interview by DONATIEN GRUAU portraits by GIASCO BERTOLI PIERRE GUYOTAT is a cult writer from the French literary avant-garde of the 1960s. His Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers (1967) and Eden Eden Eden (1970) are masterpieces of lexical creativity. In books about the Algerian War and the world of prostitution Guyotat examines the deep fissures caused by war and homoeroticism with a dense literary style that goes beyond standard French grammar and syntax, by introducing ellipses, neologisms, and aural transliterations evocative of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Guyotat’s books remain fresh today, standing as they do above the effusion of narcissism. DONATIEN GRUAU — In your autobiography, FORMATION (2007), you wrote that you decided to become a writer at 14. How did that happen? PIERRE GUYOTAT — I don’t really know. But I remember being inspired after reading Rimbaud, his Bateau ivre, which is in a style like Victor Hugo’s La tristesse d’Olympio or of Corneille….