‘The Drugs Were Good, The Music Was Good, The Sex Was Good Cult French Writer Ann Scott On Her Techno Years
His cult novel Superstars, chosen by the literary queen of the Parisian techno scene, was published in 2011. Metro.
Sent by her parents to Shoreham-by-the-Sea in England in 1977 at the age of 12 to "speak English and play tennis", she ran away from her adoptive family and friends on London's King's Road. Every summer he repeats the same act of rebellion; At the age of 13, London's biggest punk rockers gave him heroin. At 15 he was playing drums in a band, at 16 he was a skinhead and at 18 he was in London modeling for designers like John Galliano and posing for magazines like iD and The Face. “Fashion changes every year,” Scott recalls. “You can be anything you want.”
Now, 25 years after achieving cult superstar status, Scott is experiencing a renaissance. "Lo brazen" is Renaudo's winning novel. Don't turn your back on the book that bears his name. The film is set on the remote coast of Brittany. It tells the story of a composer who lives in Paris for the Marvel films and lives in a country house that he has only seen in photographs.
This victory led to Scott's books being rapidly reprinted and repackaged, sold in airports and train stations, and incorporating their bleak vision of modern French life. Critics also praised his 2017 novel Cortex, a devastating and twisted saga about what it means to survive a domestic terrorist attack and what it means to survive the Oscar attack. While the book represents the French version of Hollywood, it also reflects France's collective devastation following the 2015 terrorist attacks.
“It's crazy,” smiled Scott, now 58, sitting in the publisher's Paris offices, far from the wild Finster coast where he found himself three years ago. “On the day of the awards, I was nervous and thought, 'Oh my God, I have to start the next award.' I sat in a corner of the party and wrote two sentences.
Les Insolents, a game that plays on nerves and anger and helps you get through difficult times, is both funny and sad. Explore the ups and downs of Parisian friendships between creatives, misfits and outsiders, "friends you want to see the end of the world with", family secrets and encounters with strangers on the beach.
The book is about the bourgeois-bohemian citizens of Paris who go to the countryside “to bake their own bread or herd goats,” Scott explains. (Initially, the hapless central character must hail a taxi to get to the nearest supermarket, several miles away, and the dysfunctional house is so complex that it almost becomes a character in its own right.) Instead, after Bright Castles, the charm of book "solves the problem." . The idea of being alone.
“Most people can't be alone,” he says. “If you can't be alone, that means if you can't find anyone for decades, you'll end up with people who aren't right for you, and that scares them.”
While his novels carefully depict loneliness, he always contrasts it with fantastical depictions of crowds and subcultures. Scott (a pseudonym) was born in Paris to an art collector and a Russian mother, a photographer who later became a therapist.
She lived in Brixton Village in London in the 1980s, then worked as a housekeeper in an artists' studio, "hanging out with the people you see on TV at the top of their careers because they've just changed, but they haven't changed yet". "It was the end of the New Romantic Age. "It was about glitter and drag queens, Boy George, Dead or Alive Pete Burns, all the shops, it was fashion," he says. "It was about people trying to be heroes. or stars: they were 17 years old, or they had a bad job, or no job, and they were trying their best to become a king or princess on Friday night. And they were. Everything is beautiful because it can be anyone.
After the promotion in the newspapers
The feeling of creating art - "playing music, painting, reading, publishing anytime, anywhere" - and being among the partying people of London brought his novels to France. You never slept alone, you were always with people, hugging, whatever, walking with people. There was also some sex, but not serious. Less elegance and more refinement.
At 20 he returned to Paris and learned to write. He's been focused on one author for over a decade, reading one book nonstop: currently Underworld by Don DeLillo. His first novel, Asphyxia, was inspired by Nirvana and the Sex Pistols and tells the story of a touring band. Superstars began as a diary of her life in the underground queer clubs of Paris among a group of friends led by lesbian star DJ Sex Toy.
“Drugs were good, music was good, sex was good, but we were young then. I started keeping a journal at home because of my sadness and suddenly felt good, so I turned it into a book. Today the book seems light years away. But what remains is Scott's ability to describe his relationships with men and women. He rejects any role as a standard-bearer for bisexuality in contemporary French fiction. “It doesn't matter, it's who can tolerate you and who you want to wake up in the morning,” he says.
Scott's early books have been compared to Virginie Despentes, the former wild child of punk and literature. In fact, they did not live in the same apartment for long. “After reading his first book, I wrote to him and we met at a Courtney Love concert at the Bataclan. He said, “I live in a place I don't like, so come with my two suitcases and my cat.” '" They both wrote and separated. "We went to bakeries at seven in the evening to ask for bread that they don't sell, and they said: no... it's very good, it's one of a kind. ."
In 2019, when Scott left Paris for Brittany, he wrote the 2020 novel Grace and Darkness, about people who spend their free time monitoring jihadist propaganda online as volunteers for a civilian cyber group in France. In the hope of preventing possible attacks. As part of his research, he spent two years watching horror videos online.
"I no longer needed the beach, I wanted to get away from the people, the city, the noise, everything... I went to the beach, a really wild landscape, a harsh climate and a windy landscape: I needed anxiety, but not anxiety of people.I Am Alone and the Turmoil of the Landscape: Britney Brazen's novel is "a book about silence," she says.
Scott often fills that silence with “the dreams I talk about in my head”: fictional mentors from David Bowie to Miles Davis. He contacted the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, an acquaintance of his in London. “When I talk to him, I talk about creativity: 'Don't let me write nonsense, don't get carried away by things that are too simple,'” he says. “Respect ugliness, respect desperation. He can find beauty in everything and his heart is bigger than mine. I ask you to stand next to me and tell me that everything will be okay because you should find beauty everywhere. "
From Parisian techno parties to Hollywood galas, Scott's work connects beautiful partygoers with the hustle and bustle of life, with the difficulty of being part of the crowd. Les Insolents is a dialogue between the city and the free wilds of nature. If something bothers you in the city and you walk on the sidewalks in the busy city life, believe that those problems will always be with you. But if you are alone on the beach, the problems become insignificant.
For Scott it is important to face the ugliness and desperation of life, but you must be able to grow, protect yourself and heal your wounds. “It's okay to get hurt as long as you know how to get better,” he says. “If you're not angry, you don't have to say anything.”
