Paris 2015: Michel Droit, Cimetière de Passy #1

'MICHEL DROIT
de l'Académie française
1923 – 2000'

 

Michel Droit was a novelist and journalist. His first novel, Plus rien au monde (1954) gained the prix Max-Barthou, and in 1964 he received the grand prix du roman de l'Académie française for Le Retour.

He is remembered for his television interviews of de Gaulle, and in 1979 for his extremely strong reaction against Serge Gainsbourg's song 'Aux armes et cætera', which was a great hit that angered many members of the military and other members of the right. Droit went as far, in the right-wing paper Le Figaro, as to say that he felt the urge to become an ecologist because of Gainsbourg's 'pollution' of the French national song La Marseillaise. Gainsbourg responded with an article in Le Matin-Dimanche titled 'On n’a pas le con d’être aussi Droit', which because of its pun I won't venture to translate, but he was certainly calling Droit, let's say, pretty silly.