Jean Echenoz’s Jérôme Lindon recounts, successful sixty spare, affectionate, sometimes lightly barbed pages, the twenty-year narration that its writer enjoyed with his publisher, a fable of the French literate establishment. The communicative begins successful 1979 with an unexpected summons to Lindon’s office, and a declaration for a archetypal caller that virtually everyone other had turned down; it ends with the quality of Lindon’s decease from crab successful 2001. Between those 2 poles, Echenoz sketches a lively and idiosyncratic presumption of the bonds and insignificant psychoses that tin hap erstwhile 2 radical enactment successful tandem, and sometimes successful conflict, grounded successful a shared emotion of connection and of the writer’s art.
Five years aft Echenoz paid his fateful archetypal sojourn to Editions de Minuit, and hardly a twelvemonth earlier I met Jean himself, I climbed the aforesaid constrictive staircase astatine 7 Rue Bernard-Palissy to spot Jérôme Lindon. I don’t callback a “friendly-sounding” pistillate connected the 2nd floor, though I accidental it was she who ushered maine up, arsenic she had Jean. What I bash callback is the feeling of awestruck intimidation, truthful skillfully and amusingly evoked successful Echenoz’s statement of his ain archetypal meeting; the impressiveness of tall, acerbic Jérôme Lindon seated down his desk, portion I perched connected a not terribly comfy seat that seemed to beryllium placed miles distant from the large man.
Echenoz sketches a lively and idiosyncratic presumption of the bonds and insignificant psychoses that tin hap erstwhile 2 radical enactment successful tandem, and sometimes successful conflict.
It was September 1984. I was connected my honeymoon with my archetypal woman and, similar the young go-getters we were, we’d combined our wedding voyage with a concern trip, she to interrogation a writer for the Paris Review, maine to sojourn chap publishers. The information that Jérôme Lindon received maine astatine each had little to bash with my idiosyncratic lasting successful the publishing industry—a fledgling exertion astatine Random House, I had none—than with the information that I’d been graciously provided an instauration by a formidable literate agent, a person of a person of the family.
“Of that archetypal meeting, I’ve retained a representation astatine erstwhile vague and precise,” Echenoz writes, and I could accidental the same. I cognize determination was large courtesy, archetypal successful seeing maine astatine all, past successful treating maine arsenic if I were idiosyncratic worthy seeing. I deliberation determination was immoderate wide proposal involved, from the seasoned to the tyro. Most of all, determination was Lindon’s hearty recommendation, rather generous toward an untried young editor, that I get English-language rights to Marguerite Duras’s L’Amant, which had conscionable been published and was already creating a stir. I don’t retrieve whether helium gave maine a transcript oregon whether I bought one—the transcript I inactive ain has a terms scribbled connected the archetypal leafage (49 francs, astir $5 astatine the time), alongside a discreet stamp to beryllium that it wasn’t being shoplifted.
I dutifully took the caller location to New York and endeavored to get the rights, but the powers-that-were astatine Random House deemed Duras a specialty item, acceptable for a Grove Press-type audience, and not a bully concern of their mega-dollars. They fto the publication spell to their sister location Pantheon, which had a estimation for welcoming specified losing propositions. The Lover went to fig 9 connected the New York Times bestseller list, cementing Duras’s estimation successful the Anglophone satellite and leaving maine with a prestigious regret for my CV. So it goes.
It was astir the aforesaid clip that different Minuit title, Cherokee by a definite Jean Echenoz, was handed to maine to work by Jonathan Galassi, who backmost past was Random House’s exertion of specified unsalable genres arsenic poesy and translations, and poesy successful translation. I devoured the caller successful 1 go, communicated my enthusiasm to Galassi, and the 2 of america went to transportation it to Jason Epstein, astatine the clip the imprint’s exertion successful chief. I tin inactive spot Jason riffling done the French edition, making immoderate remark astir authors with “unpronounceable” names (Jean relates a comic echo of a akin interest successful 1 of his archetypal conversations with Lindon), and tossing it implicit our heads and into the hallway.
As Echenoz says successful his memoir, regarding the mediocre show of his ain archetypal book, income were “beside the point: I person a steadfast and it’s Jérôme Lindon. The remainder is unimportant.”
Fortunately for me, this communicative had a happier ending than the Duras episode: learning that the rights to Echenoz’s spurned caller had been acquired by David R. Godine, I wrote to Godine to suggest myself arsenic translator. David bravely took maine on, and Cherokee was published by him successful 1987—the commencement of a agelong relation and relationship with David, with his publishing location (where I ended up moving for 7 years arsenic editorial director), and astir of each with Jean himself, 10 of whose books I’ve present had the pleasance of translating—including Jérôme Lindon.
I accidental I should accidental “eleven books,” arsenic this doesn’t number the collaborative caller Semaines de Suzanne (published successful English arsenic S: A Novel), co-written by Jean, Harry Mathews, Patrick Deville, Florence Delay, and 3 others, including yours truly, who besides translated immoderate of the French contributions. The task came astir erstwhile Jean was awarded a residency astatine the Atlantic Center for the Arts successful New Smyrna Beach, Florida, successful 1990. Having been invited to articulation his team, we were tasked with penning a portion of fabrication implicit the residency’s three-week duration, betwixt afternoons connected the beach, nights astatine the section barroom (The Breakers), outings to adjacent sights (including a shuttle motorboat astatine Cape Canaveral), and enactment connected our ain projects. We duly invented a main character, Suzanne, sketched retired the basal crippled lines, divvied up the chapters, and took retired our notebooks.
After 3 weeks, we had a unsmooth manuscript, which Jean happily brought backmost to Jérôme Lindon to publish. As helium recounts, the reception was little than stellar: “One hr later, Jérôme Lindon calls: Irène tells maine you were wondering astir this. So fto maine archer you, I deliberation this happening is worthless, helium says successful essence, it’s precise bad, it’s precise atrocious for you, I’m publishing it conscionable truthful nary different steadfast gets his hands connected it.” And indeed, Semaines de Suzanne was published by Minuit successful April 1991, with arsenic small fanfare arsenic imaginable (though it was besides translated into Japanese and, I believe, German). It attracted scant attraction and sold hardly a copy.
None of that mattered to me: this was my archetypal published book, and it bore the Minuit imprint. As Echenoz says successful his memoir, regarding the mediocre show of his ain archetypal book, income were “beside the point: I person a steadfast and it’s Jérôme Lindon. The remainder is unimportant.” I’ve been fortunate capable to cognize precisely what helium means.
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Jérôme Lindon by Jean Echenoz, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, is disposable from Archipelago Books.
English (US) ·