One day, at Jim Wesson Jr.’s encouragement, Paul and a couple of the agents on his team set up a booth at a community fundraiser at a racquet club. It was vaguely environmental in purpose, raising money for wetland and mangrove preservation while being sponsored by several of the companies responsible for their impending extinction.

“Well, if all else fails I can just become a realtor,” Maya chirped. He stopped wheeling the cart.

“Sorry?” he said.

“I’m kidding. I mean, maybe I will become a realtor, married with two kids in my twenties,” Maya said. “I can see it.”

“No, you will not,” Priscilla said. “You’re too talented for that.”

Both of Maya’s nose piercings glistened in the fluorescent light of the frigid grocery. She looked like an artist, Paul thought.

He was quiet the rest of their time in Publix. Afterward, politely enough, he parted ways with the women and got into his car.

He braked at the parking lot topiary, the automated sprinklers wetting his sedan. Maya was right, he should feel ashamed⁠—⁠not of his hopes and fantasies, but of the self he had developed to deal with their ruinous state.

He decided to write to Steven, whose email he had from the cast list.

“Hey Steven, it’s Gitman from Chalk Circle here, long time. Just wanted to say that I’m really happy you made it. We had something going in Santa Fe, glad one of us got a break. Saw the show in Fort Myers and laughed my ass off, superb work as our repertory director used to say.” When the email didn’t bounce back, he imagined how Steven might reply: “Hey, if I did it, you definitely can,” or “What, you were there? You should’ve emailed me, I would’ve got you backstage,” while also recognizing, in the hope of warding off one more disappointment, that the comedian probably wouldn’t respond.

“I wrote this,” Paul said with the pick in his hand, and proceeded to strum the guitar. He felt deeply moved by this song, “Mother Dear,” the introductory track to his self-titled album. “Mother dear, how I wish, you were here, how I wish, how I wish,” he sang, his voice acrobatic and trembling. Where once he’d felt it was too maudlin, and his crooked label had suggested he move it to mid-album, now this song seemed to him a masterpiece of alternating hesitation and emotion. As he watched his pick move up and down, he could feel how important music still was to him, how he could use chords and lyrics to summon moments of his life that had passed and briefly relive them.

“Thank you very much,” he said at the end, as if he were back at that club in the Keys with his mother approaching the plywood stage. The others applauded. Priscilla said, “That was so great, Paul,” more careful these days not to call him sweet. “Nice job,” Maya added. Then they went on with their evening.

INTERVIEWER

How would you describe your own process of invention? Your works of fiction are, of course, intensely autobiographical.

CIXOUS

The problem with the question you’re asking is that it is entirely theoretical. When one writes, one doesn’t ask oneself, Is it fictional? Is it autobiographical? No. Now, another comment. All writing that is strong, alive, is autobiographical. At the same time, everything is invented. Everything Proust wrote has passed through what reality whispered to him. Of course, there are a thousand ways to be autobiographical. Take Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, which is of course entirely invented, but also The Life of Henry Brulard, the autobiography, which does not bear Stendhal’s name. When I read them both, I am transported with admiration. But what makes the autobiography autobiographical? It is already transposed, it is comic, it is tragic, it is poetic. And all that takes place in it happens to someone who is at once Stendhal and not Stendhal. Derrida pointed out, for example, that Nietzsche emphasized that philosophy is autobiographical. Of course, if the philosopher doesn’t say this, we don’t dare suggest it, but nevertheless it’s true. If we know Kierkegaard’s story, we realize that his reflections are the result of what he experienced, his own research, his anxieties.

INTERVIEWER

You’ve written that you didn’t start writing until you were twenty-seven because literature was reserved for “great men.” Is that true? What changed at that age?

CIXOUS

That was the age at which Derrida and I started our endless conversation. And of course it was all about writing. We spoke a mélange of Stendhal, and a bit of Mallarmé, some Rabelais, Blanchot. The thing is that Derrida could read me and I could read him. At first I thought to myself, How extraordinary it is that people like Derrida exist! The world is wonderful! There must be others like him. And so I set out to find the other Derridas. After a while I got the impression that there weren’t many, and finally I realized that there were none. We would talk on the phone very early in the morning. We talked nearly every day⁠—about what we were doing, our work, about current events, political positions. It was a constant analysis. This type of relationship changes over time. When you have been friends for twenty years, you turn around and look back and say to each other, “This is necessary.” And after forty years, you say, “This is life.”

There have always been⁠—and here I prefer to turn to my accomplice and friend Stendhal⁠—writers without readers. In The Life of Henry Brulard, which was written in the 1830s and which is an absolute masterpiece, Stendhal quite rightly acknowledges that he will probably have to wait until 1880 before his books are finally read. Maybe there will be readers in 1935. Maybe the crying baby next door is his reader. Finally, quite late in life, he did find a reader, a great reader⁠—Balzac, who wrote him a long letter, from one writer to another. I’ve always loved that story. Stendhal had no readers, whereas Balzac was extremely popular. Now, I would add that there has always been a certain universe that reads. There has always been Balzac for Stendhal. But it is unusual for a writer whose oeuvre is powerful, and therefore destabilizing for the reader, to be recognized. This is part of the destiny of writing. You must wait.

In my seminar, I am teaching students how to read, though not the way I read, because my way of reading is entirely singular. I read the texts in such a way that the students will discover the secrets of reading. For one thing, I historicize. This is vital, because a part of what one does when one writes is clearly a way of receiving and reworking the current, the contemporary, what’s in the process of happening. Our times are mixed into us. You can’t understand Balzac, Flaubert, or Stendhal without their historical periods⁠—the wars, the conquests, the colonialism, everything that causes humanity to constantly transform. One cannot read Tsvetaeva without reading the admirable generation to which she belonged⁠—Pasternak, Akhmatova⁠—who suffered from Stalinist persecution, and corresponded with and read one another. One can’t read Dostoyevsky without trying to learn about the Tsarist world and revolutionary infiltrations.

What else. Neil called last night and said that I put him uptight and he really wanted things to be natural and flow. I said why didn’t he come to dinner tomorrow? He said he had to go to San Francisco, and I said, how about Friday, and he said [he would] if he could. He said, what was I doing tonight? And I said I had an appt with Marshall Lumsden, but afterward I would be hungry, so why didn’t he take me out for dinner. And he said he’d call me back at 8 but that I really put him uptight. I said, “What do you expect from a 26-year-old Hollywood spinster?” (which is how I feel around him), and I said, “I’ll give you one more chance” (very flippant). He didn’t call back, so there you are.

Let’s see. What else? I’ve been practicing how to make the perfect omelet. They really taste fantastic with jack cheese surrounded by mandarin oranges. Oh, it’s so good.

I’m reading Julian by Vidal. I read Passage to India by E. M. Forster, which I loved, and Burmese Days by Orwell which I liked. I read Esprit de Corps by Lawrence Durrell and a strange book by Niccolò Tucci called Unfinished Funeral which was more depressing than Burmese Days. Also Snow White.

Well, I’m so broke I’m overdrawn at the bank and it makes me very nervous, especially since I don’t know when the check from the P. G. & E. [cover] is coming in, and I’m just really broke.

This weekend I gained 3 pounds. Friday was Daddy’s birthday so I ate Chinese chicken and cake. Joe Pailburn came to perk me up and, oh, and he kissed my feet. I nearly died.

I saw Neil on Thursday and fell for another of those 15-minute things, so I figured it would be best to get the fuck out of the house for a spell.

I am pretty tired from all the society and haven’t had a chance to read anything. This week I’m staying home and trying to figure out good ideas for collages.