Pierre Guyotat

Pierre Guyotat is a French writer. He was born in 1940 at Bourg-Argental.

Biography

In 1960, Guyotat wrote his first novel, "Sur un cheval". He was called to Algeria in the same year. In 1962 he was found guilty of desertion and publishing forbidden material. After three months in jail he was transferred to a disciplinary centre. Back in Paris, he got involved in journalism, writing first for France Observateur, then for Nouvel Observateur. In 1964, Guyotat published his first novel "Ashby".

In 1965, he published"Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats" (later released in English as "Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers"). Based on Guyotot's ordeal as a soldier in the Algerian War, the book earned a cult reputation and became the subject of various controversies, mostly because of its omnipresent sexual obsessions and homoeroticism.

In 1968, Guyotat became a member of the French Communist Party, which he left in 1971.

"Eden, Eden, Eden" came out in 1971 with a preface by Michel Leiris, Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers (Michel Foucault's text was received late and therefore didn't appear as a preface [Catherine Brun, "Pierre Guyotat. Essai biographique", Paris: Léo Scheer, 2005, p. 220-221.] ). This book was banned from being publicized or sold to under-18s. A petition of international support was signed (notably by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Boulez, Joseph Beuys, Pierre Dac, Jean Genet, Joseph Kessel, Maurice Blanchot, Max Ernst, Italo Calvino, Jacques Monod, Simone de Beauvoir, and Nathalie Sarraute). François Mitterrand, and Georges Pompidou tried to get the ban lifted but failed. Claude Simon (who won the Nobel Prize in 1985) resigned from the jury of the Prix Médicis after the prize wasn't awarded to "Eden, Eden, Eden".

In 1973, Guyotat's play "Bond en avant" was performed. During the 70s Guyotat was involved in various diverse protests: for soldiers, immigrants, and prostitutes. One of those cases was of great importance for him: he personally helped Mohamed Laïd Moussa, an 24 years old Algerian ex-teacher who was accused and then found guilty of unintended murder in Marseille. One week after he came out of jailed, Mohamed Laïd Moussa was murdered by a masked man; the event had a profound impact on Pierre Guyotat, who carried on the battle for a while.

In 1975 his novel "Prostitution" came out (which incorporated "Bond en avant" as the final monologue). For now on, Guyotat's novels deal with a new kind of illegibility and obscenity. The fictions still explore the unthinkable possibility of worlds structured by sexual slavery and transgression of fundamental taboos. But French language is now unrecognizable, estranged by a extreme grammatical, syntactic and lexical creativity. Ellipses of letters or words, neologisms and phonetic transcriptions of Arabic speaking utterances make it difficult to understand. In the 1987 reedition of "Prostitution", a 120 pages appendix - resume, glossary, "grammar" and translations - is added to the actual fiction and help the disoriented reader.

In 1977, while working on "Le Livre" (1984) and "Histoire de Samora Machel" (yet unpublished), he suffered a psychiatric illness. The depression and the deterioration of his physical and mental state culminated, in December 1981, in a coma. On December 30th 1981, the ban on "Eden, Eden, Eden" was lifted.

From 1984 to 1986, Guyotat gave a series of readings and performances of his work all over Europe.

In January 2000 he was involved in the reopening of the Centre Georges Pompidou at Beaubourg, contributing a reading of the first pages of "Progénitures". In 2005, "Sur un cheval" was reedited and in April 2005 it was read on Radio France under Alain Ollivier's direction.

Bibliography

Biography

* 2005 Carnets de bord volume 1 1962-1969. Ligne-Manifeste.
* 2005 "Essai biographique" by Catherine Brun, Editions Leo Scheer

Theatre

*1972 "Bond en avant", produced by Marcel Bozonnet and Alain Ollivier
*1987 "Bivouac", produced by Alain Ollivier
*2005 "Sur un cheval" with Valérie Crunchant and Mireille Perrier. Reading directed by Alain Ollivier for France Culture

Novels

*1961 "Sur un cheval" (Seuil, Paris).
*1964 "Ashby" (Seuil, Paris).
*1967 "Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats" (Gallimard, Paris).
*1970 "Eden, Eden, Eden" (Gallimard, Paris).
*1972 "Littérature interdite" (Gallimard, Paris).
*1975 "Prostitution" (Gallimard, Paris).
*1984 "Le Livre" (Gallimard, Paris) et "Vivre" (Denoël, Paris).
*1995 "Wanted Female", with Sam Francis (Lapis Press, Los Angeles).
*2000 "Progénitures" (Gallimard, Paris) and "Explications" (Léo Scheer).

References

External links

* [http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25341-2087452,00.html The inhuman work of Pierre Guyotat] by John Taylor for the TLS
* [http://www.ubu.com/sound/guyotat.html Recordings of Guyotat reading his work (in French)] hosted by UbuWeb.