Adieu Gary Cooper

Written directly in English, the book was not translated but entirely rewritten in French by Romain Gary five years later. The hero of this portrait of 1960s American youth, Lenny, no longer believes in the values of traditional America, so sure of its own righteousness. In Vietnam, the war drags on and student protest keeps growing: “You want me to tell you, Lenny? Gary Cooper is finished. Finished, the calm American, sure of himself and of his rights, who stands against the villains, always for the good cause, who makes justice triumph and always wins in the end. Farewell, the America of certainties. Now it’s Vietnam, universities exploding, and the Black ghettos. Ciao Gary Cooper.” A statement not without a certain nostalgia on the author’s part, who was particularly fond of Gary Cooper and liked to compare himself to him: “I’m a mixture of Gary Cooper and Rudolph Valentino, only better, because I have blue eyes […] There you go!”