Goncourt Prize 2020 for “L’Anomalie” which is heading towards one million copies, Hervé Le Tellier signed on Wednesday February 24 at the “La Machine à lire” bookstore, quiet and accessible.
Sone novel is already a publishing phenomenon. Or, to take a comparison of circumstance, a “reading machine”. Prix Goncourt 2020, Hervé Le Tellier was at home on Wednesday afternoon at Place du Parlement Sainte-Catherine. Sitting in the sun in front of the Bordeaux bookstore, the author of “L’Anomalie” (1) took part in a long signing session. “We would of course have preferred to accompany this with a meeting with the readers, but her mere presence is precious”, rejoiced the bookseller Hélène des Ligneris who has already sold hundreds of copies of the novel, and boasts “the humor of an author as humble as he is cultivated ”.
Since The Lover of Marguerite Duras in 1984, no Goncourt had reached such an audience. “I could never have imagined it”, recognizes Le Tellier. Word of mouth, good reviews, a presence on the Goncourt list and all the other literary prizes, then the consecration of the major literary prize with its red banner, finally the Covid effect which favors reading compared to other cultural practices and highlights the most visible works: the planets are aligned for an author esteemed but not necessarily used to large prints.
Tobacco at Air France
Smiling, the autographed novel under her arm, Véronique is immersed in this aeronautical novel. “I work at Air France and he was advised to me by a captain who found him incredible. And then he talks about our planes with the passengers of this flight 006 Paris-New York as his hero, moreover, the novel is a hit within the company ”. The complexity of the plot keeps the reader in suspense. Same gluttony at Paul Roussy: “I appreciate the mathematical poetry of the novel, the association of literature and science, and I intend to use it when I will be in front of my students”, explains this teacher who held to bring the novelist a copy of “Un monde”, his collection of poetry freshly published by Editions du Merle mocking.
Putting down the pen, the writer does not need to be asked to comment on his novel: “it offers the reader a thought experiment and I wanted to make him free to let his imagination run wild by quickly drawing my characters. I didn’t want to make a paving stone but to force myself to a certain density ”. President of the group of “Oulipo” (Ouvroir de literature potential) dear to Raymond Queneau and Georges Pérec, these virtuosos of a playful writing, it is also thanks to a conference on “the impostures and the truths in art ”at the University Michel-de-Montaigne that Hervé Le Tellier made the trip to Bordeaux.
And he lets everyone discover the constraints they have voluntarily given themselves to concoct this pretty literary clockwork mechanism. As for example offering through the protagonists of the novel an almost complete sample of the population of the world, by origins and ages, even if it was necessary to prune somewhat …
(1) Éditions Gallimard, white collection, 336 p., € 20
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