On the eve of the presidential election which has had the world in suspense for several months, the United States has rarely seemed so divided in its history. How did the country get here? Will the Americans be able to get through this?
It is a bit to tackle these “fascinating questions” head on that Douglas Kennedy wanted to do Elsewhere, at homea partly autobiographical story through which the novelist of The man who wanted to live his life and The pursuit of happiness (Belfond, 1998 and 2001) is now examining his country.
The writer, who returned to settle in the United States in 2011 after having lived for more than thirty years in Dublin and London, does not hide it: he has the “nagging” impression that the United States is heading towards “ full throttle into the darkness towards a precipice, a point of no return.”
“We are at a border right now,” says Douglas Kennedy, 69, in French, contacted in Cassis, very close to Marseille, a few days before the 47th American presidential election. “For me, historically, the American century began after World War II and ended in 2016 with the election of Trump. I decided to create something fairly autobiographical, but use aspects of my life to illustrate the state of our country. »
And for this, he chose to take on a few themes. The role of money as a civil religion. The immense power of evangelists in the United States, “God’s favorite country”, a power “impossible to imagine in the early 1980s”, he believes. But also the conformism of American society, jazz and the idea of the road as a metaphor for freedom, which is embodied in literature with Jack Kerouac.
The man who is sometimes presented as “the most French of American writers” does not hide his concern about the future of his country, but he tempers it in his own way. “I have a hypothesis about life: everything is bearable with a return ticket,” he says with a big laugh.
Two countries in one
Returning to live in the United States after his divorce, the writer now has his main residence in Maine. Married for several years to a Montreal psychoanalyst, he says he also spent a lot of time in the Quebec metropolis. “If things get dizzying in the United States, I have options,” he admits, who lives half the year in Europe and also has Irish citizenship.
“To be an American these days,” he writes, “is to regularly find yourself thinking: there are two countries within our borders, and they have a fierce hatred for each other,” writes Douglas Kennedy. A division, radical and deep, which inspires him with “immense discomfort and deep sadness”.
A pure New Yorker, despite his years abroad, the man grew up in the neighborhoods of the East Village and the Upper West Side, which “provided him very early with a counterbalance to this family hysteria typical of the mid-century,” he writes. Readers will recognize here and there some autobiographical elements which may have already slipped into some of his novels.
Obviously, the writer poses in Elsewhere, at home a nostalgic look at the United States of his youth and at a city, New York, which offered him, through its effervescent cultural scene and its swirling cosmopolitanism, multiple escape routes at a time when he particularly needed them.
Starting with jazz and the Village Vanguard, this legendary little venue which is a bit like the “Carnegie Hall” of jazz, the very place where Douglas Kennedy says he shook the hand of the great pianist Bill Evans at the age of 16 one evening in December 1971. “Every time I listen to jazz at the Vanguard, I become something that usually doesn’t seem like me: a proud American. »
“I am afraid of my country. But I think we are in a situation full of nuances. In Kansas, for example, there is Kansas City, it’s the city of the blues, architecturally, it’s interesting. And in the middle of nowhere, in a very nice village, I found a superb little bookstore. »
For him, it is clear that money is the barometer of life in the United States. Aware of having escaped the conformism of American society, unlike certain college friends who were quickly caught up, he says, Douglas Kennedy comments on it through the reading of novels like Grand-Rue (1920) et Babbitt (1922) by Sinclair Lewis, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, or The panoramic window (1962) de Richard Yates.
Wyoming, Texas, New Orleans: Elsewhere, at home is also crossed by a few stays in the Midwest carried out in 2021 on behalf of the Sunday newspaper in France, through which the writer took stock of the deep divisions within the country. But also noted to what extent the road acts as an antidote.
Douglas Kennedy’s latest novel, And this is how we will live (Belfond, 2023), was not a particularly optimistic proposition for the future of the United States. In this dystopia, like a prophet of doom, he imagined in 2045 a country with borders redrawn by a new war of secession. On the one hand, freedom of morals and constant technosurveillance. On the other, a world where fundamentalist Christian values rule.
Champagne ou whisky ?
For several months, the writer has commented on the presidential election and American political life in the pages of La Tribune Sunday In France. “The truth is, I read all the time,” says Douglas Kennedy. I always repeat it to young writers: you have to read two or three newspapers a day. You need to know how money works in the world. You must have great curiosity. »
“And the situation is serious. I have no idea what the outcome will be. We’ll see. But if we re-elect a man like that, a thug, a criminal convicted of 34 federal crimes, found guilty of rape in a civil trial, plus the fact that he tried to stage a coup on January 6 2021… It’s absolutely extraordinary. And according to polls, between 45 and 47% of my compatriots will vote for this total asshole. And that’s mind-blowing. »
Beneath Douglas Kennedy’s laughter emerges a real pessimism, even if the writer wants to be confident. “I am lucid. We must remain optimistic. There are historical cycles and maybe things will change. »
Guest of The big bookstorethe literary program broadcast every week on France 5, which will be set to American time for its November 6 edition, Douglas Kennedy will be in Paris on election night.
He knows that he will have to remain wise, but cannot help but also make up a few scenarios. “Let’s say this: at home, in the 10th arrondissement, on the morning of the 6th, I will have a bottle of champagne on the left and a bottle of whiskey on the right. I hope I turn to the left, but I’m afraid. »
Elsewhere, at home
Douglas Kennedy, translated by Chloé Royer, Belfond, Paris, 2024, 264 pages
