DELIRIUM Bernard Werber Interview

"Engineer of style" is the expression which defines Bernard Werber. The passage of the Novel to the News is not for him an obstacle, but the occasion to take us along in a literary form of expression which it carries like a glove. All the pleasure will be in the fact of letting itself guide.

You write long novels in general. How had the idea just written to you a collection of news?
My editor always said me that the news was not sold.
I then launched out in this work like a challenge interesting to raise. I adore to make what is given like loser at the beginning, I like to take risks. I take pleasure to go to the front what leaves the ordinary one. To write a collection which one gave losing in advance in term of sale was for me a beautiful challenge.

Your collection is however the best sale currently...
I am with the head of the sales of books with "the tree of possible", I thus made a success of my challenge. On Internet the readers do not stop meaning me the pleasure which they have to read this collection, I of it am really very content. I never knew such a glory. I even sold more than Goncourt.

The imaginary one overflows of grace and intensity in your stories...
All the stories of the tree of possible result from an observation of the world. I digest the world in the news. I collect what occurs while leaving free court to my imaginary which in fact its own interpretation.

Does separately the length of the text, which differences have there T-it enters the writing of a novel and that of a novel?
The advantage of the news is to be written first jet. I enormously rewrite the novels, I do not stop working there. The first six months are super in novels, but the last quarter of work of a novel is unbearable for me. The first hour of writing is me is pleasant for a news, and there is no rewriting. The news is a gross product.

At which time of your life the writing it did appear as the trade which should exert?
In a preceding life, I dreamed to be a writer and I was it in this one. Before dying in my former life, I thought that the job which has the easiest air for the lazy ones and in which I would not have an owner to support, would be the trade of writer. That made several lives which I wanted to write, I carry it out only in this one. All really started from there.

When do you write in general?
I write my large novels of 8h with 12h30 the morning, it is automatic. I continue with my portable computer when I travel by the train. I write the news the afternoon, but that made several weeks that I did not write any.
Best energy is that of the morning, I devote it to the novel.

You join the point of view of your editor, in the direction where the news is not a significant literary work, one can write it at any time...
The news is for me a bicycle of test, it is a launched idea which gives a small construction. That requires much less energy than to build a cathedral. On the other hand, the news can be rough work preceding a novel which will become refinement about it.

Bernard Werber.jpg (45429 octets)

This is the search of the refinement which makes you work over again your novels constantly...
In more because of needing to have best energy to write, I took courses of typist to write very quickly. To prove to me that I could write very quickly I have write the novel Le livre du voyage in only one day. That nevertheless gave 160 pages in eight hours.

Does the course of a history evolve/move T-it according to the topicality of the moment, or what you observe in your entourage?
Of course, I am somebody of influenceable. I cannot remain insensitive with the topicality and so that I see around me, that influences inevitably the turning which the history will take that I tell or even manner of telling it.

Which are your literary influences?
The first was Edgar Poe, then in the chronological order François Rabelais, Jules Verne, Jean de La Fontaine, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Franck Herbert.

In the alive authors?
None. All that is currently made seems easy me because I can do it. It is as if one shows you a car of which you know how the engine is made, how it functions and what you can do to improve it. It is not claim but I consider that if I can manufacture and mount an engine twelve valves, I cannot be impressed by the six valves. Currently I see only novels that I think of being able to improve, then that could not of nothing influence my writings.

What impassions you in the life with share the writing?
Future of humanity and the cinema. I wish less violence, more tolerance and the stop of fanaticism.

What puts to you in anger?
Fanaticism, the lie and misinformation.

The question which you don't support that one poses to you?
Do you believe to be the best writer of the century?

Collected by N A . (autumn 2002)

Edgar Poe François Rabelais Jules Verne J. de La Fontaine Isaac Asimov Arthur Clarke