the essential
The Condom media library, named after him, will be the setting this Wednesday afternoon for a reading of quotes from the author, winner of the 1980 Prix Goncourt.
On the occasion of the release of the collection “Word for word” (H & O editions) of the most beautiful quotes by Yves Navarre, the media library is organizing, this Wednesday, September 18 at 5 p.m., a reading aloud of excerpts from this compilation. Admission will be free and the initiative will offer an opportunity to immerse oneself in the author’s universe.
Released a few days ago, the book from which the readings will be taken was born from the desire of the Friends of Yves Navarre, an international association created near Montpellier eight years ago. It also held its last conference, the sixth, in June 2023 in Condom, the author’s hometown.
“The idea was launched by one of our members at a general meeting in Montpellier in March 2023,” explains Sylvie Lannegrand, president of the Friends of Yves Navarre. “It appealed to us, especially since we could count on our Mercredis citations, a hundred short extracts from Navarre’s work already posted on our Facebook page.”
The association’s board invited its members to send them their favorite quotes from the author to complement its own work. The book took shape a year later: a little over 300 quotes gathered on 120 pages, mostly taken from Yves Navarre’s thirty or so published novels, including “Jardin d’acclimatation” which won him the Prix Goncourt in 1980, as well as from his theater, his children’s books and his poems. And perhaps because he was an advertising copywriter before becoming a recognized writer, Yves Navarre had, more than anything, a sense of the right phrase.
“There is no chronology in this book, no attempt at thematic grouping or classification by work. The designer shares with us his pleasure as a vagabond in love,” explains Karine Baudoin, co-founder of Les Amis d’Yves Navarre. The Montpellier resident, a long-time reader of the author, also notes: “Curiously enough, no doubt, for the uninitiated, who only remember despair from Yves Navarre, the words that his readers keep like talismans always bring them back to life.”
This new work, and the reading proposed on Wednesday September 18, therefore constitutes an invitation to rediscover the author and his words, which remind us “how beautiful mornings are and how good it is, then, to believe in humanity.”
