JEAN TEULE. Popular novelist and comic book author Jean Teulé died at the age of 69 on Tuesday October 18, 2022. The reasons for his death are not yet certain: cardiac arrest has been mentioned, a link with food poisoning is also highlighted.
[Mis à jour le 20 octobre 2022 à 17h34] The man of letters Jean Teulé died Tuesday, October 18 at the age of 69. The writer was popularized thanks to his bestsellers telling all kinds of stories, from black comedy to historical works. The author of many successes such asJoin the dance, The Montespan or Damn it, Baudelaire! died under special circumstances. Jean Teulé died in his accommodation in the 3rd arrondissement in Paris, according to a police source cited by Le Parisien. He would have succumbed to cardiac arrest, according to his editor, who could not, on Wednesday, be categorical about the causes of death.
The causes of his death remain uncertain: as indicated by The Parisian and Actu Paris, an investigation has been opened to determine the exact circumstances of his death. Several media, Wednesday, indicated that the cardiac arrest could have occurred following a food poisoning which affected him during the weekend, after a meal at the restaurant. The investigations carried out must confirm or inform this hypothesis. According to a journalist from M6, who relies on the entourage of the deceased writer, Jean Teulé’s state of health “deteriorated after eating meatballs last Saturday”. On Twitterhe says that Jean Teulé “was admitted to the Lariboisière hospital on Sunday before being able to return to his home”.
The death of Jean Teulé generated a wave of emotion in France, especially since his death occurred unexpectedly. In a communicated official, on October 20, 2022, the Elysée paid tribute to “one of our most popular authors”. President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron hailed “a triple gifted writer, for comics, television and literature”. The presidential couple sent “to his partner Miou-Miou, to his family, his relatives, and his readers, their heartfelt condolences”.
Born in Normandy on February 26, 1953, Jean Teulé liked to recall that he was born on the same day as “Victor Hugo and Buffalo Bill”, which underlined his taste for literature, at least for the first. The writer and cartoonist first entered the world of books through comics. The man devoted ten years of his life to drawing comic strips, from the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. When he traded drawing for words with his first novels, including the famous Rainbow for Rimbaud (1991). Jean Teulé however continued to attend his first love punctually. In his books, the novelist takes pleasure in recounting the little stories of History, those which are spoken of little or not at all, such as that of the cuckolded husband of the famous favorite of King Louis XIV in The Montespan. Jean Teulé also makes an impression with his works which focus on crimes or criminals who really existed and is a French reference in the genre of True crime. These often raw stories resonate with his style of writing, a style also marked by his love and knowledge of Old French and its popular expressions.
Some works by Jean Teulé have gone from books to the big screen with several adaptations including that of Rainbow for Rimbaud and here again the writer is in charge as director. Four other novels by the author are adapted but this time without the assistance of Jean Teulé: Darling, The Suicide Shop, Stop me according to the novel The laws of gravity and thunder flower. The fact remains that before being linked to the 7th art, Jean Teulé staged himself on the small screen with two major appointments, that of L’Assiette anglaise on Antenne 2 from 1987 to 1989 then in Nowhere else on Canal+ until the 1990s.
Jean Teulé, a passionate personality
Who better than the author to tell the story? Over the course of interviews, the writer was able to deliver a bit of personality. During a meeting with journalist Elodie Souigo on France info in 2020, the author got tired of a few confidences. As a child, he describes himself as “a little bit different”. He also shared part of his childhood with the couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier who felt this same gap with the other classmates “both of us felt different” (…) And neither he nor I, we are surprised by what happened to us. It’s as if we knew we were going to manage, that things were going to be fine and that we were going to chart our course.” They were not mistaken. Jean Teulé, jack of all trades is the author of numerous popular and critical successes. Example of his success, his historical novel The Montespan, sold over 500,000 copies. If a figure was needed to illustrate the fame of the author, The Suicide Shop has been translated into 24 languages.
As his career progressed, he felt growing anxiety. Also interviewed in 2022 on the program Le Monde d’Elodie on France info, Jean Teulé bothered to “disappoint” his readers. Despite the longevity of his career, he still had stage fright. “I tell myself that it’s the twentieth novel, and that I’ve been selling it for twenty years, it’s good! But not at all. I’m more and more nervous, more and more worried. I come across fingers saying to me: I hope that people will hang on to this thing” he declared.
During his career he received several awards. In 1984, Jean Teulé was recomposed at the Angoulême Festival, not as a novelist but as a comic strip author, his first love. He received the Grand Prix de la critique for Bloody Mary, work that he wrote and drew with his comrade Jean Vautrin, already author of the novel from which the comic strip is taken. A few years later, he will receive a special prize at the same prestigious festival in 1989 for a collection of reports, People from France in which he delivers personality portraits of all kinds. A year later, in 1990, he received an award at the International Comic Strip Festival for “his exceptional contribution to the renewal of the comic strip genre”. However, for the author this award has a special resonance. He confessed to France info“When I was given this thing, I thought I was dead. It was posthumous. The next day, it’s true, I stopped.”
In addition to his pedagogy, the author had another characteristic, his outspokenness. The writer did not have his tongue in his pocket whether you like it… or not! Jean Teulé did not consider himself an author like the others; without pretension, he told about European 1 that today’s world was “inflating it a little”. He didn’t want to talk about himself, preferring history or eccentric portraits to his misfortunes. On national radio, he easily criticized certain working methods of his colleagues: “For many writers, it’s ‘I have a bad knee, I’m going to write a book about it, it should interest the whole world’ . I don’t give a damn about that.” He didn’t want to put pressure on himself, he admitted to not reading many novels except when preparing his historical works, so he “wrote in his own way”, free and without comparison.
A passionate history writer
It was stronger than him, history was his favorite subject. In a meeting with journalists from Free Maine, he said about his appetite for the past: “It may be because the current world does not please me too much”. Above all, he loved historical news items. In eat it if you want published in 2009, it retraced the history of the village of Hautefaye where Alain de Monéys was mistaken for a Prussian and eaten by the villagers. Taken from a true story… The historical novel was his favorite genre. In his latest novel, released in 2022, Agincourt in rainy weatherhe recounted the defeat of France at Agincourt against the outnumbered English on October 25, 1415. In his novel Charlie 9 he told there in a fictionalized biography the story of the eponymous king of France.
In an interview given to West France, Jean Teulé had explained how he worked to enrich his historical novels. “For six months, I read everything I can. I want to be as close as possible to the truth. All the names of the characters, sometimes their physical descriptions, if I have them, are true.” he said. For him this kind of literature was underestimated. “At school, we are taught history badly, with lists of names, dates. Whereas if we dig, we find nuggets, incredible characters. That said, my novels also have a lot of resonance with the present world”. For France infohe had confided that when he went to schools, during invitations, students came to see him to say to him: “Sir, if it was you who gave us history lessons, we would have better grades .”
If he was discreet about his private life, Jean Teulé had not made his relationship with actress Miou-Miou a secret. The couple spun the perfect love since 1988 but had never spread in the media, Miou-Miou certainly cooled by the media exposure of these previous relations. Both working in the art professions, Jean Teulé and Miou-Miou met on a professional level during the film Stop Me, an adaptation of the book Les Lois de lagravité released in 2013 and in which Miou-Miou holds the main role.
Jean Teulé and Miou-Miou, Sylvette Henry of her real name, never married. The septuagenarian actress had indicated in the columns of Gala in 2020: “I don’t need that. You can have the desire in your head to spend your life with someone without having to say it in front of a witness!” In addition to not having sealed their union in a marriage, the writer and the actress have never had children together either. The actress, however, had two daughters from her previous relationships: Angèle in 1974 with Patrick Dewaere and Jeanne in 1978 with Julien Clerc.