Disappearance
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The indestructible incarnation of decades of literature on television, the presenter of the legendary “Apostrophes”, who also chaired the Goncourt Academy from 2014 to 2019, passed away this Monday, May 6, at the age of 89.
It is his favorite word, judging by the answer to the first question of the famous questionnaire to which he gave his guests at the end of the show. Cultural souphe was: “Today.” Because there was an apostrophe in the middle. Born on May 5, 1935 in Lyon (which perhaps explains his combination of tastes for gastronomy and football) and died this Monday, May 6, 2024, Bernard Pivot experienced an intense public life from 1975 to 1990, on Antenne 2 (selected In 1974, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had just broken up the ORTF), a period during which he hosted Apostrophes. For more than fifteen years (the premiere was on January 10, 1975), he represented the book to millions of French people. But not just any book: a book about television, which is a special subcategory after all. Which led him to become a kind of benevolent pope of French publishing, since in 2014 he found himself promoted to president of the Académie Goncourt, which he joined in 2004 and from which he resigned in 2019. In this assembly where moral rigor and editorial independence hardly was necessary, it is generally considered that, regardless of his taste in novels, he played a very welcome role in literary politics.
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