Interview with Hélène Honnorat

Hélène Honnorat's career as an author began with a parachute jump (Le dessous du ciel, Buchel-Chastel, under the pseudonym Dominique Piett), and her penultimate opus is a eulogy to the suitcase (Sois sage ô mon bagage, Yovana).

Between a leap into the void and a leap into the unknown, a journey through space and a journey through time, his life and his work, carried away by a lively writing style, are built around movement.

It would be simplistic to describe her as a writer-traveler, because in her works, Hélène Honnorat does not just pass through. She settles, builds, creates connections. She does not recount stages, train platform briefs, or accidents along the way. Her journeys are slow, distended, to the point of resembling a single journey, that of a lifetime.

Writing and traveling, are they the same thing?

I don't think so. I can only speak for myself!

Of course, the two activities have points in common: in both cases, we go from point A to point B, according to a more or less planned itinerary (hum), in a given duration (there are still people who, having left for a month, come back after three years... books that were supposed to be written in a year and which suck ten years out of an author's life); we push the limits of space/time; we are completely naked, reduced to ourselves to face unforeseen difficulties.

However, it seems to me that each approach (if I may say so) has irreducible specificities. For example, travel is concrete, writing is abstract. In a journey, there are no possible "repentances", in the sense given by designers, painters to this word: sketches, corrections... You cannot make such an adventure not have taken place, conversely you cannot decide that you climbed such a volcano or stayed in Trieste if you did not go there. This is the possible role of writing! Therefore of "afterwards". Moreover, this afterward is generally solitary. You have all the leisure to move in pairs, in groups, in swarms. This is a much rarer practice with regard to writing. Finally, travel does not necessarily imply the latter.

I don't, moreover, classify myself in the "writer-traveller" category. You have very well defined my profile: I think I would rather see myself as an author who is disoriented, a disorienting author? I lived and worked for six years in Sri Lanka, six in Indonesia, four in Malaysia, four in Central America. Let's add several years in the Caribbean... These are long-term loves for these places that have given rise to novels or stories. However, there were shorter journeys: when I lived with my family in Java, I went on three short trips alone, backpacking... to Egypt, Jordan, Syria. And then when you work in Jakarta, populated by fifteen million inhabitants, finding yourself for a few days in Lombok or the Moluccas is already exotic! Fanciful mise en abyme of which I have kept some traces in my stories.

When does the book begin? When you leave or when you come back?

Since I am a very slow person, I took notes, wherever I was… then I changed positions, and I wrote about the country next door – which I knew – or about the previous country! In Malaysia, I wrote a book set in Singapore, and back in France for a long time, a thriller set in Indonesia ( Don't Forget Irma ), against a backdrop of historical events. We must also keep in mind the fact that if the country is a dictatorship, as was the case in Suharto's Indonesia, we will only access the information we need when we return.

Are your books memories or projects?

Projects that I carry in my bundle and that are nourished by memories over time. I told our family itineraries in Un mari d'Asie , a story that has just been released in France.

You have lived for a long time in different countries of Asia, several of your books tell the story of this continent. What is the most beautiful gift that Asia has given you?

Cities! The ones I lived in, the ones I passed through. They are dazzling discoveries, sometimes terrifying. Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai…

I often say that Jakarta is a monster and a marvel. It is the second largest metropolis in the world, after Tokyo. “Greater Jakarta” has thirty million inhabitants: almost half the population of France! I was afraid, then I loved this city made of towers, canals, gutters, concrete, dust and sun. I remember the glue of the traffic jams and my eldest daughter, four years old at the time, saying:

— It’s pretty, the house with feathers… (it was a very old mosque, with a bulbous roof, covered with shingles).

Or from my youngest daughter:

— Oh, Mom, cow! (because in the middle of the oh so urbanized suburbs, on a postage stamp of grass, she was ruminating while watching the cars go by).

I found in the great cities of Asia a thousand testimonies of childhood and appetite. Let us go through them at night. Taste for the rainbow, for bright pink, jam red, electric blue, Bad taste? What does it matter. Creativity is raging.

What are the travel books or travel writers that you like to share?

Some of them no longer really need us, like Jules Verne, Blaise Cendrars, Jack London, Bruce Chatwin, Nicolas Bouvier, Jacques Meunier, Sylvain Tesson or Mathias Énard…

Others, famous in absolute terms, deserve to be revisited in the light of travel, for example Colette! There are few writers as nomadic, adept at change and discovery as this woman who is nevertheless rooted in her childhood. Everything is a motif for her: Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Spain, the United States, but also tours, moves, houses. Until the end, when she was still writing "on her raft", her bed at the Palais-Royal, a window open onto the garden and the world. Let's read La Vagabonde , L'Envers du music-hall , L'Entrave , Le Voyage égoïste , Bella-Vista , Prisons et paradis , Chambre d'hôtel , Paysages et portraits …

Another example is Pierre Boulle. Who doesn't know Planet of the Apes and The Bridge on the River Kwai ? But he also wrote The Whale of the Falklands , The Garden of Kanashima (is science fiction part of travel?), Jungle Ears (and war?), The Good Leviathan , etc.

Closer to home, Muriel Cerf experienced in the 1970s with L'Antivoyage and Le Diable vert the overwhelming success that is hard to survive. When I open one of these books, I am immediately taken back by her torrential prose, her boundless erudition sprinkled with humor. However, she disappeared from our libraries, well before the controversy with Lio on television. We should rehabilitate her expeditions, and perhaps (re)read other of her titles, Amérindiennes , L'Étoile de Carthage , Hiéroglyphes de nos fins dernières ?

The Anglo-Saxons deserve a special mention. I warmly recommend Ewelyn Waugh ( Checked Baggage , A Handful of Ashes ), Eric Newby ( A Little Tour in the Hindu Kush ), John Keay ( Eccentric Travellers ).

Out of competition: Ecuador , by Henri Michaux (I went to Ecuador when I was a backpacker, out of love for this book, which does not paint the country in cheerful colors!); all of Larbaud… and the hilarious vade-mecum of the contemporary globetrotter: De l'art d'ennuyer en recountant ses voyages , by Matthias Debureaux. I cited many of these authors in the bibliography of Sois sage, ô mon bagage… Apologies to all those I cannot talk about here, who faithfully accompany me.

You have published with various publishers, from the most traditional to the most confidential, from the most general to the most cutting-edge. What is your view on the evolution of the publishing world over the last twenty years and the advent of the Internet?

So many specialists and professionals have spoken out on these subjects! Sometimes, a little aphorism reflects a vast evolution: "No one reads anymore, everyone writes"... Fortunately, this is not entirely true! But according to the statistics, we are indeed reading less and less... on the other hand, France Culture tells us ( In the kingdom of Covid, writing is queen , article by Lisa Guyenne, published on February 14, 2021) that according to a survey from May 2020, during the first lockdown, one in ten French people started writing a book. At Lattès, we have received 20% more manuscripts since the first lockdown. However, "many new authors are also turning to self-publishing, which is by definition much less selective," continues the journalist. "In 2020, we self-published 40% more books than in 2019, and up to 90% more in April," says the general director of Librinova. At Les Trois Colonnes, the "lockdown diaries" have been flooding in: "We have received a lot of similar writings: we are learning to make our own bread, we are racing for toilet paper in the supermarkets..." Phew, the lockdowns are in principle over!

More seriously, I hope that the trend towards the concentration of publishing houses and cultural brands will leave room for independent publishers and booksellers, who have my full support. My books are currently published in "paper" as well as digital versions. As long as the gods of the Market will allow the virtual and the concrete to coexist, I am willing to worship them with reason!

As for the Internet… I use it like everyone else today… who could do without it? I lived in Malaysia when the Web began to take off. I remember the first text I read online, by chance: it was Rimbaud’s correspondence. That night remains a splendid memory. It is in terms of social networks that I am a dinosaur, and that I intend to remain so (read Gérald Bronner, Apocalypse cognitive !).

Be wise, oh my luggage , by Hélène Honnorat.

You can find Hélène Honnorat's books at the Géosphère bookstore in Montpellier.

Interview conducted by Fréville for Chemins de tr@verse.