Jean Forton
Jean Forton (born June 16, 1930 in Bordeaux ; † May 11, 1982 ibid) was a French writer whose 1957 novel La cendre aux yeux was published in German translation in 2011 under the title Isabelle .
Life
Forton, the son of a surgeon and a pharmacist , grew up with his mother after his father left the family when Forton was eight years old. He then attended schools in the canton of Valais before returning to France in 1950 to study film and literature at the University of Bordeaux . As early as 1950 he founded the literary magazine La Boite à clous with a friend and published texts by authors such as Max Jacob , Pierre Seghers , Armand Lanoux , Louis Émié and Raymond Guérin as well as his own articles such as Du côté de chez Malaparte about a visit to the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte in his house in Capri .
Jacques Lemarchand , director of the Editions Gallimard publishing house, encouraged Forton to become a writer and in 1954 published his debut novel, La fuite . In the period that followed, six other novels were published, of which La cendre aux yeux was awarded the Prix Fénéon in 1959 and which was first published in 2011 in a German translation by Grete Osterwald . It is about a mid-thirties loner and the love and affection he feels for 16-year-old Isabelle and describes it from the perspective of a first-person narrator . Isabelle is initially completely aloof. The seducer has to try a number of strategies until she finally lets herself be seduced. The reason for Isabelle's susceptibility to the elder is quickly stated: the girl is lonely, her mother confused; the father isolates and abuses his daughter.
After Les sables mouvants was last published in 1966 during his lifetime , the novels L'enfant roi and Pour passer le temps were not published until years after his death from lung cancer . Until his death, Forton worked as a film, music and literary critic and bookseller. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Bordeaux, the city of his birth, held an exhibition from 2000 to 2001 entitled Exposition Jean Forton (1930–1982), un Écrivain dans la Ville .
Publications
- La fuite , 1954
- Cantemerle , 1957
- L'oncle Léon , 1956
- La cendre aux yeux , 1957
- Le grand mal , 1959
- L'e pingle du jeu , 1960
- Les sables mouvants , 1966
- L'enfant roi , 1995
- Pour passer le temps , 2002
- in German language
- Isabelle , from the French by Grete Osterwald . Graf Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-86220-011-5 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Jean Forton in the catalog of the German National Library
- Publications ( Open Library )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Niklas Bender: This Valmont ends banally . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 20, 2011, p. 30.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Forton, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 16, 1930 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bordeaux |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 11, 1982 |
| Place of death | Bordeaux |