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| Bernard Pivot | |
Bernard Pivot, whose weekly TV show Apostrophes deeply influenced what the French public read between 1975 and 1990, died on May 6. He was 89.
"The country watched him cajole, needle and flatter novelists, memoirists, politicians and actors, and the next day went out to bookstores looking for the tables marked Apostrophes," the New York Times wrote. "In a French universe where serious writers and intellectuals jostle ferociously for the public's attention to become superstars, Mr. Pivot never competed with his guests. He achieved a kind of elevated chitchat that flattered his audience without taxing his invitees."
He was responsible for an estimated third of all book sales in France for 15 years. In 1982, "one of President François Mitterrand's advisers, the leftist intellectual Régis Debray, vowed to get rid of the power of 'a single person who has real dictatorial power over the book market.' But the president stepped in to stanch the resulting outcry, reaffirming Mr. Pivot's power."
Current President Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media that Pivot was "a transmitter, popular and demanding, dear to the heart of the French." And Le Parisien's headline about Pivot's death was "The Man Who Made Us Love Books."
Pivot interviewed such French literary giants as Marguerite Duras, Patrick Modiano, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Georges Simenon. Americans who appeared on the show included William Styron, Susan Sontag, Henry Kissinger, Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy, Charles Bukowski, and Paul Auster.
Altogether 723 episodes of Apostrophes ran. In 2001, he began hosting Bouillon de Culture, which ran for 10 years. In 2014, he became president of the Goncourt Academy, a position he held for five years.
He also wrote some 20 books, "principally about reading, and several dictionaries."