The Mystery of Henri Pick

by David Foenkinos

  9

  The report on the library had been quickly edited so that Madeleine could see it during the recording of her interview. François Busnel asked her for a reaction.

  “It’s incredible to see everything that’s happening here,” she said. “I’ve heard that people are going to our old pizzeria just to see where my husband might have written his book. Anyway, I hope they don’t go there wanting to eat pizza, because it’s a crêperie now.”

  “How do you feel about all this enthusiasm?”

  “I don’t really understand it. It’s just a book.”

  “Readers are naturally curious, though. That’s also why there are so many journalists investigating your husband’s past.”

  “Yes, I know, everybody wants to talk to me. They’re rummaging through our lives, and I don’t like that. I was advised to talk to you. I hope you’re pleased. Because if I say what I think, I hope the others will leave me in peace. Some of them have been visiting his grave, and they don’t even know him. That’s not a good thing to do. He was my husband. I’m glad people are reading his book, but… well, that’s enough now.”

  Madeleine pronounced these last words in a firm voice. Nobody was expecting it, but this was how she felt. She didn’t like the whole circus that had grown up around her husband. François Busnel had mentioned the journalists investigating Pick’s life: would there be revelations? Some of them were driven by a different kind of impulse. Several7 believed that the pizzeria owner could not have written a novel. They didn’t know who had written it, or why the author had used Pick’s name, but they felt certain the facts were there, just waiting to be discovered. Madeleine’s interview, confirming her husband’s dull and uncultured life, only supported their hunch. Each of them would do whatever it took to find the key to this mystery. The race was on.

  10

  The day after the programme was broadcast, the viewing figures were released. Everybody was amazed. It was historical, record-breaking. Such figures for a literary television show had not been seen in years, since Bernard Pivot presented Apostrophes. A few days later, the book went to number one on the bestseller list. Even sales of Pushkin went up. The craze spread beyond France, with increasingly high offers for translation rights, particularly from Germany. In a context of economic crisis and geopolitical instability, Madeleine’s sincerity, allied to the miracle of the manuscript’s history, had laid the foundations for a massive international success.

  In Crozon, this media frenzy changed the way people looked at Madeleine. In the market, she could tell that people’s attitudes towards her were no longer the same. They watched her as if she were a fairground freak, and she found herself smiling at everyone to cover her embarrassment. The town’s mayor offered to organize a small party in her honour, but she categorically refused. She’d agreed to let her husband’s novel be published, she’d agreed to appear on a television programme, but that was the end of it. It was out of the question that her life should change. (It was far from certain that she was the one to decide that.)

  Faced with Madeleine’s desire for privacy, the journalists decided to fall back on the writer’s daughter. Joséphine, after years lurking in the shadows, considered this sudden fascination with her as something of a godsend. Life was offering her a chance for revenge. When Marc left her, she’d felt that nobody would be interested in her ever again, but now here she was, centre stage. The journalists wanted to know what her father was like, if he used to tell her stories when she was a little girl. If it went on like this, they’d soon be asking her if she preferred broccoli or aubergine. Like a briefly famous reality-TV star, she was seduced by the idea of being special. Ouest-France sent a journalist to conduct a full-length interview. Joséphine couldn’t believe it. “The most widely read newspaper in France,” she sighed. When they took pictures, she asked them to use her shop as a backdrop. By the next day, sales of her lingerie had doubled. People queued up to buy a bra from the daughter of the pizzeria owner who’d written a novel in absolute secrecy (one of the bizarre paths taken by this particular form of posthumous fame).

  Joséphine had regained the use of her zygomatic muscles. Now she could be seen parading outside her shop, looking like a lottery winner. In conversation with interviewers, she rewrote her own life story: she talked about how close she had been to her father, she lied that she had always sensed some mysterious inner life behind his calm facade. In the end she admitted what everybody wanted to hear: she wasn’t surprised by what had been discovered. She passed over in silence (or had completely forgotten) her first reaction. She discovered a taste for the drug that is fame; each day, she wanted to spend even longer soaking up the limelight, to let it consume her.

  She was also stunned to receive a phone call from Marc. He’d called her a few times after their separation, before vanishing completely from her life. For months on end, she would stare at the telephone, waiting for it to ring, for Marc to tell her that he’d made a terrible mistake. Some days, she would turn her mobile off and on again dozens of times to make sure it was working properly, even lifting it above her head in a ridiculous attempt to find better reception. But he had never called again. How was it possible for someone to break so completely with such a big part of their past? True, their most recent discussions had been little more than a chaotic succession of reproaches (her) and attempts to change the subject (him), and it was obvious that talking to each other equated to hurting each other.

  They say that time heals, but some wounds remain open. She still missed Marc. Not only his presence in bed in the mornings, but even his faults: the way he used to grunt instead of saying “yes” or “no”, or sometimes even “maybe”. Joséphine loved what she had previously hated. She thought about their first meeting, about the birth of their daughters. All those images of happiness, ruined by that untimely end. The moment when he said: “We need to talk.” That famous, hopeless phrase that actually means: there is nothing more to say. So it was over. But then the telephone in the shop started to ring. It was Marc, wanting to know how she was. Frozen in surprise, she said nothing. He went on: “I was wondering if I could see you, have a coffee together, if that’s okay with you?” Yes, it really was Marc speaking. It was Marc asking her if she was okay with seeing him again. She gathered her scrambled thoughts and said: “Yes.” She wrote down the time and place of their meeting, then hung up. For several minutes, she stared at the telephone.

  1Such as the striking description of a character’s forehead ‘where the bones showed through like the points of a crown of thorns or the beads of a rosary’.

  2An author she liked as much for his writing style as his physical appearance (like a mischievous bear), but whom she no longer saw very often, since he had left Grasset to return to his first publisher, Julliard.

  3As if recognition consisted of being understood. Nobody is ever understood, and certainly not writers. They wander through kingdoms of strange emotions and, most of the time, do not even understand themselves.

  4He enunciated them with great slowness and power; it would be easy to imagine that he had been an actor in his youth.

  5In fact, it was the only item of clothing she owned classy enough for such an event.

  6A slight alteration of the truth, as anyone who read the beginning of this book will know.

  7Among them, Jean-Michel Rouche, a former journalist at Figaro Littéraire, specializing in German literature (he was a hardcore fan of the Mann family), who—after being fired from his job—was now trying to scrape a living as a freelancer, writing puff pieces and presenting literary events. For now, he is no more than a footnote, but soon he will become a major character in this story.

  PART SIX

  1

  The book continued to top the bestseller lists, becoming a phenomenon with several unexpected consequences. The translation rights, naturally, were bought by publishers in many different countries, and the book was already a hit in Germany after being published in record time. The magazine Der
Spiegel devoted a very long article to the novel, comparing Pick with other reclusive writers such as J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. The article even mentioned Julien Gracq, who refused to accept the Prix Goncourt in 1951 for his novel The Opposing Shore. The situation was not quite the same, but the general thesis of the article was that Pick belonged to a large subset of writers who want to be read without being seen. In the United States, the novel would come out under the title The Unwanted Book: a surprising choice, since it referred more to the story of the book’s publication than the text itself, but tangible proof that our era was edging towards a complete domination of form over substance.

  There were also several bids for the film rights, though nothing had yet been signed. Thomas Langmann, the producer of The Artist, began thinking about a film based not on the novel but on the author’s life; he kept repeating to anyone who would listen: “It’ll be a biopick!” For the moment, however, it was difficult to envisage a screenplay on that subject, because there was too much missing information, particularly concerning the circumstances in which Pick wrote his book. You couldn’t make a two-hour film about a guy who makes pizzas and writes in the mornings when nobody else is around. “There are limits to contemplative cinema. This story would have been perfect for Antonioni, with Alain Delon and Monica Vitti in the starring roles…” Langmann daydreamed. In the end, he did not take up the option. Heidi Warneke, the warm-voiced German lady who runs the rights department at Grasset, continued to consider various offers without coming to a decision. It was better to wait for the right project than to rush into something; with the book’s success continuing to grow, it was obvious that a bigger, better offer would be made very soon. Heidi secretly dreamt of Roman Polanski, whom she considered the only director capable of making a gripping film about a man shut up in a room. The book was a story about a blockage, about the impossibility of love between two people, and the director of The Pianist had a unique talent for filming physical and mental constriction. But he had just started shooting his new film, the story of a young German painter who was killed in Auschwitz.

  2

  There were yet other consequences, even more unexpected. Some people began to embrace the good fortune of being rejected. Publishers were not always right; Pick was further proof of that. These people conveniently forgot that there was no evidence that Pick had actually sent his manuscript to any publishers. But it was a wave that could be surfed. With the rise of digital publishing, more and more writers were putting their books directly online after being rejected by traditional publishers. And the public could make such books a success, as was the case with Anna Todd’s After series.

  Richard Ducousset at Albin Michel was the first person to transform this trend into a marketing idea. He asked his assistant to find a few books that were “not too bad” among the pile of recently rejected novels. After all, publishers sometimes think about publishing a novel, then decide against it despite the book possessing certain qualities. The assistant called the selected author to find out how many rejections he’d received.

  “You’re calling me to find out how many other publishers rejected my book?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “We’d just like to know.”

  “About ten, I think.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said, hanging up.

  Ten wasn’t enough. They needed to find a champion of rejection. The eventual winner was Gustave Horn, who wrote a novel called My Brother’s Glory, rejected by thirty-two different publishers. Richard Ducousset immediately offered a contract to the author, who initially thought it was a prank. Was there a hidden camera somewhere? But no, the contract was real.

  “I don’t understand this. A few months ago, you didn’t want my book. You sent me a standard rejection letter.”

  “We changed our mind,” the editor explained. “Everybody makes mistakes…”

  A few weeks later, the book came out with a sticker on the cover announcing proudly: “A novel rejected thirty-two times.”

  This book did not replicate Pick’s success, but it did sell more than 20,000 copies, which is pretty impressive. Readers were intrigued by the idea of a novel rejected that many times. There was something transgressive about this attraction. Incapable of perceiving the irony of the situation, Gustave Horn felt that his talent had finally been rewarded. He was baffled when his publisher turned down his next manuscript.

  3

  Jack Lang, the former French minister of culture, had the idea of establishing an Unpublished Authors Day,1 when the country would recognize all those who wrote without reward. From its first year, the day was a popular success. In a similar vein to the Festival of Music, also created by Lang, the budding novelists and poets of France filled the streets to read out their stories and share their words with anyone who would listen. An investigation by the newspaper Le Parisien confirmed that one French person in three wanted to write: “One can almost say today that there are more writers than readers,” concluded Pierre Vavasseur in his article. On RTL Radio, Bernard Lehut chronicled the success of Unpublished Authors Day and noted: “We all have a Pick inside of us.” The success of that book, discovered amid other rejects, spoke to the yearnings of an entire population who hungered to be read. For the occasion, Augustin Trapenard interviewed a Hungarian philosopher whose specialization was the question of erasure, notably in the work of Maurice Blanchot. But there was a problem: this man was so intensely engaged with his subject that he kept leaving interminable silences between his sentences, as if he wished to gradually erase himself from the airwaves.

  So Pick was on everybody’s lips, a symbol of the dream that one day, you too would be recognized for your talent. Of course, some people claim to write only for themselves, but how can anyone believe that? Words always have a destination; they aspire to be read by other eyes. Writing for yourself would be like packing your suitcase and then not going anywhere. While readers did enjoy Pick’s novel, it was above all the story behind it that moved them. It echoed the fantasy of being somebody else, the unsuspected superhero, the ordinary-seeming man whose secret is that he possesses an imperceptible literary sensibility. And the less people knew about him, the more fascinating he was. There was nothing to his biography beyond the straight line of a banal, boring life. This fanned the flames of admiration; it added to his myth. Increasing numbers of readers went in search of his tracks, visited his grave. The cemetery in Crozon was filled with his most fervent fans. Madeleine would sometimes see them there. Unable to understand what they wanted, she had no hesitation in asking them to leave her husband in peace. Was she the kind of person who thought it was possible to wake the dead? In any case, you could stir up their secrets.

  These unusual visitors also went to the Picks’ pizzeria. They were disappointed to find that it was now a crêperie. The new owners, Gérard Misson and his wife Nicole, surprised by the crowds converging on their humble restaurant, decided to add pizzas to the menu. The first few days were disastrous; the crêpier struggled to make the transition. “I have to make pizzas now… and all because of a book,” he kept repeating incredulously, as he tried to familiarize himself with the pizza oven. Soon, there were no more crêpes. As more and more customers came to visit the cellar where Pick had written his novel, Misson warmed to his new vocation, organizing pilgrimages and inventing stories that, over the months that followed, became increasingly elaborate. So it was that the novel of the novel wrote itself.

  One morning, while he was making an inventory of his storeroom, Gérard Misson decided to bring down one of the tables from the restaurant. He took a chair, and sat down to write. This man, who had never written a line in his life, thought that inspiration might strike if he sat in this magical place with a sheet of paper and a biro in his hand. But nothing happened. Not a single idea. Not the merest hint of an opening sentence. On the whole, he thought, it was easier to make crêpes (or even pizzas). He was terribly disappointed, having spent several da
ys daydreaming about becoming a successful writer.

  His wife found him in that improbable position.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It… it’s not what you think.”

  “Are you writing? You?”

  Nicole laughed, and went back up to the restaurant. She had not meant to mock him, but her husband felt humiliated. Evidently his wife did not believe him capable of writing, or even just sitting and thinking. They never spoke about the incident again, but it was the beginning of the end of their marriage. Sometimes you have to do something surprising, drift away from the current of daily life, to find out what your partner really thinks of you.

  4

  The break-up of the Missons’ marriage was one of the many unforeseen consequences of the publication of Pick’s novel. This novel changed lives. And, of course, the book’s fame spread to the library of rejects from which it had been plucked.

  Magali, who hadn’t really thought about it in years, had to reorganize the space devoted to the books that the publishing industry had forsaken. To start with, there was only a trickle of new arrivals, but soon after that it became a flood. It seemed that every person in France had a manuscript tucked away. Many of them didn’t realize that they were supposed to come in person to deposit their book; dozens of novels started arriving by post every day, as if the little library were a Parisian publishing house. Overwhelmed by the situation, Magali asked for help from the mayor’s office, which opened an annexe to the library, devoted exclusively to rejected books. Crozon became the capital of France’s unpublished authors.