Alfred Hollander interviews the author of Buying
Louisiana
Alfred Hollander: Ms. Clerens, I see you were born in Belgium.
Josée Clerens: Yes.
AH: And live in New York City
JC: Correct.
AH: Are you now a citizen of the United States?
JC: Yes.
AH: And when did you become a citizen?
JC: Oh, I don’t remember. 1980? 1983? I would have to go look at my naturalization papers.
AH: Then English isn’t your native tongue. Did you find it difficult learning to write in English?
JC: Yes. Because the correct words—the words that fit, the right words—always came into my head in Flemish first.
AH: Flemish—that’s your native language?
JC: Right. Netherlandish. In English it seemed like it was always wrong.
AH: But then, when you look at your writing in the book it doesn’t seem like you had any trouble at all.
JC: That was long after.
AH: I see. In other words, when you started writing this book you were already comfortable with writing in English.
JC: Oh, yes.
AH: And how did you come to write Buying Louisiana? What got you interested in the Louisiana Purchase of all things?
JC: I wasn’t interested in it, it’s just that from people, you know, who could help me in some way—for instance, editors of magazines who liked my things—I always would get the same comments: “It’s so far removed from our readers.”
AH: Oh, because the subjects were—
JC: It was always in Belgium.
AH: Your locales were always in Belgium.
JC: Yes. I remember two different magazines, Redbook and McCall’s. At both magazines I had somebody who really liked Red Souls, a story I had written.
AH: Uh huh…
JC: “Oh, it is a lovely story; it’s warm, it has humor, it has everything. Except, who wants to read about two little girls in Europe during the war?”
AH: They wanted you to write something American.
JC: That’s what they were always saying.
AH: But why the Louisiana Purchase?
JC: Because contemporary America just doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t like it.
AH: Uh huh…so you went into history—
JC: They always—you know, "our readers"—they would always say (especially Redbook) their readers were all between twenty-five and thirty-five and they were either young mothers or professional types. And I was neither. I can’t relate to those people; I don’t know why. So I started thinking, what could I do? I’ve always liked history, and I knew nothing about American history, really. And so I started reading a few books here and there. I don’t know what triggered it exactly, but I was reading what I guess is referred to as “research”. (laughter)
AH: In your bibliography I counted fifty—over fifty—books. Did you read all of those?
JC: If they are listed I read them; if they had pictures I looked at them. They’re not all just text. I think I read an entire book on New Orleans, and that was mostly pictures. But once my period had been covered, I didn’t go much further, let’s say, past 1804.
AH: Oh, I see.
JC: Yes. I always stayed around that. But, yes, I think I read—it’s a while ago, you know—but if they’re listed I read them. I’m not saying I remember them, but I read them.
AH: Mostly cover to cover?
JC: Yes.
AH: That's a lot of reading. You did all that research before you started the writing?
JC: Of course.
AH: Did you do some research after you began the novel?
JC: I read almost all the books, let’s say, before. Maybe there were a few after, because sometimes I would come across something I didn’t know, that would crop up somewhere. As a matter of fact, I found something about Livingston after I finished the book, which I then had the narrator fill in.
AH: Do you enjoy doing research or do you consider it, more or less, a necessary evil in order to write—
JC: It depends on the writer. Or on the character. It depends on the character. I loved reading about Bonaparte—except the battles; that didn’t interest me. But I loved him as a character. I loved reading about Aaron Burr.
AH: Heh heh!
JC: Ahh… who else did I like of all these people? I liked Alquier, but I could only find information about him in Mrs. Bystryn’s (a lady I worked for at the time) Larousse encyclopedia. It was an old one—she bought it at a flea market when she was still living near Paris. There were a lot of characters in there I couldn’t find in the library—they were too obscure.
AH: I see.
JC: So this particular representative of France in Spain, Alquier, I loved him. There were others, who don’t all spring to mind at the moment, but there were certain people I really like. I would go, and then I would spread out from there. Some people I would like to read about because they were so bizarre. Like Jefferson’s daughter I thought was a real weird individual. And John Randolph! Now, I liked reading about him because he was really an eccentric individual. Wilkinson, too, was fun to read about. And Carlos IV and Salcedo. Josephine and her lady friends, Mademoiselle Montansier, you know...
AH: All these people and everything in your novel, the events, are of course part of history, and everything is written down and more or less considered fact. But when you’re writing a novel you sometimes have to add fictional elements to it, let’s say? How much of Buying Louisiana is fact, and how much did you add that is fiction?
JC: I’m like Gore Vidal in that respect. The people are exactly the way I found them. I did not embellish. I interpreted their character. But I never added, in the sense that—if somebody said something that I made up as dialog, it was in their character. I was like Jack Benny. Benny would never use a line that was not right for the character. I would not do that either, not to serve my own prejudices. I didn’t like Jefferson as much as Bonaparte, and Talleyrand was a corrupt individual, but I admired him anyway because he would never have done anything to the detriment of France. Even though he always took bribes and did all these underhanded things, I still admired him because France, his country, came first. And then he filled his pockets.
AH: Did you invent any characters?
JC: Oh yes, many.
AH: Like who?
JC: Like who… Mme Tranche, the maid in the Livingston household, and Zoé, the other one—
AH: That’s interesting, because they come across as real.
JC: This “Mme Tranche” I took from... They recorded very little information about people living at that time—the petite bourgeoisie—what we would call middle class people. People who were not starving. They found some little old lady’s—I don’t know if she was old—a little lady’s diary. She was one of the few of that class they ever found who left a diary. And she is the one who said “No matter how I shower attentions on that man, embroider waistcoats for him, and cravats— nothing will prevent him from being himself.” How could I resist that? That was written in there by that woman about some man who they wanted the daughter to marry. But they could not change him. He would not change. (laughter) I took Mme Tranche and I gave her a lot of this little lady’s diary stuff.
AH: I see; you sort of took her character—
JC: Not her character so much as her narration, the things that she related at that time.
AH: I see.
JC: And the doctor… Remember she had to put omelets on her belly? A doctor prescribed it? That was also in that diary by that woman.
AH: I see. Well, finally, if someone reads your book, what message or point of view would you like them to come away with? After reading your book what would you want them to get out of it?
JC: Dear, I have no idea! (laughs) I really don’t! I hope people enjoy it, because I like to think it has warmth and that it has wit and, at the same time, that it’s true. I did not embroider in the sense that…not on the existing people, you know. For instance, Monroe—I didn’t like him. I didn’t like him because of who he was. I didn’t put on him… (pause) …you know what I’m saying? And Jefferson, I think he was a genius and I’m taking nothing away from him when I say he was a bit of a hypocrite—and I don’t mean because he was a slaveholder, because he was born into that. And I am violently opposed to people today who want to drag him into this era and say “Why didn’t he this?” and “Why didn’t he that?” He should have freed his slaves in his will and he didn’t do that. I didn’t like that. But that was later. Nevertheless, he had a lot of things I didn’t like but I still think he was a genius. So I didn’t take anything away from him.
AH: Your writing seems to have a strong sense of language.
JC: I love language, and it probably comes out in my writing. But I also think I have a certain insight into character, and I don’t mean to drag my prejudices into it.
AH: Well, the book certainly comes across as an impressive achievement.
JC: Thank you.
AH: Thank you for the pleasure I had in reading it.
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