Bernard Pivot, Host of Influential French TV Show on Books, Dies at 89

 

 

 ""In 1958, he was hired by Figaro Littéraire, the literary supplement to the newspaper Le Figaro, to write the sort of tidbits about the literary world that the French press delighted in, and Mr. Pivot was launched. He had various television and radio programs in the early 1970s; helped start Lire, a magazine about books; and on Jan. 10, 1975, at 9:30 p.m., aired the first of the 723 episodes of “Apostrophes

From 1975 to 1990, France watched Mr. Pivot on Friday evenings to decide what to read next. The country watched him cajole, needle and flatter novelists, memoirists, politicians and actors, and the next day went out to bookstores for tables marked “Apostrophes,” the name of Mr. Pivot’s show.

In a French universe where serious writers and intellectuals jostle ferociously for the public’s attention to become superstars, Mr. Pivot never competed with his guests. He achieved a kind of elevated chitchat that flattered his audience without taxing his invitees.

During the program’s heyday in the 1980s, French publishers estimated that “Apostrophes” drove a third of the country’s book sales. So great was Mr. Pivot’s influence that, in 1982, one of President François Mitterrand’s advisers, the leftist intellectual Régis Debray, vowed to get rid of the power of “a single person who has real dictatorial power over the book market.”

Another program Mr. Pivot hosted, “Bouillon de Culture,” had a 10-year run, ending in 2001. In 2014, he became president of the Goncourt Academy, which awards one of France’s most prestigious literary prizes. He held that position until 2019."

 read the obit by Adam Nossiter