Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers (born Philippe Joyaux; 28 November 1936 – 5 May 2023) was a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel (along with writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet), which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor.

Sollers was at the heart of the period of intellectual fervour in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. He contributed to the publication of critics and thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Some of them were later described in his novel Femmes (1983), alongside other figures of French intellectualism active before and after May 1968.

His writings and approach to language were examined and praised by French critic Roland Barthes in his book Writer Sollers.

Biography
Sollers was born as Philippe Joyaux on 28 November 1936, in Talence, France. His family ran the local Société Joyaux Frères, the iron factory Recalt producing material for kitchens, metal constructions and machines for the aircraft manufacturer SNCASO under the German military administration in occupied France during World War II. His parents were Octave Joyaux and Marcelle Molinié. He moved to Paris in 1955 and studied at the Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève of Versailles and at the ESSEC Business School.

Sollers married Julia Kristeva in 1967. He died on 5 May 2023, at the age of 86.

Work


Following his first novel, A Strange Solitude (1958), hailed by François Mauriac and Louis Aragon, Sollers began, with The Park (1961) the experiments in narrative form that would lead to Event (Drame, 1965) and Nombres (1968). Jacques Derrida analyzed these novels in his book Dissemination. Sollers then attempted to counter the high seriousness of Nombres in Lois (1972), which featured greater stylistic interest through the use of wordplay and a less formal style. The direction taken by Lois was developed through the heightened rhythmic intensity of non-punctuated texts such as Paradis (1981). Sollers's other novels include Women (1983), Portrait du joueur (1984), Le coeur absolu (1986), Watteau in Venice (1991), Studio (1997), Passion fixe (2000), and L'étoile des amants (2002), which introduced a degree of realism to his fiction, in that they make more explicit use of plot, character, and thematic development. They offer the reader a fictional study of the society in which he or she lives by reinterpreting, among other things, the roles of politics, media, sex, religion, and the arts.

Controversies
In 1990, following a televised disagreement between Canadian novelist Denise Bombardier and the French writer Gabriel Matzneff over Matzneff's "recently published memoir, about his sexual conquests of very young women", a few days later, on the television channel France 3, Sollers referred to Bombardier as "a bitch".

Essays

 * Agent secret, Mercure de France, 2021
 * "Complots" – Gallimard, 2016
 * "Portraits de femmes" – Flammarion, 2013
 * "Fugues" – Gallimard, 2012
 * "Discours Parfait" – Gallimard, 2010
 * "Vers le Paradis" – Desclée de Brouwer, 2010 (with DVD - a movie "Toward Paradise" by Georgi K. Galabov and Sophie Zhang)
 * "Guerres secrètes" – Carnets nord 2007
 * "Fleurs" – Hermann éditions 2006
 * Dictionnaire amoureux de Venise, 2004
 * "Mystérieux Mozart" – Plon 2001
 * "Mysterious Mozart" – University of Illinois Press, 2010
 * "Éloge de l'Infini" – Gallimard, 2001
 * "Francis Ponge" – Seghers éditions, 2001
 * "Francesca Woodman" – Scalo Publishers 1998
 * "Casanova l'admirable" – Plon 1998
 * "Casanova the Irresistible" – University of Illinois Press, 2016
 * "La Guerre du Goût" – Gallimard, 1994
 * "Liberté du XVIIIème" (Extract from La Guerre du Goût) – Gallimard, 2002
 * "Picasso, le héros" – Le cercle d'art 1996
 * "Les passions de Francis Bacon" – Gallimard 1996
 * "Sade contre l'Être suprême" – Gallimard 1996
 * "Improvisations" – Gallimard, 1991
 * "De Kooning, vite" – La différence 1988
 * "Théorie des Exceptions" – Gallimard, 1985
 * "Sur le Matérialisme" – Seuil, 1974
 * "L'Écriture et l'Expérience des Limites" – Seuil, 1968
 * Writing and the Experience of Limits – Columbia University Press, 1982
 * "Logiques" – Seuil, 1968
 * "L'Intermédiaire" – Seuil, 1963
 * Le Défi – c.1958 (awarded Fénéon Prize, 1958)

Novels

 * Légende - Gallimard, 2021
 * Désir - Gallimard, 2020
 * Le Nouveau - Gallimard, 2019
 * Centre – Gallimard, 2018
 * Beauté – Gallimard, 2017
 * Mouvement – Gallimard, 2016
 * L'École du Mystère – Gallimard, 2015
 * Médium – Gallimard, 2014
 * L'Éclaircie – Gallimard, 2012
 * Trésor d'Amour – Gallimard, 2011
 * Les Voyageurs du temps – Gallimard, 2009
 * Un vrai roman, Mémoires – Plon 2007
 * Une Vie Divine – Gallimard, 2006
 * L'Étoile des Amants – Gallimard, 2002
 * Passion Fixe – Gallimard, 2000
 * Un amour américain – Mille et une nuits, 1999
 * Studio – Gallimard, 1997
 * Le cavalier du Louvre, Vivant Denon – Plon 1995
 * Le Secret – Gallimard, 1993
 * La Fête à Venise – Gallimard, 1991
 * Watteau in Venice -Scribner's, 1994
 * Le Lys d'Or – Gallimard, 1989
 * Les Folies Françaises – Gallimard, 1988
 * Le Cœur Absolu – Gallimard, 1987
 * Paradis 2 – Gallimard, 1986
 * Portrait du Joueur – Gallimard, 1984
 * Femmes – Gallimard, 1983
 * Women – Columbia UP, 1990
 * Paradis – Seuil, 1981
 * H – Seuil, 1973
 * Lois – Seuil, 1972
 * Nombres – Seuil, 1966
 * Drame – Seuil, 1965
 * Event – Red Dust, 1987
 * Le Parc – Seuil, 1961
 * The Park – Red Dust, 1986
 * Une Curieuse Solitude – Seuil, 1958
 * A Strange Solitude – Grove Press, 1959

Interviews

 * Contre-attaque – Grasset, 2016
 * L'Évangile de Nietzsche – Cherche Midi, 2006
 * Poker (interviews with Ligne de risque)- Gallimard, 2005
 * Voir écrire (with Christian de Portzamparc) – Calmann-Levy, 2003
 * La Divine Comédie – Desclée de Brouwer, 2000
 * Le Rire de Rome – Gallimard, 1992
 * Vision à New York – Grasset, 1981
 * Entretiens avec Francis Ponge – Seuil, 1970

Translations in English

 * Casanova the Irresistible – University of Illinois Press, 2016
 * H – Equus Press, 2015
 * Mysterious Mozart – University of Illinois Press, 2010
 * Writing and Seeing Architecture (with Christian de Portzamparc) – University Of Minnesota Press, 2008
 * Watteau in Venice – Scribner's, 1994
 * Women – Columbia University Press, 1990
 * Event – Red Dust, 1987
 * The Park – Red Dust, 1986
 * Writing and the Experience of Limits – Columbia University Press, 1983
 * A Strange Solitude – Grove Press, 1959

Influences and tributes

 * Sollers appears as a character in Philip Roth's Operation Shylock (1993), Michel Houellebecq's novel Atomised (1998) and several novels by Marc-Édouard Nabe, including L'Homme qui arrêta d'écrire (2010).
 * His writings inspired the eponymous Japanese rock band Sollers.
 * A character based on Sollers features in Laurent Binet's 2015 novel La Septième Fonction du langage (Grasset), translated into English as The Seventh Function of Language (2017).

Further reading and literary criticism

 * Roland Barthes, Writer Sollers, 1979 (ISBN 0-485-11337-6)
 * Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, 1983 (ISBN 0-226-14334-1)
 * Julia Kristeva, Polylogue, 1977 (ISBN 2-02-004631-8)
 * Michel Foucault, Distance, aspect, origine : Philippe Sollers, Critique n° 198, November 1963
 * Malcolm Charles Pollard, The novels of Philippe Sollers : Narrative and the Visual, 1994 (ISBN 90-5183-707-0)
 * Philippe Forest, Philippe Sollers, 1992 (ISBN 2-02-017336-0)
 * Eric Hayot, Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel Quel, 2004 (ISBN 0-472-11340-2)
 * Hilary Clarke, The Fictional Encyclopaedia: Joyce, Pound, Sollers, 1990 (ISBN 0-8240-0006-4)
 * Alex Gordon, ‘Roland Barthes’ Sollers Ēcrivain and the Problem of the Reception of Philippe Sollers’ L’écriture percurrente’, Journal of the Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University, No. 48, February 2002, pp. 55–83.
 * Sade's Way, Sollers on Sade, video documentary on ParisLike, 2013 (ISSN 2117-4725)