LThe North and Corsica already appeared in the famous collection of “Love Dictionaries” from the Plon house. The Basque Country has just joined these regions.
VIDEO. Biarritz: the day when the “Tontons surfers” made their place in History
IN THE ARCHIVES – One year ago, on October 14, 2023, the City of Biarritz unveiled a plaque in the name of the pioneers of surfing in Europe. The Côte des Basques now has a “place for Tonton surfers”. The last three representatives of this era are reunited: Claude Durcudoy, Joël de Rosnay and Pierre Laharrague. Back to info with the article initially published on October 15, 2023
In this collection, there are nine academicians, Goncourt prizes… In short, feathers which intimidated Alain Gardinier during the first contacts with the director of the collection Grégory Berthier-Saudrais. This nevertheless convinced him that, with the Basque Country missing from the series, he was in the best position to unfold this alphabet book. It is true that his name appears on more than 35 works, novels, biographies, surf books and on a “Dictionary of the Basque Country” published in 2008 and now out of print.
We had to find a balance: not too touristy, not too outdated, not too masculine…
The exercise here is completely different. The 2008 opus included 350 definitions and 200 illustrations. The love dictionary has 113 entries and 550 pages of text. Each chapter is a clever cocktail of facts and feelings of the author. Whether it concerns history, economic life, cultural events or social events, Alain Gardinier combines the rigor of the journalist with the verve of the storyteller. “It’s two years of full-time work,” says this jack-of-all-trades personality whose daily life is usually occupied by surfing, music, looking for posters and rare objects, eccentric cars…
Balance and surprises
Alain Gardinier took everything from scratch, eliminating more than he imagined. “We had to find a balance: not too touristy, not too outdated, not too masculine…” We also had to draw on his childhood memories in Bayonne, his student wanderings and his sporting, cultural and heritage discoveries…
The author begins at the letter A with “Abandoibarra”, a district of Bilbao transformed by the Guggenheim Museum. And explains that in his youth we avoided the sinister industrial wasteland. He ends with the letter Z with a summary of the career of Zigor, the Biarritz photographer who became a sculptor. Between the two, almost in the center of the book, the entry “Olibesarioko Saroia” describes this place, precisely determined by the calculations of an engineer, and which constitutes the exact center of the seven Basque provinces.
As he specifies in his foreword, there is no exhaustiveness in the exercise that Alain Gardinier has imposed on himself but “subjective and assumed” choices which involve Chaplin, Lizarazu, the operne, the espadrilles and of course the weather . Everyone can therefore browse through the pages according to their mood or their favorite subjects. Carried by a flexible, informative and entertaining writing, the reader revises a little and discovers a lot: personalities of yesterday and today, musical trends, delicacies or car brands… That is to say 113 reasons to fall in love with Basque Country.
Three signing sessions
Alain Gardinier will present his work on Saturday November 30, at 11 a.m., at the Librairie de la Rue en pente in Bayonne. The same day, at 5 p.m., he will be at the Bookstore in Biarritz. We will find him Saturday December 7, at 11 a.m., at the Le 5 bookstoree Art in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
