Sunday book pick: Annie Ernaux’s writerly and personal selves come together in ‘Exteriors’

When you are a Nobel laureate, even your diary entries are treasure troves of literary brilliance. Exteriors, written between 1985 and 1992, are Annie Ernaux’s fragmented passages about day-to-day life that are profound reminders of our existence and the transcendental role we play in strangers’s lives. Translated by Tanya Leslie from the French, Exteriors bridges the gap between two halves of Ernaux’s life – that of a writer and an anonymous observer of her small-town peers.

In her Author’s Note, Ernaux insists these journals aren’t a “study of urban sociology” but an “undefinable feeling of modernity associated with a new town.” Away from the elite setting of academic spaces and hallowed temples, epiphanies in the modern world can come at supermarkets and on public transport. And indeed, they often do.

Though Ernaux has lived in Clergy-Pontoise for twenty years, it is still a place “bereft of memories” and she feels like she is “hovering” in “no man’s land halfway between the earth and the sky.” Still, Clergy-Pontoise is not particularly dull. On any regular day, Ernaux meets children, young parents, screaming toddlers, temperamental shoppers, and moody senior citizens as she goes about town. The brief sightings and occasional snatches of their conversations fascinate her. She tries to piece together the puzzles of their lives and how they might observe her. She is acutely aware of her watching them.

Every day musings

“Committing to paper the movements, postures, and words of the people I meet gives me the illusion that I am close to them. I don’t speak to them, I only watch them and listen to them. Yet the emotions they arouse in me are real,” writes Ernaux. She later adds, “...Not out of harmless curiosity, or to make polite conversation, but to learn about other people’s lives so that we can learn about our own life or the life we might have led.” This explains the curious connection we often feel with strangers – even when we know we’ll never see them again. They offer possibilities of what we could be, what we could have been, and what we have irrevocably missed out on.

While going about quietly in her town, Ernaux also reflects on her role as a writer. As her work is scrutinised by critics and readers alike, she considers how writing might be a performance. “So writing is not enough;” she writes, “there need to be external signs, material evidence to define what a ‘real’ writer is.” This is especially enlightening at a time when many writers feel the need to convince readers that they indeed are writers – there is anxious public participation, fervent assurances that they are working on the next project, and so on.

Watching younger people lap up new music, art, and fashion makes Ernaux sympathetic to their unsure ways. She understands why they might feel the need to shun the old for the brand-new – oftentimes it’s not just a way to have faith in oneself, but also in the future. The promise of constant innovation makes the future bearable, and perhaps something to look forward to. Similarly, other objects have gained our faith and almost become “sacred” in the process – the crucifix that we’d not spit on, the national flag we’d not trample on, and so on. We do not commit these transgressions because of superstitions, as Ernaux points out, but because of how absolute the disrespect is perceived to be.

And so, through car parks, supermarkets, the beggars who are found aplenty, and conversations overheard on the train, we see what Ernaux’s life might have looked like in the seven years spanning the diary entries. Seeing comes with the risk of being seen and her dual nature as a participant and observer makes her conclude, “I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds on streets and in department stores, must secretly play a role in the lives of others.”

Exteriors, Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Tanya Leslie, Seven Stories Press.