Death of François Bott, literary critic, journalist and novelist

in 1958

, then the leading French daily by circulation;

he then moved to

and then to the monthly magazine

, which he founded at the end of the 1960s, before joining and directing

, between 1983 and 1991. From this journalistic experience and his long frequenting books and writers, in 2010 he produced a touching confessional story,

.

An excellent portrait painter (see

and

), boxing lover and crazy about the "little queen", François Bott left us a fine lineup of truant works where erudition was tinged with poetry, fantasy and humor.

And this since the publication of his first book, devoted to one of his masters, the communist dandy Roger Vailland, the author of

and

(

, in 1969).

Curious about everything, Bott had even "committed", in 2016, the imaginary and intimate memoirs of the painter Van Dongen, on the verge of death (

).

A few years earlier, this unconditional supporter of the Stade de Reims, in love with Deauville, had published his most intimate story:

, where he sang, for a season, the "precarious pleasures, the things of down here".

elegant feather

In

Bott, always with his elegant pen, had sketched from life some forty authors, constituting as many literary escapes, including Boris Vian, Joseph Kessel, Marcel Aymé or Raymond Chandler.

He had thus portrayed Jacques Prévert:

Lover of good words, greedy of the verb, he had, in the evening of his life, published a collection of thoughts, observations, maxims, under the title

(The Round Table).

It read: