Pauvert, l'irréductible by Chantal Aubry

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pauvert, l'irréductible by Chantal Aubry William Cloonan Aubry, Chantal. Pauvert, l'irréductible. L'échappée, 2018. ISBN 978-2-37309-044-4. Pp. 589. Toward the beginning of her study, the author makes a fleeting comparison be-tween Jean-Jacques Pauvert and an eighteenth libraire-éditeur. Her point is well-taken. Pauvert was very much in the tradition of earlier colleagues willing to risk their individual and financial freedom by publishing works that in one form or another challenged the status quo. Despite personal and professional risks, attacking the intellectual and moral complacency of les bien-pensants had been the hallmark of Pauvert's publishing career. Never was this more in evidence than in his championing the works of the Marquis de Sade whose declaration of innocence he appears to have taken to heart: "Ce n'est pas ma façon de penser qui a fait mon malheur, c'est celle des autres" (59). Amid the brouhaha surrounding the publishing of the Marquis's sulfurous prose, it is often forgotten that Sade was an Enlightenment philosophe, a contemporary of the more respectable Voltaire and Diderot, and that with them he struggled to break down traditional views of the individual and society. The Marquis's area of predilection, the force and complexity of sexual desire, along with his explicit if overheated ways of writing about it, might make him the most outrageous philosophe, yet still a philosophe. The Sadean shadow that hovers over Pauvert's achievements should not obscure his other activities. In the 1950s and 60s he reissued works by André Breton and other surrealists. He formed and deformed relationships with other editors in an effort to get into print works he deemed important, and helped to create a revival of interest in Georges Bataille and Raymond Roussel. It was Pauvert who first printed Dominique Aury's modern version of Sade, Histoire d'O (1954). He published for a time the idiosyncratic revue Bizarre as well as the radical pamphlets that appeared in the collection Liberté. His catalogue was extensive, and while Pauvert is best-known for favoring writers on the fringes of literary respectability, he was also responsible for reprints of works by Hugo and Chateaubriand, among others. Whatever one choses to make of Pauvert's publishing decisions, his contribution to the modern French literary scene is incontestable. Aubry, drawing heavily on materials available in the Bibliothèque Mitterrand and IMEC, tells Pauvert's story in great detail. She provides thorough discussions of his somewhat conflicted relations with the wily Jean Paulhan, his efforts to bring the Littré back into print, his dislike of bestsellers yet his thrill when Histoire d'O provided him with one. Aubry also provides succinct cultural postwar accounts of his complicated relationships with other editors, such as Maurice Nadeau, René Julliard, Jean-Claude Fasquelle, and the Gallimard clan. Yet for all the research and intelligent commentary that characterize Pauvert l'irréductible, there is one personage [End Page 255] who remains enigmatic: Jean-Jacques Pauvert. We understand his political and social milieu, but why he followed such a difficult career path remains a mystery. William Cloonan Florida State University, emeritus Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French