In Plateforme, his new novel, he describes with cynicism today’s desolating panorama, from the Irish island where he reconstructed for himself a universe with his wife and dog. He deals with sexual tourism and attacks the Muslim, the feminists and journalism.

-Weren't you overwhelmed by The Elemental Particles' huge success? Wasn't it hard to come back to work?

-It should have overwhelmed me; that would've been just normal. But it didn't, it didn't paralyze me. (...)

Actually, I don't travel especially to write; I write about place I've already been. I don't even know what use it is for me to come back to them, since I don't visit anything. I don't leave my room.

-Your novel’s main character, Michel, speaks once of his "immense disdain for the West ". But it’s no longer disdain, but hate, what you feel towards the Islam, isn’t it?

-Yes, you can say that.

-Is that related to your mother’s conversion?

-Not really, I never took it seriously.(...) I had a sort of negative revelation in the Sinai, where Moses was given the Ten Commandments. Suddenly I felt a total rejection for monotheistic religions. Reading the Coran is depressing, depressing! The Bible is, at least, beautiful because the Jews have an amazing literary talent; that can make up for a lot of things.(...)

-Your main character even gets to the point of saying the sentence: "Every time I learned a Palestinian terrorist, or a Palestinian child, or a pregnant Palestinian woman, had been shot to death in Gaza, I felt a shudder of thrill".

-Revenge is a feeling I’ve never experimented.(...) Revenge exists. The Islam is a dangerous religion; it has always been. Luckily, it’s condemned. First, because God doesn’t exist. Second, capitalism has undermined Islam. There´s only left to hope that it will be defeated soon. Materialism is not as bad. Its principles are less destructive, less cruel, than the Islam´s.

-Then, don´t you have any spiritual aspiration?

-Honestly, the desire to transcend must be quite weak in me. Mi scientific education has left a strong impression. I believe in the importance of proof.

-Is the scientific explanation for the mysteries of life enough for you?

-It's unpleasant, but so convincing! Besides, my novels and the scientific method have something in common: their experimental nature. In a way, my characters are experiments I carry out with my brain: some work and develop; some others, don't.

-You have also written: "Humanitarism makes me sick".

-Of course, in the Third World’s conflicts there are victims, but it’s those victims who provoke them. If those poor jerks find it fun to destroy one another, then let them. Nationalists are apes. Dictators are not to blame, common individuals who can only think of combat are. They enjoy holding a rifle, they enjoy killing, they’re evil. Anybody who takes a gun to defend a cause, no matter what, is intrinsically despicable to me.(...)

-When you describe the violence in the suburbs, particularly in the new urban nucleus of Evry, surrounded by hordes of barbarians, you sound like a radical partisan of security.

-That’s no news; it’s my chevénementist side. [In reference to Jean-Pierre Chevénement, former Minister of the Interior and a candidate for president at the moment]. It´s obvious that the Police should act against any immoral behavior. Keeping things in order is normal. There’s no reason for one to feel threatened in one’s everyday life. In the novel, there’s this aphorism I especially like: "The military is a humanism".

-Since Extension Du Domaine, you play with the similarities between the author and the main character. Why all those Michel, those alter ego?

-It's fun. For instance, this passage in Plateforme's first page: "This is the reason why I never got a domestic animal. I never got married either ". As a matter of fact, I wrote that soon after buying a dog, and being already married. That allows for a negative self-image: what one could be but is not. It's also useful, very useful indeed, to describe things that have never happened to us, but which we would have liked to live.

-Some people don’t give much importance to sex. Is it possible that you overvalue it?

-No it’s not, I’m closer to a balance than Lovecraft! Besides, it’s interesting to write about it; (...)

Anyway, I don’t live to write. I mean it. So far, issues have imposed themselves to me. What I wander is whether I would be able to describe harmony and happiness in a convincing way.(...)

That’s not Plateforme´s subject but, even so, I tried to convey the feeling of gladness I used to experiment as a child. I could spend hours looking for four-leaved trefoils, without ever getting bored. I´ve completely lost that. We know, as well, that children like being told always the same story. Regarding this, the joy of repetition, I also have my puppy’s example.(...)He can spend three hours bringing the ball back to me, never losing one single bit of happiness. Why do I have less and less fun throwing it to him?.(...) There’s also that idea of the absolute need that new wonderful things happen to us. That makes you think...

By Didier Sénécal Paris, 2001