portrait of a punk aristo – L’Express

Publisher of Gaspard Kœnig, Renaudot’s favorite beaten by Scott, Muriel Beyer fumes and declares that the jurors wanted to “sink their prize”. No offense to him, on the contrary we can see panache in this choice. A year after crowning Simon Liberati, the Renaudot confirms its status as the most rock’n’roll grand prize in France, ignoring sales figures and defending a certain idea of ​​literature (marginal and poetic) against the sheepish demagoguery which consists of rewarding more sophisticated novels that are already selling in bookstores.

Success and Ann Scott have always been two. His journey rhymes more with bohemianism, drift, eclipses. As she tells us when we meet her at her publisher: “A writer cannot be first in class. A true writer is always the black sheep of his family.” Born in 1965, she grew up between several worlds. Although his father is an orphan, he became an advertising executive and plays polo – not the most popular sport in underprivileged circles. On her mother’s side, she is descended from White Russians who emigrated in 1917 – her godfather is none other than the famous Prince Yussoupov, the opium-addicted transvestite who orchestrated Rasputin’s assassination.

Her aristocratic origins mixed with declassion give Ann Scott a casualness that could pass for morgue. Both well-born and slightly unhinged, she stopped going to class at the age of 16, the year she fell into heroin. A fan of the Ramones, Johnny Thunders and Paul Weller, she lived with her mother on rue Monsieur-le-Prince, rode a Vespa, dressed in a Fred Perry suit and polo shirt, and hung out with punks and skinheads. Her nights are spent at the Palace, where she is briefly a lady. While still a minor, she met Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent and all the who’s who of Parisian nights at the time.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the turning point in rigor did not concern her. She goes to London, where she is “first a drummer in rock groups and completely broke, then a model and a little less broke”. It was on this occasion that she adopted the nickname Scott, in homage to Fitzgerald. Still addicted to heroin, she parades for John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood, poses in trendy magazines (iD, The Face). Trading one addiction for another, she ends up quitting drugs to delve into literature (Truman Capote, Less than zero by Bret Easton Ellis, Hubert Selby Jr. and especially William S. Burroughs). She then lived alternately between London and Paris, then settled back for good in the French capital where she wrote and rewrote manuscripts that all publishers refused.

In 1994, she had a shock while reading Fuck me by Virginie Despentes: “The sentences had a very precarious balance but the words always fell precisely where they were supposed to. Despentes, it seems shaky but it is not at all. She cannot be emulated because she has a rhythm of her own in her head, as well as an inimitable art of shorthand. No one can copy her. Finally, by reading Fuck me I felt like I was being beaten: there was such rage, such fury, it’s a savage’s book… But Virginie is a savage! She’s strong, she has a big voice, she’s a woman of the woods!”

Scott writes to Despentes, they meet at a Hole concert (Courtney Love’s band) and it’s the start of a close friendship. In 1995, they lived together in Butte-aux-Cailles: “We had no money at all. At lunchtime we went to McDonald’s and shared the fries and meat. And in the evening we went to the bakery. before it closed and we asked if we could have the bread that they hadn’t sold…” On an empty stomach, Despentes wrote Learned Dogs while Scott finishes what will become his first novel, Asphyxia (1996), published by Florent Massot, then publisher of Despentes.

In 1997, a new club opened in Paris: Pulp. Going out with the star DJ of the place, Delphine Palatsi aka Sextoy, Ann Scott is at all the parties, which inspire her Superstars, a book classified as cult upon its release. The novelist is invited to Thierry Ardisson’s house, she is on the verge of becoming more mainstream, but it is here that, as in a Balzac novel, two destinies will be written in opposite directions for the two former roommates: Despentes, the daughter of postmen from Nancy, will experience large print runs and institutionalization; Scott, the descendant of Russian nobility, will only remain known to those in the know.

Without denying her work, she concedes that the books she published during the 2000s are not essential. She shows a return to form with Cortex (2017) and Grace and Darkness (2020). In 2019, foreshadowing confinement a year in advance, she left her small apartment in the Marais for a house in the depths of Finistère. She has lived there alone ever since, like the heroine of her last novel. The Insolent, a composer of film soundtracks reclusive in Brittany who thinks with melancholy of her failed love stories, her fading friendships and a city, Paris, which vibrates less than before. This dreamy character was inspired by the Icelandic musician Johann Johannsson, who died of an overdose in 2018 (like DJ Sextoy, in 2002).

In some ways, Ann Scott is a survivor. Far behind her are the Parisian evenings (Palace, Rex and Pulp) and London (Heaven and Taboo). As she turns sixty, Ann Scott now likes to walk on the beach: “I prefer to be carried away by a landscape, a storm, a piece of classical music, not necessarily old people’s things, but certainly not kids’ things, it wouldn’t make sense…” Literally, what feeds her? “I loved Duras, Mauriac, Balzac… Sorry, what I’m about to say is not generous, it will seem a little condescending, but I no longer read contemporary fiction. Being obsessive by nature, I reread a lot. For a at the moment I only reread Don DeLillo, in particular Overworld. It’s probably a bit deadly…”

By choosing Ann Scott, the Renaudot prize jury did not recognize just one book. He also wanted to honor someone who burned the candle at both ends instead of making a career. Ann Scott was a model, but there is little chance that we will see her again parading on the café terraces of Saint-Germain-des-Prés: “I can imagine settling down even further away, in Scotland or Ireland . Paris, on the other hand, is over: there is nothing left for me here…”

The Insolent, by Ann Scott. Calmann-Lévy, 194 p., €18.