The French writer Pascal LainéPrix Médicis (1971) and Goncourt (1974), died Monday December 30 in Paris at the age of 82. He devoted his life to writing but also to photography.
“Author of around thirty novels and around ten essays, fifty years after La Dentellière (Gallimard), he leaves us on tiptoe, with the elegance that characterizes him”said his wife Sophie Lainé à l’AFP.
Professor after studying philosophy, Pascal Lainé was crowned with two prestigious literary prizes: in 1971, he was the winner of the Medici Prize for The Irrevolutionthen three years later, from Goncourt for The Lacemakerboth 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.
Isabelle Huppert revealed by the adaptation of The Lacemaker in 1977
The Lacemakera novel translated into several languages, was brought to the screen by Claude Goretta in 1977, launching the career ofIsabelle Huppertin the role of Apple.
In 2000, Pascal Lainé had however denounced in Holy Goncourt! (Fayard), the media maelstrom around the literary return to school, believing that The Lacemaker had obscured the rest of his work. The writer had also started a new book in recent months.
“We only live bits and pieces of our life (…) We don’t live enough. And if you miss on the first try, there’s no question of trying your luck again.”he declares.
“At a hundred years old, if by chance I held on until then, I too would still only be in my first falters and, wham, the wrong note! My existence is worth another and, if it only represents a relatively serious matter 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? »
