A book in one hand, his pair of glasses in the other: the image of the presenter of the most popular literature program remains etched in the memory. “Apostrophes” lasted fifteen years, from 1975 to 1990, followed by millions of viewers. And certain extracts still have great success on the internet. Bernard Pivot, who died this Monday, May 6 at the age of 89, is the man who made the French read, ending up being better known to the general public than many of the writers he interviewed or won awards with the Goncourt.
So when the Gabriel Matzneff affair arose in January 2020, who benefited from great indulgence while he had sexual relations with minors, we rewatched a lot of a show from March 1990 on which the writer was a guest. With 30 years of hindsight, the sequence is shocking. “ Today, morality comes before literature. Morally, this is progress », Bernard Pivot will defend.
The popularity of the literary journalist, who had nearly a million subscribers on Twitter, was not damaged by this controversy, but he shocked in September 2019 with a tweet deemed sexist about the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
Above all a journalist
Others remember him, dressed in the old gray teachers’ blouse, as the one who tried to reconcile French speakers with spelling by organizing, from 1985, the Dicos d’or, a spelling championship that quickly became international . In 2004, he was the first “ non-writer » co-opted within the Goncourt Academy. He became president in 2014 and stepped down at the end of 2019.
He has written three novels: Love in vogue » (1959), which he does not find serious, « Yes, but what is the question ? » (2012) and « …but life goes on » (2021), close to autofiction. Several essays as well, on the French language but also on his two other great passions: wine and football. Born in Lyon on May 5, 1935, into a family of small traders, he spent his childhood in Beaujolais and was known to be an enlightened lover of the wines of this region. We owe him a Wine lovers dictionary » (Plon, 2006). In football, he was a loyal fan of AS Saint-Etienne and the French team.
He defined himself above all as a journalist, a profession of which he experienced all facets. After starting out as an intern at Progrès de Lyon, he joined Le Figaro littéraire in 1958. Head of department at Le Figaro in 1971, he resigned in 1974 after a disagreement with Jean d’Ormesson (who would become his most frequent TV guest). He goes through Lire, Le Point, Le Journal du Dimanche.
Create intimacy
It was on New Year’s Day 1967 that Pivot appeared on television for the first time. In 1974, after the breakup of the ORTF, he had the idea of “ Apostrophes », broadcast for the first time on Antenne 2 on January 10, 1975. This program which he hosts live, after Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 1, is unbeatable on Friday evenings. We laugh a lot, we compete in wit, we smoke and drink, we insult each other, we kiss… The public loves it, the sales follow.
The giants of letters follow one another in this new kind of salon where Pivot knows how to create intimacy and bring together improbable duos. Cavanna tries to silence a dead drunk Charles Bukowski with a famous “ Bukowski, I’m going to punch you in the face! ”, to which Pivot adds: “ Shut up… »Solzhenitsyn defends « The Gulag Archipelago » and his memoirs. Marguerite Duras admits to him: “ We drink because God does not exist “.
Sagan, Barthes, Nabokov, Bourdieu, Eco, Le Clézio, Modiano, Levi-Strauss and even President Mitterrand will be his guests. In 1987, he clandestinely interviewed Lech Walesa in Poland. Facetious and meticulous reader, he subjects his guests to “ Pivot questionnaire », inspired by that of Proust.
When ” Apostrophes » stops, the tireless journalist creates “ Culture broth », always on public service, with a broader horizon than books. When the show ceased in June 2001, the last number attracted 1.2 million viewers.
