Public Enemies Read Free Page B

merging, potentially criminal group, the lynch mob, avid, bloodthirsty, the “hairless, malignant beast” of which Frantz speaks in [Sartre’s play]
Les Séquestrés d’Altona
[
The Condemned of Altona
], * the “carnivorous species that has sworn [our] destruction,” in a word the great animal “lurking in the familiar eyes of our neighbors,” which is rearing to be “released.” In a sense I know it doubly. I am almost genealogically familiar with its characteristic breath, the quickened step, the warning signs, the war cry, the treachery. But I’ve never really felt that it was targeting me in particular or that I had it coming, that sooner or later my turn would come.
    Let’s put it differently.
    Having reflected on your question, yes, of course.
    Yes, it’s quite clear that this is “the” phenomenon par excellence, that this phenomenon is the basis of socialrelations, far more than, say, love, the social contract, or universal affection among mankind. That’s clear.
    It’s clear too that inclusion implies exclusion, and that generally whenever two men meet they have agreed to reject and banish a third … In other words, we must be suspicious of what the Greeks called
syncretism
—I’ve always thought that its deeper meaning was not the one claimed by etymology, a “union of several Cretans,” but rather “everyone united against the Cretans” (they were, after all, the least favorably viewed, the most disreputable people in the ancient world). Doesn’t that fit perfectly?
    Yet, the more I have gained this knowledge applied to others, the more prolifically I’ve written about its underlying logic, the more I believe, for example—and to reply to one of your other remarks, the more I’ve helped, following the path opened up by René Girard, * to show that revealed religions are not responsible for producing scapegoats but rather help to subdue savagery—the more I feel that my personal case, my experience as a young man or as a man, hardly helped me to reach these conclusions.
    It’s odd but that’s how it is.
    It doesn’t square with the idea that was our starting point, of the writer who has been disowned, insulted, dragged into the mud, et cetera. But it’s the truth.
    One last thing.
    You seem skeptical when I say that the things written about me and that I discover from time to time on diabolical Google are significant for me only insofar as they keep meinformed of the state of play, what my adversary is up to, his weaknesses if any, and how to react appropriately.
    You’re wrong.
    I can assure you that this is also true.
    As soon as I’ve read them and immediately drawn the obvious tactical or strategic conclusions, I forget the articles by those people.
    They have no effect on my narcissism.
    In the face of assaults, my ego is fireproof, shatterproof.
    And there’s a magic slate aspect, so that the malevolence spread in this way evaporates as soon as it stops scattering its effluents and informing me of the position of what Flaubert in a letter to Baudelaire called the adversary’s “batteries” and “carriages.”
    In other words—and you were right there—there’s nothing to equal the drive to conquer as an antidote to these two twin poisons, the desire to please and the desire to displease.
    There’s nothing to equal a
sense of war
, not only to protect a work, shelter it, give it sanctuary but also to see it through and to hang on to the desire to continue, unshaken by winds, tides, and the ravening pack.
    I’d forgotten that phrase of Voltaire’s.
    But I have to say that I like it a lot and that’s how I like to think of the writers I admire: living and dying bearing their weapons, making the best of it, like the great Valmont, * that “painter of battles.” That’s how I like to think of myself too, but my battles are like the ones in that book by Pérez-Reverte † that you recommended to me, and which I found gripping … But I’ll stop here, dear