La Corrida
One of 35 copies on vélin pur fil, from the deluxe issue (no. 19).
Double presentation inscription, signed: “Pour Monsieur Jean Bonnefond, cette [CORRIDA], américaine, en respectueux hommage, Michel Déon,” [then, in a different ink and some decades later:] “Cher Hubert [Morent], vous êtes le successeur d'un de ces bibliophiles de la société disparue des Amis de la Nicaise au temps heureux du 145 bd Saint-Germain. J'aime bien que vous deveniez, à votre tour, le possesseur de ce roman qu'au premier instant j'aurais plutôt voué à l'oubli. L'ayant lu, Blaise Cendrars me donna quelques conseils que j'ai suivis le reste de ma vie, rendant grâce au vieux bourlingueur… Votre ami, Michel Déon.”
In the 1950s, Michel Déon gave himself over to the charms of the south, setting off for Italy, Greece and the island of Spetsai — already a favorite —, Portugal, Spain, Ticino, Morocco, Rio and the United States, where he sets the adventures of Pierre Gauthier, caught up in a sordid affair as an innocent, exalted and sympathetic anti-hero. The character reappears in the following novel, La Carotte et le Bâton. “What his character rediscovers, for the moment, in the poetic Louisiana bayous where creole is spoken, are his own memories and a latent anguish weighing on the entire narrative: the anguish gnawing at a man caught up in a crime (…), a solitary anguish that betrays a more general unease: the hero of 1950 is a man hunted by a hostile society in a world itself doomed to death” (Pierre de Boisdeffre, in Revue des deux mondes, no. 11-1960, p. 91).
One of Michel Déon’s major novels, dedicated to Antoine Blondin.