WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.639 You know, I was looking at the stack of research 00:00:01.639 --> 00:00:05.400 we have for today, and it feels a bit like we're 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:08.419 looking at three different people, maybe four. 00:00:08.679 --> 00:00:10.900 It really does feel that way. It's almost disjointed, 00:00:10.919 --> 00:00:13.259 isn't it? I mean, looking at the biography here. 00:00:13.460 --> 00:00:15.960 On one page, you've got a guy hanging out in 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:19.559 1960s Paris, smoking cigarettes, wearing the 00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:22.280 trench coat, talking philosophy with Michel Foucault. 00:00:22.359 --> 00:00:25.399 Oh, yeah. Very chic, very intellectual. The kind 00:00:25.399 --> 00:00:27.620 of guy you'd be intimidated to talk to at a party. 00:00:27.719 --> 00:00:30.059 The absolute epitome of the French cool kid, 00:00:30.219 --> 00:00:33.340 the enfant terrible. Right. But then you flip 00:00:33.340 --> 00:00:36.579 the page and the same guy is living in a jungle 00:00:36.579 --> 00:00:39.740 in Panama, sleeping in a hammock. eating insects 00:00:39.740 --> 00:00:42.960 and completely cut off from the Western world 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:45.840 for four years. For four years. And apparently 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:48.560 he liked that version of his life better. Much 00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:50.560 better by his own admission. Yeah. And then just 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:52.359 to confuse things further, you have the third 00:00:52.359 --> 00:00:55.700 guy, the Nobel Prize winner, the immortal of 00:00:55.700 --> 00:00:57.899 the French Academy, the guy giving lectures in 00:00:57.899 --> 00:01:01.240 Stockholm in a tuxedo. It's just it's hard to 00:01:01.240 --> 00:01:02.939 reconcile that these are all the same person. 00:01:03.479 --> 00:01:06.659 J .M .G. Leglazio. It is hard, and that's what 00:01:06.659 --> 00:01:08.680 makes him such a nightmare to categorize for 00:01:08.680 --> 00:01:11.780 critics, but an absolute dream for us to study. 00:01:11.859 --> 00:01:14.859 Exactly. The Swedish Academy, the folks who gave 00:01:14.859 --> 00:01:17.980 him the Nobel, they had this line in their citation 00:01:17.980 --> 00:01:20.280 that I just love. I think it frames everything 00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:21.739 we're going to talk about today. What was it? 00:01:21.859 --> 00:01:24.920 They called him an explorer of a humanity beyond 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:28.959 and below the reigning civilization. Wow. Beyond 00:01:28.959 --> 00:01:32.560 and below. That is heavy. It gives you chills, 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:34.780 doesn't it? It implies that the world we live 00:01:34.780 --> 00:01:37.620 in, the skyscrapers, the stock markets, the podcasts, 00:01:37.900 --> 00:01:40.319 the elections, that's just the surface. Yeah. 00:01:40.379 --> 00:01:43.700 That is the reigning civilization. But Leclesio 00:01:43.700 --> 00:01:46.120 spent his life trying to pry up the floorboards 00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:48.859 to see what was underneath. So that is the mission 00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:51.219 for this deep dive. We aren't just doing a standard 00:01:51.219 --> 00:01:54.159 biography. We're trying to figure out how you 00:01:54.159 --> 00:01:57.379 go from being an experimental French hipster, 00:01:57.400 --> 00:01:59.760 you know, this intellectual darling. Right. To 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:02.859 becoming a voice for indigenous tribes and the 00:02:02.859 --> 00:02:05.450 environment. Honestly, I want to understand the 00:02:05.450 --> 00:02:07.489 sensual ecstasy thing the Nobel Committee talked 00:02:07.489 --> 00:02:09.409 about, because that sounds, well, it sounds promising. 00:02:09.710 --> 00:02:11.909 It's a fascinating concept. And to get there, 00:02:11.990 --> 00:02:13.629 we have to look at everything. We've got his 00:02:13.629 --> 00:02:16.590 books, his interviews and some truly wild stories 00:02:16.590 --> 00:02:18.610 about his childhood that explain why he never 00:02:18.610 --> 00:02:20.889 quite felt at home in Europe. OK, so where do 00:02:20.889 --> 00:02:23.710 we start? The beginning seems obvious, but with 00:02:23.710 --> 00:02:26.129 him, even that is complicated. Let's start with 00:02:26.129 --> 00:02:29.430 the passports. Because the confusion starts right 00:02:29.430 --> 00:02:32.889 at birth. It really does. So JMG, Le Clécier 00:02:32.889 --> 00:02:35.750 Jean -Marie Gustave, was born on April 13th, 00:02:35.750 --> 00:02:38.849 1940. Now, context is everything here. He's born 00:02:38.849 --> 00:02:41.650 in Nice, France. A French Riviera. Beautiful. 00:02:41.810 --> 00:02:44.750 Beautiful, but not in 1940. This is World War 00:02:44.750 --> 00:02:47.689 II. France is under occupation. It's a time of 00:02:47.689 --> 00:02:50.629 shortages, fear, and chaos. Not exactly a vacation 00:02:50.629 --> 00:02:53.409 spot. No. But while he is physically born in 00:02:53.409 --> 00:02:55.550 France, his heritage is already pulling him in 00:02:55.550 --> 00:02:57.229 completely different directions. Because his 00:02:57.229 --> 00:02:59.710 father wasn't even there. No, not at all. His 00:02:59.710 --> 00:03:01.770 father was a surgeon in the British Army. So 00:03:01.770 --> 00:03:04.069 at the very moment Leclésio was taking his first 00:03:04.069 --> 00:03:06.849 breath in Nice, his father was stationed in Nigeria. 00:03:07.250 --> 00:03:09.509 So right from day one, there is this massive 00:03:09.509 --> 00:03:12.550 separation. The father figure represents authority, 00:03:12.770 --> 00:03:15.310 the British Empire, and this distant, exotic 00:03:15.310 --> 00:03:19.030 land of Africa. And the mother is there in war 00:03:19.030 --> 00:03:21.389 -torn France. It's this perfect split, and it 00:03:21.389 --> 00:03:23.629 gets even more complicated. But then there is 00:03:23.629 --> 00:03:25.629 the Mauritian connection. This is the part of 00:03:25.629 --> 00:03:28.250 the notes I had to read twice. He has three nationalities, 00:03:28.330 --> 00:03:31.610 French, British, and Mauritian. And he calls 00:03:31.610 --> 00:03:35.169 Mauritius his little fatherland. But he barely 00:03:35.169 --> 00:03:37.250 lived there. He never lived there for more than 00:03:37.250 --> 00:03:39.550 a few months at a time. And that paradox is the 00:03:39.550 --> 00:03:42.469 key to his soul, I think. To understand why he 00:03:42.469 --> 00:03:44.949 claims Mauritius so strongly, we have to go back 00:03:44.949 --> 00:03:47.389 in time. We have to go back to the 18th century. 00:03:47.590 --> 00:03:50.270 Ah, the ancestor story. The ancestor story. This 00:03:50.270 --> 00:03:52.689 is family legend, but it's foundational. His 00:03:52.689 --> 00:03:55.550 ancestor, a man named Francois Alexis Leclisio, 00:03:55.689 --> 00:03:57.469 was living in Brittany, France during the French 00:03:57.469 --> 00:04:00.150 Revolution. Okay, so heads are rolling. The guillotine 00:04:00.150 --> 00:04:03.740 is busy. A pretty tense time to be alive. Exactly. 00:04:03.860 --> 00:04:06.840 The Revolutionary Army, the Jacobins, they are 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:09.840 demanding total loyalty. And they demand that 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:13.139 Francois enlist in the army. But they have a 00:04:13.139 --> 00:04:15.340 requirement, a very specific requirement. He 00:04:15.340 --> 00:04:17.600 has to cut his hair. A hair cut. The Revolutionary 00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:20.360 cut. Short hair. It was a symbol of breaking 00:04:20.360 --> 00:04:23.660 away from the old aristocratic styles, the wigs, 00:04:23.740 --> 00:04:26.300 the long hair of the ancient regime. And he refused. 00:04:26.579 --> 00:04:28.720 You refused. I have to stop you there. He fled 00:04:28.720 --> 00:04:32.259 the country. He became an exile. Because he didn't 00:04:32.259 --> 00:04:34.180 want a haircut. That seems a little dramatic, 00:04:34.339 --> 00:04:36.139 doesn't it? I mean, hair grows back. It sounds 00:04:36.139 --> 00:04:38.579 incredibly petty to us now, sure. But think about 00:04:38.579 --> 00:04:41.600 the context. In a totalitarian environment, which 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:44.740 the terror effectively was, the body is the last 00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:47.100 thing you own. Ah, okay. If the state can tell 00:04:47.100 --> 00:04:49.500 you how to wear your hair, they own you. His 00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:53.259 refusal wasn't just vanity. It was a profound 00:04:53.259 --> 00:04:55.740 act of political defiance. He basically said, 00:04:55.800 --> 00:04:58.019 my body is my own. And he got on a boat with 00:04:58.019 --> 00:05:00.600 his family to escape. That is a serious commitment 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:02.839 to personal liberty. Where was he treated to 00:05:02.839 --> 00:05:05.220 go? He intended to go to India. That was the 00:05:05.220 --> 00:05:07.779 plan. But the boat stopped in Mauritius, which 00:05:07.779 --> 00:05:10.379 is this island in the Indian Ocean. And for whatever 00:05:10.379 --> 00:05:12.800 reason, maybe they were tired of the sea, maybe 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:14.420 they liked the look of the place, they got off, 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:18.459 and they stayed. And that accident of history, 00:05:18.600 --> 00:05:21.379 getting off the boat one stop early, created 00:05:21.379 --> 00:05:25.040 this weird hybrid identity for the Leclasio family. 00:05:25.800 --> 00:05:27.620 Because Mauritius isn't exactly French, right? 00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:29.459 Well, it was a French colony, but shortly after 00:05:29.459 --> 00:05:31.600 they arrived, the British took it over during 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:34.319 the Napoleonic Wars. But here is the loophole 00:05:34.319 --> 00:05:37.800 that created Le Glacier's world. The British, 00:05:37.860 --> 00:05:40.500 in the Surrender Treaty, allowed the French settlers 00:05:40.500 --> 00:05:42.860 to keep their language, their religion, and their 00:05:42.860 --> 00:05:45.379 customs. So you have a time capsule. Precisely. 00:05:45.629 --> 00:05:48.069 You have this community of white French settlers, 00:05:48.269 --> 00:05:51.149 the Franco -Mauritians, living on a British -ruled 00:05:51.149 --> 00:05:53.990 island off the coast of Africa, speaking 18th 00:05:53.990 --> 00:05:56.149 century French and holding onto customs that 00:05:56.149 --> 00:05:57.910 were disappearing back in Europe. It's like a 00:05:57.910 --> 00:06:00.470 cultural bubble. A bubble, exactly. And so Leclasier 00:06:00.470 --> 00:06:02.649 grows up hearing these stories. Even though he's 00:06:02.649 --> 00:06:04.769 in France, his parents talk about this island 00:06:04.769 --> 00:06:07.009 like it's the Garden of Eden. It's this lost 00:06:07.009 --> 00:06:09.850 paradise. So he grows up feeling like an exile. 00:06:10.920 --> 00:06:14.120 He feels that his real home isn't the concrete 00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:16.920 and rain of Europe. It's this mythical island 00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:19.540 he's never even really seen. He calls it his 00:06:19.540 --> 00:06:22.480 little fatherland. It's a place of memory, not 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:24.819 geography. And that's a theme that just runs 00:06:24.819 --> 00:06:27.019 through his entire life's work. The search for 00:06:27.019 --> 00:06:29.060 a home that maybe doesn't even exist on a map. 00:06:29.279 --> 00:06:31.480 That sense of being an outsider must have been 00:06:31.480 --> 00:06:33.560 amplified by his childhood. We mentioned the 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:36.680 war. But after the war, something huge happens. 00:06:37.019 --> 00:06:39.180 This is the event that made him a writer. I truly 00:06:39.180 --> 00:06:42.139 believe that. In 1948, when he is eight years 00:06:42.139 --> 00:06:45.180 old, he, his mother, and his brother get on a 00:06:45.180 --> 00:06:47.379 ship. They're finally going to join his father 00:06:47.379 --> 00:06:49.699 in Nigeria. Imagine that for an eight -year -old 00:06:49.699 --> 00:06:51.939 boy. You've grown up in a small village in the 00:06:51.939 --> 00:06:55.000 mountains behind Nice Roke Billiard. You've seen 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:57.459 war, sure, but your world is still very small. 00:06:57.980 --> 00:07:00.620 And suddenly you're on a boat for weeks heading 00:07:00.620 --> 00:07:03.399 to West Africa. It was a massive cultural shock. 00:07:03.480 --> 00:07:05.660 He wrote about this extensively later in his 00:07:05.660 --> 00:07:08.040 life, particularly in his book Lafrican, The 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:10.680 African. He describes the journey as passing 00:07:10.680 --> 00:07:13.139 through a looking glass. Through a looking glass. 00:07:13.220 --> 00:07:16.480 I like that. He leaves the gray contained sort 00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:19.540 of rationed world of post -war Europe and enters 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:23.000 a world of intense light, heat, storms, and just 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.920 vastness. And he's meeting his father. essentially 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:27.360 for the first time. He would have been, what, 00:07:27.379 --> 00:07:29.360 an infant when his father left? Right. He hadn't 00:07:29.360 --> 00:07:30.980 seen his father since he was a baby. So in his 00:07:30.980 --> 00:07:33.420 head, his father is this hero, this distant god, 00:07:33.500 --> 00:07:37.399 this myth. But the reality, the reality was a 00:07:37.399 --> 00:07:40.199 bit different. The notes say his father was strict. 00:07:40.620 --> 00:07:43.560 Strict, mildly. His father was a British army 00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:45.839 surgeon who had spent years in the bush alone. 00:07:45.959 --> 00:07:48.839 He was rigid. He was colonial. He was authoritarian. 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:51.420 So not a warm and fuzzy reunion. Not at all. 00:07:51.480 --> 00:07:54.459 He believed in discipline. So Leclisio goes from 00:07:54.459 --> 00:07:57.220 this free -roaming life with his mother to suddenly 00:07:57.220 --> 00:07:59.879 having this stern man measuring out his food 00:07:59.879 --> 00:08:01.660 and telling him how to behave. It was a shock. 00:08:01.860 --> 00:08:03.899 That dynamic is fascinating. You have the freedom 00:08:03.899 --> 00:08:06.379 of the African landscape, the jungle, the insects, 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:09.720 the sheer vitality of Nigeria clashing with the 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:11.620 rigidity of the father figure inside the house. 00:08:11.779 --> 00:08:14.579 That tension is the engine of his creativity. 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:17.379 It's right there. The conflict between nature 00:08:17.379 --> 00:08:21.490 freedom and civilization rules. In Nigeria, the 00:08:21.490 --> 00:08:24.769 boy, Lecladzio, found a kind of freedom outside 00:08:24.769 --> 00:08:27.649 the house that he never had in France. What did 00:08:27.649 --> 00:08:29.670 he do? He played with the local children. He 00:08:29.670 --> 00:08:32.269 ran through the tall grass. He describes this 00:08:32.269 --> 00:08:34.529 incredible feeling of being part of something 00:08:34.529 --> 00:08:37.690 bigger. He realized that the world was much bigger 00:08:37.690 --> 00:08:39.570 and stranger than what he learned in school. 00:08:40.159 --> 00:08:42.500 It seems like that trip planted the seeds for 00:08:42.500 --> 00:08:45.059 his lifelong fascination with cultures outside 00:08:45.059 --> 00:08:48.019 of Europe. He didn't just see Africa as a scary 00:08:48.019 --> 00:08:50.559 place or a place to be conquered. He saw it as 00:08:50.559 --> 00:08:52.519 a place that was alive. He saw it as a place 00:08:52.519 --> 00:08:55.919 that had its own logic, its own magic. And significantly, 00:08:55.980 --> 00:08:58.799 he realized that the European way of doing things, 00:08:58.899 --> 00:09:01.679 his father's way, wasn't the only way. It was 00:09:01.679 --> 00:09:03.700 just one option and maybe not even the best one. 00:09:03.740 --> 00:09:05.659 That's a huge realization for a kid to have. 00:09:06.059 --> 00:09:08.539 So he spends his formative time in Nigeria, absorbs 00:09:08.539 --> 00:09:11.019 all these sights and sounds, but eventually he 00:09:11.019 --> 00:09:13.360 has to come back. He has to grow up, go to university, 00:09:13.419 --> 00:09:16.679 become a serious person. And he tries. He really 00:09:16.679 --> 00:09:20.039 does. Which brings us to his meteoric rise as 00:09:20.039 --> 00:09:23.220 the young rebel. Okay, so this is his Paris phase. 00:09:23.460 --> 00:09:26.059 This is the Paris phase. He goes to university 00:09:26.059 --> 00:09:29.220 in Bristol for a year, then in Nice. He studies 00:09:29.220 --> 00:09:31.639 literature. He's incredibly smart, obviously. 00:09:31.899 --> 00:09:34.600 He gets a master's degree. I saw the thesis topic. 00:09:35.429 --> 00:09:39.169 Henri Michaud and the mystical experience. Which 00:09:39.169 --> 00:09:42.169 is perfect, right? Michaud was a poet who used 00:09:42.169 --> 00:09:44.490 drugs and travel to explore the boundaries of 00:09:44.490 --> 00:09:47.350 the mind. So Le Clesio is already signaling what 00:09:47.350 --> 00:09:49.490 he cares about. He cares about the things that 00:09:49.490 --> 00:09:51.909 break the rules of normal reality. He's not writing 00:09:51.909 --> 00:09:53.909 his thesis on, you know, Proust or something 00:09:53.909 --> 00:09:55.809 predictable. No, he's already looking for the 00:09:55.809 --> 00:09:59.450 weird stuff, the edges. And then, in 1963, at 00:09:59.450 --> 00:10:02.330 the ripe old age of 23, he drops his debut novel, 00:10:02.570 --> 00:10:05.659 Le Procès Verbal. In English, The Interrogation. 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:08.980 And boom, instant superstar. 23 years old. I 00:10:08.980 --> 00:10:10.480 was still figuring out how to pay my electric 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:13.860 bill at 23. He publishes a novel and almost wins 00:10:13.860 --> 00:10:15.740 the Prix Goncourt, which is like the Pulitzer 00:10:15.740 --> 00:10:17.240 and the Booker Prize rolled into one for the 00:10:17.240 --> 00:10:19.559 French. He won the Prix Renaud, which is huge. 00:10:19.860 --> 00:10:22.480 And the book was The Talk of Paris. Everyone 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:25.919 was talking about this brilliant, strange, young 00:10:25.919 --> 00:10:27.919 writer. But let's pause here because I think 00:10:27.919 --> 00:10:29.440 we need to explain what kind of book this was. 00:10:29.539 --> 00:10:32.480 I've tried to read some of the... Cool French 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:35.299 literature from the 60s, the nouveau Roman stuff. 00:10:35.639 --> 00:10:39.159 And I have to be honest, it can be rough. It's 00:10:39.159 --> 00:10:42.000 not exactly a beach read. No, definitely not 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:44.139 a beach read. If you bring the interrogation 00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:46.059 to the beach, you're going to have a bad time. 00:10:46.139 --> 00:10:47.919 You'll probably just stare at the sun and question 00:10:47.919 --> 00:10:49.700 your own existence. Which is kind of what the 00:10:49.700 --> 00:10:52.259 main character does, right? What was he actually 00:10:52.259 --> 00:10:55.039 doing in these books? Because the notes mention 00:10:55.039 --> 00:10:59.019 he was obsessed with insanity and... So think 00:10:59.019 --> 00:11:01.919 about the time period. This is the 1960s. Structuralism 00:11:01.919 --> 00:11:04.500 is huge. Existentialism is still hanging around. 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:08.000 The cool intellectual stance was to deconstruct 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:10.080 everything. Deconstruct everything. OK. The idea 00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:12.000 was that traditional storytelling, you know, 00:11:12.039 --> 00:11:14.440 once upon a time a hero fell in love and defeated 00:11:14.440 --> 00:11:17.000 the villain was a lie. It was a fake structure 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:19.360 we imposed on a chaotic world to make ourselves 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:21.559 feel safe. So they wanted to write the world 00:11:21.559 --> 00:11:24.700 as it actually was without the neat little plot. 00:11:24.840 --> 00:11:26.899 Right. And they believe the world is chaotic. 00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:30.259 fragmented and doesn't have a clear plot. So 00:11:30.259 --> 00:11:32.799 Lecletio's early books are trying to capture 00:11:32.799 --> 00:11:36.259 that chaos. In the interrogation, the main character, 00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:39.519 Adam Palo, is a guy living in an abandoned house. 00:11:39.779 --> 00:11:41.980 He might be a deserter from the army. He might 00:11:41.980 --> 00:11:44.200 be an escapee from a mental asylum. We never 00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:46.279 really find out. So what does he do? What's the 00:11:46.279 --> 00:11:48.879 story? He wanders around. He stares at objects. 00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:51.340 He tries to kill rats. He follows a dog. He sits 00:11:51.340 --> 00:11:53.259 in the sun and tries to figure out if he actually 00:11:53.259 --> 00:11:56.200 exists or if he's merging with the landscape. 00:11:56.440 --> 00:11:59.360 It's very internal. It sounds intense. It is 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:01.480 intense. It's written with this high voltage, 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:04.409 nervous energy. He's describing the sunlight 00:12:04.409 --> 00:12:06.690 on a wall for three pages, but he makes it feel 00:12:06.690 --> 00:12:09.269 like a hallucination. It's a book about a mind 00:12:09.269 --> 00:12:11.929 falling apart or maybe a mind waking up to a 00:12:11.929 --> 00:12:14.070 different kind of reality. And the heavy hitters 00:12:14.070 --> 00:12:16.629 loved it. The big name philosophers. Oh, they 00:12:16.629 --> 00:12:19.610 adored it. Michel Foucault, the philosopher who 00:12:19.610 --> 00:12:21.950 wrote Madness and Civilization, basically said, 00:12:22.049 --> 00:12:25.690 this guy gets it. Jules Deleuze praised him. 00:12:26.190 --> 00:12:29.029 Le Clésio became the poster child for this very 00:12:29.029 --> 00:12:32.389 cerebral, very difficult, very French way of 00:12:32.389 --> 00:12:34.889 writing. He was the rebel. He was questioning 00:12:34.889 --> 00:12:37.490 the nature of language. He was questioning reality. 00:12:37.789 --> 00:12:40.169 He was the angry young man in the black turtleneck. 00:12:40.169 --> 00:12:42.470 He fit the part perfectly. But he didn't stay 00:12:42.470 --> 00:12:45.460 there. Yeah. And I think that is... The plot 00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:47.559 twist of his life. He could have stayed in Paris, 00:12:47.759 --> 00:12:50.340 accepted the awards, become a professor at the 00:12:50.340 --> 00:12:52.620 Sorbonne, and just kept writing these difficult 00:12:52.620 --> 00:12:54.679 books about madness. He could have had a very 00:12:54.679 --> 00:12:56.840 comfortable career doing that. But he didn't. 00:12:56.840 --> 00:12:59.679 He left. He ran away, essentially. He realized 00:12:59.679 --> 00:13:02.159 that the intellectual life in Paris was its own 00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:04.179 kind of trap. It was just words about words about 00:13:04.179 --> 00:13:05.659 words. He wanted to put things real. He wanted 00:13:05.659 --> 00:13:07.379 to get his hands dirty. So he starts moving. 00:13:07.500 --> 00:13:11.240 He goes to the U .S. to teach. But then, 1967. 00:13:12.700 --> 00:13:15.379 Thailand. This seems like a key moment. All right. 00:13:15.419 --> 00:13:17.340 This was his national service. In France, you 00:13:17.340 --> 00:13:19.080 have to do military service, but you could do 00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:21.879 cooperation instead, basically aid work. So he 00:13:21.879 --> 00:13:24.179 gets sent to Thailand. And he gets kicked out 00:13:24.179 --> 00:13:27.200 almost immediately. Laughs. He does. And the 00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:29.940 reason is so telling. It says everything about 00:13:29.940 --> 00:13:32.500 the man he was becoming. Why? What happened? 00:13:32.860 --> 00:13:35.039 He didn't get kicked out for being a bad worker 00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:38.480 or for being lazy. He got kicked out for protesting 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:42.710 against child prostitution. Wow. OK. That is 00:13:42.710 --> 00:13:45.470 a bold move for a young man in a foreign country 00:13:45.470 --> 00:13:48.490 on a government assignment. It is, but it shows 00:13:48.490 --> 00:13:51.470 that his moral compass was already pointing towards 00:13:51.470 --> 00:13:53.950 social justice. He wasn't just there to be a 00:13:53.950 --> 00:13:56.409 tourist or an observer. He saw exploitation. 00:13:57.490 --> 00:14:00.269 Specifically, the exploitation of children. And 00:14:00.269 --> 00:14:02.029 he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He wrote articles. 00:14:02.070 --> 00:14:04.309 He complained. And the authorities said, OK, 00:14:04.429 --> 00:14:06.269 you're too much trouble. Get out. So even back 00:14:06.269 --> 00:14:08.850 then, he was defending the humanity below the 00:14:08.850 --> 00:14:10.950 reigning civilization. That's it. Exactly. He 00:14:10.950 --> 00:14:13.710 was already doing it long before the Nobel Committee 00:14:13.710 --> 00:14:16.450 gave him the award for it. So they boot him from 00:14:16.450 --> 00:14:18.529 Thailand. Where do they send him? They transfer 00:14:18.529 --> 00:14:21.850 him to Mexico to finish his service. And this 00:14:21.850 --> 00:14:24.610 accident of bureaucracy being sent from Thailand 00:14:24.610 --> 00:14:27.649 to Mexico changed his life and arguably the course 00:14:27.649 --> 00:14:29.629 of French literature. Because this is what leads 00:14:29.629 --> 00:14:31.950 to Panama. This is what leads to Panama. And 00:14:31.950 --> 00:14:33.970 honestly, this is the part of the story that 00:14:33.970 --> 00:14:36.909 blows my mind. We are talking about the Ember 00:14:36.909 --> 00:14:40.269 Woonin tribe. Yes. So while he's based in Mexico, 00:14:40.470 --> 00:14:43.669 he starts traveling down into Panama. And he 00:14:43.669 --> 00:14:47.029 ends up spending four years from 1970 to 1974 00:14:47.029 --> 00:14:50.610 living with the Ember Woonin people in the Darien 00:14:50.610 --> 00:14:52.830 jungle. Okay, we have to talk about what living 00:14:52.830 --> 00:14:55.490 with means here. Because usually when a writer 00:14:55.490 --> 00:14:58.169 goes to a remote location, they stay in a hotel, 00:14:58.350 --> 00:15:00.370 maybe hire a guide, take some notes and go home 00:15:00.370 --> 00:15:03.049 to write. Maybe they stay for a month. This was 00:15:03.049 --> 00:15:06.110 not that. Leclezio disappeared. This wasn't a 00:15:06.110 --> 00:15:09.009 retreat. This was immersion. The Ember lives 00:15:09.009 --> 00:15:12.360 in the deep rainforest. At that time, there were 00:15:12.360 --> 00:15:14.940 no roads, no electricity, no running water. The 00:15:14.940 --> 00:15:16.600 social structure was completely different. It 00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:18.340 was a river -based culture. He lived in their 00:15:18.340 --> 00:15:20.480 villages, ate their food, slept in a hammock. 00:15:20.539 --> 00:15:22.480 What drove him to do that? Was he running away 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:24.679 from his fame in Paris? I think he was running 00:15:24.679 --> 00:15:26.500 towards something. You know, he had spent all 00:15:26.500 --> 00:15:28.919 those years in Paris writing about how civilization 00:15:28.919 --> 00:15:32.039 is a trap and language is a prison, but it was 00:15:32.039 --> 00:15:33.860 all theoretical. Right, he was writing it from 00:15:33.860 --> 00:15:36.580 a cafe. He was writing about madness from a comfortable 00:15:36.580 --> 00:15:39.840 apartment. In Panama, he wanted to see if there 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:42.179 was another way to be human. He wanted to see 00:15:42.179 --> 00:15:44.179 if he could exist outside of the Western machine. 00:15:44.519 --> 00:15:47.460 He was testing his own theories in the most extreme 00:15:47.460 --> 00:15:50.299 way possible. And what did he find? What did 00:15:50.299 --> 00:15:53.240 four years in the jungle do to a Parisian intellectual? 00:15:53.919 --> 00:15:56.500 He found silence. That's the biggest thing he 00:15:56.500 --> 00:15:59.100 talks about in interviews. In the West, we are 00:15:59.100 --> 00:16:02.480 constantly bombarded with noise words, ads, media, 00:16:02.740 --> 00:16:05.720 traffic. The Ember culture was based on a different 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:08.360 kind of communication, a connection to the immediate 00:16:08.360 --> 00:16:10.980 environment, paying attention. I found this quote 00:16:10.980 --> 00:16:13.259 in the research where he talks about how living 00:16:13.259 --> 00:16:16.080 there stripped away his intellectual armor. That's 00:16:16.080 --> 00:16:18.960 the key. You can't be a pretentious French philosopher 00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:21.639 when you have to worry about jaguars or finding 00:16:21.639 --> 00:16:24.899 clean water or navigating a river in a dugout 00:16:24.899 --> 00:16:26.759 canoe. Your master's thesis doesn't help you 00:16:26.759 --> 00:16:29.120 there. Not at all. The jungle demands that you 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:31.980 be present. It forces a kind of humility. He 00:16:31.980 --> 00:16:33.720 said later that he arrived there thinking he 00:16:33.720 --> 00:16:35.919 knew things. He was the educated European and 00:16:35.919 --> 00:16:38.480 left realizing he knew nothing. There's a story 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:40.779 about him getting sick, right? Yes. He felt very 00:16:40.779 --> 00:16:43.000 ill at one point. He had a scorpion sting, I 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:46.440 believe, and got a terrible fever. And the tribe 00:16:46.440 --> 00:16:48.440 cared for him. They used their traditional medicine, 00:16:48.659 --> 00:16:50.620 their knowledge of plants, and that experience 00:16:50.620 --> 00:16:53.159 of vulnerability, of being completely dependent 00:16:53.159 --> 00:16:55.200 on these people who had none of the technology 00:16:55.200 --> 00:16:58.259 of the West, but had a profound knowledge of 00:16:58.259 --> 00:17:01.100 healing and care. That shifted his worldview. 00:17:01.360 --> 00:17:03.740 He stopped seeing them as primitive. And started 00:17:03.740 --> 00:17:06.480 seeing them as perhaps more advanced in the ways 00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:09.259 that actually matter. And this is where the sensual 00:17:09.259 --> 00:17:11.259 ecstasy comes in, right? The Nobel Committee's 00:17:11.259 --> 00:17:14.130 phrase, it's not sexual. It's sensory. Exactly. 00:17:14.309 --> 00:17:16.930 It's the ecstasy of the senses. Feeling the rain 00:17:16.930 --> 00:17:19.410 on your skin, smelling the rot and the bloom 00:17:19.410 --> 00:17:21.690 of the jungle, watching the light change on the 00:17:21.690 --> 00:17:24.009 river. He stopped trying to analyze the world 00:17:24.009 --> 00:17:26.269 and started trying to feel it. He got out of 00:17:26.269 --> 00:17:28.210 his head and into his body. And he didn't just 00:17:28.210 --> 00:17:30.130 sit there and feel things. He actually did work. 00:17:30.269 --> 00:17:32.960 He translated their mythology. He did, and this 00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:35.440 is important. He didn't just romanticize them. 00:17:35.539 --> 00:17:38.200 He treated their culture with the same academic 00:17:38.200 --> 00:17:40.900 rigor he would have treated Greek or Roman culture. 00:17:41.140 --> 00:17:44.539 He translated Le Prophétie de Chilam Balam. He 00:17:44.539 --> 00:17:46.839 wrote a doctoral thesis on the history of Mexico. 00:17:47.099 --> 00:17:49.339 But he wasn't writing about the conquerors. He 00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.259 was writing about the conquered. He was looking 00:17:51.259 --> 00:17:53.759 at history from the losing side. So he comes 00:17:53.759 --> 00:17:57.000 out of the jungle in 1974. He's married now to 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:00.359 Jemia, who is Moroccan. He's got kids, and obviously 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:02.519 he can't write the same. way he did before. You 00:18:02.519 --> 00:18:05.539 can't write jagged experimental novels about 00:18:05.539 --> 00:18:07.980 insanity after you've lived that kind of life. 00:18:08.099 --> 00:18:10.079 You really can't. The old tools don't work anymore. 00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:13.960 And that leads us to his literary metamorphosis. 00:18:14.259 --> 00:18:18.319 In the late 70s, he pivots completely. What changed 00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:20.359 in the writing itself? If I picked up a book 00:18:20.359 --> 00:18:22.920 from 1965 and a book from 1980, would I know 00:18:22.920 --> 00:18:24.700 they were by the same guy? You might doubt it. 00:18:25.039 --> 00:18:27.619 the jagged nervous almost paranoid energy of 00:18:27.619 --> 00:18:30.200 his early work disappears in its place comes 00:18:30.200 --> 00:18:33.059 this long flowing lyrical style it's smoother 00:18:33.059 --> 00:18:35.000 it's almost hypnotic and the subjects change 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:38.740 too completely he stops writing about urban alienation 00:18:38.740 --> 00:18:41.660 and starts writing about the desert the sea the 00:18:41.660 --> 00:18:45.480 sky childhood travel and this deep connection 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:48.099 to the environment and the book that really marked 00:18:48.099 --> 00:18:51.240 this change the one everyone points to is desire 00:18:51.240 --> 00:18:54.380 published in 1980. Dessert is a masterpiece. 00:18:54.740 --> 00:18:57.259 It won the Grand Prix Pomerant from the Académie 00:18:57.259 --> 00:18:59.700 Française. It's the book that proved he wasn't 00:18:59.700 --> 00:19:02.799 just a 60s flash in the pan. He was a major, 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:05.220 major writer with something new to say. Tell 00:19:05.220 --> 00:19:07.220 us the story. What happens in Dessert? It has 00:19:07.220 --> 00:19:09.960 two timelines, which is brilliant. One is set 00:19:09.960 --> 00:19:12.279 in the present day, well, the late 70s, following 00:19:12.279 --> 00:19:15.160 a young girl named Lala. She's a descendant of 00:19:15.160 --> 00:19:17.519 the Blue Men, the Touareg nomads of the Sahara. 00:19:17.779 --> 00:19:19.700 The Blue Men? Yeah, from the indigo dye they 00:19:19.700 --> 00:19:22.140 used. So she lives in a shantytown on the edge 00:19:22.140 --> 00:19:24.480 of a Moroccan... city. She's poor. She's marginalized. 00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:27.740 But she has this incredible, fierce connection 00:19:27.740 --> 00:19:30.480 to nature. She talks to the insects. She stares 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:33.039 at the sea. She has this inner freedom. And the 00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:34.920 other timeline. The other timeline goes back 00:19:34.920 --> 00:19:38.119 to 1909 and 1910. It tells the story of the Tuareg 00:19:38.119 --> 00:19:40.859 tribes, her ancestors, fleeing across the desert 00:19:40.859 --> 00:19:43.319 to escape the French colonial army. So again, 00:19:43.480 --> 00:19:45.779 he's taking the perspective of the displaced. 00:19:46.589 --> 00:19:49.009 He is writing about the people running away from 00:19:49.009 --> 00:19:51.569 the civilization that Leclessio himself technically 00:19:51.569 --> 00:19:54.730 belongs to. Exactly. And the way he writes about 00:19:54.730 --> 00:19:57.789 the desert is stunning. He describes it not as 00:19:57.789 --> 00:20:00.349 a wasteland, not as something empty, but as a 00:20:00.349 --> 00:20:02.950 place of purity, of blinding light, of freedom. 00:20:03.289 --> 00:20:06.890 The free men of the desert possess nothing, but 00:20:06.890 --> 00:20:09.190 they have the horizon. So what happens to Lala? 00:20:09.549 --> 00:20:12.009 She eventually goes to France. She ends up in 00:20:12.009 --> 00:20:13.789 Marseille and she works as a model, actually, 00:20:13.930 --> 00:20:16.950 but she hates it. She sees the city as a cold, 00:20:17.109 --> 00:20:20.089 dead place full of slaves to money and image. 00:20:20.349 --> 00:20:23.230 It's a prison compared to the desert. It sounds 00:20:23.230 --> 00:20:25.410 like he's taking all that anger from his youth. 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:28.180 the anger at society and channeling it through 00:20:28.180 --> 00:20:30.759 this girl. But instead of just screaming, he's 00:20:30.759 --> 00:20:32.819 showing us the beauty of the alternative. That's 00:20:32.819 --> 00:20:34.859 a perfect way to put it. He's not just critiquing 00:20:34.859 --> 00:20:36.759 the West anymore. He's offering an alternative 00:20:36.759 --> 00:20:39.579 vision of beauty. He's saying, look at what we 00:20:39.579 --> 00:20:41.599 destroyed. Look at the dignity of these people 00:20:41.599 --> 00:20:44.299 we called savages. And clearly it worked. The 00:20:44.299 --> 00:20:46.660 audience responded. This wasn't just for philosophers 00:20:46.660 --> 00:20:49.640 in Paris anymore. Not at all. This new style 00:20:49.640 --> 00:20:52.819 brought him a huge mainstream audience. By the 00:20:52.819 --> 00:20:57.039 90s, he was a titan. In 1994, Lear Magazine did 00:20:57.039 --> 00:21:00.480 a survey and 13 % of readers voted him the greatest 00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:03.599 living French writer. 13 %? Yeah. That's a huge 00:21:03.599 --> 00:21:05.819 number in a poll like that. It's massive. He 00:21:05.819 --> 00:21:08.140 was being translated into 30 languages. He had 00:21:08.140 --> 00:21:10.460 become the voice of the ailleurs, the elsewhere. 00:21:10.940 --> 00:21:13.460 I like that. So he's established, he's beloved, 00:21:13.599 --> 00:21:17.519 he's living this global life. Albuquerque, Mauritius, 00:21:17.640 --> 00:21:21.349 nice. He's found his rhythm. And then... The 00:21:21.349 --> 00:21:23.390 biggest phone call of a writer's life comes in. 00:21:23.670 --> 00:21:26.170 2008, the Nobel Prize in Literature. It had been 00:21:26.170 --> 00:21:28.130 a while for the French, hadn't it? A long time 00:21:28.130 --> 00:21:30.490 between wins. A long drought. The last French 00:21:30.490 --> 00:21:33.430 language winner was Claude Simon in 1985. So 00:21:33.430 --> 00:21:35.589 this is a huge moment, a kind of homecoming for 00:21:35.589 --> 00:21:37.609 the prize. And we talked about the citation earlier, 00:21:37.789 --> 00:21:40.470 explorer of a humanity beyond and below. Yeah. 00:21:40.529 --> 00:21:43.029 But they also called him the author of New Departures. 00:21:43.210 --> 00:21:45.069 What do you think they meant by that? I think 00:21:45.069 --> 00:21:46.849 they were acknowledging that shift we just talked 00:21:46.849 --> 00:21:49.690 about. They recognize that he was brave enough 00:21:49.690 --> 00:21:53.170 to reinvent himself. Most writers find a style 00:21:53.170 --> 00:21:56.930 that works and they stick to it forever. Leclitzio 00:21:56.930 --> 00:21:59.890 broke his own mold because his life experience 00:21:59.890 --> 00:22:02.589 demanded it. He had the courage to depart from 00:22:02.589 --> 00:22:05.500 his own success. How did he handle the win? Was 00:22:05.500 --> 00:22:08.500 he gracious? Yeah. Did he seem overwhelmed? He 00:22:08.500 --> 00:22:11.960 was very le glasio about it. He said he was touched, 00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:15.339 but he immediately deflected the glory to his 00:22:15.339 --> 00:22:18.160 mixed heritage. He said, I was born of a mix 00:22:18.160 --> 00:22:21.109 like many people currently in Europe. He used 00:22:21.109 --> 00:22:23.569 the moment to validate the idea of being a mongrel, 00:22:23.650 --> 00:22:25.710 of not belonging to just one nation. He made 00:22:25.710 --> 00:22:27.809 it about everyone, not just about him. It's very 00:22:27.809 --> 00:22:29.849 consistent with his character. Completely. And 00:22:29.849 --> 00:22:31.829 then came the lecture. The Nobel lecture is always 00:22:31.829 --> 00:22:33.190 a big moment. You have the world's attention. 00:22:33.349 --> 00:22:35.170 What are you going to say? He titled it Dans 00:22:35.170 --> 00:22:38.470 la Forre des Paradoxes, In the Forest of Paradoxes, 00:22:38.470 --> 00:22:40.410 which is a great title. And what was the message? 00:22:40.569 --> 00:22:43.410 What paradox was he focused on? He used the platform 00:22:43.410 --> 00:22:47.329 to attack information poverty. Information poverty. 00:22:48.140 --> 00:22:50.200 That sounds like a tech term. Like he's complaining 00:22:50.200 --> 00:22:52.859 about slow broadband speed. It does sound like 00:22:52.859 --> 00:22:55.240 that, but he meant it culturally. He was talking 00:22:55.240 --> 00:22:57.460 about who gets to be heard, whose stories get 00:22:57.460 --> 00:23:00.259 told. He pointed out that the vast majority of 00:23:00.259 --> 00:23:03.660 human beings in Africa, in the Amazon, in the 00:23:03.660 --> 00:23:07.240 slums of Asia do not have access to books. And 00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:09.599 more importantly, their own stories aren't being 00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:12.460 published. Their myths, their poems, their histories 00:23:12.460 --> 00:23:15.569 are oral and they're disappearing. So he's saying 00:23:15.569 --> 00:23:18.130 that literature with a capital L is an exclusive 00:23:18.130 --> 00:23:20.930 club. Exactly. He's saying it's a luxury club 00:23:20.930 --> 00:23:23.970 for the West. And by ignoring the stories of 00:23:23.970 --> 00:23:26.390 the rest of the world, we are impoverishing ourselves. 00:23:26.470 --> 00:23:29.150 We are missing out on 90 percent of the human 00:23:29.150 --> 00:23:31.930 experience. It was a very humanist plea. He wasn't 00:23:31.930 --> 00:23:33.950 talking about great art. He was talking about 00:23:33.950 --> 00:23:36.450 basic human dignity and the right to have your 00:23:36.450 --> 00:23:38.349 story heard. It's consistent with the guy who 00:23:38.349 --> 00:23:41.180 got kicked out of Thailand for protesting. He 00:23:41.180 --> 00:23:43.880 never lost that advocacy. He never became just 00:23:43.880 --> 00:23:46.660 an artist in an ivory tower. He didn't. And it 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:49.000 kept engaging globally. Even after the Nobel, 00:23:49.220 --> 00:23:51.460 he didn't just retire to a villa in Nice. He 00:23:51.460 --> 00:23:53.619 went to South Korea to teach at Ewha Women's 00:23:53.619 --> 00:23:56.319 University. He went to China to teach at Nanjing 00:23:56.319 --> 00:23:58.599 University. I love the image of this guy. You 00:23:58.599 --> 00:24:00.519 picture a Nobel laureate, you maybe picture him 00:24:00.519 --> 00:24:04.119 in a dusty library in Paris. But LeClessio is 00:24:04.119 --> 00:24:08.019 moving between Seoul, Nanjing. Albuquerque and 00:24:08.019 --> 00:24:11.799 Nice. He is constantly teaching, learning, moving. 00:24:12.059 --> 00:24:14.980 He is a shark. If he stops moving, he dies. Or 00:24:14.980 --> 00:24:17.460 at least his creativity dies. He needs that friction 00:24:17.460 --> 00:24:20.200 of new cultures, new languages to spark his writing. 00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:23.019 He thrives on being a foreigner. Now, we have 00:24:23.019 --> 00:24:25.880 to address that with a figure this complex. It's 00:24:25.880 --> 00:24:27.920 not always smooth sailing. We can't paint him 00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:30.279 as a saint. Even a Nobel Peace Prize adjacent 00:24:30.279 --> 00:24:32.660 figure like him can step into controversy. Yes, 00:24:32.740 --> 00:24:34.799 and we need to discuss the Mama Rosa situation 00:24:34.799 --> 00:24:38.000 in 2014. This gives us a glimpse into how his 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:40.480 worldview can sometimes clash with a very messy 00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:42.799 reality. This one is tricky. Let's lay out the 00:24:42.799 --> 00:24:45.619 facts first. Who was Mama Rosa? Mama Rosa was 00:24:45.619 --> 00:24:47.740 the founder and director of a shelter in Mexico 00:24:47.740 --> 00:24:50.940 called La Gran Familia. She was a legendary figure. 00:24:51.450 --> 00:24:54.009 For decades, she took in street children, orphans, 00:24:54.029 --> 00:24:56.829 kids nobody else wanted. She was seen as a savior, 00:24:57.029 --> 00:24:59.569 a living saint by many. But then came the raid. 00:24:59.930 --> 00:25:03.470 July 2014, Mexican federal police raid the shelter. 00:25:03.670 --> 00:25:06.750 And what they find is horrific. The report said 00:25:06.750 --> 00:25:08.650 there were insects in the food. Children were 00:25:08.650 --> 00:25:10.670 malnourished. Some were being held against their 00:25:10.670 --> 00:25:12.809 will, preventing parents from picking them up. 00:25:12.930 --> 00:25:15.829 It was described as a house of horrors in the 00:25:15.829 --> 00:25:18.410 media. A really grim situation. And Leclesio 00:25:18.410 --> 00:25:20.910 stepped in. He did. He wrote an opinion piece 00:25:20.910 --> 00:25:22.849 in Le Monde, the biggest newspaper in France. 00:25:23.029 --> 00:25:26.170 And he defended her vehemently. He argued that 00:25:26.170 --> 00:25:29.640 she was close to sanctity. That is a risky stance 00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:31.720 when the police are parading evidence of abuse 00:25:31.720 --> 00:25:34.480 on the nightly news. Why did he do that? Was 00:25:34.480 --> 00:25:36.920 he ignoring the evidence? It's complicated. I 00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:38.539 don't think he was ignoring it, but I think he 00:25:38.539 --> 00:25:40.799 was viewing it through a very specific lens, 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:43.759 his lens. He knew Mama Rosa. He had visited the 00:25:43.759 --> 00:25:46.519 shelter. He likely saw a woman who was doing 00:25:46.519 --> 00:25:48.839 the dirty work that the Mexican state had refused 00:25:48.839 --> 00:25:52.460 to do for decades. So he saw the state, the reigning 00:25:52.460 --> 00:25:55.099 civilization, attacking a woman who was caring 00:25:55.099 --> 00:25:58.869 for the humanity below. That's it, exactly. From 00:25:58.869 --> 00:26:01.210 his point of view, he probably thought, how dare 00:26:01.210 --> 00:26:03.049 the government, which leaves these kids on the 00:26:03.049 --> 00:26:05.309 street, come in and judge the one woman trying 00:26:05.309 --> 00:26:08.230 to feed them, however imperfectly. He saw it 00:26:08.230 --> 00:26:10.549 as a colonial -style intervention, authority 00:26:10.549 --> 00:26:13.329 versus the grassroots. But if the allegations 00:26:13.329 --> 00:26:15.890 were true, he was defending an abuser. And that's 00:26:15.890 --> 00:26:18.690 the conflict. His loyalty to the outsider and 00:26:18.690 --> 00:26:21.369 his distrust of authority maybe blinded him to 00:26:21.369 --> 00:26:23.390 the reality that sometimes the outsider can be 00:26:23.390 --> 00:26:26.329 abusive too. It highlights that his philosophy 00:26:26.329 --> 00:26:29.150 siding with the marginalized isn't always neat 00:26:29.150 --> 00:26:32.049 and tidy. It can be messy. It shows the limits 00:26:32.049 --> 00:26:34.589 of that worldview sometimes. It reminds us that 00:26:34.589 --> 00:26:36.910 he's driven by emotion and personal connection, 00:26:37.109 --> 00:26:40.450 not necessarily by cold, hard facts. His loyalty 00:26:40.450 --> 00:26:42.589 is to the people on the ground. Right. He is 00:26:42.589 --> 00:26:45.490 a poet, not a judge. And that loyalty can sometimes 00:26:45.490 --> 00:26:48.450 lead him into complex moral territory. But if 00:26:48.450 --> 00:26:51.049 we zoom out from that specific incident, his 00:26:51.049 --> 00:26:53.130 advocacy has been pretty consistent on the big 00:26:53.130 --> 00:26:55.480 themes, hasn't it? Absolutely. Throughout his 00:26:55.480 --> 00:26:58.380 life, he has focused on ecological concerns long 00:26:58.380 --> 00:27:00.839 before it was trendy. Books like Terra Amata 00:27:00.839 --> 00:27:03.579 and the Giants from way back in the 60s and 70s 00:27:03.579 --> 00:27:06.019 were about urban pollution and environmental 00:27:06.019 --> 00:27:08.779 destruction. The displacement of people. Constantly. 00:27:08.819 --> 00:27:11.319 Wandering Stars about a young Jewish girl fleeing 00:27:11.319 --> 00:27:13.839 the Nazis and then an Arab girl displaced by 00:27:13.839 --> 00:27:16.380 the creation of Israel. Onitsha is about the 00:27:16.380 --> 00:27:18.859 legacy of colonialism. And of course, Indigenous 00:27:18.859 --> 00:27:21.839 Voices, as we saw with his translations, he has 00:27:21.839 --> 00:27:24.059 consistently used his platform. to find a light 00:27:24.059 --> 00:27:26.500 on the things reigning civilization wants to 00:27:26.500 --> 00:27:29.380 ignore. So as we wrap this up, let's go to the 00:27:29.380 --> 00:27:32.019 synthesis. We have called him the man of elsewhere. 00:27:32.359 --> 00:27:35.579 It really seems to fit. I think that's the only 00:27:35.579 --> 00:27:38.109 title that does fit. Look at the arc. He starts 00:27:38.109 --> 00:27:39.869 with an ancestor fleeing the French Revolution 00:27:39.869 --> 00:27:42.049 because he won't cut his hair. He's the boy on 00:27:42.049 --> 00:27:44.369 the boat to Nigeria seeing a new world. He's 00:27:44.369 --> 00:27:46.569 the protester in Thailand. He's the tribe member 00:27:46.569 --> 00:27:49.809 in Panama. And finally, the Nobel laureate in 00:27:49.809 --> 00:27:52.769 Sweden. It's a life defined by movement and crossing 00:27:52.769 --> 00:27:55.710 borders. He really is a bridge. He connects the 00:27:55.710 --> 00:27:58.650 reigning civilization, Europe, the West, the 00:27:58.650 --> 00:28:01.809 academy with the humanity below, the indigenous, 00:28:02.049 --> 00:28:04.769 the marginalized, the forgotten. And he doesn't 00:28:04.769 --> 00:28:07.390 just connect them. He suggests that the value, 00:28:07.529 --> 00:28:09.430 the truth, and the beauty are often found on 00:28:09.430 --> 00:28:11.809 the side of the humanity below. He argues that 00:28:11.809 --> 00:28:14.069 they have something to teach us. Which brings 00:28:14.069 --> 00:28:17.029 us to a final slightly provocative thought to 00:28:17.029 --> 00:28:19.829 leave with everyone. LeClessio started his career 00:28:19.829 --> 00:28:23.230 writing about insanity in the West. He was obsessed 00:28:23.230 --> 00:28:26.690 with madness, alienation, the breakdown of the 00:28:26.690 --> 00:28:29.089 self in the modern city. He ended up writing 00:28:29.089 --> 00:28:31.890 about sensual ecstasy in the global South and 00:28:31.890 --> 00:28:33.970 the indigenous world. It was a complete reversal. 00:28:34.250 --> 00:28:36.589 It really was, from torment to a kind of grace. 00:28:36.869 --> 00:28:39.589 So the question is this. Does LeClessio's journey 00:28:39.589 --> 00:28:42.690 suggest that for him, sanity and peace are impossible 00:28:42.690 --> 00:28:44.769 within the structures of modern West? Western 00:28:44.769 --> 00:28:47.829 civilization. Does he believe that to be truly 00:28:47.829 --> 00:28:51.029 whole, to be sane, you have to escape the skyscrapers 00:28:51.029 --> 00:28:53.170 and the rules and go back to the desert? I think 00:28:53.170 --> 00:28:56.089 he might argue that, or at least he argues that 00:28:56.089 --> 00:28:59.289 we need to let the desert into our skyscrapers. 00:28:59.750 --> 00:29:01.910 We need to remember that we are part of nature, 00:29:02.009 --> 00:29:04.809 not masters of it. We need that other perspective 00:29:04.809 --> 00:29:08.089 to keep ourselves sane. It's a question he leaves 00:29:08.089 --> 00:29:10.730 for us to answer. And I suppose the best way 00:29:10.730 --> 00:29:13.009 to do that is to pick up his books. If you want 00:29:13.009 --> 00:29:15.619 to find out for yourself. Pick up dessert. Or 00:29:15.619 --> 00:29:17.680 read the African. It might just change the way 00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:20.500 you see your own little fatherland. Indeed. It's 00:29:20.500 --> 00:29:22.759 worth the trip. That's it for this deep dive. 00:29:22.980 --> 00:29:25.339 Thanks for listening and keep exploring. Until 00:29:25.339 --> 00:29:25.819 next time.