Joséphine Dard: Frédéric Dard, mon père: San-Antonio (2010)

Joséphine Dard is Frédéric Dard's only biological child by his second wife Françoise, and this book is a huge love letter to her father on the tenth anniversary of his death. In 'coffee table' style this publication may be, but it is very revealing of the enigmatic, crazy, but so sane antidote that Frédéric Dard was to the world of literature, to the world in general.

Here, we have letters written to Frédéric Dard – the man known to most people as San-Antonio after his eponymous larger-than-life private detective – and many tributes and many letters by (mainly, but not exclusively) figures involved in the world of literature and the arts such as Bernard Pivot, Georges Simenon, Frédéric Beigbeder, Albert Cohen, Georges Trenet, Patrick Sebastien, Jean Dutourd, the list is huge.

Frédéric Dard was a highly gifted, highly original and very funny writer whose work will continue to inspire many other writers. He was also a very loving father, husband and very warm to his many friends, very giving. But this book seems to tease out more than Jean Durieux's book on him did. Here, and by more than one person, we learn of his hypersensitivity, shyness even, and Joséphine Dard reveals that on her first marriage he walked her to the church but no further as on that day his arms were covered in psoriasis. For me, the most revealing part in this book is in three pages he wrote about himself, which I find quite devastating.

The paper is called 'Si j'étais...Frédéric Dard' ('If I were...Frédéric Dard') and is astonishingly frank, even though he didn't (I'm sure) intend to publish it. Here we have the existential Dard, reflecting on what he, er, isn't. He writes that he always expected to be himself, that his self (Frédéric Dard) would somehow magic itself into being when he grew up, like at a particular age when he was allowed to vote. But it didn't happen, he still feels deprived of himself, is still waiting for something to happen, as if he's missed an appointment. There's a kind of parallax (my expression), a lack of correspondence between how others see him and how he sees himself. Everything he says, does and thinks doesn't conform to his 'true [or real] essence'. This seems even bleaker than Samuel Beckett.

An extremely interesting book.

One small correction: the author says that her father invited Renaud on Le Grand Échequier, in 1982, when his career was just starting: wrong, Renaud already had five successful albums to his credit by then. He went on to much greater success, but that's hardly the same thing.

My Frédéric Dard posts:
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Joséphine Dard: Frédéric Dard, mon père: San-Antonio
Jean Durieux: Frédéric Dard dit San-Antonio
San-Antonio: Certaines l'aiment chauve
San-Antonio: Messieurs les hommes
San-Antonio: Des dragées sans baptême