Jean Forton (1930–1982)

Biography

Son of a father surgeon, it loses this one at the age of eight years. Her mother resumed her studies in pharmacy to finish raising her young son and two younger daughters, Anne-Marie and Marie-Claire. At the age of sixteen, Jean Forton, who contracted pleurisy, interrupted his studies to seek treatment in Valais (Switzerland) and became aware of his literary vocation.

Returning to Bordeaux, he studied film studies, then bookseller. In 1950, with his friend Michel Parisot, he founded a cultural magazine sponsored by François Mauriac and Jean Cocteau, La Boite à clous (sic). He wrote articles on literature, cinema and music, Two other passions. The magazine welcomes famous artists such as Max Jacob, Marcel Béalu, Louis Émié, Armand Lanoux, Roland Laudenbach (Michel Braspart), Chris Marker, René de Obaldia, Pierre Seghers, André de Richaud, Claude- Henri Rocquet, Robert Sabatier, Maurice Toesca and the great elder of Bordeaux: Raymond Guérin. From the latter, Forton published in 1950 an unpublished text, On the Side of Malaparte, which tells of the visit of Guérin to the famous Italian author in his villa of Capri. The financial losses occasioned by this publication sound the death knell of the magazine after 12 issues.

The following year, Seghers published a long story about Forton, Le Terrain Vague. On the private plane, the year 1951 marks a turning point for the young novelist, since he marries Janine Franza, with whom he will have two children, and opens the bookstore Montaigne, which will specialize fairly quickly in technical works of law.

In 1954, Jean Forton proposed a first novel, Charmoz, to Jean Cayrol, his compatriot from Bordeaux, a reader with the Seuil publishers, who refused it while encouraging the young author to pursue the path of writing. Under the title La Ville fermée, Forton then sent his manuscript to Jacques Lemarchand, a reader at Gallimard, who advised him to rewrite it. This novel will never be published. Meanwhile, in May 1954, Jacques Lemarchand accepted the manuscript of La Fuite, whose action is located in Bayonne. This will be Forton's first novel published by Éditions Gallimard.

Six other novels follow at the rate of one per year on average, all published by Gallimard:

L'Herbe haute, in 1955, a peasant novel that takes as its setting the Pyrenean countryside;
Uncle Léon, in 1956, featuring a defeated of life whose only gift is to predict the outcome of the boxing matches;
La Cendre aux yeux in 1957, considered his masterpiece, where we see a Don Juan without attracting a young girl, and who will get the Fénéon prize in 1959. It is the first novel of Forton To compete for the Goncourt. All the novels that follow will also be among the favorites for this great literary prize;
Cantemerle, novel for children, also in 1957;
Le Grand Mal in 1959, which treats one of Forton's favorite subjects: the ambiguity of childhood and adolescence. This novel obtained the Grand Prix of the City of Bordeaux in 1970;
The pin of the game, in 1960, which marks the apogee of his career and the beginning of his fall. For this novel, which denounces the sadistic methods of a Jesuit college under the Occupation in Bordeaux, unleashes a violent polemic in the literary milieu. Victim of a true cabal of devotees, Forton sees the Goncourt escape him from very little.

Six years of silence preceded Gallimard's publication of the last novel published during the life of the author: Les Sables mouvants, in 1966. Forton was then denied the manuscript of L'Enfant roi by his editor. He died in 1982 of lung cancer, without publishing works other than news in the local press. It was not until 1995 that Le Dilettante made Jean Forton rediscover the public with the publication of L'Enfant roi, which remained unpublished, and the reissue of Les Sables mouvants in 1997.

In 2002 and 2003, the publisher Bordeaux Finitude published two collections of unpublished news of Forton: To pass the time and Days of heat. The art of Forton was unanimously hailed by the critics in this news which are jewels of humor and sensibility.

In October 2009, Le Dilettante reissued La Cendre aux yeux, his most sulphurous work, while Finitude published one of his unpublished works, Le Salut et la Grâce, under the title Holy Family.

Finally, in November 2012, his latest novel, La vraie vie est ailleurs, was published by Le Dilettante.
Bibliography

The Wave Land (new), Pierre Seghers, publisher, Paris, 1951, reissued. In Jean Forton, a writer in the city, collective work, Le Festin, Bordeaux, 2000.
La Fuite (novel), Gallimard, Paris, 1954 (reissued 1983).
The Great Grass (novel), Gallimard, Paris, 1955.
The Uncle Leon (novel), Gallimard, Paris, 1956.
The Ash