Virginie Despentes: ‘I wasn’t writing Baise-Moi from a very good place’

Virginie Despentes, 55, was born in Nancy, France, and lives between Paris and Barcelona. Her books include her 1993 debut, Baise-Moi, about two sex workers on a killing spree; the feminist manifesto King Kong Theory (2006), which discusses her gang-rape at the age of 17; and the bestselling Vernon Subutex trilogy, televised on Canal Plus in 2019. For the Times Literary Supplement, her writing is “intelligent, outspoken, witty, shocking, propulsive and streetwise”. In Despentes’s new novel, Dear Dickhead, an author, Oscar, becomes unlikely penpals with an actor, Rebecca, after he insults her looks on Instagram while facing allegations of sexual misconduct from a young colleague.

What led you to write a #MeToo novel set in French publishing?
I saw it as being more about addiction. In France there wasn’t really any book industry #MeToo moment, but I was interested in Oscar because we have the same background, which is to say he wasn’t raised to be a writer who has a little bit of power. I wanted to think about what happens once we switch from not having much power to having a little bit and have to realise our situation has changed. I was interested in the moment at which you listen to what people are telling you. He thinks he’s the victim and then slowly understands what everyone’s talking about. Once you understand you’ve done some things wrong – and after a certain age most of us have – what do you do next? The book makes it obvious that I don’t have answers.

Does having answers interest you less now than when you began writing?
Something I understood with time – more as a reader than a writer – is that novels are a great space to not be sure about things. I was interested in writing a three-way conversation where you can’t choose between different versions of events, and don’t have to. I wanted to have Zoé [Oscar’s accuser] talking and I was interested in Oscar’s point of view, but also I wanted someone my age like Rebecca, who is less sure about all this frenzy about being a good person.

Did readers in France think the novel minimised male violence?
It went both ways. A lot of readers were understanding of what I was trying to do, but for some, it wasn’t radical enough, especially because I’m the author of King Kong Theory. Some people thought I was too nice with the aggressors. Shall we kill all men? I’m not absolutely against the idea, but it’s very difficult to do [laughs]. #MeToo let us see that there’s a massive problem, but where do we go from there?

What made you centre the action on two addicts?
I struggled with drugs all my life. Well, no, I enjoyed drugs... and then I was, like, 30 years old and started to really struggle. I wanted to write about it, but then I read an essay by Leslie Jamison about alcohol, which I thought was so brilliant and so close to what I wanted to do that I dropped the project. All of a sudden I thought, it won’t be an essay, it’ll be another novel where everything goes in.

Have you mellowed as a writer since Baise-Moi?
Yes. I’m very OK with not being able to write Baise-Moi now. I don’t think it’s possible to be my age and write from that perspective of anger. I wasn’t writing it from a very good place; now, if I met now a young girl like I was when I was 23, I’d try to take care of her. I loved being that person, but it was tough. The idea of taking care of myself came to me very late in life: good for me that I’ve mellowed. The world around me hasn’t mellowed at all. When I was writing [Dear Dickhead], the Ukraine war had just begun and it felt like there was more sadness than ever. For the first time I thought, I’m going to write a novel that makes you feel better – not that it’s always funny. I never thought I’d write a feelgood novel but people didn’t need something that breaks them down even more.

When did you first have the impulse to write?
I was 17, living alone in a new city where I didn’t know anyone, when I read Bukowski and thought, I’m going to write. He conveyed the idea that you can be a drunk working for the post office – which was me at that time – and write first-hand impressions of money, sex, alcohol and the city without agreement from the bourgeoisie. Thirty years later, I don’t read him with the same eye – the misogyny, the proletarian anger that can lead to the extreme right – but there was no bullshit and a lot of tenderness for the reader, like he was an older brother very close to me. I’d always been a big reader but he was the first writer who made me feel I’d met someone from my family.

What have you enjoyed reading lately?
As a reader, I need relief; we deserve it. That is why I love this American novel I’m reading, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow [by Gabrielle Zevin], which is brilliant. I also love the Madrid writer Alana S Portero. Mariana Enriquez, from Argentina, is to me the most interesting writer now: fantastical, gothic, strange, amazing.

Where do you prefer to work, Paris or Barcelona?
Paris is a difficult city for me to write in, because there are so many people for me to see, but it’s a good city in which to be a writer because books are still very important in France and that’s very motivating. And I like French writers – some of us really are arseholes, but we’re interesting arseholes! But for actually writing, I’m very much at ease in Barcelona. I have time, space, light and can walk. Generally I’m writing here, not Paris.

So what does a typical writing day look like for you?
Most of the time I’m struggling to write. I fail and end up doing something else – but all of a sudden, I have a book.

• Dear Dickhead (translated by Frank Wynne) is published on 12 September by MacLehose Press (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order a copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply