Dominique Manotti: “James Ellroy has become a parody of himself”

We are in 1980. The French writer could not believe it. Disappointed with her surroundings, her trade unionist furor went off little by little, until in 1992 she would read amazed ‘La Confidential’, by James Ellroy. So, as in an epiphany, he realized that from the black novel you can take a stronger blow against the corruption of power than with political and social activism. «Despair led me to the black novel. I was very disappointed, but I saw that this medium was much better to show and denounce the hidden truth of the world, its interconnected vilerges, its most primary emotions, its corruptions, its complete meaningless. I understood that it was the only way to capture reality, or at least it was a better format than writing a book of sociology or history, ”says the author in an interview with ABC.

From this renewed energy ‘Sentier’ hat ‘, her first novel, which catapulted her at the top of the new French noir, in the wake of the great Jean-Patrick Manchette. His novels were complex, full of nuances, with the idea of ​​not singularizing crimes, but contexts. «The police novel supports the system. He states that crime is an exception and that the police can solve and return peace to the status quo. That doesn’t interest me at all. The black novel, on the other hand, states that crime is born from a rotten system, full of corruption and decay and reflects much better the reality in which we all live, ”says the author.

Last February he went through BCNEGRE to talk about Marseillesthe city that has become the star scenario of its novels. What resembles other Mediterranean cities such as Naples or Barcelona itself? «There are three features that define Marseille, a hard, terrible city, which can be very afraid. Think that there everyone watches and knows what happens, but nobody says anything. First of all, it is a port city. For many years it was the largest port in Europe and entrance door of Asia. That is, it is a much more mixed and popular population than Paris, ”says Manotti

The second characteristic of Marseille is that it is a Corsa city, with a strong tradition of the sardos, great traffickers. And the third is that the Law of Silence prevails, so that the mafia campaates at ease. “When Zinedine Zidane He said: I do not love France, I love Marseille, he captured the feeling of many Marseille. Imagine that the daughter of former Mayor Gaston Defferre married Jean-Louise Fargette, a well-known gangster, nobody missed him a little, ”concludes Menotti, Pseudonym of Marie-Noëlle Thibult

For the author of “black gold”, the world is increasingly complicated and perverse and, therefore, more difficult to describe. Your latest novel, the excellent ‘Marseille 73’it was published four years ago, but it is difficult to publish soon. «I don’t like talking about the future, but I was sick and this has delayed me a lot. Don’t know”. What is clear is that you don’t want to repeat itself. «For example, I adore the Los Angeles quartet, but I don’t like his last novels anything. He has become a parody of himself, ”confesses Manotti.

Who loves without remission is the writer and ‘showrunner’ David Simon, especially to his series The Wire. «There you see every season as evil is systemic, which begins in the port and continues in the streets, in schools, municipalities and newspapers of newspapers. No one escapes. Everything is interconnected. You just have to follow money. For example, it is impossible to separate the rise from the Internet with the massive arrival of cocaine to the United States, ”he says. There is no doubt that the culture of suspicion has this incredible writer as one of her paradigms.