Death of the French writer Jean Teulé, great enemy of boredom
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Jean Teulé, a self-taught writer who became very popular as a TV columnist in the 1990s, died on Tuesday October 18 at the age of 69.
According to a press release from Mialet-Barrault editions, the novelist died of cardiac arrest at his home in Paris.
He had lived there since 1998 with his partner, actress Miou-Miou.
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In March 2022, he still told, with his biting verve, his mocking irony and his caustic humor, to RFI listeners, the story and the genesis of his latest book.
Agincourt in rainy weather
, printed in 300,000 copies, restores one of the worst in the history of France.
In 1415, face to face, a starving English army, weakened by dysentery, and a supernumerary French army, bloated with sufficiency and weighed down by stupidity.
Against all expectations, the first will dominate the second, thanks to a series of blunders and a muddy ground.
"
Let's not be bored
"
Last year, on the occasion of the poet's bicentenary, he published
Crénom, Baudelaire!
, an extraordinarily lively portrait of Baudelaire: "
He's the absolute poet
", he had confided to RFI, before admitting that he had long thought of never devoting a book to Baudelaire: "
He was for me too unpleasant, too misogynistic, too mean to everyone.
But in the end, he bowed to the genius: "
If you have to read a collection of French poetry, it
's Les Fleurs du mal
. "
It's the top.
»
"
A little terror, a little poetry, and fun, that we are always caught in the awkward position and above all that we are not bored
", he described at the microphone of RFI, at the time to evoke the ingredients of his novel
Charly 9
,
a very original portrait of "Charly", nickname given to Charles IX, king of France from 1560 to 1574.
From his first novel in 1991, this history buff has cultivated an offbeat tone.
Rainbow for Rimbaud
tells the story of an ordinary inhabitant of Charleville-Mézières, in the footsteps of the famous poet.
"I don't read novels"
Adored by his readers who transformed his books like
Ô Verlaine
(2005) or
Je, François Villon
(2006) into popular successes, the so-called Parisian intelligentsia liked his books very moderately.
"
I don't read novels.
I didn't read it before writing, and I still don't read it (...) I don't want it to cut my legs off, and to say to myself: if there are guys who write like that, it's not worth it for me to take a pencil
, ”he explained on France Inter in 2019.
Television assured him a certain fame with the general public, first alongside Bernard Rapp in the program
L'Assiette anglaise
, then on Canal+, which he joined in 1994. He was part of the adventure of
Nulle elsewhere
as a columnist.
He was also the companion of actress Miou-Miou, since 1998.
Jean Teulé has won original awards such as the Trop Virilo 2015 prize with
Héloïse, ouille!
, on the love affair with Abélard, or the Maison de la presse 2008 prize with
Le Montespan
, on the husband of Madame de Montespan, the mistress of Louis XIV.
A Norman childhood
Born on February 26, 1953 in Saint-Lô, a Norman town that emerged in ruins from the Second World War, Jean Teulé was initially a mediocre student in the Paris suburbs.
He had arrived at the great poets not thanks to a professor of letters, but by a record.
"
That's how I discovered Rimbaud and Verlaine, and I fell into it thanks to [Léo] Ferré who sang it extraordinarily well
," he said.
“
Me too, I wanted to do my job as a smuggler, and that's what happened.
Lots of teenagers told me that without me, they wouldn't have known these three guys.
»
He then entered the world of culture via alternative comics.
He was one of the designers of the magazine
L'Écho des savanes
, from 1978 to 1983, then he published his own albums, starting with
Bloody Mary
in 1983. In 1989, he received a special prize at the Angoulême festival for a a collection of reports,
Gens de France
, which was followed in 1990 by
Gens d'ailleurs
, on Africa and Reunion.
"
It takes few lines for Jean Teulé to draw a portrait or restore a drama
", wrote Le Monde in 2001.
Le Figaro
, on the occasion of a fiction in 2007,
Le Magasin des suicides
, saluted an author "
neither too light in subject nor too heavy in humor
”.
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