This Monday, November 4 will be awarded the king of literary prizes: the Goncourt. Created in 1903, the award was coveted because it allowed its winner to receive an income of 5,000 francs at the time. This sum was chosen because it corresponded to two years of a civil servant’s salary.
The Goncourt Prize then gave birth to other literary awards, and not necessarily for the right reasons. He is accused of misogyny from the second edition because the jury, made up of ten men, elected the novel by Léon Frappié while the big favorite was a woman, Myriam Harry.
As a sign of protest, contributors to a women’s magazine decide to create a competing literary prize: the “Vie Heureuse” prize named after their newspaper, which has since become the Prix Femina. This jury, exclusively female, will show less sexism since for its second edition, it will reward a man, Romain Rolland.
Another award born after a joke
Le Goncourt then created another competitor. This time, it all started as a joke. In 1925, the deliberations of the Goncourt jury were interminable and pushed the impatient journalists to go to lunch together. Between the pear and the cheese, they have an idea: since the Goncourt is presented by writers, why wouldn’t they, literary critics, do the same?
Idea validated on condition of making an anti-Goncourt and rewarding a funny book. They thus create the Renaudot prizenamed after Théophraste Renaudot, creator of one of the very first newspapers in France, the Gazette.
The small problem is the difficulty in finding a book that fits their concept, that is to say a funny book. They end up choosing the serious one by a young unknown author, Armand Lunel, to give him a boost. From then on, they can no longer go back. Which will allow great authors like Marcel Aymé, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Louis Aragon or Georges Perec to receive the Renaudot. Not bad for a price that started from a joke.
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