Everything is Permitted in Dreams: Corinne Hoex and Caitlin O’Neil on Gentlemen Callers

This book is more about feminine desire than erotic consummation, so it’s not pornographic at all.

Diving without abandon into the realms of sexual fantasy and desire, Corinne Hoex’s Gentlemen Callers is a series of vignettes that follows the erotic as it traverses into the pleasurable, the humorous, and the absurd. As our Book Club selection for the month of April, Laurel Taylor described Hoex’s text as “a truly astonishing outlier.” In the following interview, Taylor speaks to Hoex and her translator, Caitlin O’Neil, about the multi-layered operations of the epigraph, the difficult of translating wordplay and idioms, and writing with joy.

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Laurel Taylor (LT): The construction of Gentlemen Callers was really interesting—can you tell us a little bit about what your inspiration was for the novel?

Corinne Hoex (CH): Each time, it’s the situation—of the dreaming woman—that drives the inspiration. It always begins with the concrete, and from there on it’s a mixture of fantasy and reality; something comes from reality and introduces a rupture, an entry into dreams. Whenever the vignette was too realistic, or didn’t abandon reality through some kind of glitch or unexpected detour, I didn’t keep it.

There were texts with characters who were much too banal—a pizza delivery man, a doctor. . . There wasn’t that sparkle, that possible transformation, so I didn’t continue with those dreams. So even more than inspiration, it was an exercise in the material, in the writing process.

But a lot of the dreams, of course, correspond to anecdotes from my own life. For “The Astrologer,” for example, I had taken some astrology classes, and all of it—the books, the Ephemeris, all of those calculations—I found horrid, boring. I imagined this situation where she [the dreaming woman] is seated across from an astrologer, and this astrologer is trying to seduce her, but he’s tactless, he’s insufferable. He says: “My Mars is on your Venus,” and all that, but he isn’t pleasing her, so she waits and tries to find a way to escape. There have often been times in my life—at school, at conferences—when I would like to escape; in this fantasy, since we’re dealing with the stars, the comet comes in through the window and takes the woman away. It’s not the man who seduces the dreaming woman, but the comet.

Similarly, when the narrator’s with the geographer and he bores her, she sees a beautiful polar bear that’s much more pleasing to her. There are sometimes elements which are not human; everything is permitted in dreams. 

LT: Caitlin, how did you first encounter this text? And what made you want to translate it?

Caitlin O’Neil (CO): This is my debut book-length translation, so it was very much my own choice of what text to pursue. When I started, I got some very good advice, which was: for your first translation, make sure that it is a work that you love wholeheartedly. Because you’re going to be working more closely with this text than you have ever worked with any text before in your life, and you are going to work very hard for this text as well. There may be rejections, and you need to love this text so much that you are willing to work through all the rejections that come your way. When I first started, I was coming from an academic background, so this was really a chance for me to dive deep into the world of Francophone literature, and hunt down a book that wasn’t known in the US yet.

I was especially drawn to Belgian literature for certain practical reasons. Belgium has a lot of support for the arts, and funding that publishers here like to see; there are grants available for publishers. So that narrowed it down, and then I found Corinne’s complete works—unbeknownst to Corinne. I was not in touch with her at all at that point. I was just reading through all of her work. When I got a copy of Valets de nuit—the French title of Gentlemen Callers—I sat down and read through it in one sitting, then immediately turned back and read through it again. I read it twice in one sitting. And I just knew that if you love a book enough to read it twice in one sitting . . . Oh man, this is it.

And, also, I didn’t hear this until recently, but it struck such a chord with me. I was listening to Emma Ramadan, a French translator, talk about how she knows when to work on a book and she said something like: it’s when she’s struck with a fever of wanting to be part of the creation of a book that has already been written. A desire “to live alongside the book,” I think was her phrasing. And I immediately recognized that sentiment. That was the fever that had struck me when I read this book. I immediately wanted to be part of it.

LT: I was really interested in is the function of the epigraph in the text—extracts from Baudelaire and Hugo and du Barry. I was curious about how both of you felt about interacting with the canon.

CH: In general, when I include an epigraph, it’s very precisely selected. The epigraphs are very much a part of the game, because they are never to be taken literally, but instead with an ironic interpretation. That is to say that each time, they interact with the text. I even think that it’s better to read them after reading the vignette, because after reading the vignette, you can better appreciate the epigraph. You understand their purpose, their existence, better after reading the text. But on the other hand, they immediately provide the reader with a little wink of what’s to come, since they operate one level removed from the text.

CO: I’ll just say that it’s incredibly impressive how many meanings the epigraphs Corinne chose—they introduce layer upon layer upon layer of depth after you read the texts. Even as I was going through the book for the fortieth time [laughs], it was still surprising me, the dimensions of some of the epigraphs.

CH: They’re important, but at the same time, they’re not to be taken seriously. They’re not to be taken literally.

CO: There was one epigraph that Corinne and I voted to change, because in the original French. . . I’m talking about “changer de crèmerie,” Corinne.

CH: Oh yes, that was very difficult. An idiomatic expression.

CO: That was hard. So in the original French for “The Baker 2,” it was a quote from Jean Giono’s Les Grands chemins [The Open Road, tr. Paul Éprile (NYRB)]: “C’est à peine éclairé, mais j’y vois assez pour me rendre compte qu’on a tout à fait changé de crèmerie.”

“Changer de crèmerie” is an idiomatic expression, which means to no longer be in the same sort of space, and that was really a core idea of “The Baker 2,” because it’s a reprise, but the entire situation has changed. But also you have the literal interpretation of “crèmerie”—“creamery.” I’m not lying when I say I thought about this epigraph for three years. And finally, maybe two days before I turned in the final draft, we were like, we can’t do this. We can’t do this. It’s not going to work. Everything feels forced. Nothing is working. So we found another epigraph from Zola, not Giono, from The Belly of Paris—and it became “she came again.” (And we were like. . . “Nice.”) “Ten times, to pass by the almond cakes, St. Honorée cakes,” et cetera, all of the bakery stuff that would lead to the baker. So in that case, I think that’s a really interesting example of how we had to work together to come up with a solution, because the translation itself was not going to work in that case.

LT: So it sounds like you’ve worked fairly closely together on the translation. Is that the case?

CO: We worked pretty separately until it got to the end, when I had just a couple of questions which, at that point, I had been knocking my head against for a while, as we were coming up to the final deadline. That’s when we started really getting into the nitty-gritty, but for the most part, I think it was pretty separate. Now we’re very close.

LT: So for you, Corinne, coming in at the end of the process, what was that like for you to discuss your work coming into English?

CH: We communicated at the beginning with questions, and then after that primary contact, Caitlin continued alone. I remember “changer de crèmerie” was a real problem, and a few other problems as well. But bravo, she avoided all the pitfalls.

LT: Because of the erotic content of the book, I was curious to hear about Corinne’s experience of the book’s reception in the French-speaking world.

CH: I seem to remember that all of the reviews were charmed by the book. I don’t remember any that were scandalized. A lot of them said that there was a joyful eroticism, that it was playful, that it was cheeky. There was one who said it was deliciously roguish, and that Freud would have most certainly liked to have the dreaming woman lying on his couch. So not so much philosophical as psychoanalytical. In general, all the reviews loved it. They liked it, it was “audacious,” it was “light,” it was “delicious, mischievous,” all sorts of things along those lines.

The only other response I had is that my previous editor at Grasset, she didn’t want to publish it. She told me, “Maybe I’m a bit prudish, but I feel . . . I don’t want . . .” So she was maybe a tiny bit reticent.

Yes, these texts are all flirtatious, they’re always playful. It’s light eroticism, eroticism that’s slightly intellectual, more in the sense of desire. This book is more about feminine desire than erotic consummation, so it’s not pornographic at all. When there are consummation scenes. It’s more about desire, so that didn’t shock people. They often found it charming.

LT: Well, I think that play is a downplayed aspect of sex in the US, but no, sex is fun!

CH: Yes, I think so too! There’s a question—or well, an observation—in desire, that the psyche plays the most important role, and it’s always in the rupture [of fantasy] that this psychological humor can play and function.

CO: That is one of the things which immediately struck me with this book—how so often in literature (though I’m not saying this is the case across the board), any sex is either trauma-ridden or ominous in some way, or the site of power struggles. There’s often something off-kilter and somewhat menacing about it in literature. And immediately, what struck me about this book is that—no, it’s about joy. It’s about a woman’s own subconscious desires and pleasure, and it was unlike anything that I had ever read before.

Audience question: I would like to ask about what you were saying about this being a very positive book about woman’s sexual desire. I feel this is quite a political book and I was wondering if that was a motivation for Corinne, because in some political spheres a women’s sexuality is seen as something that should be controlled.

CH: No! But I agree—literature, books, all that—is obviously political in the sense that everything in them can influence the way of governing the world. But if I had written this book with political or social intent, with a message, or even if I had been conscious of a message, it surely wouldn’t have been the same book.

CO: Corinne, what do you think of the people who read your book now and take away this message of: “Wow, this is political to show a woman with positive sexual desire”?

CH: I think that’s magnificent, obviously! You know, once I write a book, it belongs to each person who reads it, and each person sees a different universe. Each person is unique, and so I think that’s magnificent that people see that connection because that gives my book a far greater reach!

CO: I would add that when I first started translating this book, it was 2017, January of 2017. And this book was a balm. It felt very comforting to immerse myself in a book where a woman’s pleasure was celebrated and not punished. And I think, as this person so kindly just worded it, it’s about desire running free. It felt so comforting to really immerse myself in this world where desire was running free with no consequences—political, personal, or anything.

Audience question: This raises the question, could this book be written today? It was written six years ago and we’ve all been through such a journey—not necessarily a pleasant one—and because it is such a joyful book, I wonder if this is something Madame Hoex feels she would be in the right mindset to be able to create this in this environment.

CH: I think joy. . . is really interesting to me. It’s in our hearts in any situation. There’s always a kernel of joy and enthusiasm. Even with how connected we are, in life, there’s always this joy running through. And I know how difficult it is and has been. In Europe, at the moment, spirits are low because of the war in Ukraine, but when I go for a walk outside I realize that I have a big smile on because I’m out in nature, because I’m alive, simply because I’m alive, and that’s a gift every day. So I think that I would write the same book, of course, yes, because this book connects me to something interior, not exterior, and connects me to this kernel-like joy.

Audience question: I had a question for Caitlin in terms of the translation, because the book is so filled with wordplay. I would imagine the “jeu” is very difficult in terms of translation. How did you balance that?

CO: When I first begin translating, I would do a pretty straightforward translation. And I think Laurel actually pointed this part out—she specifically mentioned “cockpit” in “The Aviator.” That was a happy accident. So some of these things just popped up organically, and I embraced them when they did. Others were a little trickier, like a couple of the final lines. Often Corinne’s final lines are so rich and have several double meanings going on in them. I think of “The Beekeeper,” for example—“I feel the thrust of one swift, searing prick,” is the line. I’m embarrassed how long it took me to come up with “prick,” but you know, there are a couple of those that I would rework a little bit to get that humorous, double-layered meaning that felt very much in the spirit of what Corinne had done in the French, even when word-for-word it wasn’t a direct translation.

I also just have to give credit to my amazing editor, Kaija Straumanis, who took one look at this book and said: “Great, we can fit in more innuendos, though.” And then she went through and flagged parts—“But could this be dirtier? But is there another word that you could use here that’s more sexual?” On the draft I went through and—talk about homework—I had a running list of sexy words going at one point. Where I would say, “Okay, well, I need a religious term that could be construed as sexual.” That was my process. It ranged from organic happy accidents to really diving into vocabulary. And I’ll be honest, too—I started reading romance novels in order to figure out the right words to refer to body parts in a way that’s sensual and not clinical. I had word lists on word lists on word lists.

Corinne Hoex’s answers in this interview were translated from the French by Caitlin O’Neil.

Corinne Hoex (b. 1946) is an award-winning contemporary Belgian writer and member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium. She has, to date, published eight works of fiction and prose and over twenty works of poetry. Hoex has won several literary prizes, including the 2013 Prix Félix Denayer in recognition of her collection of work. She currently lives in Brussels. 

Caitlin O’Neil has a master’s degree in French linguistics from The University of Texas at Austin. She is based in Minneapolis, where she is a publicist and copy editor. Gentlemen Callers is her first book-length translation.

Laurel Taylor is a translator, writer, and scholar currently working on her Ph.D. in Japanese and comparative literature through a Fulbright at Waseda University. Her writing and translations have appeared in Mentor & Muse, The Offing, The Asia Literary Review, and elsewhere.

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