GREAT INTERVIEW. Im drowning in work: deeply affected by the death of his wife, Pierre Perret brings his Grandma Anna back to life in a book and prepares a new album

We find him in a Parisian hotel, near Maison de la Radio, where he has just recorded a show. Twenty years have passed since our first meeting for a reportage for the magazine Envoyé Spécial, on France 2. Some lines have appeared on his face. A veil of sadness too. But Pierre Perret still has that mischievous face that his friend Bernard Pivot liked so much. The face of a little country boy, born in the summer of 1934 in Castelsarrasin, and which he remembered to write the third part of his memoirs: “Mémé Anna” (Mareuil éditions). His wife, who he had named Rebecca, died at the age of 88 in January, after a terrible fall on the marble staircase of a Parisian hotel where they had just had lunch. Despite the immense pain and sorrow of losing his soulmate, the author of “Lily” and “Jolies colonies de vacances” continues to promote the book, both in Paris and the regions. He also writes new songs.

Franceinfo Culture: How are you Pierre? Pierre Perret: I’m managing. I’m managing because it’s not easy. I drown myself in work. I started another book and just finished a series of songs. I have about a dozen that will be part of an album I’ve been working on for a little over three years. I’m happy to have finished it because it was starting to become heavy always questioning everything, forty, fifty times… But as I’ve done that all my life, I won’t stop along the way, you see.

Has this perfectionism in writing not changed? No. There are songs I started four or five years ago. It’s eclectic. The songs are poles apart. There are many current topics, themes so prevalent today. Racism, again, anti-Semitism, the eco-warriors who get a bit of a beating… There’s everything that surrounds us today. The relentless intolerance, the stupidity, the war. It’s quite recurrent for me. It’s my Don Quixote side, I can’t help it.

Did Rebecca’s sudden death change something in your way of writing and living? No. It further reinforced my standards. I’ve never tightened the screw like today in writing, and I try to detach myself…

Rebecca didn’t hesitate to tell you what she really thought of your songs? Absolutely, and she often encouraged me to go all the way with some that I wondered if it was necessary to do them. She didn’t hold back from scolding me to see things through because uncertainty has always been very prevalent for me. I was glad to have an opinion because there is no greater loneliness than in writing. Whether you’re writing a book or writing a song, you’re alone. The extra word, the extra note, or the missing note… it’s eternally questioned with me, and it has been the problem of my entire life to know how far to go and where not to go. Rebecca knew I wouldn’t let up. She would say, “When you pick up the pen you know when it starts and never when it will stop, you’re a real stubborn person!” It’s true that when I start a song, I have to finish it, no matter how long it takes.

When will this new album be released? I hope to record it by the end of summer. I met the young man who will arrange the songs and we talked a lot about the atmosphere, but I want to give him demos that I will make. If all goes well, it should see the light in October-November. By the end of the year.

Let’s talk about the book “Mémé Anna.” In cinema, we would call it a prequel because chronologically, it comes before “Le Café du Pont” and “A cappella,” the first two parts of your memoirs. Yes, I put the cart before the horse. It was really the one that needed to be written first, but it came last. All the little streams that fed into the big river, they all came from there. Mémé, she opened so many little streams in my life. There are an infinite number of female characters in my texts that come from her, that result from all that she brought me, from all that I saw without saying anything but kept in a corner of my mind.

Did you do specific research or just rely on your memory? I knew her for almost 25 years because she raised me, she took me everywhere. Mom was happy to be rid of me on the days there were press events at the café [her parents ran the Café du Pont in Castelsarrasin]. She couldn’t take care of me much, so Mémé put down her apron and took me. I had much more intimacy with her than with mom in the end. There are so many things that marked me and that are found in the book. What escaped me, I gathered from the grandchildren who also knew her, to see how she continued to be with them. And it’s funny because I’m going to Castelsarrasin in July for a signing, and I’m going to meet little Michel, the son of André Ehanno, who went to the maquis with his brother Félix, at 17-18 years old, when the Germans arrived in 1942. I talk about him in the book. He married Marthou, mom’s sister who worked in the café. Their son is still there. I called him yesterday and he said, “Especially don’t go to the hotel. I’m there with the car, I’ll take you wherever you want. You come, you stay at the house, you have your room.” I saw him being born and we often talked about Mémé. She loved the company of children and took care of them when I left. That served to fill in a few gaps for me.

What makes Mémé Anna’s destiny extraordinary to you? I don’t know many women who have lived their lives getting hit like she did. She was found on the table of a Montauban butcher, abandoned with a pin and a note that said: My name is Anna, I’m nobody’s daughter. When you arrive in life like that, you don’t come in through the front door.

She was beaten to a pulp by the man she fell in love with at a dance, yet on several occasions, despite the beatings, she went back to live with him. They had four children. Can you explain that? It’s the unfathomable mystery of an attachment. Why, under those conditions, have the weakness to return and continue? Why not have the courage to take your children and leave?

[Translated from French]