La Vie devant soi

In the winter of 1974, Romain Gary decided to give his pseudonym a physical presence and asked his young cousin, Paul Pavlowitch, to embody Émile Ajar.

Pavlowitch, then thirty-three, matched the part well physically. He admired Gary, had read all his books, and was himself a passionate reader and occasional writer. The scheme was carefully constructed. Gary had just finished La Tendresse des pierres, composed as always by dictating to his secretary Martine Carré — one of the few people aware of the Ajar deception — before copying it out in the well-known black cloth notebooks. Pavlowitch read it in one sitting, in a single night. The Ajar machine began operating in earnest in the first half of 1975, going as far as producing false identity papers.

Michel Cournot, at Mercure de France, was captivated by the novel sent to him by this Émile Ajar, whom he had never met, through a fictitious lawyer, “Maître Bossat,” a year after Gros-câlin. Wanting clarification about the book, Gary decided to bring his cousin onto the scene and arranged a meeting in Geneva. Pavlowitch played the part flawlessly. Cournot never doubted for a moment that this was indeed the author.

In late July, while the book was already in press, Gary arrived unannounced at the Pavlowitchs’. Annie, Paul’s wife, had just reread Adieu Gary Cooper and noticed that La Tendresse des pierres was the title of a novel being written by Jess Donahue, the young heroine of that earlier book. Panic ensued: the book had already been announced and 18,000 copies printed. The two men rushed to Cahors to telephone Cournot urgently, since there was no telephone at the Pavlowitchs’ farmhouse.

The thousands of printed copies were pulped: the title leaves were reset and the title changed on the cover. A new printing was launched, delayed until August. André François’s cover drawing was kept unchanged. The definitive title seems to have been suggested by Cournot, drawing on a line from the book itself — “you must not cry, my child, it is natural for the old to die; you have your whole life ahead of you” — though the production manager at Mercure de France, Gilbert Minnazoli, is also credited with finding La Vie devant soi during production.

The novel appeared in September. On the 17th, Jacqueline Piatier announced in Le Monde “Émile Ajar’s second triumph”; Max-Pol Fouchet, writing for Le Point, compared it to Voyage au bout de la nuit, praising it lavishly. The publisher arranged an interview with Yvonne Baby of Le Monde, held in Denmark at the end of the month. Émile Ajar had definitively entered the public stage. On 17 November, La Vie devant soi was awarded the Prix Goncourt.

Asked for comment, Gary replied: “I liked Gros-Câlin… I have not yet read La Vie devant soi. I do not believe its author can preserve his anonymity for long.”

A perfect copy.

Bookplate of Jacques Bredèche (bookplate with the motto Savoir Bâtir).