Claude Mesplède : Indeed, labels and definitions proliferate. They also call me the ‘crime stories pope’ and in his Panorama du polar français (Panorama of French Crime Stories), the late Maurice Périsset had placed me among its ‘éminences grises’, or most eminent and knowledgable powers if you prefer. But to all these labels, and notably the ‘specialist’ one, I prefer, as so eloquently expressed by my collegue and friend Michel Boujut, the term of fan, because even if today I receive some royalties for the books I write, it is through my passion and personal taste that I came originally to crime stories. Simply for pleasure.

It started very early because as early as eight, nine years old in oder to quench my thirst for reading, I could rummage in my father’s library and he was a literature teacher at the Berthelot high school in Toulouse. To dispense no constraints, no stimulations, no interdictions seems to me an excellent method to inspire a kid to read, to read voraciously even, since, in my case, I devoured everything I picked up. I read without any discrimination, curious about anything as a naive youth (I believed in Santa Claus until 6th grade, at 10 years old). That’s how, though still a kid, I read Les aventures du roi Pausole and Les Chansons de Bilitis by Pierre Louys without really understanding what they meant. A further example can come from Chroniques du règne de Charles IX by Prosper Mérimée in which a very eager lover cuts with his knife the laces of a damsel’s bodice in his haste of undressing her. Such details, which remained rather incomprehensible to me, perturbed me nonetheless. It’s also at that time that I read numerous aventure stories like Les Aventures de Télémaque by Fénelon or Hercules’ exploits. I always adored either greek or latin mythology inspired legends. It is in fact in sixth grade that, at the request of a teacher, I presented to my classmates my first paper ever which was about the twelve labours of Hercules. One or two years later in quarantine because of mumps, I read The Bible, many tales by Maupassant and Salammbô by Flaubert, a novel that has remained mythical for me and whose first sentence I recall often : « It was in Mégara, a suburb of Cathage, in the gardens of Amilcar ». Such readings lead to crime stories as they carry the same narrative richness linked to the pleasure to discover strange or shady worlds. Thus I read my first crime stories at ten years old. I still remeber them, at least the plots. The first title La Dernière enquête de l’inspecteur Ralston, a book of 120 pages in the « Le Verrou » series, written by Peter Cheyney, totally captivated me. Its guilty character was a pseudo paralitic man who, wanting to divert suspicions, spent his days in a wheelchair. Then, there were the investigations of Agatha Christie and those of Simon Templar, the character created by Leslie Charteris, who was nicknamed The Saint.

C. F : Since Edgar Alan Poe, considered as the father of crime stories, this literary genre has never stopped reinventing its codes either in rigid and conformist modes or in irreverent ones (misrepresentations, transgressions, subversions, parody of writing codes) thus generating a multitude of variants in the writing practice of crime stories. Which variants do you prefer and why ?

C. M : Most kids started their crime stories reading through Le Club des Cinq or similar publications. In my case I read an English author, Arthur Ransome who featured a group of adolescents involved in many aventures whose realism made them highly believable. Later on, I grew up splitting my reading interests between two poles: the classics with Zola, Benjamin Constant, Flaubert, Gérard de Nerval etc., and the crime and popular stories from Paul Féval (Les Mystères de Londres), Eugène Sue (Les Mystères de Paris), Maurice Leblanc, Gaston Leroux, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and above all Patrick Quentin, creator of a couple, Iris and Peter Duluth whose adventures fascinated me. During my military service I read a lot, as it lasted 27 month during the Algerian war. I discovered Aragon, Roger Martin du Gard, Henri Barbusse, etc. They all wrote agaisnt the war ! I returned to active life in mai 1961. I came back to Air France plane maintenance shops in Orly. In 1963 the CGT union chose me as its head of alternate representatives and then I found myself elected for two years to the company’s board of representatives. I shed my blue overalls for office work garments and learned the management of a restaurant and its employees. I uncovered some shady wheeling and dealing by a manager who was quickly removed (later I will use these experiences in my novel Le cantique des cantines). Also, put in charge of cultural affairs, I organized the first conferences bringing together writers and artists with Air France blue-collar workers and office employees. By the second meeting the event was already a success. I invited Jorge Semprun when his book Le Grand voyage came out. It may have been his first book but for me it was my first interview, on a stage, with 150 attentive spectators. Everything went well thanks to Jorge’s kindness who, without knowing it, thus started what would become the future of my literary activities. This type of conference will go on for quite a few years with a schedule of a well attended session per month. Following my two years’ mandate I left the company’s board of representatives because my comrades prefered to elect me as the head of the Air France Orly union, which at the time had 1500 members from an overall staff of 4500 people. All these details are important to understand how I came to be involved with what we call in France the noir crime stories. My militant activities had not dampened by book reading boulimia yet I was dealing more in Karl Marx realm than in the complete works of James Hardley Chase, even if my personal crime stories library was steadily growing with each house move. One Saturday morning, while going to the local market, I bought from an outdoor bookseller La Moisson rouge (Red Harvest) de Dashiell Hammett. Besides its behaviorist style, which has since become a favorite of mine, the fascinating story told how the boss of a mine (he owns the mine, the shops, the miners housing, etc…), faced with a tough strike, calls on some gunmen (gangsters) to quell the proletariat. In another realm I was meeting again in a crime story some of my daily preocupations and had no difficulty to identify with all the union members portrayed. Red Harvest will remain my bedside book because there I discovered a microcosm of prohibition time America, and of union bashing that literally captivated me. Before reading this book I didn’t know that a crime story could uncork capitalist society so clearly. Hammett helped me to understand that and above all led me to discover the diversity in American novel writing. In reality, what happened in this town called Personville ? Hammett, who knows the art of shorcuts, says it all in one sentence that I know by heart : « When the last skull had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organized labor in Personville was a used firecracker » For further exemple one can refer to the article published in 1922 by journalist James Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice) about the coal mine strikes. He told how the mines’ bosses, infuriated by their powerlessness, had rented four planes to bomb a gathering of miners and their families. I understood quickly how the American noir crime stories allowed me through the pleasure of reading, to enrich my knowledge of past and present times, as Hammett intended. Basing yourself on a crime story narrative you can tell a lot of things and bring flesh and blood characters to life. Even if I sometimes value reading a Hercule Poirot’s mystery, that type of story is far from Hammett’s realism and by extension from those who have chosen to express themselves through noir crime stories.

C. F : Considered for a long time as a ‘pseudo literature’, a ‘rogue-literature’, the crime stories genre has been booming recently and drawn also respect and an devoted following : national and international festivals and conferences, special sections in bookstores, internet sites and magazines, encyclopedias and critical essays, university papers, ‘straight’ authors flirting and dabbling with the genre…How do you read this ‘phenomenon’ ?

C. M : This phenomenoon is compplex and it would be pretentious to read it outright since certainly several factors are at play. First of all, for the last thirty years French novels have become unappealing and of the self centered type. Therefore a certain number of readers turned away from them and towards crime novels, one of the rare spaces where narrating stories is actually being done. Besides, for some time now, the whole planet has been living under unbriddled liberalism and in such a climate noir crime stories have flourished since they ring as a discording tune from the fashionable similar standard songs emanating ‘the right & left political forces’ as they are called. Not only crime stories diverge from this conformist world but furthermore they denounce it often. As such they are sometimes a meeting point for those who would like to change the world. Those who harped for years that crime stories had no value are contradicted daily by the scope and richness of the publications. Quality of writing is the indelible stamp of today crime writing. Therefore readers have no complex anymore in front of old criticism. They read without shame and participate actively in raising perceptions around them.

Yet, to all this, one needs to add, when talking about France, everything that emerged following the creation of the ‘Association 813’ group and the Crime Novels & Films Festivals in Reims (1979-1986), Grenoble (1987-1989), Saint-Nazaire (1988-1997). Before all those fans were rather isolated, each in their corner, but then they discovered that their passion was shared by quite a few people. Such meetings allowed energies to be gathered. Some well known authors were invited and the public followed. We come to a point when readers, through their sharing, finally admit and dare to profess their love for the genre, previously hidden as shamefull somehow. At the same time comes the book series Rivages/Noir from François Guérif. The start is difficult but success, notably thanks to Ellroy books, changes the attitude of publishers towards the genre. With its integral and careful translations, its consistent follow-up of authors, Rivages pushes the competition to self examination. Crime stories gain in respectability and numerous series come to life.

C. F : What are the most innovative countries, the most prolific in crime stories publication ? How do you explain that and what are the most-travelled tendencies ?

C. M : Among the most innovative you find Sweden with a whole stable of talented authors even if some are less brilliant. There is also the United Kigdom with English authors like Minette Walters, Val McDermid, John Harvey, Nicholas Blincoe. But also some Scots like Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre, Philip Kerr without forgetting my old friend William McIllvaney. If among anglo-saxons, the historical novel remains the daily chore, crime procedural is very much in for the greatest number : Rankin, Harvey, Mac Dermid among those already mentioned but also for rather unknown new writers. Innovation is also present in Italy and Spain where fascistic regimes swarted for years any contradictory opinions. Finally the whole of Latin America opened up to this type of narration without renouncing onirism and derision among other traits which are evident attributes of Latin American literatures.

C. F : Are noir crime stories the best way to translate the angst, the ‘ghoulish death dance’ (as written by Alain Demouzon) of our societies ?

C. M : That the number of publications (between 1350 & 1400 titles every year) would slow down a bit because nobody can read it all. This type of over-production doesn’t help the crime stories genre.

C. F : What are the novels that you read recently that interested or even fascinated you ?

C. M : Last year there was Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane and a French novel by Hervé Lecorre : L’Homme aux lèvres de saphir. It’s a gem as you would have guessed !

C. F : You already gave a shot to crime writing (with Le cantique des cantines), so, your next caper is for… ?

C. M : … I have a title if you want : "claudio.m.com/detective.publinet", what do you think ? Since this question is often thrown at me I’ll rephrase an old answer fitting well with my personality. I believe that I have nothing to bring forth through a novel. Moreover when I read Vargas, Oppel, Dessaint, Pennac, Raynal and a few others, I see my own writing as platitudes. Therefore I prefer to let those who do it well to write the novels. I have no literary ambition. But I love to infect others with the reading virus. I love to spread my passions and since I was raised in an era when crime stories were bashed upon, I wanted to defend them and to give a shot to what had never been done. A book dedicated to the life and works of all these writers scorned by the intelligentsia, so their trace remained, so they wouldn’t be forgotten totally.

	European crime fiction in the crosshairs

	n°1 May-June 2005


	Interview with Claude Mesplède by Cathy Fourez Translation: Steve Novak • March 2005 • During the Festival of Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, Cathy met with Claude Mesplède, a well known figure to crime stories fans with whom he likes to mingle. Cathy Fourez : You have the prestigious title (which would shame some of the most hardened academics in this domain) to be a ‘specialist’, one could even say an international ‘ erudite’ about crime stories literature ; but everyone knows that genius is not born but built…therefore to satisfy our hunger , tell us what led you ‘to suck on crime stories milk’ ? Claude Mesplède : Indeed, labels and definitions proliferate. They also call me the ‘crime stories pope’ and in his Panorama du polar français (Panorama of French Crime Stories), the late Maurice Périsset had placed me among its ‘éminences grises’, or most eminent and knowledgable powers if you prefer. But to all these labels, and notably the ‘specialist’ one, I prefer, as so eloquently expressed by my collegue and friend Michel Boujut, the term of fan, because even if today I receive some royalties for the books I write, it is through my passion and personal taste that I came originally to crime stories. Simply for pleasure. It started very early because as early as eight, nine years old in oder to quench my thirst for reading, I could rummage in my father’s library and he was a literature teacher at the Berthelot high school in Toulouse. To dispense no constraints, no stimulations, no interdictions seems to me an excellent method to inspire a kid to read, to read voraciously even, since, in my case, I devoured everything I picked up. I read without any discrimination, curious about anything as a naive youth (I believed in Santa Claus until 6th grade, at 10 years old). That’s how, though still a kid, I read Les aventures du roi Pausole and Les Chansons de Bilitis by Pierre Louys without really understanding what they meant. A further example can come from Chroniques du règne de Charles IX by Prosper Mérimée in which a very eager lover cuts with his knife the laces of a damsel’s bodice in his haste of undressing her. Such details, which remained rather incomprehensible to me, perturbed me nonetheless. It’s also at that time that I read numerous aventure stories like Les Aventures de Télémaque by Fénelon or Hercules’ exploits. I always adored either greek or latin mythology inspired legends. It is in fact in sixth grade that, at the request of a teacher, I presented to my classmates my first paper ever which was about the twelve labours of Hercules. One or two years later in quarantine because of mumps, I read The Bible, many tales by Maupassant and Salammbô by Flaubert, a novel that has remained mythical for me and whose first sentence I recall often : « It was in Mégara, a suburb of Cathage, in the gardens of Amilcar ». Such readings lead to crime stories as they carry the same narrative richness linked to the pleasure to discover strange or shady worlds. Thus I read my first crime stories at ten years old. I still remeber them, at least the plots. The first title La Dernière enquête de l’inspecteur Ralston, a book of 120 pages in the « Le Verrou » series, written by Peter Cheyney, totally captivated me. Its guilty character was a pseudo paralitic man who, wanting to divert suspicions, spent his days in a wheelchair. Then, there were the investigations of Agatha Christie and those of Simon Templar, the character created by Leslie Charteris, who was nicknamed The Saint. C. F : Since Edgar Alan Poe, considered as the father of crime stories, this literary genre has never stopped reinventing its codes either in rigid and conformist modes or in irreverent ones (misrepresentations, transgressions, subversions, parody of writing codes) thus generating a multitude of variants in the writing practice of crime stories. Which variants do you prefer and why ? C. M : Most kids started their crime stories reading through Le Club des Cinq or similar publications. In my case I read an English author, Arthur Ransome who featured a group of adolescents involved in many aventures whose realism made them highly believable. Later on, I grew up splitting my reading interests between two poles: the classics with Zola, Benjamin Constant, Flaubert, Gérard de Nerval etc., and the crime and popular stories from Paul Féval (Les Mystères de Londres), Eugène Sue (Les Mystères de Paris), Maurice Leblanc, Gaston Leroux, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and above all Patrick Quentin, creator of a couple, Iris and Peter Duluth whose adventures fascinated me. During my military service I read a lot, as it lasted 27 month during the Algerian war. I discovered Aragon, Roger Martin du Gard, Henri Barbusse, etc. They all wrote agaisnt the war ! I returned to active life in mai 1961. I came back to Air France plane maintenance shops in Orly. In 1963 the CGT union chose me as its head of alternate representatives and then I found myself elected for two years to the company’s board of representatives. I shed my blue overalls for office work garments and learned the management of a restaurant and its employees. I uncovered some shady wheeling and dealing by a manager who was quickly removed (later I will use these experiences in my novel Le cantique des cantines). Also, put in charge of cultural affairs, I organized the first conferences bringing together writers and artists with Air France blue-collar workers and office employees. By the second meeting the event was already a success. I invited Jorge Semprun when his book Le Grand voyage came out. It may have been his first book but for me it was my first interview, on a stage, with 150 attentive spectators. Everything went well thanks to Jorge’s kindness who, without knowing it, thus started what would become the future of my literary activities. This type of conference will go on for quite a few years with a schedule of a well attended session per month. Following my two years’ mandate I left the company’s board of representatives because my comrades prefered to elect me as the head of the Air France Orly union, which at the time had 1500 members from an overall staff of 4500 people. All these details are important to understand how I came to be involved with what we call in France the noir crime stories. My militant activities had not dampened by book reading boulimia yet I was dealing more in Karl Marx realm than in the complete works of James Hardley Chase, even if my personal crime stories library was steadily growing with each house move. One Saturday morning, while going to the local market, I bought from an outdoor bookseller La Moisson rouge (Red Harvest) de Dashiell Hammett. Besides its behaviorist style, which has since become a favorite of mine, the fascinating story told how the boss of a mine (he owns the mine, the shops, the miners housing, etc…), faced with a tough strike, calls on some gunmen (gangsters) to quell the proletariat. In another realm I was meeting again in a crime story some of my daily preocupations and had no difficulty to identify with all the union members portrayed. Red Harvest will remain my bedside book because there I discovered a microcosm of prohibition time America, and of union bashing that literally captivated me. Before reading this book I didn’t know that a crime story could uncork capitalist society so clearly. Hammett helped me to understand that and above all led me to discover the diversity in American novel writing. In reality, what happened in this town called Personville ? Hammett, who knows the art of shorcuts, says it all in one sentence that I know by heart : « When the last skull had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organized labor in Personville was a used firecracker » For further exemple one can refer to the article published in 1922 by journalist James Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice) about the coal mine strikes. He told how the mines’ bosses, infuriated by their powerlessness, had rented four planes to bomb a gathering of miners and their families. I understood quickly how the American noir crime stories allowed me through the pleasure of reading, to enrich my knowledge of past and present times, as Hammett intended. Basing yourself on a crime story narrative you can tell a lot of things and bring flesh and blood characters to life. Even if I sometimes value reading a Hercule Poirot’s mystery, that type of story is far from Hammett’s realism and by extension from those who have chosen to express themselves through noir crime stories. C. F : Considered for a long time as a ‘pseudo literature’, a ‘rogue-literature’, the crime stories genre has been booming recently and drawn also respect and an devoted following : national and international festivals and conferences, special sections in bookstores, internet sites and magazines, encyclopedias and critical essays, university papers, ‘straight’ authors flirting and dabbling with the genre…How do you read this ‘phenomenon’ ? C. M : This phenomenoon is compplex and it would be pretentious to read it outright since certainly several factors are at play. First of all, for the last thirty years French novels have become unappealing and of the self centered type. Therefore a certain number of readers turned away from them and towards crime novels, one of the rare spaces where narrating stories is actually being done. Besides, for some time now, the whole planet has been living under unbriddled liberalism and in such a climate noir crime stories have flourished since they ring as a discording tune from the fashionable similar standard songs emanating ‘the right & left political forces’ as they are called. Not only crime stories diverge from this conformist world but furthermore they denounce it often. As such they are sometimes a meeting point for those who would like to change the world. Those who harped for years that crime stories had no value are contradicted daily by the scope and richness of the publications. Quality of writing is the indelible stamp of today crime writing. Therefore readers have no complex anymore in front of old criticism. They read without shame and participate actively in raising perceptions around them. One can also detect a change among female readers. Thirty years ago women readers stuck mostly to suspense novels (Mary Higggins Clarke) or the enigma genre (Agatha Christie). Then a certain number of women writers came to the noir crime stories. Their heroes are no longer cookies chewing old ladies with slippers, but energy driven daily joggers in their forties. After dropping their suburbanite hubbies they deal alone with themselves and with police inquiries during which they carry forth feminist claims and their right to sexual difference. This freedom of tone, linked to the feminist activism of the 70’s, has played a part in the choices made by the new female readers. Yet, to all this, one needs to add, when talking about France, everything that emerged following the creation of the ‘Association 813’ group and the Crime Novels & Films Festivals in Reims (1979-1986), Grenoble (1987-1989), Saint-Nazaire (1988-1997). Before all those fans were rather isolated, each in their corner, but then they discovered that their passion was shared by quite a few people. Such meetings allowed energies to be gathered. Some well known authors were invited and the public followed. We come to a point when readers, through their sharing, finally admit and dare to profess their love for the genre, previously hidden as shamefull somehow. At the same time comes the book series Rivages/Noir from François Guérif. The start is difficult but success, notably thanks to Ellroy books, changes the attitude of publishers towards the genre. With its integral and careful translations, its consistent follow-up of authors, Rivages pushes the competition to self examination. Crime stories gain in respectability and numerous series come to life. C. F : What are the most innovative countries, the most prolific in crime stories publication ? How do you explain that and what are the most-travelled tendencies ? C. M : Among the most innovative you find Sweden with a whole stable of talented authors even if some are less brilliant. There is also the United Kigdom with English authors like Minette Walters, Val McDermid, John Harvey, Nicholas Blincoe. But also some Scots like Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre, Philip Kerr without forgetting my old friend William McIllvaney. If among anglo-saxons, the historical novel remains the daily chore, crime procedural is very much in for the greatest number : Rankin, Harvey, Mac Dermid among those already mentioned but also for rather unknown new writers. Innovation is also present in Italy and Spain where fascistic regimes swarted for years any contradictory opinions. Finally the whole of Latin America opened up to this type of narration without renouncing onirism and derision among other traits which are evident attributes of Latin American literatures. C. F : Are noir crime stories the best way to translate the angst, the ‘ghoulish death dance’ (as written by Alain Demouzon) of our societies ? C. M : I’m not shure if it is the best way, but for me it is the one that binds with my personal reader’s sensibility. C. F : What do you expect for crime novels in 2005 ? C. M : That the number of publications (between 1350 & 1400 titles every year) would slow down a bit because nobody can read it all. This type of over-production doesn’t help the crime stories genre. C. F : What are the novels that you read recently that interested or even fascinated you ? C. M : Last year there was Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane and a French novel by Hervé Lecorre : L’Homme aux lèvres de saphir. It’s a gem as you would have guessed ! C. F : You already gave a shot to crime writing (with Le cantique des cantines), so, your next caper is for… ? C. M : … I have a title if you want : "claudio.m.com/detective.publinet", what do you think ? Since this question is often thrown at me I’ll rephrase an old answer fitting well with my personality. I believe that I have nothing to bring forth through a novel. Moreover when I read Vargas, Oppel, Dessaint, Pennac, Raynal and a few others, I see my own writing as platitudes. Therefore I prefer to let those who do it well to write the novels. I have no literary ambition. But I love to infect others with the reading virus. I love to spread my passions and since I was raised in an era when crime stories were bashed upon, I wanted to defend them and to give a shot to what had never been done. A book dedicated to the life and works of all these writers scorned by the intelligentsia, so their trace remained, so they wouldn’t be forgotten totally. >> Go to read articles by Claude Mesplède on Europolar. >> Bibliographie (from mauvaisgenres.com) : 1982. Voyage au bout de la noire (Futuropolis), in collaboration with Jean-Jacques Schléret. Biography, bibliography et filmography of 732 writers from Série Noire & Série Blême, (1945 to 1980). 813 Award for best crime novels study for the year. 1985. Voyage au bout de la noire. Volume 2. With 72 new writers (1980/1985). 1988. Pas de peau pour Miss Amaryllis (Souris Noire, Syros). Kids crime story. Filmed for television (Souris Noire FR3). 1992. Les Années Série Noire (Encrage). Volume 1 - 1945/1959. Study published at Gallimard. Each volume undertakes the study of 500 tiitles (plot summary, critical analysis, quotes, tidbits) anlysis of some notable characters , several indexes (themes, characters, translators, original titles, locations, French titles) and a study of each years publishing houses editorial management. 813 Award for best crime novels study for the year. 1993. Les Années Série Noire (Encrage). Volume 2 - 1959/1966. 1994. Les Années Série Noire (Encrage).Volume 3 - 1966/1972. 1995. Les Années Série Noire (Encrage). Volume 4 - 1972/1982. 1995. La Crème du crime (L’Atalante). In collaboration with Michel Lebrun. Anthology of French noir & crime short stories including 88 texts preceded by an historical essay on French crime novels from the origins to present day. 1995. Chroniques au noir (Options). Compilation of articles published in Options magazine (1993/1995). 1996. Le Cantique des cantines (Baleine) novel in the Le Poulpe series. 1996. Les Auteurs de la série noire (Editions Joseph K.). Revised & updated version of Voyage au bout de la noire (1945/1995). 1999. Joyeux Noëls (Fleuve Noir). Publication of one book with 13 new noir short stories from 13 French authors. 2000. Les Années Série Noire (Encrage). Volume 5 - 1982/1995 2003. Dictionary of Crime stories. 2 volumes (Joseph K.) 2003. Dictionnaire des littératures policières (Joseph K., Nantes)
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