Few winners of the most prestigious literary prizes returned to this episode. But all these stories more or less draw the same conclusion: you sign a simple book, then the affair takes on out-of-control proportions. At the height of reluctance, Paul Colin, Goncourt 1950, when asked what his second book would be about, replied: “Oh, do we have to write another one?” He became a winegrower and abandoned literature after two novels. Jean-Louis Bory, Goncourt 1945, evokes in Un prix d’excellence (1986) his meeting with Colette, to thank the president of the jury who had crowned him for My village at German time. This legend of literature receives with pomp a 25-year-old stranger who wants to thank her. He will commit suicide, depressive, at the age of 59. Jean Carrière, Goncourt 1972, narrates the series of disasters after the wild success of a novel which he found moderately successful, L’Épervier de Maheux: death of the father, illness of the wife then divorce, finally depression. It’s called The Price of a Goncourt (1987).
Pascal Lainé, Goncourt 1974, denounces the media circus of the literary season in Sacré Goncourt! (2000). The Lacemaker, discreetly published one day in February, was in no way intended for the autumn prices and obscured all the rest of his work. Finally, there is the particular case of Romain Gary who won the Goncourt in 1975 with La Vie avant soi… a second time, under a heteronym. In Vie et mort d’Émile Ajar (1981), published after his suicide, he laughs at this consecration which he did not want so much, at the twilight of a tumultuous life.
“I was unaware of all the uses of the literary milieu”, writes Jean Rouaud on the contrary, speaking of his first novel in 1990, Les Champs d’honneur. This family story is still considered a masterstroke today. At 37, he ran a newsstand in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, a profession of “low prestige”. And he gave credence to the estimate of the editions of Minuit according to which “we would only sell 350 copies”. The press attaché recommended the other novel published by Minuit at the same time, “which I was unaware of course”. What follows is a series of happy circumstances, recounted with humour. “An irresistible story”, according to L’Obs.
The magazine Lire made a report that summer on the other professions of writers. The modest newsstand finds himself there “even before the publication of the book” and thus “attracts the attention of critics”. The press is “enthusiastic”, so that “journalists marched to the kiosk”, remembers the author. Bernard Rapp invites Jean Rouaud for the premiere of Caractères, a literary program that follows Apostrophes by Bernard Pivot. The machine has run wild and nothing will stop it. People recognize the writer in the street. His encounters in bookstores draw crowds. He poses in front of Robert Doisneau. The president of the Goncourt jury, Hervé Bazin, wrote to him to ask “very officially to send the book to his entire team” who had not read it, except for one juror. The epilogue, “this media asteroid which fell on my head”, is one that only French literary prizes offer – a mixture of obscure intrigues, shots of Jarnac and ball of the hypocrites. Today Jean Rouaud, 33 years later, delivers a scoop: if the Académie Goncourt announced that it had decided in the second round, “in reality (…) it only took one”. To mitigate the affront to the vanquished.
