Jacques Lanzmann
| Jacques Lanzmann | |
|---|---|
| Born |
4 May 1927 Bois-Colombes, France |
| Died | 21 June 2006 (aged 79) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Journalist, author, songwriter |
| Nationality | French |
| Notable awards | , 1977 |
| Spouse |
|
| Children | |
| Relatives | Claude Lanzmann (brother), (sister) |
| Website | |
| jacqueslanzmann |
|
Jacques Lanzmann (4 May 1927 – 21 June 2006) was a French journalist, writer and lyricist. He is best known as a novelist and for his songwriting partnership with Jacques Dutronc.
Lanzmann spent the early part of his life in Auvergne. His parents, Armand and Pauline, divorced shortly before World War II and, at the age of 12, he became a farmhand. Lanzmann was Jewish and, following the Battle of France, he, his mother and his siblings, pretended to be Moroccan Arabs in order to escape persecution by the Vichy regime. In 1943, Lanzmann and his elder brother Claude (later a noted documentary-maker) joined the Communist resistance. Jacques was taken captive by the Germans and was due to be executed by firing squad, but escaped. Lanzmann's father was one of the leading local figures in the rival Mouvements Unis de la Résistance, but Jacques and Claude were not aware of this until February 1944.
After the war, Lanzmann worked in Paris as builder and a welder, and showed promise as a painter. During the early 1950s, he moved to Chile for two years, where he worked as a copper miner.
While Lanzmann was in Chile, a manuscript of a novel he had written, La glace est rompue ("The ice is broken"), was given to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir by his brother Claude. Claude was, at this time, in a romantic relationship with Beauvoir. This intervention led to the publication of the novel in 1954.
Lanzmann's second novel, Le Rat d'Amérique, published in 1956, was inspired by his experiences in Chile. Its commercial success led to him being offered a job as a critic for the Communist literary magazine , edited by Louis Aragon. He was sent by the magazine to the Soviet Union to report on the literary scene there. On his return, he wrote a third novel, Cuir de Russe, published in 1957, which depicted the extreme poverty of Russian peasants that he had witnessed during his visit. The novel was considered a betrayal by the French Communist Party, and Lanzmann was expelled.
...
Wikipedia