Paul Colin (writer)

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Paul Colin (* 1920 ; † March 20, 2018 ) was a French writer .

Life

Paul Colin made his novel debut in 1950 with Les jeux sauvages , which was published by Gallimard . The publication in the renowned Parisian publishing house was supported by the local editor and writer Jacques Lemarchand . The book is about the wealthy but aimless student François, who in Paris tries to find his place in a world full of violence. One night the young man, who grew up in Sologne , sets out to write down his previous life and recapitulate his boisterous childhood in the country, his years of study, and conquests and defeats with women. Ida Berger-Chevant ( Europe ) noted a “cold cynicism” with which Colin, who himself lived in the Sologne, described the “whole depravity of a ' gilded country youth' ”. She found Lex jeux sauvages very easy to understand compared to Pierre Molaines Les Orgues de l'enfer , winner of the Prix ​​Renaudot 1950.

Before the Prix ​​Goncourt was awarded in 1950, Georges Arnaud (Le Salaire de la peur) , Hervé Bazin (La Mort du petit cheval) , Marguerite Duras (Un barrage contre le Pacifique) or Serge Groussard (La Femme sans passé) won favored. On the morning of December 4, 1950, the jury met in the Drouant restaurant in Paris to choose the winner. In the following hours, however, she was unable to agree on a novel - there was a tie between L'Amour triste by Bernard Pingaud , L'Ecume et le Sel by Michel Zéraffa and L'Homme de la scierie by André Dhôtel . Shortly before lunchtime, jury member Philippe Hériat directed the discussion to Colin's book, which had already been mentioned but annoyingly discarded. The now tired and hungry jury members then voted Les jeux sauvages of the 30-year-old outsider Colin as the winner with five votes in the fifth voting round .

After the award ceremony, the rumor spread that, despite the award , Les jeux sauvages was a slow seller and would not sell. The influential publishing house employee Gaston Ier then called several bailiffs and had the number of 122,500 printed copies of the novel officially certified by the printers Brodard & Taupin , Grevin and L'Imprimerie Moderne . On February 9, 1951, he reserved a two-page advertisement in the trade journal Bibliographie de la France , in which he had the number of copies printed in large letters in addition to the judgments of the appointed experts. The rumor then dissipated.

In 1959 Colin published Terre paradis, another novel by Gallimard. The book focuses on the lonely Maxime Lemoine, son of rampant parents, who lives in the country with his grandmother. His fantastic experiences with others turn into scandal and he is left alone with his ideals in the end. After Terre paradis there were no more publications from Colin. He settled as a farmer in the south of France. In 1970 he expressed himself with great irony in a television interview about his work as a writer and stated that he had never aspired to a literary career.

The writer Pierre Assouline , a later member of the Académie Goncourt, criticized the award of 1950 in a newspaper article published in 2008 for its “unfathomable mediocrity” and described it as an “accident in literary history”. He criticized Colin as "nothing" and "stranger" and classified Les jeux sauvages as "insignificant". In 2012, Guillaume Sbalchiero described the novel in a series of articles about forgotten Goncourt Prize winners published in L'Express as “familiar and intimate”, but, like Assouline, pointed out that Marguerite Duras' timeless novel Un barrage contre le Pacifique did not receive a prize . Despite a “complicated style” and “digressions that are difficult to digest”, Colin's work “can still revive certain personal memories in the reader,” says Sbalchiero.

Works

Novels

  • Les jeux sauvages . Paris: Gallimard, 1950.
  • Terre paradis . Paris: Gallimard, 1959.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary , accessed April 22, 2018
  2. ↑ a b c d Assouline, Pierre : Le succès du Goncourt 1950 constaté par huissier . In: Le Monde , August 29, 2008, p. 11.
  3. ↑ a b Berger Chevant, Ida: Paul COLIN: Les jeux sauvage . In: Europe 29 (1951), pp. 132-133.
  4. ^ French Author Honored: Goncourt Prize Is Awarded to Paul Colin for 'Wild Games' . In: The New York Times , December 5, 1950, p. 33.
  5. ^ Marshall, Robert G .: Paul Colin. Terre paradis. In: Books Abroad 35 (1961), p. 350.
  6. ↑ a b Sbalchiero, Guillaume: Goncourt oubliés 2: Paul Colin, 1950 . In: lexpress.fr , September 18, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Colin, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH 1920
DATE OF DEATH 20th March 2018