Jean Cormier and Symbad de Lassus: Blondin : 20 ans déjà ! (2011)

This is a tribute, a long love letter not written by two people – his long-term friend Jean Cormier and Blondin's grandson – but also, for example, his first wife Sylviane, his daughters Laurence and Anne, the 'Hussard' (like his friend Roger Nimier (1925-62) Michel Déon), Bernard Pivot, etc.

Jean Cormier (1945-2018), along with fellow writer and sports journalist Denis Lalanne, created the Festival Singe-Germain, which of course puns on Blondin's novel Un singe en hiver and the Saint-Germain area he frequented.

But this book is not just a celebration Antoine Blondin the writer, nor even Blondin the famed drinker, but Blondin as a sports writer, particularly of the Tour de France, of which he covered twenty-seven, from 1954 to 1982. He wrote for L'Équipe, following the cyclists in the famous '101': he couldn't drive, but went with, for instance, the leader Pierre Chaney, Jacques Augendre and Jean Bobet, all of whom have a word here to say about Blondin. During the Tour it may have been beer in the morning, pastis at noon and the strong stuff in the evening, but not of course for Jean Fargues, the driver.

Bobet's is perhaps the most interesting account, as he was his hotel room mate during the Tour, and when he talks about being awoken in the morning by Blondin playing at bullfighting with a towel and a chair, he was seeing in advance what he would see Bébel (Jean-Pierre Belmondo) play out to the cars in the film Un singe en hiver, and indeed what Blondin played to the cars on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Also of interest is what the Tour doctor Philippe Miserez says, that Blondin (who smoked two packets of cigarettes a day) was not killed by the demon drink but the demon nicotine: if he hadn't smoked, he'd no doubt have been around when this book was written, making it absurd to celebrate the twenty years since his death: he may have been a drunkard, but he wasn't an alcoholic.