Avec mon meilleur souvenir

In this collection of memoirs, Françoise Sagan looks back with casual grace on her encounters and friendships: Jean-Paul Sartre, Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, Tennessee Williams and others. She displays here her gift for the vivid anecdote and the affectionate portrait — without ever quite forgetting herself, the better to escape.

Or to escape from herself, for speed is a balm, as she writes here: “[…] it also blows away sorrows. However madly in love one is, in vain, one is less so at 200 kilometers an hour […]. Just as it joins with play and chance, speed joins with the happiness of living and, consequently, with the confused hope of dying that always lingers within that happiness of living. That is all I finally believe to be true: speed is neither a sign, nor a proof, nor a provocation, nor a challenge, but a surge of happiness.”

A fine presentation copy to another independent-minded woman, Sylvie Genevoix, the daughter of Maurice Genevoix. A discreet but influential literary figure, she pursued a career in publishing after studying classics at the Sorbonne. She began at Plon as a press attaché for the 10/18 imprint, then coordinated the literary departments at Plon-Perrin-Julliard, becoming director of publications at Julliard. From 1992 to 2005 she was literary director at Albin Michel, before being appointed to the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA). As is often the case with her copies, she has underlined several passages in the course of her reading.