Jean-Jacques Pauvert, death of a great editor – Le Figaro

The editor died Saturday at Toulon. He was 88 years old

This is a big name publishing disappears. Jean-Jacques Pauvert died Saturday in Toulon. He was 88 years old, and had never ceased to be an active editor. Last year, he was still working on the reissue of Sade living , his monumental biography of the author of Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue , published by The Tripod. More than 1,200 pages. And in 2011 he published My reading love: an anthology of the best erotica (The Musardine)

His name will be forever associated with Sade and The Story of O.. But it was more than that, more than what, for convenience, is described as “editor sulfur,” “specialist of erotic literature” or even, for some, a “pornographer.” It’s true, he has never, either, tried to take off the label.

He was 19 when he published his first book in 1945 as a publisher. Two years later, he began the first official edition of the World and full and complete Sade Works. And knows his first trial – all his life he will be a regular courtroom. Editing Sade bring him ten years of conflict with the French government for “gross indecency” as Flaubert, like Baudelaire. After ten years, he will win a court victory that will give him the heart glad and motivated to take on new risks – it has never failed to do. Why he published these licentious works? It is not possible bestseller that interested Jean-Jacques Pauvert – he has yet experienced much, and when he was making money it was to pursue other adventures or to cover heavy costs. No, what interested him above all was the freedom of creation and expression. It has, for example, published Memoirs of a fascist, of Rebatet. Or, more challenging this time, he published a biography of a famous Pétomane Roaring Twenties, named Joseph Pujol. I must say that the authors of this book were funny sacred clowns. Caradec François and Jean Nohain who could spend months hoax

In 1954, Jean-Jacques Pauvert talks in his new reputation. That year, a manuscript distributed illicitly: The Story of O . The novel is signed by an unknown, Pauline Reage, a pseudonym. It is a story could not be more erotic that, to map, praised sexual submission. This novel, which became one of the most emblematic areas of literature, was born of a bet between Jean Paulhan, host of the NRF Gallimard, and the secretary general of the journal, Dominique Aury. This woman who liked to stay in the shadows, author of Anthology of religious poetry , the challenge of Paulhan, who said unable to write an erotic novel. When Paulhan received the manuscript, he knows he holds in his hands a strong and singular text, but can not publish Gallimard house too serious and too prestigious to edit such a text editor … And how -believed it? Jean-Jacques Pauvert, of course. We know that it is not afraid of anything. He says banco. Paulhan wrote a preface wearing a descriptive title, “Happiness in Slavery,” which sums up the spirit of the novel. Noise and controversies in the literary Landerneau. The vice squad tries to unmask Pauline Reage and invests offices Pauvert. Without success: there was no contract copyright

The Story of O will stall the price of Two Magots awarded to an anonymous author!. But the book is banned from sale to minors, and Pauvert continued for obscenity.

It would be unfair to reduce Pauvert erotic genre. He loved above all the art, literature and beautiful texts – it was also an avid graphic book and he took great care in the production of books. He, among others, edited Sagan, Guy Debord, Charles Cros, André Breton, Georges Bataille, Albertine Sarrazin, the Countess de Segur, Dali and many others …

In 1972, the house edition that bears his name is on the winners of the Prix Goncourt Jean Carrière The Hawk Maheux , a title that tells the tragic story of a family chronicle Cevennes.

must also salute the courage of this man who was never the last to reveal young authors or support colleagues in difficulty. It has, for example, helped Regine Deforges when it was experiencing trouble with the law. She became his wife and they had a child.