Curated playlist
20th-century French male writers
- Jean BeaufretJean Beaufret's 1946 challenge to Heidegger produced the Letter on Humanism.
- André BretonSurrealist founder André Breton once wrote that firing a revolver blindly into a crowd was the simplest surrealist act.
- Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski survived the Holocaust by pretending to be Catholic. As a boy in Poland, he memorized prayers to hide.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre asked to be dropped as a Nobel nominee, then won anyway. His 1964 letter went unread.
- Marcel DuchampIn 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a signed urinal to a New York show, and the committee turned it away.
- Albert CamusAlbert Camus thanked his old schoolteacher right after his mother when he won the Nobel Prize.
- Le CorbusierLe Corbusier built a pavilion around a tree poking through its roof. Furious organizers put up a fence to hide it.
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault's surgeon father expected him to become a surgeon too. He became a leading thinker on power instead.
- François TruffautIn 1958 François Truffaut was the only French critic not invited to Cannes. A year later, Cannes gave him Best Director.
- Jean GenetIn 1949, facing a possible life sentence, Jean Genet was saved by a petition.
- Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze never trimmed his fingernails. He once explained that he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and so could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain". It is a…
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard dropped his script and wrote dialogue day by day for the film Breathless.
- Alfred CobbanAlfred Cobban used a 1954 London lecture to call a famous view of the French Revolution a myth.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Louis-Ferdinand CélineManuscripts of French novelist Céline, missing since 1944, were handed to police in March 2020.
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau recorded his 1929 recovery from opium in a diary of drawings and withdrawal notes.
- Jean AnouilhJean Anouilh's play Antigone opened in occupied Paris in 1944 and censors passed it. Many heard resistance in it.
- Jean GiraudouxPlaywright Jean Giraudoux died in Paris in 1944, and some suspect poison. His death has never been fully explained.
- Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille's secret society Acéphale never found an executioner. Every member had agreed to be the victim.
- Henri PoincaréHenri Poincaré won a royal prize for a problem he did not solve. His entry still revealed the first chaotic system.
- Louis AlthusserLouis Althusser used a police officer's shout on the street to explain how ideology shapes every person.
- Raymond QueneauRaymond Queneau calculated that his book of sonnets would take 190,258,751 years to read nonstop.
- Jean-Pierre MelvilleAs the story goes, Jean-Pierre Melville died at dinner after writing 200 shots of a new film that morning.
- Roland BarthesRoland Barthes was walking home through the streets of Paris on the 25th of February 1980 when the driver of a laundry van knocked him down. A month later, on the 26th of March, he died from the pulmonary complications that followed. He…
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Marcel wrote at least thirty plays, but readers kept turning to his philosophy.
- Jean WahlPhilosopher Jean Wahl escaped the Drancy internment camp and crossed the Atlantic.