We wouldn’t want to cause tears in the cottages, but appearing on the first Goncourt list is not always an easy task. There were 16 of them this year, nine men, seven women, to be on the starting line on September 5. Until October 3, the date of the second jury selection, reducing the number of contenders to eight, what fun!
From there, the situation gets tougher, because everyone is going to accomplish, as a herd – those who fail out being asked to put on a good show – a veritable tour of France to meet the students for the Goncourt high school students (awarded on November 23). On October 25, the third list falls, only four competitors left, but the 16 continue their journey, in prison this time, to meet the Goncourt jurors of prisoners.
On November 7, mass is said, the 400 meters turns into a marathon for the only winner, Jean-Baptiste Andrea, crowned for Watch over her. Before his consecration, the 52-year-old from Cannes already had a full dance book (around a hundred signatures in bookstores from September to Christmas), and only spent, he tells us, two days a week with his wife. and his dog Lorca, a superb black German shepherd. A pace which should accelerate, bookstores, media libraries, literary events, all coveting the crowned one, even belatedly.
Jean-Baptiste Andrea won the Goncourt for “Veiller sur elle”, a fresco of more than 500 pages which combines the history of Italy in the 20th century, thwarted love and passion for art, published by a small publishing house, L’iconoclaste.
© / Marianne Payot/L’Express
It’s better not to have a job that’s too demanding
Finally, there are trips outside borders, the winner being “at the mercy” of a coronation by one or more of the 36 international “Goncourt choices”, not to mention the foreign publishers who will have bought the rights to the novel (they were already around fifteen before obtaining the prize) and will wish to have the Frenchman in the flesh.
It’s better not to have a job that’s too demanding… Which is the case for Andrea, who is devoted to writing. The fact remains that you have to know how to keep a cool head – the honors and the jackpot can destabilize certain winners, as Jean Carrière, vintage 1972, so well recounted in The Price of a Goncourt or Pascal Lainé (1974) with Sacred Goncourt.
We also think of Yann Queffélec, his million copies sold Barbarian Wedding (Goncourt 1985) and his millions of francs as quickly squandered as they were earned (he once again bought a luxurious sports car, which he used little and defrauded, among others, many of his friends). To help the elected official of 2023 put everything into perspective, we recommend reading the Paris of the Goncourts (Editions Alexandrines) by Robert Kopp, a delightful evocation of the literary world at the time of the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt and an account of the Parisian wanderings of the two heirs, from a theater to a salon via their house in Auteuil.