Letters between lawyers, formal notice, next summons… The sale of a very intimate unpublished notebook by Georges Perec has triggered friction for several weeks between the heirs of the writer (1936-1982) and those of Suzanne Lipinska ( 1928-2022), a woman for whom he felt an absolute, euphoric, then tragic passion in the years 1969-1971. With, as a result, a renewed legal debate on the right of ownership for property of this type.
Before her death, Suzanne Lipinska had already considered selling the original manuscript of The Disappearancewhich Perec had given him. He had written this novel without the letter “e” at her home, in Andé (Eure), in a mill which she had transformed into a place of creation for artists, and where François Truffaut had filmed scenes from Four Hundred Blows and of Jules and Jim. “This extraordinary place requires major workexplains Stanislas Lipinski, Suzanne's grandson. The sale of Georges Perec's papers will be used to finance them. »
For the Perec heirs, the surprise came from the other documents put on sale simultaneously. Benoît Forgeot, the Parisian bookseller responsible for finding them a buyer, offers in the same lot The Disappearance, 135 drawings and paintings by Perec, 35 love letters addressed to Suzanne Lipinska, as well as a previously unknown sketchbook. The one at the heart of the dispute. In this 44-page notebook, where texts and drawings alternate, the usually modest writer addresses “Suzon” and expresses all the suffering of this unrequited love which will later bring her to the brink of suicide. “You rescued me from indifference, but you restored me to worry”writes Perec, according to an extract revealed by the bookseller.
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