He started in economic journalism and then made the leap to politics, but Bernard Pivot was known for his interviews with writers from around the world. Literary expert and president of the Académie Goncourt, Pivot died today at the age of 89. Book fans will always remember him for his television programs in which he interviewed the most prestigious authors: Marguerite Duras, Umberto Eco, Norman Mailer, Georges Simenon, Marguerite Yourcenar and Vladimir Nabokov.
Pivot was born in Lyon in 1935. During the war he had a Le Petit Robert dictionary as a companion. Thanks to that book he fell in love “with words” and became a journalist. He went through large media such as Le Figaro, which he left in 1974 and in parallel began to present his first television program, Ouvrez les guillemets (Open quotes), on TF1, the first French television network.
He continued with Apostrophes, which remained on the air between 1975 and 1990, and then gave way to Bouillon de culture (Culture Soup), which was broadcast between 1991 and 2001. Double J (2002-2006) was his last television program: “La The audience law is to blame for the program stopping airing, but the worst thing was the late schedule that forced me to say phrases like “don’t leave” or “stay with us,” the journalist lamented in an interview. to the EFE agency in 2011 on the occasion of a visit to Madrid to collect the Antonio de Sancha prize awarded by the editors of the Spanish capital.
Pivot spent more than 30 years on the French small screen speaking with great writers and could not avoid some very conflictive moments and even some slips. Like when he interviewed Gabriel Matzneff, who attended the Apostrophes program in 1990. Matzneff was a self-recognized pedophile, who bragged in his books about having sexual relations with children. Pivot thanked Matzneff and did not hesitate to cordially and jokingly describe him as “underage collectors.”
He had another bad time, one of those that make history, when in 1978 he invited Charles Bukowski, who appeared on the set completely drunk, having drunk two bottles of wine while waiting for the broadcast to begin. She stuffed two more bottles between her chest and back during the program and told one of the talk show hosts: “Raise your skirt and I’ll tell you if you’re a good writer or not.” Pivot tried to silence him, but failed. Bukowski’s departure from Apostrophes was even more notable than his arrival. The writer threatened everyone present with a knife while he shouted: “Let me get out of this fucking place!”
Among his most memorable interviews stands out the one he did with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of the Gulag Archipelago, in 1993. The Russian writer had passed through Stalin’s camps and the Spanish Jorge Semprún was a prisoner of the Nazis in Buchenwald, an experience that filled his literature. Pivot admired Semprún, assured that he was his “favorite” writer and dedicated to him the prize that the Madrid editors awarded him in 2011.
