On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 5.30pm, collective reading of Violette Leduc's novel, La Bâtarde (1964) with art students of École d'art de Belfort.

Each participant is invited to read. This reading will take place at École d'art de Belfort, 2 avenue de l'Espérance.
To take part in this collective reading (reading in French), please contact Richard Neyroud: r.neyroud@cracalsace.com.

«(...) Eleven-thirty in the evening. My radio is playing. Calypsos, blues, sambas. Bastards have a curse on them: a friend told me so. Bastards have a curse on them. It is a knell, a tocsin drowning the calypsos, the blues, the sambas. Why don't bastards help each other? Why do they avoid each other? Why do they detest each other? Why don't they form a brotherhood? They should be able to forgive each other everything since they all hold the most precious, the most fragile, the strongest, the darkest part of themselves in common: a childhood twisted like an old apple tree. Why are there no matrimonial agencies in existence to help them marry each other? I should like to see written in letters of fire: "Bakery for bastards." Then I needn't feel that stupid prickling in my throat anymore when people ask for the big loaves that French people refer to as "bastards." I have always wished that in that wonderful American film Marty, the two shy people who come together at the end were bastards.»*.

* Violette Leduc, La Bâtarde, Ed. Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1965, p. 38-39.
Translation by Derek Cottman.

This collective reading is organised in collaboration with École d'art de Belfort, 2 avenue de l'Espérance, in dialogue with the group exhibition Le couteau sans lame et dépourvu de manche.