Jean Cormier and Symbad de Lassus: Blondin : 20 ans déjà ! (2011)

This is a tribute, a long love letter not written by two people – his long-term friend Jean Cormier and Blondin's grandson – but also, for example, his first wife Sylviane, his daughters Laurence and Anne, the 'Hussard' (like his friend Roger Nimier (1925-62) Michel Déon), Bernard Pivot, etc.

Jean Cormier (1945-2018), along with fellow writer and sports journalist Denis Lalanne, created the Festival Singe-Germain, which of course puns on Blondin's novel Un singe en hiver and the Saint-Germain area he frequented.

But this book is not just a celebration Antoine Blondin the writer, nor even Blondin the famed drinker, but Blondin as a sports writer, particularly of the Tour de France, of which he covered twenty-seven, from 1954 to 1982. He wrote for L'Équipe, following the cyclists in the famous '101': he couldn't drive, but went with, for instance, the leader Pierre Chaney, Jacques Augendre and Jean Bobet, all of whom have a word here to say about Blondin. During the Tour it may have been beer in the morning, pastis at noon and the strong stuff in the evening, but not of course for Jean Fargues, the driver.

Bobet's is perhaps the most interesting account, as he was his hotel room mate during the Tour, and when he talks about being awoken in the morning by Blondin playing at bullfighting with a towel and a chair, he was seeing in advance what he would see Bébel (Jean-Pierre Belmondo) play out to the cars in the film Un singe en hiver, and indeed what Blondin played to the cars on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Also of interest is what the Tour doctor Philippe Miserez says, that Blondin (who smoked two packets of cigarettes a day) was not killed by the demon drink but the demon nicotine: if he hadn't smoked, he'd no doubt have been around when this book was written, making it absurd to celebrate the twenty years since his death: he may have been a drunkard, but he wasn't an alcoholic.

Antoine Blondin and Pierre Assouline: Le Flâneur de la rive gauche: Entretiens (1988)

This is an edited collection of interviews made in 1988 between Pierre Assoulline and Antoine Blondin, three years before the writer's death. As might be expected, it is really humorous, and at the same time appears to be very honest. But.

Associated with what Bernard Frank (of whom Blondin speaks highly) in 1952 calls Les Hussards, when taken to task on the definition of this group, Blondin says that it essentially referred to himself, Roger Nimier, Michel Déon and Jacques Laurent: the 'core' Hussards, which was never a 'school' as the writers were very different. To Blondin, the common ground was the criticism of Sartre (who was nevertheless praised in Nimier's early writing) as an 'intellectual terrorist' without humour.

Assouline tries to dig out Blondin's political affiliations, although he says he has none: he repeats (as in his chat with Serge Gainsbourg (available online via Youtube)) that he's seen as left-wing by the right, and right-wing by the left. He vaguely situates himself somewhere in the middle. Vagueness seems to be a norm with Blondin.

What isn't vague is Blondin's drinking, which is almost a religion to the man. Alcohol is to some extent an escape, certainly a way of life, but the comfort it brings, and in particular the false companionship that accompanies it, is not exactly everything to Blondin, but it's halfway there. That's all in the fun: the 'bullfighting' of cars on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the spending of six entire days 'Chez Blanche' (a bar on the rue du Bac), the 33 arrests, Roger Nimier rescuing him financially from the cops, and on and on.

Blondin had many literary friends, Nimier being perhaps his greatest (until his death in 1962), but then there's also Marcel Aymé, Paul Morand, Jacques Chardon, etc. The idea of Blondin being elected to L’Académie française wasn't impossible: but how would he have reacted to such an invitation? Well, there were five cafés between Blondin's flat and the Académie: he would never make it there: although only 150 metres away, he would start out in his habit vert, leave his sword in the first bistrot, leave his cocked hat in the second, and shamefully end up at the Académie française in his underpants!

As for Blondin's most famous quotation, the last sentence of his novel L'Humeur vagabonde: 'Un jour nous prendrons des trains qui partent' (lit. 'One day we'll take leaving trains.'): the meaning? On 30 July 2018, the day France won the world football cup, Frédéric Beigbeder, in La Frivolité est une chose serieuse, claims that at last he's understood what Blondin meant: happiness has to be shared, otherwise it's worthless; being  proud of your country brings people closer to others. Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Beigbeder. Assouline tried hard to eke out a meaning from Blondin, and the first answer is: the quotation means that one day Blondin will write a readable book. Assouline repeats the question, and Blondin says that the meaning is that the trains will take him home. Er...

Antoine Blondin's grave in Père-Lachaise.

My Antoine Blondin posts:
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Antoine Blondin and Pierre Assouline: Le Flâneur de la rive gauche
Antoine Blondin: Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir
Antoine Blondin: Les enfants du bon Dieu

Antoine Blondin: Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir (1970)

Antoine Blondin was not part of a school, although he is generally associated with the Hussard writers, right-wing and anti-Sartre. Regarding Blondin's politics, though, he said in a conversation with Serge Gainsbourg in a bar (available on YouTube) that the right considered him left, but the left thought him right. It was Bernard Franck who gave them this title, and the other three Hussards are Roger Nimier (who 'provided' the name with his novel Le Hussard bleu), Jacques Laurent and Michel Déon.

For many years, Blondin was a very well-known character around Saint-Germain-des-Prés, mainly for his relentless drinking, and for his resulting antics, such as playing at 'bull-fighting' with oncoming cars. He was also well-known to the police, who arrested him on a number of occasions, and as well as novels also wrote for L'Équipe sports paper.

Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir is a kind of autobiography. I say 'kind of' because it's all over the place, it's an opportunity for Blondin to give a fine display of his verbal pyrotechnics. It's difficult to describe because the novel has no plot, being the memories of a fiftysomething's behaviour years ago, including the disagreements with his wife, but mainly the many bars he went to (particularly the ever-open Bar-Bac (also known as 'chez Blanche') on rue du Bac. Roger Nimier also features strongly in the novel, as in the episode when he agrees to help Blondin out financially when he can't pay his taxi fare. Other writers who make an appearance are Albert Vidalie (of whom the eldest daughter was Blondin's god-daughter) and Giulio Cesare Silvagni. A crazy but brilliant man, and a fascinating book.

My Antoine Blondin posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Antoine Blondin and Pierre Assouline: Le Flâneur de la rive gauche
Antoine Blondin: Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir
Antoine Blondin: Les enfants du bon Dieu

Antoine Blondin: Les enfants du bon Dieu (1952)

Looking at comments on this book – and there aren't many, partly I think because the writing of Antoine Blondin (1922–91) has dated so quickly, but largely (at least as far as this book is concerned) because this is so esoteric: a decent knowledge of European history is needed to understand the first part of this novel. But then even the title needs some explanation as it forms half of an expression: 'Il ne faut pas prendre les enfants du bon Dieu pour des canards sauvages' (lit. 'You mustn't take God's children for wild ducks'), meaning that people shouldn't be taken for idiots, or shouldn't be made fun of.

The (anti-)hero of the work is the narrator Sébastien Perrin, who's a thirty-year-old history teacher at a school in a well-heeled area of Paris and married to Sophie. They live in a block of flats which also houses a general and a viscount, and life is very monotonous for Sébastien, who decides to liven things up by not only changing the history syllabus but changing history itself, at least from the way he teaches it. One of the important changes he makes is not to include the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, which would also change many other things. As an example of the thinking, when Sophie and Sébastien are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary, the waiter whispers that there's no more Alsace, whereupon Sébastien looks at Sophie and declares that it's started: what Sébastien jokes has started is the messing up of history – the waiter is of course talking about wine, whereas Sébastien's talking geographical change.

During the Nazi occupation Sébastien was, like many other French workers, forced to do his STO (Service du travail obligatoire) in Germany, and on the way back home he worked as a groom and became amorously involved with Princess Albertina of Arunsberg-Giessen, although back in France he ended the relationship by informing her (ostensibly via a third party) that he had died.

However, Albertina later goes to France with her uncle and meets the 'dead' man, and of course they have a secret affair and she gets pregnant. Or at least so she thinks. I very rarely give up on reading a book, and although in the early stages I was slightly tempted to abandon this in the same way that I know others have done, I'm glad I stuck with it: the humour grows on you.

My Antoine Blondin posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Antoine Blondin and Pierre Assouline: Le Flâneur de la rive gauche
Antoine Blondin: Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir
Antoine Blondin: Les enfants du bon Dieu

Paris 2015: Antoine Blondin, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise #5

'Antoine Blondin
1922 – 1991'

Antoine Blondin was the son of the French female poet Germaine Blondin (1887–1965) and also wrote under the pseudonym Tenorio and was associated with the Hussards. His stint under occupied France between 1943 and 1944 with the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), in an Austrian synthetic rubber factory, inspired his first novel L'Europe buissonnière (1949), which won the prix des Deux Magots and gained the attention of Marcel Aymé and Roger Nimier. Other noted novels of Blondin's include Les Enfants du bon Dieu (1952), L'Humeur vagabonde (1955) and Un singe en hiver (1959). His drunken exploits particularly around the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area were fondly remembered. The novel Monsieur Jadis ou l'École du soir (1970) is autobiographical.