so how much of this actually belongs to us what is a troublemaker a female Troublemaker I thought it was interesting would you be able to sum up your book because there is a plot a history a story yes there's a story in it the narrator who has who is not named dreams about a friend who she shared a lot of experiences with when she was a young girl and a teenager and who she hasn't seen for about 10 years so she has a dream about her friend odil and she decides to go visit her and to talk to her about their relationship and to find out what has happened in the 10-year interval uh the two women have very different Lifestyles they live far away from one another how their relationships with men have developed and where they stand really 10 years on for me this was a good opportunity to talk about my childhood and my adolescence and get into contact uh with uh my feelings as a woman and to unpack this attraction for men that I have that may seem like something normal and but it isn't for me uh male female relationships are so turbulent that I have to wonder what attracts women in men uh it's not the simplest mean mode of relationship perhaps sexually it's [Music] satisfying uh perhaps the two Sexes are interested sexually in the other but I I I don't know if I can really sum it up any better than that title of this session is power emancipation and eroticism so that's a pretty big a pretty tall order what does what does this uh what do you have to say about this what do these three words have to do with your writing well this is what I was saying when I started to have uh relationships with men I realized that we were not on an equal footing when I began to have sexual relationships with men it wasn't just after the 1960s where everybody was saying let's all sleep with each other and it's all very uh peaceful and joyous and it's just pleasure for everyone I'm not saying that it wasn't like that but in my relationships with men there was clearly a question of who has the power who's winning and there was a lot of uh adversarial posturing so so that's power means to me emancipation is part of this process that I uh entered into uh of unpacking what attracts us to each other for me the there's no mystery as to why men are attracted by women all you have to do is look at women and you understand and then you can write about it it's uh women are objects of worship but conversely I'm not even talking about Aesthetics uh men can be very beautiful but from a relationship and sexual and sentimental point of view there are so many stumbling blocks that one has to wonder whether this is a taste that young girls learn throughout their upbringing uh since we were tiny since in our the the uh the cartoons we watched watch in our mothers our relationships with our mothers Etc when I was a little girl I was very interested in boys or young older men who are my father's friends and I would hover around them why why where does this precocious interest in men come from and isn't it a form of training that uh young girls are subjected to more or less consciously we're being prepared to become mothers wives and uh in a certain sense submissive to men so the concept of emancipation which I use in my book is not about contesting cancelling or uh denying my taste for men whether it's cons natural or learned I think that whether we like men or women we can only love them more by trying to understand them better this is the whole masturbatory side of erotic literature we don't need to understand why we love something or like it but understanding brings a different level of Love A Different Dimension uh contemplation full of contemplation and tendous to come back to Power there are a lot of power plays in your book The the narrator trying to control odal and the opposite uh is the power sexual yes this is my it's a very personal point of view I didn't want to be seen to be saying that relationships between women are simple and male female relationships are uncomplicated there's no set rule a relationship between to women can be just as complex and perhaps as tumultuous or turbulent as a relationship with a man but I can only write about what I know so odil did not exist as such she's a composite of many women with whom I had relationships but I started writing this book Because as I was prising my memories I thought this little girl who I was attracted to uh I wasn't madly in love with her they were when I hated her when we hated each other and it was interesting for me that these games I played as a little girl were uh revolved around heterosexual seduction plays what you see in cartoons what you see in films none of neither of us had ever been uh had a crush on a boy or a man but we were reproducing patterns binary patterns cliches absolutely if she played the man I would play the woman the so the man was the one who decided who made the suggestions and the woman just went along with it this was a clear reproduction of all the Disney films we watched with the recumbent princess who allowed herself to be carried off I found something there was something erotic in that passivity that pass passive posture and also in the aggressive posture so of course there are power games and sometimes they are more mysterious than the games that these two women play with men because I think that what women perform every day with men is doesn't there's no mystery in it uh we all know the score how are we all playing to the same score so uh uniformly it's because we've all learned it since we were perhaps too small to even be able to verbalize it well when we read your book we get an idea that the idea that homosexuality is a national inclination heterosexuality is something a bit strange and in the Final Chapter we get the idea that we might be able to do without men men are completely Superfluous I'm I'm exaggerating but only slightly the last sentence that men get saved at the last minute no well to live in today's world and I don't think I'm the only one I think that femin female bisexuality or homosexuality is very much encouraged by men it's not something that we are told we should be ashamed of women are encouraged to do it because men find it uh exciting and they're not threatened this is my theory they're not threatened because the main difference is that there's no male organ involved two women making love uh do not threaten men because they is no basically so I think that for the vast majority of PE of men there's no threat in women having relationships with others but now the real question is what do we women become if we take men out of the equation can we just be ourselves I think the book proves that this is not completely possible because the what's at stake is not that simple I've never been tempted to say that men are useless uh I think that the adversity between men and women may have some sort of erotic spiciness in it we can continue to interrogate that but I think it would be interesting to wonder what female sexuality would be like if we didn't feel we needed to excite or please men my desire for men and the desire that men might have for me does doesn't give me a lot of perspective but I do ask myself the questions I can't say I'm immune to uh an attraction to men that's why my book is in no way subversive I'm not trying to uh upset things I'm writing as a woman who grew up in the world that we live in and who's been a slave of the male gaze and is trying to uh free herself from that as well as she can well then I'd like to ask you what the role of mothers in is in all of this it was interesting what you said a minute ago you said that you used to watch Disney films with all their cliches and uh platitudes what role do mothers play in the predisposition of young girls well I think uh mothers play the role that their mother played in the book I'm not saying that my mother did this but it was obviously based on my mother around the age of five or six I had a crush on one of my father's friends who was maybe 33 or 35 and I remember uh that he came to dinner one evening and I had put on my best little shirt and a Barret in my hair and when he came in my mother said look oh she knew you were coming look she's put on her nicest clothes isn't that cute of course it was cute but when you read between the lines what was happening there really metaphorically wasn't that a mother pushing her daughter towards a man preparing her daughter to become a woman and what is a woman supposed to do a woman is supposed to be pretty supposed to please Men supposed to uh humor men's uh moods I don't want to blame women because we have all grown up in the same kind of cage we're not always conscious of it but when we do we have to ask ourselves how can I get out of this I'm only describing a system in which we all came up me included I became what I became what I have become if I'd been more combative or more or more Angry maybe my book would have been different but the fact is that um I felt comfortable in this system for a long time I understood the language I knew what men wanted and uh that was a role that I Knew by heart I can imagine that at one point this started to annoy me and I decided to uh change it I don't want to have take a a bleheim like position on Mothers women because they're just uh repeating what they learned and they predispose us to doing the same but so much has changed how how is it that this hasn't changed well I had I have two sons and when my two little boys were born I realized and I'm not very proud to have to say it but I realized that it would have been difficult for me but much more difficult for me to have girls because I know what uh life holds in store for them I know how they're usually educated uh raised my mission is to raise Boys to Men my boys will be less toxic for women my aim is to raise uh functional men who can have healthy relationships with women and now I forgotten your question no I think you've answered it more or less how can we explain the fact that things don't change the generations come and go and so many things have changed in so many areas how is it that this has not changed because I think these things take a long time to change look at the progress we've made over 10 years in terms of women uh being able to speak and deconstruction men have changed a lot over the last 10 years so I think it's a structural issue and structural issues require generations of uh change but I think what's crucial is to become aware of the world that we're living in and where girls are still being brought up to be future I wouldn't say geishas that's a bit harsh but you see what I mean and boys are raised in a completely different way when I talk to my friends who have little girls uh they always say yes but girls and boys are not different I think it's just a difference in the way we raise them I don't think that fundamentally the personality of a girl or a boy has any specific traits that are gender related or gender linked uh so this is going to take time but be becoming aware is a first step towards uh more peaceful male female relationships I remember having a conversation with Elizabeth B who was the feminist she had a boy and a girl and she explained that as children the boy would go towards the truck and the girl towards the doll and it wasn't because she didn't try and mix things up a little bit I don't know I've got little boys who play with trucks they play with dolls they're quite happy doing both and there's something reassuring when I see a boy playing with a truck and a girl playing with a doll um I'm not saying anything against anyone of course we need to be reassured these patterns are very comfortable because they're age old they've been passed on from one generation to the next and it's hard to leave this Comfort it's hard to do away with one's Habit to enter unnown territory how can we educate bring up uh girls and boys the same way it's a fight a constant fight against our own education against what we were told what we were taught but I am absolutely convinced my mother is a psychologist in a daycare center and very often she says it's not boys who don't want to play with dolls it's parents who don't want their boys to be given a princess costume or a doll I don't think you need to be a radical feminist realize how silly it is to stick to such patterns boys can learn a lot from playing with dolls and girls playing with trucks if we managed to change uh uh this uh simple vision of Life uh very early on it would make a huge difference several times in your novel we get the notion that sex is the only way for you to be self-aware what does this mean exactly well I say so but I'm able to say the exact contrary five pages later I write this book after having written my novel La I spent three years working in a brothel it may sound anecdotal well not really but it does change the way you relate to sex and the way you see your relationships with both men and women my problem has always been that I have a hard time being self-aware during sexual intercourse because I'm always withdrawn I'm always wondering about the image I'm conveying to the other was I winning this encounter was he spending a nice time that was my first concern and it's still a huge effort for me to be present to be self-aware during sexual intercourse there's this sort of state of mind uh of the writer regardless of what I'm doing I'm always a little withdrawn because uh I'm trying to figure out whether from this experience I I I could do something with this experience so I'm always uh looking at things uh uh from a distance was constantly representing myself and I wasn't really enjoying what was happening to me and literature helped me experience uh what I had just felt and uh have the sensations that I did not feel on the moment so when I'm there what can I say about it when you write you don't feel or you feel uh with a delay I think most writers most authors can say the same thing they look at themselves live and they think about what they'll be able to do with that yes absolutely when as a writer you write on your own sexuality and uh the changes and Swings in your sexuality it changes things a little bit there are very few moments in time when I have sex without writing not simultaneously of course but I always get the feeling that Beyond uh physical pleasure or total indifference there are lots of things that can happen that go Way Beyond sexuality the other opens up to you your partner opens up to you and there's no erotic tension in it it's a very moving it's very authentic you're entirely a human being and all of this is mixed up in my mind so the book that uh I wrote that will be published uh later in the year is a true love story there are a few sex scenes but they're written very differently because these are things that I really felt and it's a miracle as a woman as a writer to feel something something like pleasure to be in relation with my body to be there where I am present that's a miracle and this brings me back uh to my condition as a woman being a woman and being a writer to me is um having the same perspective on your life as a woman you always want to appeal to others you're pushed to smile there's always a distance between you and yourself and to me that's really typical of writers too and in this novel that is to be published in September it's different yes absolutely it's h something that I wrote pretty spontaneously I didn't take that step back I didn't have the ability to take that step back uh to look uh at the spontaneous emotions and analyze them sometimes I find them kind of of silly and childish I'm not always very nice with myself which is the reason why I want to annihilate the joy in me I say to myself okay you're quite happy right now but in 6 months time uh you won't feel that Joy anymore so things are very different with a distance why did you choose uh autobiographical fiction what you write is between autobiography and fiction but there's a lot of you in what you write is it uh because of the inspiration is it out of honesty is it a conscious decision that you made did it come naturally to you I think it came when I realized that there was this split in me writing about myself was a way of running after the truth about me I I love fiction I read Stephen King Lovecraft uh I love uh that kind of literature so I love fiction in other writers but I get the feeling that the best works of fiction have already been written real life is filled with moments where you don't need to that you don't need to fill with fiction life is full of surprises it's full of things that are unexpected and I think I also write because I like the idea that I might resonate with my readership even if I only have a single reader uh I always think uh there's bound to be one or two crazy people who just think like me and who'll feel less alone because for me the true tragedy in life is the fact that you're constantly alone and my interest in eroticism because of that when you're with someone you're having sex trying to have sex it's a moment in time where you do not feel alone and don't be mistaken I like being alone I uh that's the way I work best but it's terrible I think it's a real tragedy when you write you uh create Bridges between people and uh it's absolutely fabulous it's a great job do you expose yourself more when you write an erotic novel rather than a traditional novel yes in a sense people tend to laugh about it there ill EAS with novels about the body sex is also funny and if you don't like it uh you can always laugh about it so yes I guess in a sense uh you expose yourself more but I get the feeling that I expose myself more when I speak about my dying grandfather in Lan then when I talk about uh meeting up with guys uh in parks in Berlin this notion these uh sexual Adventure [Music] meeting guys in Parks that's something that I share with the whole wide world it's uh nothing specific whereas a Mourning the fact that you're losing someone you're close to you may tell it the way you want but when people read the fact that your grandfather is dying people tend to shrug and say well it's natural uh it's you're bound to uh your grandfather but uh sexuality is uh is marry you feel alive uh you feel happy whereas when you're faced with mourning with suffering uh it's um a lot more complicated it's a lot uh more indecent do you think there's a way of writing that's different between men and women and eroticism erotic literature and literature in general yes absolutely it would be hypocritical to say the contrary erotic literature uh was uh fell within the purview of men exclusively but what do men write about when they write erotic novels when I wrote L men came to me to tell me I like what you write uh you're not a combative feminist obviously Men read what they want to read in what I write but I was also told if a man wrote half of what you wrote uh it would be scandalous well men wrote way more than I did and they went way further than I did the difference is when men talk about eroticism they don't talk about frustration they don't talk about loneliness it's a a series of conquests of sex scenes I would like to read erotic liter written by men where they could talk about uh their sexual flaws uh erectile dysfunction amongst others so they could talk about the weaknesses of men sexuality they're very eager to talk about themselves uh as a walking Hawk but women know it's not the case and they that's the only thing they talk about they talk about their sexual power where as women when they talk about uh eroticism they talk less about the body they talk more about the sensations about the feelings they try and analyze their own desire uh this feeling that they feel shoot up on their bodies and there's something much more indecent Shameless in uh women's literature but just look at the way women talk about sex amongst themselves it's a lot more obscene than Between Women uh they give a lot more graphic details women's sexuality is uh meant to be very complex and I didn't understand anything about sex that's why I started writing about it in sads literature you would read about women coming seven times in a couple of seconds but in reality it wasn't the case so where did that difference come from I think it may come from the fact that sad is a man men have uh constant fantasies about women and sad wrote about these women who come several times in very little time it can happen but we need to have to be given the opportunity when women talk about erotic literature they try to explain to men how it works they try how it works they try to tell men that it's not that complicated that all you need to do is apprehend uh the pleasure um of your partner and that's um taught to our men are not taught to how to contemplate how pleasure starts how it evolves it's um a very fun activity feminists gave you hard time what do they hold against you well it depends on the feminist you're talking about at the time my novel L was published it's the novel about my experience my three-year experience in AB brl uh I had a hard time with radical feminists that was uh in 2019 I'm talking about abolitionists according to me may try protecting women but they take away their agency over their own sex life and these radical feminists these abolitionists fulfill the same role as masculinist they say you don't have any Agency on your sex life on your imagination because everything is in the hands of men in Minds uh there's no way out of it for women unless they constantly fight against themselves or against their education from then on you may wonder when can we just sit down and appreciate things for what they are without constantly having to wonder whether my this fantasy uh is it did I develop it for for myself or is it just a reproduction of patriarchy in my mind personally I consider myself a feminist I was a feminist long before I started working uh in a brothel but uh the experience in the brothel uh reinforced my feminism and same thing with motherhood becoming a mother and seeing how motherhood um falls in the hand of uh the same people time and time again that has also reinforced um my f feminism I came to realize that uh in in our lives we submit to whole slew of other people and I'd be uh interested in knowing what the feminists have to think about my novel l in which I talk a lot more about motherhood they um say I'm not as combative as against men I'm not going to fight I like men I like being loved by men I don't feel like I have uh to defend myself against this it's part of my life I don't want to have to waste my uh youthful years wondering why how and that's it Unfortunately they can't all be put down we've got to make do we've got to find a way it wouldn't be doing men and women a service if we were constantly challenging our uhra uh attraction uh to each other did you feel did you feel um could you relate to the me too movement well of course for once people listen to what we have to say and it's not just about the rap I think uh the problem is deeper than that these are obvious uh abuses uh of our consent but there are all sorts of abuses from uh childhood on where people uh think they can override our consent we're pushed to do all sorts of things and I think that's exactly what the me too movement tries to call out there's not single time in your life as a woman where you're not sexualized and molested in a way or another ask any girl around you we've all experienced these moments in time when older men look at you in a way that shouldn't even cross their minds in odil I mention a married man who's 32 they meet odil and her friend when they're 15 this is something that actually happened to me I can tell you and writing about it I'm a little shocked when people tell me uh that uh they weren't underage sexual underage sexually speaking so it was legal but morally at 32 it wouldn't cross my mind to look at a 15-year-old boy the way he looked at a 15-year-old girl as a child they already see what we're going to become and we're going to become females it happens outside our families but also inside families uh fathers uh have this sense of belonging they know that daughters uh jumping on their lap will become women and they belong to them until they belong to other men that's the problem of course uh there's sexual violence rape but there's this entire education that makes this given to uh men's desire I think uh we'll keep it here and uh turn to the floor to see whether there are questions there'll be a roing mic going through the room and immediately after this discussion Emma will be signing her book upstairs thank you very much [Applause] Emma this is very interesting this discussion was very [Music] interesting talk about more sensitive writing for men talking about uh their erotic life about ER ISM as an author what does it take for a man who would like to write about these things what I meant is that it's uh not the the point is not for men writing erotic novels to start talking about uh the times when they feel vulnerable when they feel weak uh very often men feel powerless helpless uh facing uh women's um sexuality women realize that men feel very little faced [Music] with women who are much more resilient who can come several times in one go masculine erotic literature let us to many erroneous ideas for a long time I was disconcerted by U male erotic literature I thought I wasn't hardwired the way other women were I didn't have the ability to come seven times uh in a few minutes or this is just the result of a fantasy about women's sexuality uh it's the same thing with pornography the point is not to represent sexuality the way it is but it's in the case of pornography it's a farce I think men could write erotic novels and show the difference or talk about desire longing it's the difference between eroticism and pornography it's uh the way uh suggesting things I'm sure that male sexuality is just as complex as women's sexuality you take one step forward two steps back talk to people's loneliness despite the encounters I think that would be much more interesting and not just uh looking at one's Naval one's erection one's masculinity I am don't want to to give less to anyone I learned a lot from uh erotic literature but I also learned how to take one step back I know that uh erotic literature uh is not sexuality it's uh it's a circus I don't know whether that answers your question yes it does thank you Emma we wait until someone else uh asks a question you could give us a a few names Nicholson Baker you mentioned a while ago yes Nicholson Baker who's a US author and I would suggest reading Vox which is the story of a man and women woman who meet on a phone line and they talk for a certain number of hours about sexuality masturbation imagination and uh it's a book that was written by a man at a time where there was no notion of inclusivity and deconstruction and yet it's one of uh the most interesting texts written about the clitoris and uh it's a tail telling that was written by a man they're all the novels written by fris re absolutely marvelous they're very spontaneous they're solar there are lots of erotic uh novels that are very serious such as batai for instance it's a very solemn very heavy and then there's a which is a bit of a of a farce it's a little b a little bit like like sad 120 days there's very well [Music] written what else comic books I learned a lot from Jean Kaiser who did a lot of uh cartoons on the covers of uh ariri and Charli uh the French magazines uh talks a lot about sex with a lot of tenderness he was uh very friends uh very good friends with Alisa who's a radical feminist from Germany who was able to be his friend despite the fact that he was constantly drawing and and did so very brilliantly what else could I recommend an an I came to an a little late in life because uh to me a little fussy there's a book uh about and a relationship she had in Paris very recently nin and Jim Nim nin her father their letters were published uh they had a real ancestral relationship it was at the time was early days of psychoanalysis psycho analysts had no idea how to manage the udus complex and they would encourage their patients to satisfy this relationship so they these uh letters were published they're sometimes hard to read uh they're stunning but they're very [Music] interesting I'd say Nicholson Baker fris re and re Blue Bicycle I uh grew up with fr he was the man of my life no one knew whether he collaborated with the Germans or whether he was in the resistant movement and yet uh he was the Cornerstone of my sexuality as a teenager who was uh one of the editors one of the main editors of erotic literature at her time yes absolutely is there one last question from the floor or should we go directly uh to the signing I think we covered the topic uh quite extensively thank you very much Emma thanks you