Ivan Jablonka defends his work at all costs. On Monday August 28, the author of Goldman spoke on France Inter. He affirms that his book is not a “star biography” but a “work of social sciences” which makes “the archeology of an era”. The historian says he “tried to tell the story of an exceptional artist who became a hyperstar but also a myth, almost a national institution”. But if the work of Jablonka, released on August 18 by Editions du Seuil, has been talked about a lot, especially in the press, it has not pleased everyone. In particular to the main interested party, Jean-Jacques Goldman himself.
The speech of Ivan Jablonka also follows that of the singer, in Le Canard Enchaîné. The interpreter of I give you, withdrawn from the media scene for many years, claimed to have “never met this author” and to be “sad for all the people who are being duped” by buying books that talk about him. Ivan Jablonka is “not very surprised” by the reaction of the favorite singer of the French. Then he added, “I wrote to him to tell him I was doing this book. I asked him to have access to some of his archives and he did not answer”. If the news does not sadden the historian, it almost amuses him: “What an honor that Jean-Jacques Goldman, buried in silence for twenty years, comes out to talk about my book”, he jokes at the microphone of Sonia Devillers.
For Ivan Jablonka, “a historian is not someone we authorize”. On the contrary, it must embody “freedom of thought, of expression”. “The goal of a social science book is to say true things, continues the 2016 Prix Médicis. surveys in the absence.