After two years devoted to Proust ("Mémoire de la littérature", "Morales de Proust"), and two years to life writing (a first year general and broad, a second year exclusively on Montaigne), we completely changed subject and tackled contemporary times in a multidisciplinary and intercultural project.
For a long time, I'd had the idea of carrying out research over the course of a year, following it month by month. It would be like writing the novel of a year, reliving it at its own pace, in all its aspects, in all its details, reading all the books, going through all the press, seeing all the films, listening to the radio, watching television, immersing myself in daily life, songs, advertising, fashion and so on.
This unoriginal fantasy could be traced back to a memory from Les Misérables , where one chapter is entitled "1817" (t. I, book III, chapter I) and begins as follows: "1817 is the year that Louis XVIII, with a certain royal aplomb that was not lacking in pride, called the twenty-second of his reign. It was the year when M. Bruguière de Sorsum was famous. All the wigmakers' stores, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were painted azure and decorated with flowers This is followed by a copious Abstract listing all the events, from the most significant to the most insignificant. All events are recalled and intermingled: news items, dramas, disasters, shipwrecks. Then come the rengaines, the scies, the obituaries.
Hugo was born in 1802, he was 15 in 1817; he revisits his youth, remembers anecdotes, but he has also investigated, compiled. And yet, 1817 is a year that doesn't count in history; it's a hollow year. "Here, in no particular order, is what emerges confusedly from the year 1817, forgotten today", he says.
Could the same be said of 1966? A forgotten year from which we'd like to extract a jumble of details to make its "physiognomy", pick out its incidents neglected by history, the scum of its days.
