A very skilled and sensitive writer: that’s Maxim Jakubowski, one of the best crime and erotic novelists. In our interview, he expressed his thoughts, ideas and cleverness. Maxim was born in England but he spent part of his life in France. He worked as a publisher and then opened the Murder One bookshop, a very popular crime bookstore. His masterpieces are: “It’s You That I Want To Kiss”, “Because She Thought She Loved Me”, “The State Of Montana”, “On Tenderness Express”, “Kiss me Sadly”, “Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer” “I Was Waiting for You’. What strongly emerged from the interview was Jakubovski’s deep psychological intelligence.
Mr. Jakubovski, when you depict your characters what are (if) the features they never lack? Are there any constants in your characters?
-I would say that many of my characters lack true happiness, and the stories i knit around them depict the way they seek it, and often find it either superficially or wrongly in the pursuit of sex, or at any rate something they can’t quite put their finger on. It’s both a lack and a constant, although it can differ slightly whether it’s a male or a female character, and also is dictated by their sexual nature, be it dominant or submissive.
“When you talk of men and women, you have to talk inevitably of sex” that’s what you said in an interview. I think another indispensabile reality, strongly linked to a man, is death(in all its aspects: loneliness, depression, discouragement). Eros and Thanatos represent the double face of life. That’s why your literary styles are both thriller and erotic?
– The death factor is terribly important to me, and the book I am currently finishing is actually very much about it, EKATERINA AND THE NIGHT (being published in England this October). But there are deaths in almost all my books, whether or not they are thrillers. Death is the opposite pole of sex and their intersection is fascinating place. It’s the usual cliche to say that orgasm is also called la petite mort in French (the small death), but I do believe (and follow George Bataille) that orgasm is the closest we can get to knowing death. In addition, when I am writing thrillers, I often have a character, Cornelia, who is a hitwoman (and very popular with my readers), so killings and death are a narrative requirement to say the least! Only one of the books in which she appears (CONFESSIONS OF A ROMANTIC PORNOGRAPHER) has unfortunately appeared in Italy
Love and sex: what’s the relation between these two terms in your opinion?
-They are inseparable. As soon as one grows up and leaves adolescent romantic fantasies behind, I think it is inevitable they are closely joined at the hip (or the genitals)…
Sex and loneliness: is there a relation between these terms?
-In my books and stories, they are also closely connected, although I am not sure that is also the case in real life. Because of things that have happened in my life, I have been a lonely inhabitant for many days and nights of hotel rooms all over the world and I have an ambivalent relationship with them. One feels a strong sense of loneliness being alone in a hotel room when night begins to fall and memories come racing back through one’s mind, but at the same time, because of those memories and feelings, a hotel room feels/smells/breathes of sex, so that all makes the loneliness and sex equation a burning one, and something that does affect me a lot. In addition, there is a seductive spell in the anonymity of hotel rooms that attracts me. It’s almost living outside one’s life where morality and taboos no longer exist.
What is BDSM in your view?
-A very complex set of emotions and actions. There are so many cliches and misapprehensions about BDSM. It’s not all about leather, latex, handcuffs, chains, dungeons and whips. There is also a subtle emotional underpinning in the way certain aspects of BDSM can define a person or a character’s sexuality or help them understand their true nature. BDSM can cover so much ground and is an area that truly fascinates me, although my personal dabblings in it have been minimal because of the sometimes ridiculous nature of its ‘toys’ and activities and the fact I have a strong sense of irony and too many BDSM typical situations just make me burst out laughing.
I read “Kiss me Sadly” and “American Casanova”. Your style is so smart and fine. Can a writer maintain a smart style though he uses a direct language, when writes about sex and erotism? How?
– When I write about sex, my most important preoccupation is to avoid all forms of vulgarity. It’s not easy and I do my best. I do believe one can write about sex and explicitly at that, and write well. It helps if you can manage to give credibility to your characters, and provide them with a life and emotions that readers can identify with. But there is no magic formula. I am still learning on every new page I write, but there is no method involved, just intuition. I just do not see myself as a ‘sex writer’, just a writer who happens to write about sex. A fine but an important distinction.
How do you live your daily life? Are you an outsider? Do you like social life or a retired life?
-When I am In London, I am up around 7am every day and write fiction until 11am. Some days It’s just 500 words, some other days I can manage up to 2,000 words. Afternoons, I write articles, read, review, listen to music, see films. If I am travelling, I just write a few notes here and there as inspiration strikes, even though I always travel with my laptop computer; although once I did write a whole short story between leaving my New York hotel in a taxi for JFK airport, andf the plane departing 3 hours later. It was a short erotic vampire story an American editor had asked for, and suddenly inspiration struck! But normally, it’s the usual slow grind and systematic discipline of most writers. I am not a retiring person but then neither am I great socializer. I have a limited amount of friends and am not greatly comfortable in parties or big gatherings, especially due to the fact that I don’t drink (not by principle at all, purely a matter of taste). I am quite self-contained and private, but because of my writing and journalism I still have to function in public at film and book preview parties and events, as well as literary and film festivals. I also greatly enjoy doing public readings for my books and appear to be quite popular. But basically, I am most comfortable with just two or three people around discussing matters of art, or, preferably, a woman who touches me inside, just talking, having coffees, eating, walking and maybe more…
Three words to describe Maxim Jakubovski.
-Outardly misanthropic and quiet; internally, a cauldron of emotions; overall, just a dreamer of a man. Not quite 3 words, but three descriptions.
Have you any regrets in your life?
–Too many. Women I have lost, women I have never known, things I should have done differently, words I should have said. And, less importantly, that some of my favourite books still haven’t been translated into Italian!
What is femininity in your opinion? And what about seduction?
-My whole life and the purpose of my writing, I think, is to understand women, their beauty, their soul. And I have never questioned the power of seduction. I can only seduce with the power of words and an ironic smile. I have never been a Don Juan, and have been more (or attempted to be ) a minor version of Leonard Cohen.
Do you feel seductive?
If only I could. Sigh…
Have you ever hated one of your characters? Have you ever created a character to object to him/her?
-No. Some have been caricatural, and deliberately so in the cases of the bad people/villains in some of my thrillers but otherwise every character I write about has something of me, whether male or even female. Madame Bovary, c’est moi! No hate is involved; on the contrary I dearly love my female characters. As I write about them, I try to inhabit their life, their bodies in a desperate attempt to understand them fully, identify myself with them (even the killers…).
What would you suggest to a budding erotic writer?
– Just write. Don’t think about being erotic or not. If you write naturally and you are true to your heart and your inner pulsions, maybe some readers out there in the great nowhere will find your lines erotic.
A writer is both lucky and condemned. Lucky because he can experience the deepest aspects of life but he is condemned to suffer because of the empathy with the world surrounding him. Have you experienced these double aspects of being a writer?
-Yes, totally. Every new book or story is a new torture. Every line hurts.
Is there one of your characters you liked most?
-I tend to like all of them, but I have the deepest affection for the female characters who have been inspired by women I have known (well or very little) in real life. Because they still live in my lines. In a way, even though they are erotic, most of my stories are also love letters to someone.
Have you ever cried while writing a book?
– Yes, when the reality that inspired them was too much to bear.
In your opinion what makes a writer “THE” writer?
– I don’t and neither expect to ever know. All I know is what I am. And I am all too sadly aware that I am just a minor writer in a minor genre but I’m grateful that I have the talent to express my obsessions in this way as a form of catharsis, I suppose. On the other hand, there are many other authors (not necessarily erotic by nature) whom I love and admire, and whenever I read a few of their lines it is immediately evident that they are THE writers!
Who are the writers you appreciate most?
-John Irving, J.G. Ballard, Cornell Woolrich, Emily St.John Mandel, David Goodis, Drieu la Rochelle, Cesare Pavese, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jim Thompson.
You have lots of fans. What kind of relationship do you have with them? What is the funniest thing a fan told you? The saddest one?
-I get letters in the mail, but only from people who like my stuff, so it’s not very critical. It’s good for the ego, especially in weeks when I feel unsure whether it’s worth continuing to write or whether I have something worthwhile to say. At public events, contacts are more fleeting as most are a bit shy at the prospect of confronting an erotic writer in the flesh.
You lived in Italy for a year (in Castiglione delle Stiviere). Tell me something about your Italian experience. What is your opinion about the literary scene in Italy? Do you think the erotic literature is considered in Italy? Who are the Italian writer you like most?
– I was only in Italy for 14 months and this was a long time ago. But I have been back many times, at least 2 or 3 times a year. I love Rome, Veniceand Genoa. The women. The atmosphere. My contacts are mostly with Italian writers in the crime area because we meet annually in Courmayeur.Pavese of course, And amongst contemporaries Barbara Baraldi, Francesca Mazucatto, Isabella Santacroce, Tommaso Pincio, Simona Vinci. I like Cris Formetta’s stuff (and have published and translated some of her stories in England) but I feel she still has to concentrate more on her fiction and less on money-making non fiction (she’s a friend).
What are your project for the future?
I hope to have finished my new novel EKATERINA AND THE NIGHT next month. It’s about an affair between a young Italian journalist and an older man, and also involves a woman who is the angel of death. Sort of LOLITA meets STORY OF O, with supernatural overtones! The finale takes place in Venice in winter, and the final chapter stands alone as a short story in the VENICE NOIR collection I have just delivered to my American publishers, which features 14 all-new stories about Venice and its darkness by lots of different writers from Italy, the UK, the USA, France and Canada. It’s a sequel from my ROME NOIR collection which should be apparing from Einaudi later this year.
