My short story titled "Mont Blanc" was recently published online at House Magazine (Salt Publishing) and as usual I'm blogging a few words discussing how the story came to be written. There may be spoilers within.
"Mont Blanc" is one of twelve recently written stories which takes French New Wave cinema as a starting point and then runs with an alternative version of it. In this case, the film in question is François Truffaut's "Jules et Jim" (1962). I've seen the film many times but it wasn't until I read the source material - a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché (a very poor novel, it has to be said) - that I noticed how much the character of Catherine (played by Jeanne Moreau) is little more than a 'manic pixie girl' trope and a cipher for the characters of the Frenchman, Jim (Henri Serre), and the Austrian, Jules (Oskar Werner). I wanted my story to readdress this balance and to be written from the perspective of Catherine; a feminist retelling of the tale, if you will. I can't remember now why I chose this title, but it fit. And as usual, once I had the title, I could begin to write. Thematically, the collection as a whole (still seeking a publisher) plays on French New Wave as much as my previous collection, Candescent Blooms, played on Hollywood.
Here's an extract:
They swallow my independence like Evian water. Then seek to bottle it.
The compartment in which I am squeezed is designed by men. It is Baudelaire who said that a woman is natural, that is to say, abominable: the greatest idiocy combined with the greatest depravity. The Austrian and Frenchman make this debate in my presence. I light a cigarette, the smoke from the Gitane curling around my smile. These two consider themselves free thinkers, yet my thoughts spiral in my head without their knowledge. Together they impose stereotypes onto unconventional lifestyles. They pour glasses of wine.
These men – with their shielded homoerotic tendencies, with their belief in a ménage à trois on the condition that there are only two in a bed– these free radicals who are no more than horrors, monsters, assassins of the arts, little fools, little sluts – these men.
