It was a time, around 1952, when adolescents did not spend their nights to grieve on Tiktok. In his superb preface to the collection of Jacques Rivière, Critique and creation (Bouquins), Jean-Yves Tadié remembers his 15th birthday when, in the evening in his bed, he read passionately Studies And News Studies from river, “like others comics”. “Show that the great writer must always remain in the midst of us, like Christ with the disciples of Emmaus, such is the first task of the critic,” writes Tadié. Best friend of Alain-Fournier before marrying his sister Isabelle (then being the lover of Yvonne Gallimard, Gaston’s wife…), Rivière led The NRF From 1919 to his premature death in 1925, at the age of 38. Sensitive and rather wise reader in appearance, a lover of music as well as literature, he knew how to distinguish the novelties of his time and failed neither Debussy, Nor Stravinsky, nor Proust, which he defended from the start. He was undoubtedly less relevant in painting, if we believe his distrust of Vallotton and Matisse … Anyway, this rich volume Critique and creation (where there are also political texts as well asLoved, The only novel published by Rivière), is an essential bible for all the young people of 2025 who would dream of writing on books and rubbing shoulders with our time.
We will not say, alas, not as much a thin volume of 100 pages as the round table devoted to Frédéric Berthet under the title The impassive. The cult, fun and anxious author of Daimler leavesalso died early to 49, gave rods here and there, especially in Daily newspaperbut also to Madame Figaro or at The international idiot. He evokes here with Kafka spirit, Saul Bello, Drieu La Rochelle or Jean Raspail, but that his texts are short! The fan remains on its hunger. We still emphasize some aphorisms, including this one: “Every writer is a plunged humorist, by surprise, in the middle of a drama.” And we stop on this passage when, in 1989, Berthet rediscovers the old papers of Jacques Laurent: “Can we say that we read these articles, these essays with a kind of melancholy? Tacking Sartre, Malraux, Mauriac, devil, it was worth it. They were people who could answer. Today, we can no longer attack anyone.”
All his life, Angelo Rinaldi will have gave TORT to Frédéric Berthet. Now 84 years old, he never hung up the sulphate. A small publisher, the moments, had the excellent idea of reissuing in the form of a book a special issue of L’Express dating from 1990. Rinaldi remains the greatest literary critic in the history of our newspaper. Better to have consulted your cardiologist before opening Roses and thorns : It is such a happiness of reading that we closely borders on the attack. The texts are classified into five categories: “a little”, “a lot”, “passionately”, “to madness”, “not at all”. The gogginal player naturally begins with the “not at all” section, and there he feasts with the descents of Aragon, Duras (“La Castafiore”), Sollers (“Le Bel-Ami Hypertextuel”), Mishima (“Le D’Annunzio du Japan”) or Albert Cohen (“The very type of the surface writer”). Even when you love Fitzgerald, you can only salute its insight when Rinaldi dismantles the myth of this “great author for protected adolescents”.
And what about his humor when he plummers the Clézio or the Newspaper Goncourt brothers, and his finesse of analysis when he shows how Paris rotten Kundera … “Criticizing is breaking”, said Rinaldi. But he added: “Don’t make me a Fouquier-Tinville, it’s exaggerated.” Relentless in his detestation, he is just as much in his adorations. We take the same pleasure in reading the articles gathered in the “passionately” section. Rinaldi expressed his admiration for Gombrowicz and Léautaud, proof of the correctness of his taste, and his veneration for Saint-Simon, which he compares to a samurai. Intelligence, erudition and style: everything is there. In a mocking text, he points to an author “narrative stuff to which we have given up since Charles X”. Who still writes like that, with sovereignty at La Talleyrand? In his big years, Angelo Rinaldi was even better than Renaud Matignon, the wonderful critic of Literary figaro. Happy will we be when we have a tenth of his talent.
Critique and creation. By Jacques Rivière. Bouquins, 1152 p., € 32.
The impassive. By Frédéric Berthet. The round table, 109 p., € 22.
Roses and thorns. By Angelo Rinaldi. Editions of moments, 268 p., € 21.