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Mathieu Lindon: “I am also writing this book as a living archive”

2023-02-09T06:20:38.054Z


In the head of -. With Une archive, Mathieu Lindon recounts a life surrounded by books, alongside his father, director of Éditions de Minuit, opting for an emotional rather than a historical prism, because, he says, "I am an archive all my own. only".


“I knew he was a great writer before reading him”: Mathieu Lindon thus speaks of Beckett, with whom he dined, at the age of 6, at the family table.

In

Une archive

, he unfolds a life innervated by Éditions de Minuit, long run by his father, Jérôme, tells us behind the scenes from a child who lived through the plasticization of the home by the OAS, like an adult. which saw the birth of a great generation of writers, from Echenoz to Toussaint.

It sheds light on the publisher and the man who was his father, deciphering a terribly romantic family history.

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In video, "The Super-8 Years" by Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux, excerpt

Miss Figaro.

– How does your book differ from that of historian Anne Simonin,

Les Éditions de Minuit

?


Matthew Lindon.

On the one hand, Anne Simonin's book ends in 1955, the year of my birth, on the other hand, my angle is different: it is also as a living archive that I am writing this book , and it is this archive that I am trying to decipher.

What I have seen, received and felt since always, being born and leading this existence in the midst of books.

I tell less about Jérôme Lindon or the Éditions de Minuit than the place they held in my life.

The term archive takes on several meanings in the story and punctuates it in an almost musical way...


Yes, it happened naturally.

My father had a great taste for archives.

In the book, a friend tells me that Pierre Bourdieu, at the time angry with my father, had this observation: "I received a letter from Jérôme Lindon, but it is not intended for me, it is intended for its archives.

This seemed all the more plausible to me since, in his family life, my father was able to act in the same way with documents that he received or sent.

This is also a problem that historians should confront: in the 19th century, people were unaware that the archives they left were going to be used, whereas today, they know, there is no there are no more neutral archives… My father, for example, liked to keep them but also to create them, and the archive

Read alsoPhilippe Claudel: "The real enigma is the nature of man"

You also say how one builds oneself vis-à-vis this heritage: you did not fall out with your father, like your brother, you did not take over the Editions, like your sister, and you became a writer …


I was very proud to publish my first book with Minuit.

I couldn't imagine publishing anywhere else, until my father made stories for my second book – he was customary in fact with almost all authors, unless the first novel had met with great success – and that made me happy. led to moving to POL, which has become my new home in every sense of the word.

An archive

follows

What loving means

and

Hervelino

, insofar as I have the impression of writing an autobiography where I am not the main character.

Perhaps the best way for me to be able to talk about myself is to echo those great figures such as Michel Foucault, Hervé Guibert and my father.

An archive,

by Mathieu Lindon, Éditions POL, 240 p., €19.

His private collection

  • The Search

    , by Marcel Proust.

    "Now that the Proust year is over, why not read or reread it quietly?"

  • Le Petit Nicolas

    , by Sempé and Goscinny.

    "Goscinny's humor has always delighted me, it has influenced my work, and I love Sempé's drawings."

  • Juliette Drouet

    , by Florence Naugrette.

    "A half-century love story that tells of a female destiny and the influence of her lover on Hugo."

  • Illiterate

    , by Rachid O. "Because it hangs in everyone's face to be illiterate in feelings, and it's marvelous to avoid it."

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2023-02-09

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