Disappearance
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An indestructible incarnation of literature on television for several decades, the host of the legendary “Apostrophes”, who also chaired the Goncourt academy between 2014 and 2019, died this Monday, May 6 at the age of 89.
His favorite word, according to his answer to the first question of the famous questionnaire to which he submitted his guests at the end of the show Culture brothwas : “Today.” Because there was an apostrophe in the middle. Born on May 5, 1935 in Lyon (which perhaps explains his combined tastes for gastronomy and football) and died this Monday, May 6, 2024, Bernard Pivot experienced an intense public life from 1975 to 1990, on Antenne 2 (elected in 1974, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had just broken up the ORTF), a period during which he hosted Apostrophes. For more than fifteen years (the premiere took place on January 10, 1975), for millions of French people, he represented the book. But not just any book: the book on television, which is still a particular subcategory. Which led him to become a sort of good-natured pope of French publishing, since he found himself in 2014 promoted to president of the Goncourt academy where he had joined in 2004 and from which he resigned in 2019. In this assembly where moral rigor and editorial independence were hardly required, it is most often considered that, whatever his tastes in novels, he played a very welcome role in literary policy.
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