Any resemblance...

The eternal question : "where do you find your inspiration ?", which is the motto of those who have no imagination and will never write anything worth reading, is even more pressing when you write an erotic novel. Everybody wants to know if I am writing out of experience and if these are my fantasies. The answers to those questions are yes but and yes but...

Whoever wrote anything knows that the author is his characters and lives a thousand lives. "All the stories are true, even more so the ones we take the trouble of inventing", wrote Pierre Pelot. Within this frame, I did live what my heroin lived; except, of course, I am not a girl. And I did not live what she lived. So how autobiographical is that work? Show me a novel that is not autobiographic. Even the most unbelievable stories carry a part of the author's inner life, inner truth. As for the exact details and acts she does... Who is the most pervert ? The one who writes it, or the one who absolutely wants to find the most sordid elements to satisfy his voyeurism ?

Now about my fantasies... Yes, this book shows a few of them. But every book is the result of its author's fantasies. And inasmuch as sex is concerned, I have many more fantasies than these here. That is fortunate, otherwise I would never be able to write anything again. To me, the question is not to know whether I am "normal" or "pervert". I am convinced that we all have wild fantasies, more or less acknowledged, more or less denied, more or less conscious... To me, a novelist's job is to search every recess of his mind to find the most original bits. I explored many corners of my libido. There are others. And we all have ours...

A careful reader will soon understand that in order to write Le Bandeau, I had to investigate far beyond my own fantasies. It may seem odd, but in order to write a worthy erotic novel, you must rsearch the subject thoroughly. I read a great lot. Not only erotica, but also studies on sexual behaviour and feminine psychology. If my character is nameless, it is because everybody can relate to her. A name would necessarily bring to everybody's mind the image of someone they know. Imagination would be canalised, and the pictures would form with that person's features. Here, you can give her the face you want. Yours or anyone else's.

Last, I wish to indirectly answer some of my colleagues, who were shocked that I, a teacher, would stage a young girl not quite of age, who might be one of my pupils.

First, I do not believe that ignoring teenagers's sexuality is a productive attitude. The utter absence of sex education at school (where, aside from the necessary but alarmist information about AIDS, nothing is done) paves the way for pornography. By reducing sex to AIDS or nothing, we forget everything that surrounds this aspect of our life (love, feelings, sensuality, well-being, respect...). And the young people are left with porno films as their only role model.

Then, how hypocritical can we be ? The author who, I believe, is the most widely studied in French schools is Daniel Pennac. Let me state this very clearly : I love what he does. Nevertheless. How does The Fairy Gunmother begin? A child is exhilirated because someone "changed an old lady into a flower". That is to say he blew her head off with a gun and the blood spurted around her, forming a corolla. We have here a poetizing of gratuitous violence, presented as desirable and beautiful; which does not trouble my esteemed colleagues one bit. But hinting that a 17 year-old girl may have sexual relations (an activity that should be associated to pleasure and enjoyment), that is unthinkable... Why, I will keep reading Pennac with great pleasure. And I am sure he does not share the point of view of those teachers who pretend their pupils do not live real lives.

As a conclusion, when I was in school myself, preparing for my end of secondary education degree, I studied Sade's Justine. That was 20 years ago. Since then, my colleagues have become more puritan than their parents.