” HASutour de Minuit”, the Lagrasse book banquet brought together Jean Echenoz, Laurent Mauvignier, Yves Ravey, Tanguy Viel and the new director of the starred house, Thomas Simonnet. Without forgetting the one who wrote the story, Anne Simonin. The latter proposed a re-reading of the silence of the seafrom Vercors, pseudonym of Jean Bruller ffounder of the house with Pierre de Lescure, a book that marked its birth in 1942, before the arrival of Jérôme Lindon who was to embody it. So 80 years ago. She showed this book-object in all its resistant dimension, in the midst of the German occupation, a clandestine publication which endangered all those who were its artisans. Above all, she suggested what this tale, between Beauty and the Beast, owed to the tragic fate of Saint-Pol-Roux, since the poet had suffered from Nazi barbarism in October 1940, and it was up to him, “Poet assassinated », that Vercors will sign his book.
From this editorial history, marked later by the publication of The question by Henri Alleg, but also by the New Roman, and over time by two Nobel Prize winners, Samuel Beckett and Claude Simon, the success of The Lover of Duras (and we should speak of the human sciences, Bourdieu, Deleuze, etc.), the writers present in the catalog and at the Banquet are the heirs. To Jérôme Lindon, to whom Jean Echenoz devoted a tribute book whose title is the name of his publisher, just after his death (2001), his daughter Irène succeeded. At the start of this year, publisher Thomas Simonnet took over the reins of the house on rue Bernard-Palissy, which was bought by Madrigall. “Minuit is a house of fights, says Simonnet, up to those of Jérôme Lindon for the independent bookstore, the price of the book… Enough to ensure the authors the essential: the conditions of their independence, and therefore of their work. “The first literary return Minuit sans Lindon is under the sign of “the promise”, adds Thomas Simonnet, who insists on the duty to invent. “With the very first novel by a very young woman, Claire Baglin, Indoors, and the new surprise that one of the little-known authors of this catalog has in store for us, Yves Ravey with Taormina. A surprise not to be missed, we confirm! Each in turn, the authors present in Lagrasse entrusted us with their “hour” of Midnight.
READ ALSOWho is Thomas Simonnet, who will direct the Éditions de Minuit, bought by Gallimard?
Jean Echenoz : “I wanted to be published in this house whose cover is the most beautiful of all the French edition, but it seemed to me, a little as one says of a girl, that she was too beautiful for me. I finally sent my first manuscript to Jérôme Lindon, who accepted it (The Greenwich Meridian, 1979) after all the other houses turned it down. But the second I brought him a little lightly, he kicked me out. He was right. The very beginning of this text, I’m comingis published in The Notebook of the Herne [consacré à Echenoz, parution le 21 septembre, NDLR], but I threw the rest in the trash. I came back for the third and stayed in this house, despite minor differences. Midnight was the sanctified face of Beckett. Even if I don’t come from the New Roman, I remember that when I was young, reading Erasers de Robbe-Grillet gave me ideas on the treatment of objects, which The modification de Butor gave me some on the treatment of time, these authors opened up something. Minuit was in my eyes a kind of principality, with a stupidly elitist feeling. […] I remember that Jérôme Lindon often said that there was no reading without laughing [il a raconté comment le manuscrit de Molloy s’éparpillait dans le métro tant il était secoué de rire en le lisant]. Laughter seemed to him a driving force, and in my books it is a form of distance that I want to take in relation to what I am telling. I took from Lindon this superstition that it would go wrong anyway. For example that I would not have the Medici, he had told me, when I appeared on the list for Cherokee [Medicis 1983, NDLR]. I made this house policy my own. At least we’re not disappointed. »
Laurent Mauvignier : “I came from the Beaux-Arts and, in the 1980s, modernity was Sollers, As is, the pure and hard avant-gardes, the disappearance of the novel. And when I discovered Minuit, a door opened for me on the possibility of writing, passing through fiction, that of finding literary paths that do not belong either to the avant-garde to which I had no nothing to add, nor a return to the good old 19th century novele. There was an opening on contemporary literature which bears the heritage of the XXe century and its formal questions. My first “Midnight” was Butor, The timetable, Passage of Milan and The modification, then Robbe-Grillet and what fascinated me at that time was that there was romance, all the same. Koltes, Pinget too. Francois Bon with Factory output (1982) taught me that it was possible to talk about our own reality, to integrate it into stories, form and content could therefore talk about a here and now like it had never been done. First of all, it was a great joy, because it got me out of the impasse in which I was. I knew Tanguy Viel who warned Irène Lindon that I was sending him a manuscript. Two days later, it was done. Far from them. We will sell 200 copiesJérôme Lindon told me, but still we will do it. Irene thought it would work. She was right… I was a bit afraid of Jérôme Lindon, like everyone else. He was talking aboutAlain, Claude and Margueriteit is necessarily dizzying when you are 30 years old! You are one of the last dinosaurs, after you, it’s over! he had told me, in the sense that what interested me would no longer concern the following generations. And it’s true that our literary space, to us who are gathered in Lagrasse, is linked to the XXe century, to the same story. I don’t know what it is for the younger ones…”
yves ravey : Enter this catalog [Bureau des illettrés, 1992] was the promise of security, and at the same time a call to responsibility; my name is in it, I am, we are all responsible for its future. For me, Molloy by Beckett remains a block of mystery, I feel a resistance from the authors of the catalog, like a resonance, a road to follow. The first book I read at Minuit was L‘one dimensional man de Marcuse, in terminal. The publishing house that I knew with Jérôme Lindon was a place of reflection, of seriousness, whose writings were authoritative. In the waiting room for my first psychoanalysis session, I was reading The Voyeur, by Robbe-Grillet. The idea of mystery and the inexplicable, of unanswered questions common to the various authors of the Minuit editions gave me permission. Because reading Duras, I find myself in a linguistic bath, with images, a rhythm, even if I’m not sure I understand, things are unsurpassable that I don’t try to surpass. So could I too write what seemed anything and that made sense. Regarding Minuit’s reputation on a formal level, I must say that I remain hypersensitive to everything around me, to the threats hanging over the planet, and that I can express it in a literary way, I am not at all neutral, the work of writing ignites the fire against terrible and unbearable things. I will continue to do only literature. »
READ ALSORemaking the world with the Verdier house
Tanguy Viel “I gave my manuscript to read to François Bon, who lived in the same town as me, and he put it on Lindon’s desk. Jérôme and Irène welcomed me, advising me to write a real novel. Eight months later I came back and my first novel was published afterwards. [Le Black Note, 1998]. I was trained by Beckett, Duras, Claude Simon and two shocking texts: The night of Koltes and Lie by Savitzkaya. These books showed me how emotion arises from language, from syntax, I found refuge there. I remember these words of Jérôme Lindon: Only post what you hear. That is to say the style. Anxiety is at work, in this house, a bit like POL, Verdier. The authors of Minuit have reintroduced the real, in French literature, Bon, Echenoz. Robbe-Grillet’s sentences against Sartre must be placed in their context: The writer begins to write when he has nothing to say. A committed writer, disengaged from the world, from reality, the debate is obsolete: the subjects of Minuit’s books for 20, 30, 40 years have been an x-ray of contemporary society. And anyway, the novel has a fuel: who is the world! Simply we no longer defend the tightness of the text unlike the time of the New Roman. »