You have decided to stop publishing Books. For what ?
Pierrick Chuto, author: “When, almost twenty years ago, I started genealogical research, I never imagined publishing ten books. The first, “Le maître de Guengat”, dedicated to Auguste Chuto, my grandfather and mayor of the town from 1846 to 1871, worked very well. I sold 1,800 copies. But today, it has become too difficult to sell Breton books. Overproduction is such that books do not stay on the shelves for long due to lack of space. For self-publishing, it's even worse and relations with booksellers are increasingly tense. Today, I am only distributed in five or six points of sale, and only one in Pays Bigouden, at L'aire de Broca. It’s not the lack of subjects that pushes me to stop, it’s the functioning of the book chain.”
How did you get into writing?
“You should rather ask me why I didn’t come sooner!” (laughs) I became a trader by default, to take over from my father. It still kept me busy for forty years, thirteen of which as president of the Pont-l'Abbé merchants' association. But what I would have liked to be is a journalist. So, on the second day of my retirement, at age 60, I started writing. It was the genealogical research that I had started that gave me the trigger. I discovered that the people in my family were strange and temperamental, and that there were things to tell that also allowed us to evoke local history.”
You are not a historian, how did you proceed?
“I explored the departmental, diocesan and municipal archives and found a wealth of information there. With each book, I put some aside and that led me to a new work. I am not a historian, but I am passionate and conscientious. Everything I say is true and verified. Sometimes it can be offensive or painful, but I don't judge, I just tell. Sometimes with a bit of second degree.”
We saw you at the last Bigouden Book Fair and you opened a blog. So you're not retiring completely?
“No, I will continue to do trade fairs and conferences when I am invited. I love telling stories, I love contact with the public and readers. And I still have copies of my books to sell. And thanks to the blog, I can continue to tell the daily life of our ancestors, so different from ours today. After so many hours spent digging through the archives, I have an impressive number of unused documents. I use it to post one article a week on what happened between 1800 and 1950 in Cornwall.”
“I am very proud of it, both in substance and form. It was printed on very beautiful paper at Cloître, in Saint-Thonan, and includes many original illustrations by Jean-Marie Misslen. As for the story of Bishop Duparc, it was not at all known and will surprise more than one reader. From 1908 to 1946, he waged a holy war against Kof ha Kof (belly-to-belly) dances, considered diabolical and invented by Satan. The Bigoudens who really like dancing didn't like it, nor did the anticlerical press! “.
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