Philippe Sollers (French:[sɔˈlɛʁs]; born Philippe Joyaux; 28 November 1936 – 5 May 2023) was a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel (along with writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet), which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor.
Sollers was at the heart of the period of intellectual fervour in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. He contributed to the publication of critics and thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Some of them were later described in his novel Femmes (1983), alongside other figures of French intellectualism active before and after May 1968.
His writings and approach to language were examined and praised by French critic Roland Barthes in his book Writer Sollers.[1]
Sollers married Julia Kristeva in 1967. He died on 5 May 2023, at the age of 86.[5]
Workedit
Following his first novel, A Strange Solitude (1958), hailed by François Mauriac and Louis Aragon, Sollers began, with The Park (1961) the experiments in narrative form that would lead to Event (Drame, 1965) and Nombres (1968). Jacques Derrida analyzed these novels in his book Dissemination. Sollers then attempted to counter the high seriousness of Nombres in Lois (1972), which featured greater stylistic interest through the use of wordplay and a less formal style. The direction taken by Lois was developed through the heightened rhythmic intensity of non-punctuated texts such as Paradis (1981).[citation needed]
Sollers's other novels include Women (1983), Portrait du joueur (1984), Le coeur absolu (1986), Watteau in Venice (1991), Studio (1997), Passion fixe (2000), and L'étoile des amants (2002), which introduced a degree of realism to his fiction, in that they make more explicit use of plot, character, and thematic development. They offer the reader a fictional study of the society in which he or she lives by reinterpreting, among other things, the roles of politics, media, sex, religion, and the arts.[citation needed]
Controversiesedit
In 1990, following a televised disagreement between Canadian novelist Denise Bombardier and the French writer Gabriel Matzneff over Matzneff's "recently published memoir, about his sexual conquests of very young women", a few days later, on the television channel France 3, Sollers referred to Bombardier as "a bitch".[6]
Bibliographyedit
Essaysedit
Agent secret, Mercure de France, 2021
"Complots" – Gallimard, 2016
"Portraits de femmes" – Flammarion, 2013
"Fugues" – Gallimard, 2012
"Discours Parfait" – Gallimard, 2010
"Vers le Paradis" – Desclée de Brouwer, 2010 (with DVD - a movie "Toward Paradise" by Georgi K. Galabov and Sophie Zhang)
His writings inspired the eponymous Japanese rock band Sollers.
A character based on Sollers features in Laurent Binet's 2015 novel La Septième Fonction du langage (Grasset), translated into English as The Seventh Function of Language (2017).[7][8]
Notesedit
^Barthes, Roland (1987). Writer Sollers. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9780485113372.
^"1936, 28 novembre – Philippe Sollers/Pileface". pileface.com. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
^Usine de ferblanterie Recalt ; usine de chaudronnerie Boyer S.A., Actuacity
^Anna Topaloff, " ESSEC, la business school qui mène à tout ", GQ, juillet 2015, pages 54–58.
^Philippe Sollers, romancier, critique, essayiste, est mort
^"Consent by Vanessa Springora review – a memoir of lost adolescence". TheGuardian.com. 11 February 2021.
^Elkin, Lauren (12 May 2017). "The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet review – who killed Roland Barthes?". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
^Dames, Nicholas (16 August 2017). "A Postmodern Buddy-Cop Novel Sends Up the World of Semiotics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
Alex Gordon, ‘Roland Barthes’ Sollers Ēcrivain and the Problem of the Reception of Philippe Sollers’ L’écriture percurrente’, Journal of the Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University, No. 48, February 2002, pp. 55–83.
Sade's Way, Sollers on Sade, video documentary on ParisLike, 2013 (ISSN 2117-4725)
External linksedit
Media related to Philippe Sollers at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Philippe Sollers at Wikiquote