After the journalist's death last May, his daughter retraced, using countless archive photos, the exceptional career of the television man.
After the departure of Bernard Pivot, Cécile, one of his daughters, found a series of binders in his office that she dared to open for the first time. This is how she discovered countless perfectly classified photos, in 75 albums, relating to different eras of the long career of the journalist and writer. Most of them had been taken and collected by Agnès, his other daughter.
In order to experience the feeling of spending a little more time with him, she immersed herself in these archives for three months. She extracted hundreds of documents before reading dozens of press articles, in order to associate these photos with passages from her life and career. The whole is brought together in The taste of othersa book that she signed with Agnès, her sister.
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The great times of “Apostrophes” and “Bouillon de culture” are of course mentioned, starting with those where he received Arthur Miller, Anthony Burgess, Angela Davis, but also this exceptional meeting with Jean-Marie le Clézio , to the almost general indifference of the media, because, the same evening, on TF1, Bernard Tapie was the guest of the “Game of Truth”.
“Press card 17316”
A photo showing Vladimir Nabokov during an interview that has become cult, is accompanied by a revelation: the author of Lolita had expressed a wish that was immediately granted: in the teapot, there was, in reality, whiskey. Nobody noticed it then, which is not the case for this other evening that has become legendary, September 22, 1978, when Charles Bukowski, completely drunk, decided to leave the set.
As a nod to the behind the scenes of these shows, we discover the presenter in the moment of makeup, but also surrounded by André Berger, courier for the publishing houses and Madame Reversat, the caretaker of his Parisian home. For around thirty years, they delivered and brought packages of books to his Parisian apartment on Avenue Niel, sometimes several times a day.
Dad hated the word “here”, he much preferred her, “Today”
Cécile Pivot
In a chapter entitled “Press card 17316”, the time is discussed when, as a courier at Le Figaro Littéraire before taking over its management, he was, in 1968, the first to believe in the future of Patrick Modiano, and in 'interview. The future Nobel Prize winner kept the letter then sent by the critic as a good luck charm. To his love of literature was always added those of football, Gauloiserie, cooking and Beaujolais, born at the age of 5 when he took part in the grape harvests which he called his “intermissions of freedom”. “Drink wine and live joyfully” is it written on a poster in front of which he places, a few pages before, family documents, which, no doubt out of modesty, he has never shown.
We discover, among others, his grandchildren in the house in Beaujolais, and Anne-Marie, his sister, who was a German teacher. The whole thing is accompanied by a long, deeply affectionate biographical text by Pierre Assouline, one of his colleagues at the Académie Goncourt. “Whoever wants to write our cultural circuit towards the end of the other century will not be able to avoid a careful examination of the archives of Apostrophes”he writes, among others. Cécile Pivot confides that she chose him for this tribute because he one day used the word about his father that, in her opinion, sums up the man he was: “kindness”. She adds that she retraced this journey with love, but without the slightest form of nostalgia. “Dad hated the word “here”, he much preferred her, “Today””.
