“Author of around thirty novels and around ten essays, fifty years after +La Dentellière+, he leaves us on tiptoe, with the elegance that characterizes him,” Sophie Lainé told AFP .
A professor after studying philosophy, Pascal Lainé was crowned with two prestigious literary prizes: in 1971, he was the winner of the Médicis prize for “L'Irrévolution”, then three years later, of the Goncourt for “La Dentellière”, all two published by Gallimard.
The first tells the story of the meeting of two youths, that of a rebellious young philosophy professor appointed to a provincial technical high school and that of his students. The second addresses the condition of Pomme, a young girl working in a hair salon.
“La Dentellière”, a novel translated into several languages, was brought to the screen by Claude Goretta in 1977, launching the career of Isabelle Huppert, in the role of Pomme.
In 2000, Pascal Lainé, however, denounced in “Sacré Goncourt!” the media circus around the literary season, believing that “La Lacetière” had overshadowed the rest of his work. He continued to write until the end, his wife emphasized, adding that he had started a book in recent months.
“We only live fragments of our life (…) We don't live enough. And if we fail on the first try, there's no question of trying our luck again,” he declares, according to an extract that she sent to AFP.
“At a hundred years old, if by chance I held out until then, I would still only be in my first falters, me too and, wham, the wrong note! My existence is worth another and, if it is not represents a relatively serious matter that for me, it is still not nothing. In any case, how many men, on the day of their death, can affirm without laughing that they will have really lived?
