Portrait photographique

The Quai d’Orsay granted the writer a two-week leave, during which he gave interviews, notably appearing on the ORTF program “Lectures pour tous,” hosted by Pierre Dumayet, who welcomed Gary on 19 December. He faced sharp criticism there attacking the “poorly written” style of Les Racines du ciel. Gary, honored and delighted to have sparked such lively controversy, replied with humor and tact: “Every work calls for its own style: when you set a herd of elephants loose across Africa, evoking sweat, the bush, the virgin forest, adventurers […], you cannot do it in the style of La Princesse de Clèves or the Duchesse de Guermantes. You have to try to invent a language of your own […]. I am forced to give up certain stylistic elegances; I am not writing Giraudoux — God knows I adore Giraudoux — and when he brought his gods down from Olympus to walk them through ministry antechambers, he dressed them at Dior. But my Morel, I can’t dress him at Dior!”

Often reproduced, this photograph, taken a few days later at the Éditions Gallimard offices, was used for the cover of Nancy Huston’s book Le Tombeau de Romain Gary (Actes Sud, 1999). It is the work of photographer Albert Harlingue, a prolific photographer of the first half of the twentieth century, active from the First World War through photojournalism and author portraits. His extensive output — some 70,000 negatives — was acquired by the Agence Roger-Viollet in 1964, upon his death.