The literary 'rentrée': passion for stories, mirror of France

Pandemics, governments and fashions pass in France, but there is an immovable institution, faithful to the annual appointment: la

rentrée

, the beginning of the literary course.

Between the end of August and the beginning of September, hundreds of novels are suddenly published in this country.

Magazines and cultural supplements dedicate dozens of pages to fictional literature.

Prime-time radio shows interview writers.

Bookstores are flooded with novels that every moderately educated reader will want to have read if they want to stay up to date and have a worldly conversation over coffee or dinner.

In this

rentrée

, 521 new novels have been published.

Among them, those dealing with relationships between fathers and daughters stand out.

Some, traumatic, marked by abuse, such as

Voyage dans l'Est

, by Christine Angot.

Others, happy like

Premier sang

, by Amélie Nothomb.

The

rentrée

coincides with the first knockout rounds of the autumn's great literary prizes, with Goncourt looming on the horizon.

The members of the jury select the best and, when deciding the winners in November and December, establish the authors of the year, who will be translated into other languages ​​and will embark on an international career.

Emmanuel Carrère: "I'm fed up with autobiography"

These days, in the headquarters of the publishing houses in Paris, in the bookstores and literary centers, some of the books are decided that within a year will be read in Barcelona or New York, in London or Berlin, in Rome or Madrid.

"In France, between September and November, literature rises in the hierarchy of curiosity and attention", sums up a veteran of the

rentrées

, Éric Fottorino. Winner in 2007, with the novel

Baisers de cinéma

, of the Fémina award,

Mohican

has just published

. "At this moment, France - the France of those who read, obviously - gets excited, fights, debates, discusses objects that are fictions, stories," he explains.

The

literary

rentrée

is a commercial operation: it is about flooding the market with a product in a very short time.

Although it is limited exclusively to the most literary and cultured genre: the

best sellers

of mass sales, popular literature, have other rhythms and markets.

At the beginning of September, among the 10 best-selling books in France, according to the Edistat publication ranking, five were

manga

comics

, four were dictionaries and one novel, that of Nothomb.

A greased machinery

The origin of the phenomenon dates back to the post-world war period, explains Pierre Assouline, a member of the Goncourt Academy, which awards the prize of the same name.

It was then that the publishers decided to publish their most valuable books in September, coinciding with the return to school, the end of the holidays and the beginning of the political course.

And in time for these books to be eligible for the great literary prizes.

The Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, in November 2020, just after its reopening following the lifting of some measures against COVID.Kiran Ridley / Getty Images

The machinery, in fact, starts up earlier, in spring, when publishers send journalists and critics the first versions of the novels that will arrive in bookstores at the end of the summer and will enter this fair of vanities and talents that is I

rentrée it.

In the literary-journalistic world, it is a time of overflowing activity and unleashed nerves.

Authors want their publishers to publish their books at the

rentrée

to be

eligible

for the awards.

Publishers want the media to notice their titles.

Journalists, critics, and jurors are overwhelmed by an overabundance that provokes criticism and debate every year but continues to repeat itself.

In 2020, a year of pandemic and confinements in which bookstores were closed for months, 511 novels were published, almost like in a normal year.

No one is trained to read that much in a few weeks.

A screening must be done, guided by smell, suggestions and the prestige of well-known authors.

"There are books that, reading 10 pages, enough is enough," says Assouline, who estimates that he has read more than fifty of the 521 titles of this

rentrée

this summer

.

"For me, summer is anything but vacation," adds this writer, who combines his activity as a Goncourt jury with that of a novelist and literary chronicler.

He, although he has received some books before, does not start reading them until June 15 on the advice of Bernard Pivot, the man who revolutionized literary journalism on television and presided over the Goncourt Academy for years.

"Bernard Pivot told me: 'If you start before June 15, in September you will have forgotten them," he says.

We have the impression that a large mirror is walking before French society and everyone can look into it

Eric Fottorino

“This year”, he values, “there is a lot of diversity, the awards are very open.

There are years with heavyweights like Michel Houellebecq that crush the

rentrée

.

This not".

In this

rentrée

there is no Houellebecq, nor any Emmanuel Carrère, the star of the previous one with his novel

Yoga

.

Among the best-known names are the best-selling Nothomb, author of minimalist fables and clean lines, and Angot, reference of self-fiction.

Both approach the figure of the father from opposite experiences.

Nothomb identifies so much with his father, the Belgian diplomat Patrick Nothomb (1936-2020), that he gets under his skin and writes his life in the first person between his birth and the day he was about to be shot in Congo.

"I am in front of a firing squad," starts

Premier sang

.

“Time stretches, each second lasts a century longer than the previous one.

I am 28 years old.

In front of me, death has the face of twelve performers ”.

Angot's father was the opposite, not an admirable father but a sexual predator who abused his daughter for years from her adolescence, an experience that she has been addressing in her narratives since the 1990s.

Voyage dans l'Est

, written with a frenetic pace and without euphemisms, comes after the publication in France of several first-person books that have placed incestuous abuse at the center of social debate and have forced legislative changes. "A battered child is humiliated with blows, a child raped with caresses," says the narrator. “In both cases it is a humiliation strategy. Incest is a denial of filiation that passes through the submission of the minor for the sexual satisfaction of the father ”. Angot's novel is on the Goncourt's first list of finalists. Nothomb, eternal aspirant, no.

Few people have the overview of what's new. Goncourt juries like Assouline, for example. Or literary journalists like Nathalie Crom, from the cultural weekly

Télérama

. "I see two trends," describes Crom. "One is the rise, with even greater force, of autofiction and narrative non-fiction, especially of women." Angot's book is an example. "Another trend is the ecological question, with a considerable number of works that in one way or another, either descriptive or as an anticipatory novel, address the climate crisis." Quote

Hors-gel

, by Emmanuel Salas, and

Climax

, by Thomas B. Reverdy.

"Among 500 novels there are for all tastes: historical, sentimental, customs novels," says Fottorino, who was the director of

Le Monde

and now combines novel writing with the direction of the publications

Le 1

and

Zadig

.

"We have the impression that a large mirror is walking before French society and everyone can look into it."