She had a loose verb and an incisive pen. Claude Sarraute, journalist at Le Monde for more than 35 years, then columnist with a piquant reply to Les Grosses Têtes, died on June 20 at the age of 95. This woman of culture, daughter of the novelist Nathalie Sarraute, will have graced the entertainment section of the evening newspaper with lively mood notes that have long delighted her readers.
Her thunderous style, which worked wonders in writing, found new life on the radio from the 1990s onwards. with Laurent Ruquier on Europe 1 (We’re going to get embarrassed), France 2 (We’ve tried everything) or France Inter (Nothing to wax), Claude Sarraute will become a popular figure in the audiovisual sector. In all these volleys, she knew how to slash as well as dodge. A formidable swordsman, she was always amused, to her advantage, by the fake (or real) machismo of her male colleagues and particularly the iconoclastic and gruff sailor, Olivier de Kersauson.
Some false ingenuities of Claude Sarraute…
Light, laughing, nonconformist, capable of wit and also of scratches, Claude Sarraute had married the American journalist Stanley Karnow in 1948, then Christophe Tzara, son of Tristan, in 1956, and, finally, the philosopher, essayist and journalist Jean-François Revel in 1967. “My retarded and irresponsible child side must have distracted him. I was his most loyal groupie. He knew everything, I knew nothing,” she said of her last husband, exaggerating his lack of culture and his naivety.
Claude Sarraute was born on July 24, 1927 in Paris, the eldest daughter of one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999), and lawyer Raymond Sarraute. The intellectual and serious environment in which she grew up did not prevent her from having a taste for laughter. “I made my mother laugh until I was 99. I was indelibly cheerful. With a woman like that, it was my only chance to get out, right? (…). To compare us is to compare À la recherche du temps perdu and Pif le Chien. For her, what mattered was that I worked in a newspaper like Le Monde”, she confided one day to Liberation.
With a degree in English, she did a bit of theater before embarking on journalism, collaborating with the Sunday Express. In 1952, she began to write to Le Monde. She remained there for 35 years, columnist in the Shows section, then Television, and finally by signing an insolent post on the last page, entitled Sur le vive (chronicles gathered in the collection Say so!).
Claude Sarraute joined La bande à Ruquier in the early 1990s. Unlike many women her age, she was not looking to look younger. “I have lots of wrinkles but it’s not a problem” to go on TV, she assured, saying to fight “against youth and anti-old racism”. She added mischievously that “his age is his business”.
Claude Sarraute has long held a column for Psychologies magazine and has written several novels, which she described as “clowneries”, as if to apologize for not being at her mother’s level. His books include Allô, Lolotte, c’est Coco, Ah! love, always love, Sarraute, the girl of the year, Dad who?, Say, do you love me?, Say see, Maminette…or Belle belle belle. Ignoring formal formalities, she wrote in spoken style, advocating a futility that aimed to say the essential.
Claude Sarraute, who saw himself living as long as his much-admired mother, said in 2014: “Physically, everything is fine… The health problems, we had time to get used to them! And thank you medical advances too! At my age, we are patched up to last as long as possible. Mother of four children (including an adopted daughter), she played, at almost 80 years old, in Catherine Breillat’s film, An old mistress (2007). She is notably the mother of sports journalist Martin Tzara and Nicolas Revel, head of the AP-HP.
