The presenter and writer Bernard Pivot, who got millions of French people reading thanks to his show Apostrophesdied Monday May 6 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in the Paris region, at the age of 89, his daughter Cécile Pivot announced to Agence France-Presse.
Remembered with a book in one hand, his pair of glasses in the other, Bernard Pivot also presented the show Culture broth and organized from 1985 the Dicos d’or, a spelling championship which quickly became international.
Apostrophes lasted fifteen years, from 1975 to 1990, followed by millions of viewers. And certain extracts still have great success on the internet.
Thus, 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 thirty 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 brought together nearlyone million followers on Twitterwas not started by this controversy, but he shocked in September 2019 with a tweet deemed sexist about the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
You tell me the newsBernard Pivot, 85 years old and still up to date
Several personalities have already reacted to the death of Bernard Pivot on social networks, such as the writer Alain Mabanckou: “ Bernard Pivot was a gigantic bridge », he writes.
Bernard Pivot was a gigantic bridge, and literature suffered an immense loss. He is, in my eyes, one of those mediators for whom I would say that in Europe also an old man who dies is a library which burns… RIP pic.twitter.com/iQ9KhXJYPg
— Alain Mabanckou (@amabanckou) May 6, 2024
In 2016, Bernard Pivot was ironic about his own death: “ The habit of radio stations calling me when a writer dies is so great that, the day I die, they will call me “.
The radio stations’ habit of calling me when a writer dies is so great that, the day I die, they will call me.
— bernard pivot (@bernardpivot1) January 22, 2016
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 into the Académie Goncourt. He became its president in 2014 and withdraws 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 faithful supporter of AS Saint-Etienne and the France.
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 Literary Figaro in 1958. Head of department at 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 Read, Point, The Sunday Journal.
Create intimacy
It was on New Year’s Day 1967 that Bernard Pivot appeared for the first time on television. In 1974, after the breakup of the ORTF, he had the idea ofApostrophesbroadcast for the first time on Antenne 2 on January 10, 1975.
This show that 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 Bernard 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 submits his guests to the “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.