Rewarding the production of culture: Le Prix Goncourt

Abstract

Universally celebrated as the most prestigious French literary award since its inception in 1903, le Prix Goncourt plays a remarkably influential role in French literature. Linked to complex issues of the commercialization of art, the economic power of publishing houses, and the ambivalent relationship of the reading public to the critical press, the Goncourt represents a controversial phenomenon nervously anticipated every fall. Analysis of the cultural impact and critical reception of three novels recognized by the prize—Jean Rouaud's Les Champs d’honneur, Jean Echenoz's Je m’en vais, and Michel Houellebecq's La Carte et le territoire—reveals a multifaceted cultural network, embodying a fascinating mirror of the French cultural landscape itself. In 1990, the press applauded the first novel of a then-unknown Rouaud, whose book appeared with Minuit (significant because not with Gallimard, Grasset, or Seuil, the conglomerate known as “Galligrasseuil”); his exploration of the motifs of familial and national history resounded throughout France. In 1999, Echenoz's ludic conception of reality as a trompe-l’œil as duplicitous as fiction creates a hybrid text, part roman d’aventures, part polar. Finally, in 2010 Houellebecq offers a sarcastic art-world satire, is accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia, and hands to Flammarion its first Goncourt in two decades.