CULTURE Gard: Resist!, the essential book on André Chamson

These two events complement each other perfectly. At Carré d’art, the exhibition recounts the journey of André Chamson, an intellectual for uncertain times. Alcide’s book retraces the life of a man who deserves to be recognized to become someone famous again.

Pour the publisher and founder of AlcideYann Cruvellier : « Chamson suffers from a double injustice: oblivion and/or the label “regionalist writer”. Friend of Giono, he was part of the lineage of Ramuz. »

André Chamson himself was aware of this phenomenon. HAS” I have never considered my novels as regionalist novels. I don’t know any regional man. On the other hand, I know that every man is from somewhere. Should we say, once again, that nothing is original except the original and that if the universal does not reveal itself to us through the particular it risks never being more than the shadow of a shadow? No book is regional except the missed books. »

And Yann Cruvellier continues: “ As for forgetting, we must remember a Chamson who marked his time. Chief of staff of Daladier, co-founder of Friday with Jean Guéhenno, the future author of Journal des Années Noirs, friend of Gide, Martin du Gard, Saint-Exupéry, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Kawabata, to name just a few, his works are translated throughout the world. »

Sartre wrote in his famous Notebooks of the Funny War: “ I am not a great person in this world and I do not see the great people in this world, so my diary will not have the value that that of Giraudoux or Chamson could have. “It’s true that Chamson is today an almost forgotten author. But not quite. Voices are being raised, brains are thinking to reassess his place at the heart of our society. Even gone, he remains exemplary. It is perhaps in the 21st century that his writings take on their full meaning.

« Chamson, his faith in humanity, his analytical lucidity and his commitments resonate in today’s world. This is why we must reread him and discover what writer he was because it is as such that he gained the recognition of his peers » adds Yann Cruvellier.

Everyone will recognize André Chamson as an author, a humanist. André Chamson enjoyed success with his first novel, Roux le bandit (which was also republished by Alcide as a book, but also in a magnificent comic strip).

He got involved in the debates of the 1930s, founded the magazine Fridayone of the platforms of the Popular Front. His work, which earned him his election to the French Academy, has been translated throughout the world.

But, André Chamson, it is also a demand. HAS” The word that reveals the secret of its Cévennes birthdays Résister !as the basis of his beliefs. Combining a rare strength of work with undeniable courage, he participated in supporting the Spanish Republicans, joined the Resistance then as commander in the Alsace-Lorraine brigade that he created with André Malraux…

A sober and limpid writing, the clarity and lucidity of the analysis, the commitment: André Chamson lives in the time of a world that is changing accompanied by a question, “What men have we become?” » His work and his journey resonate singularly today, between resistance and hope.

« Since his youth, Chamson has lived primarily as a writer, and, for more than half a century, the society of his time recognized him as such. It is the essayist, the memoirist and, even more, the novelist who co-directs Friday and who spoke seven times at the Desert Assembly, who was elected to the French Academy in 1956 and whom former Colonel Berger appointed in 1959 to head the Archives of France. And if he must remain present at the heart of the 21st century, it can only be because he will still make his singular voice heard, as if lifted above himself by a demand for freedom that no vicissitude will ever silence, in accordance with the maxim of the Well of Miracles – this book little known, the dark star of Chamson’s work and which the author placed under the aegis of Job and Ezekiel: “The best recognize themselves in hope,” concludes Pascal Ory, who signs the preface to Résister !.

For the work to be this good, it took several hands. Soft, intelligible and sharp, those of Micheline Cellier, Patrick Cabanel, Eddy Noblet, Guillaume Bope and therefore Pascal Ory.

With more than 180 pages, Resist! offers an honest and endearing panorama of the life of a man, of a family. Drawings, correspondence, photos, press cuttings, testimonies… If you like Chamson, if you don’t know him or don’t know him well, if you are curious, if you want to see a Man in all his splendor, go to the Carré d’Art exhibition but buy this book!

André Chamson, Resist! published by Alcide, 188 pages at a price of 18 euros.