THE FEMME FATALE OF MOISSON ROUGE SPEAKS
I wouldn't say they're the coolest kids at the party. More like the ones that, an hour after you've left the party, you realize they're even cooler but not by wearing the latest fad or by dancing to the hippest band. No, it was much more than that. But you can't put your finger on it--you just wish you had whatever sort of cool it was they had.
That's Moisson Rouge, the new French crime fiction publisher putting hot slabs of pulp on the bookshelves, looking for the best American, European, Spanish--hey, it can be from anywhere as long as it's noir.
Take a look at their first offerings: Jose Overjero, Robert Bloch, and a guy named BEF. Following close behind will be Nathan Singer, Randall Peffer, and several others.
I asked a few questions of Judith Vernant, the woman in charge of this rowdy gang, to figure out just what's going on across the pond.
ANS: Tell us about Moisson Rouge. Why did you start it? What do you envision for the future?
JV: I began in the wonderful world of publishing working as a freelancer for different houses, on different projects...For instance I corrected travel guides, rewrote very serious psychoanalytic essays but also very serious...mmm...articles about...well...aliens (yeah, the little green men).
Then I was hired by Hachette Litteratures, a generalist house that belongs to the giant Lagardère group. After 4 years, I decided to create a series of crime fiction books, because the final goal of a publisher — in my opinion, at least — is to publish what you'd like to read. And I LOVE crime fiction.
So in 2006 I went to la Semana Negra — a great Spanish festival organized by Paco Ignacio Taibo II — where I found authors. But back to Paris, I realized my boss wanted me to make something "lighter", or a bit "girly" (like some "Mystery of Bridget Jones's Prada Dress"). And since my influences are more Jim Thompson, Hammett, Westlake, Ellroy, or non-crime fiction, you can imagine it was not AT ALL what I expected to publish.
Here starts the noir fairy tale: I met a "sponsor" — what we call in French a "mécène", someone who wants to finance cultural project — worked on the project with my future associates, and it finally worked (oh yeah!).
For the moment we plan to publish about 10 books a year: we want to maintain a good level of quality and are a very little crew. Then we'll try to get bigger, but not too fast.
NS: Do you look at noir through a "retro"/nostalgic lens, or do you see it as ever changing and able to make itself new over and over (or both. Or neither)?
JV: I'd say both. For example, our covers want to be "pulp chic", with a very retro logo and a modern graphism, these black and white photos, etc. We're gonna republish old classics (Psycho and Star Stalkers, by Bloch, or The Lenient Beast, by Brown) and very modern, innovative books, like Nathan Singer's A Prayer For Dawn (Bleak House Books!!). And try to look for texts from all over the world (Greece, Spain, Mexico, USA, Brasil, Russia...and France, of course). We also want to reprint "cult" noir books from the 70', forgotten jewels.
NS: Why crime fiction? What's the appeal to you personally?
JV: I've started reading crime fiction since I was a kid. Agatha Christie and that kind of stuffs, but quickly changed for darker books — Highsmith, Hammett, Chandler, Brown, Bloch, Ellroy, and Thompson were my heroes. Then I read old classic sci-fi books (Matheson, Sheckley, Brown again, Ballard) and went back to my first love: crime fiction.
About my relationship with this genre...good question...first of all, I swear I'm not a psycho killer. Then, I think it's — sorry for the cliché — the best way to explore contemporary social questions or history (I studied history in university). Same for (good) sci-fi, I think. To me, literature has (almost) never been a way to "escape" from the real world — even if it sounds like a paradox from a "genre" reader.
NS: What should writers be doing if we want to see noir survive another hundred years?
JV: Keep on writing and publishing at Moisson Rouge. And explode the codes of genre (that's what genres are made for: being exploded, used, twisted).
NS: Who should Americans be reading from Europe? From elsewhere? Similarly, what are your favorite film noirs?
JV: From France, they should read Manchette (some of his books has been translated into English), ADG, Simenon, and my friends Jérôme Leroy and Thierry Marignac (members of the MR crew).
My favorite films noirs are Série Noire (based on Thompson's A Hell Of A Woman), Le Corbeau, Le Doulos, Les Diaboliques (all are French), and I really like mafia films, Scorsese, and old classic Hollywoodian movies like Casablanca, Freaks, and Sunset Blvd.
NS: Why are you so obsessed with Amy Winehouse after all these months?
JV: BECAUSE SHE'S THE BEST SINGER OF THE CENTURY. Because she don't care about the disc industry rules, because the sings like a Motown blues, soul singer...and, of course, because we both love wine.
NS: So, the International Crime Fiction Syndicate. Please explain that to us.
JV: Well... The ICFS was founded by Ben, from Bleak House Books, and I. We've been working together for several months (I bought him three books — for the moment, but that's just a beginning) and are very creative, crazy, cool people. My English is shitty and Ben doesn't speak French, and since we needed a common language we had to invent one: crimesperanto was born.
NS: Sum up Moisson Rouge in a cool, manifesto-like slogan.
JV: Style's not dead. Style rules. Style is our motor.
Or something like this...
***
Thanks to Judith for putting up with my rambling. Always happy to see someone come along in the publishing biz as enthusiastic about noir as our little school of Crimedogs is.
