It is a story of disinterested family transmission that André and Jean-Paul Crouzet carry on their shoulders, supported by the members of their association. Distant cousins of the bookseller-collector-scholar Yves Dubois who died in 1971, they already made headlines at the end of last year. On October 27, they were the ones who reopened (before the scheduled sale of the building) the bookstore “Aux Bibliophiles” at 22 rue Voltaire in Agen, closed since 1973. A real event and an exceptional discovery because the place seemed to have drawn the curtain yesterday.
It is in the oldest wing of the Manu that the City of the Book could see the light of day.
Amandine Gasparotto
Inside, 15,000 works were listed on the high wooden shelves by volunteers including Maïté Bouyssy, a former professor at the Sorbonne. “It is an exceptional collection, the social and literary memory of an entire century that must be protected and made accessible to as many people as possible,” she declared at the time.
“Reinstall the original facade”
Composed of popular writings, novels, old bound books, many works on Agen, the discovery of this nugget was happily followed by the Departmental Archives. Who, after having recovered the most precious manuscripts, validated the creation of an Yves Dubois fund and gave the volunteers the mission of saving this remarkable heritage that has already caught the attention of researchers from all over France. “We put them in temporary storage in Tonneins because Yves Dubois was above all a former member of the Resistance from Tonneins (his mother ran the café in Varès). And we approached the town hall, which was very receptive, and which with the Manu has enough space to reinstall the original façade that we recovered and the entire fund; thus the Cité du Livre project was born, to which the town hall was very favorable,” explain the volunteers we met on September 7 at the Feria des Assos Tonneinquaise.
Loïc Déquier/SOUTH WEST
The facade of the bookstore.
Who says historical and heritage project, says Alain Glayroux, the local historian who is part of the adventure. “I find the energy of these volunteers from all walks of life who want to pass on and open up culture to as many people as possible, very exciting. And that this project of a library open to all is promised to the Manu, it is a just return of History. Here even the most educated cigar women instructed the less fortunate.”
Cultural center
In this Cité du livre, the association wishes to bring together other documentary funds generally considered modest, but nevertheless rich in lessons. “Readers and families would find an additional and non-elitist place of culture there. And researchers, because of the proximity of the station, could come and work from Toulouse or Bordeaux for a day,” Maïté projects.
This structure could take place within the future cultural center, on the ground floor of the heritage building. And even if book lovers were told that it would logically be near the municipal archives, the situation seems to have changed. The latter should, as announced in the municipal council on September 11, land alone at the former tax office which is going to be bought and rehabilitated.
