He had helped propel Michel Houellebecq's career to the forefront of the French literary scene: publisher Raphaël Sorin died this Sunday at the age of 78.
Born in 1942, and passed through several of the biggest houses of French publishing, from Seuil to Fayard, via Albin Michel and Flammarion, Raphaël Sorin is known in particular for his collaboration with Michel Houellebecq from the end of the years. 1990. He thus successively published
The Elementary Particles
,
Plateforme
and
The Possibility of an Island
, which established the fame of the author.
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Far from being disinterested in the most sulphurous literature, Raphaël Sorin had also endeavored to publish Charles Bukowski and Jean-Louis Costes, two authors renowned for their sharp and virulent pen.
Passed in the 1980s by the program
Droit de Réponse
by Michel Polac, hailed for his freedom of speech, he had ended up working, in recent years, within the Ring publishing house as literary director.
If he had some great successes, Raphaël Sorin did not hide some of his most fantastic mistakes, such as that of
Love Story
by Erich Seagal, the manuscript of which had passed into his hands at the end of the 1960s. .
"I was the threshold at the time and my reading report was damning for this book that I found really corny. I remember saying it sucked, nothing to do. But Flammarion took it and it worked, ”
said a few years ago.
“Later, I met the author who had become a professor of classical letters, I confess to him that I rejected his book. And there, he answers me: Oh, I understand you, it was really very bad »
.
Le Figaro offers
its condolences to his son Étienne Sorin, journalist.
