Jouanard, Gil 1937–

PERSONAL: Born December 11, 1937, in Avignon, France.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Fata Morgana, Fontfroide le Haut, 34980 Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France.

CAREER: Writer. Journalist, 1962–65; editor of literary entries for an encyclopedia; New National Theatre of Marseilles, deputy manager for cultural information, 1975–77; worked for French Ministry of Culture.

WRITINGS:

Banlieue d'Aerea, P.J. Oswald (Honfleur, France), 1969.

Diaclases, P.J. Oswald (Honfleur, France), 1970.

Poèmes hercyniens, P.J. Oswald (Honfleur, France), 1972.

L'absent de d'indicatif, Chambelland (Paris, France), 1973.

Rencontres et pensées le long du chemin, Revue Chaman (Saint-Girons, France), 1977.

Lentement à pied: à travers le Gras de Chassagnes, Solaire (Font-Saint-Esprit, France), 1981.

Souls la dicté du pays (title means "Under the Dictation of the Country") Slatkine, 1982.

Jours sans événements, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1983.

Un corps entier de songes (title means "A Whole Body of Dreams"), Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1985.

L'eau qui dort (title means "The Water which Sleeps"), Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1987.

Le moindre mot (title means "The Least Word"), illustrated by Daniel Nadaud, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1990.

Aires de transit (title means "Surface of Transit"), Seghers (Paris, France), 1992.

Savoir où (title means "To Know Where"), Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1992.

The Eye of the Ground, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1994.

Le goût des choses: prose (title means "The Taste of Things"), Verdier (Lagrasse, France), 1994.

Plutôt que d'en pleurer (title means "Rather than to Cry about It"), Verdier (Lagrasse, France), 1995.

L'envergure du monde, Deyrolle (Paris, France), 1996.

Créuscule musical (title means "Musical Twilight"), Filigranes, 1996.

(With Bernard Blangenois) Aux Maramures (title means "In Maramures"), Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1996.

C'est la vie (title means "That's Life"), Verdier (Lagrasse, France), 1997.

D'après Follain (title means "According to Follain"), Deyrolle (Paris, France), 1997.

Le jour et l'heure (title means "The Day and the Hour"), Verdier (Lagrasse, France), 1998.

Tout fait événement, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1998.

Le causse en hiver, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 1999.

Mémoire de l'instant: nouvelles ordinaires de divers endroits (title means "Memory of the Moment"), Verdier (Lagrasse, France), 2000.

(Editor, with Ann Potié) Auteurs et traducteurs en Laguedoc-Roussillon, Centre Régional des Letters/Ré Languedoc-Roussillon (Castries, France), 2001.

(Editor, with Ann Potié) Editeurs et revue en Languedoc-Roussillon, Centre Régional des Letters/Ré Languedoc-Roussillon (Castries, France), 2001.

Le Connemara pays de l'imaginaire, Laquet (Martel, France), 2002.

Cela seul, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 2002.

Paris villages: étapes a capell à travers l'harmonia mundi, Laquet (Martel, France), 2003.

La saveur du monde, Phébus (Paris, France), 2004.

Le bois de Païolive, illustrated by Stéphane Erouane Dumas, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, France), 2005.

Untel: bis repetita. Nouvelles variations, Verdier (Lagrasse, France), 2005.

Contributor to Jean Pollain, edited by André Dhôtel, Seghers (Paris, France), 1993. Contributor to periodicals and books.

SIDELIGHTS: In Tout fait événement, French author Gil Jouanard collects twenty personal essays about his upbringing in an undeveloped suburb of Avignon. Capturing the freshness of his childhood experiences, he reminisces about his first experiences of nature, his boredom at family meals as the adults around him gossiped, and the long doldrums of Sunday afternoon. In the Times Literary Supplement, John Taylor wrote that "the problem of growing up while remaining free at heart, ever curious and open-minded, concerns him profoundly."

Le jour et l'heure, a similar collection of essays, focuses on Jouanard's adult years: primarily a collection of travel essays, these works are gleaned from his experiences traveling for his job with the French Ministry of Culture. The travels in the book include visits to Brazil, Germany, Mexico, and Ireland and hikes in the limestone plateaus of south-central France, and he discusses his own interests in geology, anthropology, and prehistory, as well as other authors he admires. "Above all," Taylor commented, the book reveals Jouanard's "affection for, and occasional bracing irritation with, the present, wherever he is." In World Literature Today, Steven Daniell wrote that "a certain sympathy gradually develops between Jouanard's narrator and the reader that makes the journeys interesting and even, finally, enjoyable."

Le moindre mot is a collection of eighty-one prose poems, illustrated by Daniel Nadaud, that explore what Tobin H. Jones in the French Review called "a world rich in connections between the phenomena of human experience and those of nature," and praised as "startling in its insight and power."

In World Literature Today, F.C. St. Aubyn wrote of Plutôt que d'en pleurer that Jouanard "has a talent for putting together a series of brief texts that add up to a whole which is more than the sum of its parts." The book is a collection of twenty-nine short descriptions of writers, who are identified only by their initials. Aubyn implied that those who are familiar with French literature will be able to identify these writers simply by their unique traits and foibles, and noted that in his character studies of these authors, Jouanard makes the point that "it is better to laugh than to weep" about the shortcomings of some of France's greatest literary stars.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

French Review, May, 1993, Tobin H. Jones, review of Le moindre mot, p. 1044.

Times Literary Supplement, August 20, 1999, John Taylor, "Intimist Moments," p. 23.

World Literature Today, spring, 1995, p. 325; summer, 1996, p. 663; summer, 1997, F.C. St. Aubyn, review of C'est la vie, p. 554; spring, 1999, Steven Daniell, review of Le jour et l'heure, p. 302.