Georges Lambrichs, passionate about writing never yet seen
Georges Lambrichs Jean Paulhan
La Libre, Francis Matthys, 10 mars 2023
In publishing, there are dowsers who spot manuscripts they will help reveal against all odds. A discreet writer himself, Georges Lambrichs was one of these talent scouts. A very well-documented biography devoted to him has now been published by Arnaud Villanova.
Mad about literature
Born on July 5, 1917 in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, one of Brussels' municipalities, Georges Lambrichs showed a passion for literature from adolescence. With no degree whatsoever, he published columns in the Brussels weekly Le Rouge et le Noir. In 1937, he went to Paris to show his texts to Jean Paulhan, who directed the mythical Nouvelle Revue Francaise; for Georges, J.P. would remain "a kind of model" and a lifelong friend. When will Paulhan enter the Pleiade?
During the war, Lambrichs became the Brussels correspondent of the clandestine French review Messages. This later connected him with Vercors, whose Le Silence de la mer had appeared in 1942, also clandestinely, at Editions de Minuit, founded by Vercors (alias Jean Bruller) and Pierre de Lescure, supported by Paulhan and Paul Eluard.
Settling in Paris in 1945, Lambrichs joined Minuit as a reader, where his first book, L’Aventure inachevee, appeared the following year. From 1948 onward he handled literary direction there, while young Jerome Lindon took charge of administration. At Minuit, Lambrichs published Samuel Beckett's Molloy (rejected by Camus at Gallimard) and, by the same future 1969 Nobel laureate, Malone meurt, crowned in 1951 by the Critics' Prize. By then-unknown agronomy engineer Alain Robbe-Grillet, he published Les Gommes, winner of the Prix Feneon in 1953: this was the beginning of the Nouveau Roman, a movement Lambrichs would later judge harshly.
"The best of his time"
As his professional relations with Lindon deteriorated, Lambrichs (married, father of two daughters) resigned in 1954 and moved to Grasset, where in 1958 he published Christiane Rochefort's Le Repos du guerrier. Given the huge success of that novel, Gaston Gallimard contacted Lambrichs to work for his illustrious house; hired in January 1959, he was invited by contract to devote to it "the best of his time." That same year, he became a naturalized French citizen.
From 1959 onward, Lambrichs created the "Le Chemin" collection - which would exist until 1987. With total freedom in his choices, he published under this label dozens of French-language authors, from Pierre Bourgeade to Michel Foucault, from Georges Perros to Pierre Klossowski, from Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues to Pierre Guyotat, from Christian Bobin to Michel Butor, and others such as Jean-Noel Schifano or Jean-Loup Trassard. Two of them would win the Prix Goncourt: Jacques Borel for L’Adoration in 1965 and Pascal Laine for La Dentelliere in 1974.
In October 1962, Lambrichs received by mail a letter and then the manuscript of a 22-year-old from Nice, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (Nobel 2008); without hesitation, he published that first novel, Le Proces-verbal, which would win the Prix Renaudot in 1963.
Succeeding Jean Paulhan and then Marcel Arland, the author of S’en prendre aux mots (1991) directed La Nouvelle Revue Francaise from 1976 to 1987: his marshal's baton. What fascinated him, he admitted, "was writing never seen, never read, never yet printed." Georges Lambrichs died in Paris on February 10, 1992.
Le chemin continue. Biographie de Georges Lambrichs
Arnaud Villanova