Pascal Lainé (born 10 May 1942 in

Anet Anet () is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region of north-central France. It lies 14 km north-northeast of Dreux between the rivers Eure and Vesgre, the latter flowing into the former some 4 km no ...

Eure-et-Loir Eure-et-Loir (, locally: ) is a French department, named after the Eure and Loir rivers. It is located in the region of Centre-Val de Loire. In 2019, Eure-et-Loir had a population of 431,575.Prix Médicis The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by and . It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent." The award goes to a work of fiction in the French language. In 19 ...

(1971 for ''l'Irrévolution'') and the Goncourt (1974 for '' La Dentellière''), Pascal Lainé has published over 20 novels and has written for television, theater, and film. While recovering from childhood illnesses, Lainé discovered novelists Alexandre Dumas, père and

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

, aspiring to their kind of voluminous writing, but in school he focused on philosophy and history, becoming an avid student of

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...

, and

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...

. He was also drawn to

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

(both by conviction and from a desire to rile his parents) and he chose Russian as his second foreign language, permitting him to read Anton Chekhov and

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...

in the original. Lainé studied philosophy at l'

École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Sav ...

and began his career as a teacher first at th
Lycée technique de Saint-Quentin
and later at the

Lycée Louis-le-Grand The Lycée Louis-le-Grand (), also referred to simply as Louis-le-Grand or by its acronym LLG, is a public Lycée (French secondary school, also known as sixth form college) located on rue Saint-Jacques in central Paris. It was founded in the ...

in Paris. He then became a professor in 1974 at the Institut universitaire de technologie in Villetaneuse. He currently serves as an administrator at th
Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques (SACD)
With

Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...

, he discovered the "fireworks" of poetry, and in Mallarmé he discovered the pleasure of deciphering a text and studying its structure. He is also fascinated by

Witold Gombrowicz Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his ...

: "I felt with this joker, this aristocratic Rabelais an instant kinship. He taught me that a writer gives up his homeland and is always a foreigner wherever he finds himself."

Bibliography

* ''B comme Barrabas'',

Éditions Gallimard Éditions Gallimard (), formerly Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française (1911–1919) and Librairie Gallimard (1919–1961), is one of the leading French book publishers. In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1,418 titles. Founded by Ga ...

, 1967 * ''L'Irrévolution'' (novel), Gallimard, 1971 –

Prix Médicis The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by and . It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent." The award goes to a work of fiction in the French language. In 19 ...

* '' La Dentellière'' (novel), Gallimard, 1974 –

Prix Goncourt The Prix Goncourt (french: Le prix Goncourt, , ''The Goncourt Prize'') is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward o ...

* ''Si on partait'' (novel), Gallimard, 1978 * ''L'Eau du miroir'' (novel),

Mercure de France The was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group. The gazette was published ...

, 1979 * ''Tendres cousines'' (novel), Gallimard, 1979 * ''Terres des ombres'' (novel), Gallimard, 1982 * ''Les Petites Egarées'' (novel), 1988 * ''Dialogues du désir'' (novel), 1992 * ''L'Incertaine'' (novel), 1993 * ''Le Commerce des apparences'' (novel), 1997 * ''Anaïs nue'' (novel), 1999 * ''Derniers jours avant fermeture'' (novel), 2001 * ''Capitaine Bringuier'' (play) * ''Monsieur vous oubliez votre cadavre'' * ''Le mystère de la Tour Eiffel'' (novel), 2005 * ''Un clou chasse l'autre ou La vie d'artiste'' (essay), Punctum editions, 2006 {{DEFAULTSORT:Laine, Pascal 1942 births Living people People from Eure-et-Loir 20th-century French novelists 21st-century French novelists Writers from Centre-Val de Loire ENS Fontenay-Saint-Cloud-Lyon alumni Prix Goncourt winners Prix Médicis winners French male novelists 20th-century French male writers 21st-century French male writers