by Anne Berest
On the train home, I read over my almost finished manuscript and I write the following letter to Denis Westhoff:
Dear Denis,
It is several months since we had lunch and you suggested that I should write a book in memory of your mother, or, rather, a book to revive the memory of her. You wanted to draw attention to a particular period in her life, the one that can be summed up as having ‘preceded the legend’. Denis, you presented me with a gift and I have tried to be as true to the task as possible. But in what way true? Most faithful to what? These are questions I have had to answer and I decided to be most faithful to myself, hoping in this way that I would only have to explain myself to one person.
Today, when I reread the manuscript, it seems to me that its ‘secret plot’ – which is to say, the subject that, although not consciously chosen, emerges when the writing is done – involves an unlikely friendship between a lady of a certain age, now dead, and a young woman born two generations after her. For, from the day we had lunch together, your mother entered my life with all the force of a living being. Initially, I think, your mother did not like me very much. In common with all mothers, she was suspicious of her son’s choice of woman; she no doubt found me too glum and too serious. But, as often happens in tales of ill-suited couples thrown together by fate, she has just had to get used to me and I believe I have had the good fortune to become the object of a special affection on her part. Yes, your mother has become for me a confidante, a not very sympathetic one, one who is as amusing as she is severe and as uncompromising as she is joyful. During all those weeks of work, we spoke to each other almost every day and our conversations, which I derived from her books and from her life, were interrupted by nothing and by no one. Like my other friends, she pointed me in the direction of books that I would not otherwise have read, she helped me understand a thousand things that were obscure to me, she propelled me towards people I would perhaps not have considered, she richly filled hours that I would otherwise have let slip by. I do believe that Françoise Sagan has surrounded me with her benevolence, has influenced my actions and thus, in accordance with the butterfly effect, has determined my whole life, the life I have ahead of me – for I believe that to be the role of friends, great friends.
I hope you will not regret having chosen me, for I have given of myself entirely in this book and have written it with the greatest reverence, but also, in honour of your mother, with the greatest degree of irreverence possible.
A.
NOTES
1 Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, Stock, 2012.
2 Françoise Sagan, Réponses, interviews, éditions Pauvert, 1974.
3 Florence Malraux, in conversation with the author.
4 Alain Vircondelet, Françoise Sagan, un charmant petit monstre, Flammarion, 2002.
5 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, The Hogarth Press, 1929. [Translator’s note: quoted in French and annotated as ‘Virginia Woolf, Une chambre à soi, traduction de Clara Malraux, 10/18, 1996’.]
6 Françoise Sagan, Des bleus à l’âme, Flammarion, 1972. ‘When she was eighteen, she had written a nice little French composition that had been published and had made her famous.’ [Translator’s note: first published in English as Scars on the Soul, translated by Joanna Kilmartin, André Deutsch Limited, 1974.]
7 Françoise Sagan, Des bleus à l’âme, op.cit. ‘She had refused to make a tragedy out of it all, or even a problem; in any case, writing was, first and foremost, something she enjoyed doing.’
8 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, Denoël, 2008. ‘I like writing,’ she said. ‘To write a novel is to construct a lie. I like telling lies. I have always lied.’
9 Denis Westhoff, in conversation with the author.
10 Françoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse, Julliard, 1954.
11 Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, op.cit.
12 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit.
13 Ibid.
14 Jean-Claude Lamy, Françoise Sagan, une légende, Mercure de France, 2004. ‘I said to myself, “Well! It’s complicated!” For the first time in my life I had a foreboding that nothing was entirely black or white. In a world torn between Good and Evil, there were grey areas. Things were much more ambiguous than I had imagined.’
15 Sophie Delassein, Aimez-vous Sagan…, Fayard, 2002. ‘Françoise Sagan often tells how, at that time – whether it be an exact memory or one that has been embellished – she went to consult a fortune-teller based in Rue de l’Abbé -Groult, who is supposed to have predicted, “You will write a book that will cross the oceans.”’
16 Christer Strömholm, Le Boulevard, introduction to the book of photographs Les Amies de Place Blanche, VU éditions, 2011.
17 Interview with Françoise Sagan on France Culture in 1955, quoted by Thierry Séchan, Le Roman de Sagan, Romart, 2013. ‘I don’t know why it is so difficult to speak of luck. I myself am quite well acquainted with luck. Luck came my way a year ago and has been with me ever since.’
18 Preface by Claude Mauriac to the album Mauriac intime, photographs by Jeanne François-Mauriac, Stock, 1985.
19 Jean-Claude Lamy, Françoise Sagan, une légende, op.cit.
20 Jean-Claude Lamy, René Julliard, Julliard, 1992.
21 Bertrand Meyer-Stabley, Les Dames de l’Élysée. Celles d’hier et de demain, Librairie académique Perrin, 1999.
22 Henry de Montherlant, Les Jeunes Filles, Grasset, 1947.
23 Vladimir Jankélévitch, L’Imprescriptible, Seuil, 1986.
24 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit.
25 Denis Westhoff, in conversation with the author.
26 Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, op. cit.
27 Françoise Sagan, Avec mon meilleur souvenir, Gallimard, 1984.
28 Boni de Castellane, Mémoires, introduction by Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Perrin, 1986.
29 Marcel Proust, Le Côté de Guermantes, Gallimard, 1921–1922.
30 Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse, op. cit.
31 Jean-Claude Lamy, Françoise Sagan, une légende, op. cit.
32 Interview with Françoise Sagan for La Dépêche, quoted by Jean-Claude Lamy, Françoise Sagan, une légende, op. cit. ‘Cajarc and my childhood: an enchanting domain that must for ever remain inviolate.’
33 Françoise Sagan, De guerre lasse, Gallimard, 1986.
34 Jean-Claude Lamy, Françoise Sagan, une légende, op. cit.
35 The person in question was the actor Michel Simon, according to Michel Castaing in his article in the newspaper Le Monde, dated 1 February 1994.
36 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit. ‘What impression did the death of that child from dehydration leave on his family? Was he the victim of the adults’ inadvertence? The question meets with a blank: Suzanne Quoirez does not really remember. As for Sagan’s biographers, they draw a veil over the event.’
37 Alain Vircondelet, Françoise Sagan, un charmant petit monstre, op. cit.
38 David Teboul, Bardot, la méprise, Gaumont Télévision, Christian Davin production, Arte France, 2011.
39 Françoise Sagan, Derrière épaule…, Plon, 1998. ‘It was a summer just like the summers we still used to have back then, broken up by dusty, deserted avenues beneath trees of apple green and dark green … I go to the baker’s in Rue Jouffroy in my dressing gown and buy two croissants. I nibble mine on the way back, meeting only a bus as empty as the boulevard and an ill-shaven bachelor.’
40 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit.
41 In the original anecdote, the person who arrived was a journalist. Recounted by Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, op.cit.
42 Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, op. cit.
43 Sophie Delassein, Aimez-vous Sagan…, op. cit.
44 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit.
45 Marguerite Duras, Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia, Gallimard, 1953.
46 Matthieu Galey, Journal 1953–1973, Grasset,
1987.
47 Alain Malraux, Les Marronniers de Boulogne: Malraux père introuvable, Bartillat, 2012.
48 Frédérique Lebelley, Duras ou le poids d’une plume, Grasset, 1994.
49 Marguerite Duras, La Cuisine de Marguerite, Benoît Jacob, 1999. Quoted by Laetitia Cénac, Marguerite Duras. L’écriture de la passion, La Martinière, 2013.
50 Jean-Claude Lamy, Françoise Sagan, une légende, op. cit.
51 Thierry Séchan, Le Roman de Sagan, op. cit.
52 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit.
53 Alain Vircondelet, Françoise Sagan, un charmant petit monstre, op. cit.
54 Thierry Séchan, Le Roman de Sagan, op. cit.
55 Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, op. cit.
56 Françoise Sagan, Avec mon meilleur souvenir, op. cit.
57 Tennessee Williams, ‘On Meeting a Young Writer’, Harper’s Bazaar, August 1956, reprinted in Tennessee Williams, New Selected Essays: Where I Live, New Directions Paperbook, ed. John S. Bak, foreword by John Lahr, 2009. [Translator’s note: quoted in French and annotated as ‘Tennessee Williams, De vous à moi, éditions Baker Street, translated by Martine Leroy-Battistelli, 2011’.]
58 Françoise Sagan, Avec mon meilleur souvenir, op. cit.
59 Jean Cocteau, Le Passé défini, journal, Gallimard, 2005.
60 Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure, op. cit.
61 Denis Westhoff, Sagan et fils, op. cit.
62 Ibid.
63 Michel Déon, in an article for Paris Match: ‘Bonjour Tristesse introduces us to an eighteen-year-old writer … A novelist of high calibre is born, perhaps a new Colette, to judge by the precocious qualities of the work. Critics will be on the lookout for Françoise’s second novel.’
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Laure Adler and Stefan Bollmann, Les femmes qui écrivent vivent dangereusement, Flammarion, 2007.
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About the Author
Anne Berest is a Parisian author and journalist. She also writes for television, cinema and theatre. She was working on her third novel when Françoise Sagan’s son, Denis Westhoff, asked her to write a book to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Bonjour Tristesse.
Heather Lloyd was previously Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, and has published work on Françoise Sagan. She is the most recent translator of Bonjour Tristesse for Penguin.
Copyright
First published in France as Sagan 1954 by Éditions Stock
Copyright © Éditions Stock, 2014
First published in Great Britain in 2015
by Gallic Books, 59 Ebury Street,
London, SW1W 0NZ
This ebook edition first published in 2015
All rights reserved
© Gallic Books, 2015
The right of Anne Berest to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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