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Archipelago Books

Jérôme Lindon

Jérôme Lindon

by Jean Echenoz, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti

$16.00
$16.00
Available as E-Book Biography & Memoir French Literature International Literature
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Jérôme Lindon is a genre-defying meditation on the friendship and working relationship between Jean Echenoz and his editor, the founder of Les Editions de Minuit, Jerome Lindon. Lindon published the work of Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, and Robbe-Grillet, among so many other giants. This voice-driven ramble recounts in candid, understated, and hilarious glimpses Echenoz’s encounters with his publisher over a period of twenty years, and in the process reveals an intimate portrait of both of them. Echenoz’s spare, lyrical, and playful descriptions of early-morning phone calls and exchanges over lunch illuminate Lindon’s impulsiveness and impatience, his matter-of-fact generosity, and the humanity beneath his gruff exterior. In his unassuming way, Echenoz’s lets us in on how his own literary path was shaped by Jerome Lindon’s belief in him and explores the deep bonds between a writer and his publisher. A tender tribute.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781962770699
Pages: 64
Publication Date:

Praise

Echenoz loosely chronicles the publisher-writer relationship, with its ups and downs, closeness and distance . . . a nice little personal tribute.
—Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review

This funny and quietly tender reflection from novelist Echenoz recounts his friendship with his editor Jérôme Lindon, who headed the French publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit from 1948 until his death in 2001 and published the work of Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, among others . . . Echenoz offers glimpses of the humanity beneath Lindon’s gruff exterior, revealing him to be a passionate, reliable editor. The result is a charming portrayal of the often complicated writer-editor relationship.
—Publishers Weekly

[Jérôme Lindon is] well, maybe not sprightly, because sometimes peeved or frustrated, but moving, heartfelt, immediate.
—Lydia Davis

I laughed out loud reading Echenoz’s charming and lively tribute to Jérôme Lindon, even as it made me nostalgic for the lost literary life I dreamt of being part of when I was young. A beautiful book that celebrates an utterly singular character.
—Nicole Krauss

Reading this remembrance is like tagging along for a dream that celebrates the vulnerability, love, and complicated relationships from which all great art springs.
—DW Gibson

Writing lives! Echenoz's words are full of grace and surprises, and he has the ability to throw relationships among them just off-center enough to make the images or people they convey seem all the more compelling and fresh.
—The New York Times Book Review

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