Thomas Clerc's 'Intérieur' Excerpts: A Literary Mapping of a Parisian Apartment

The French literary journal artpress published excerpts from Thomas Clerc's book 'Intérieur' (Gallimard, 2013), which offers an exhaustive, room-by-room cartography of the author's Paris apartment. The excerpt focuses on the entrance, describing the door, lock, keys, and the act of entering. Clerc intertwines personal anecdotes—such as a burglary on February 8, 2006, and a lockout on October 28, 2005, triggered by learning of Guillaume Dustan's death—with reflections on security, domestic space, and writing. The door, described as non-standard, orange, and old, evokes a coarse past. The lock, an 'Italian' double-turn model costing 500 euros, is poorly installed. Clerc notes the irony that the burglary occurred via a window, not the door, contrary to statistics. He also discusses his habit of leaving keys in the lock and the symbolic weight of keys as objects that signify property without fully materializing it. The excerpt ends with Clerc's dedication to his great-grandfather Auguste Clerc, a decorator and painter of religious objects murdered by his wife on June 29, 1912.