Le Mariage is Diane Johnson's eagerly anticipated followup
to her 1997 success, Le Divorce. Both novels are gently humorous
comedies of manners that deal with the misadventures of Americans in French
society--situations that Johnson, who has lived in France for several years
now, can understand and appreciate. As we chat in her Portland hotel room,
she and I (along with her media escort) amuse ourselves by trying to come up
with potential titles for another such book, the rule being that the word must
be exactly (well, almost exactly) the same in French or English. (If you
see Johnson's Le Weekend in a couple years, that was the escort's doing.)
RH: Although you've been critically acclaimed and well
respected for decades as a novelist, Le Divorce was a
real commercial breakthrough for you. How has that
affected your career?
DJ: It made me very nervous when I came to write Le
Marriage, because one of the obligations of having people really
like your books, which I must say I never had the sense of that much
before, is that you don't want to let them down. Obviously I'm going
to write the way I write, but I was conscious of that little feeling of
pleasure when people I didn't even know liked my book, and felt a
little bit of worry about what they would say about this new one.
Before Le Divorce I never felt that, because it was only my
friends and critics that were reading them anyway.
RH: Although there are many thematic similarities
between the two books, Le Marriage isn't really a
sequel.
DJ: These are new characters, though there are a couple of
characters that stray in from the other book. I can see why writers
like Anthony Powell begin to use recurring characters. You
get to know them and it's kind of a shame to give them up when
they serve very well for some of the things you want to say.
RH: I assume you continue to write about Americans in
Paris is largely because you, yourself, are still in Paris.
DJ: Exactly. It's very much more convenient and very
much more interesting to write about where you are and what's
happening in the society that you're observing, partly because I'm
not very good about taking notes, so I'm sure I wouldn't remember
what that hotel on the northeast corner was called; it's just better to
be able to look. And since I'm still in Paris, I probably will do at least
one more novel set in France.
RH: How much do your experiences in Paris heighten
your sense of your own American-ness?
DJ: I think it increases it very much. Here, we're all
Americans. Nothing stands out particularly in our behavior. But
there, you're just very much more conscious, not only of your own
American-ness and how you're always going to be an American, but
of the Americans that you see--sometimes to your horror at some of
the things that they do.
RH: And you realize that not only are you always going
to be an American they're always going to consider you an
American.
DJ: That's right. You can never ever really be assimilated.
I think that's absolutely true. You might get to the stage with them
where they would say, "She's an American, but . . ."
RH: When I was living in Europe, I found myself reading
a lot of pulp fiction, like Raymond Chandler, just to get in
touch with American voices again. Do you go through the
same sort of reading habits when you're over in
France?
DJ: Yes. Although I should point out that Raymond
Chandler was an Englishman; he, too, must have felt that there was a
kind of freshness and directness about American English that he
enjoyed employing. He certainly disguised himself as an American...
Yes, I read a lot of American books, but I was also very influenced
by the tradition of the English novel, especially the 19th century
English novel, because those were the first novels that I read as a
child. There's an expressiveness and lucidity to the English novel
which I still aspire to; the American novel has a more poetic quality
which I fear that I haven't really had.
RH: One thing I love about authors like, say, Anthony
Trollope or Charles Dickens is that their novels are often as
much about the social structures in which the characters
interact as they are about the characters.
DJ: Absolutely. Trollope was a brilliant master of the
social analysis and the comedy of social class and hierarchies of all
kind. I love his writing, and I was just reading a wonderful, almost
unknown novel of his, The American Senator. You might like
that one, because it has an senator who comes to an English rural
class society, and it's fun to see Trollope's slightly broad rendition of
an American.
RH: I presume you can read French well?
DJ: Yes. I do it more and more as I get more comfortable
reading French. I won't say that I entirely enjoy reading in French;
it's something I always have to make myself do. And certain French
writers I find very hard to read. Colette, for example, is very
difficult French. But more and more, I find I can go to a French
bookstore with pleasure, picking out books that I actually want to
read.
RH: Who are some of your favorite contemporary
writers?
DJ: Well, I've been reading Patrick O'Brian for so long, but
I've almost not read anything in the last year, when I was writing. I
just finished this at Christmastime. It was produced very quickly.
But I was just reading a very good book by Ward Just and I always
love Alison Lurie's novels. What I often do is reread novels that I
already liked. So I always read The Great Gatsby every year
and I read Pride and Prejudice.
RH: You've had some experience working with
filmmakers, having worked with Stanley Kubrick on The
Shining. Has there been any interest from Hollywood in
Le Divorce?
DJ: Oh yes. Le Divorce is, I think, on the cusp of
becoming a Merchant Ivory film.
RH: Would you be interested in writing the
screenplay?
DJ: Well, I did co-write a script for Interscope a few years
ago, when they had an option on the book. But Ivory thinks that he
wants a slightly different kind of script than Interscope wanted, so
they may go back to the drawing board.
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