La Gloire de Mon Pere (Fortunio Series #1) Book

Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974)


In 1957 the playwright, cinéaste and film producer Marcel Pagnol published what he called in the Avant-propos his first piece of prose (aside from quelques modestes essais), La gloire de mon père (The Glory of My Father), which opened a tetralogy of memoirs from his childhood and youth - Souvenirs d'enfance - to a well justified popularity. Though Pagnol had been elected to the Académie française in 1946, this charming text is the opposite of the stuffy and studiously serious memoir one might expect from an Académicien.

With loving detail and somewhat exaggerated effect Pagnol recreates life and family in the Provence early in the 20th century - Aubagne, Saint-Loup, Marseille - a life I still saw traces of when I lived in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille in the 80's. I can best give you a sense of this amused, slightly hyperbolic style with a tout petit example in which he describes his little brother, Paul:

...on le voyait tout à coup s'avancer, titubant, les bras écartés, la figure violette. Il était en train de mourir suffoqué.

Ma mère affolée frappait dans son dos, enfonçait un doigt dans sa gorge, ou le secouait en le tenant par les talons, comme fit jadis la mère d'Achille.

Alors dans un râle affreux, il expulsait une grosse olive noire, un noyau de pêche, ou une longue lanière de lard.

Après quoi, il reprenait ses jeux solitaires, accroupi comme un gros crapaud.(*)

A trip to a junk shop becomes an elaborate adventure and generator of reader's chuckles, which effects are soon totally eclipsed by those of a féerique removal to a summer vacation villa in the Provençal countryside full of ancient olive, almond and apricot trees, wild herbs and the buzz of countless cicadas. Indeed, the tone of much of the book is that of an accomplished raconteur entertaining friends gathered around a few bottles of wine with tales of people and places all present know well and love, deliberately told in a manner to widen the eyes of the children at hand. I recommend that you pour a glass and edge into the circle of listeners yourself.


(*) ...one saw him suddenly advance, staggering, arms outstretched, face violet. He was in the process of choking to death. My panic-stricken mother pounded on his back, stuck a finger down his throat or shook him upside down by his heels as once did Achilles' mother. Then with a horrible groan he expelled a large black olive, a peach pit or a long lanyard of lard. After which he resumed his solitary games squatting like a great toad.





Mont Ventoux