French writer Jean Teulé died on Tuesday October 18 at the age of 69. “Betty Mialet and Bernard Barrault have the immense sadness to have to confirm that their author Jean Teulé would have succumbed last night, October 18, to cardiac arrest”wrote the Mialet-Barrault editions.
Jean Teulé was born in St-Lô in the Manche in a communist family. He then grew up in Arcueil in the Paris region. After a chaotic schooling, he entered the art school in rue Madame then began his career working for The Echo of the Savannas at the end of the 1970s. He would become a pillar of it.
He worked from the 1980s at Glénat, where he adapted bloody mary by Jean Vautrin. This album marked the spirits to the point that specialized journalists created for him the “Prix Bloody Mary” at the Angoulême Festival in 1984, which would then become the Grand Prix de la critique, awarded each year by the Association of Critics and comic book journalists (ACBD).
In January 1986, he published his first comic strip report in the magazine in Zero, a chronicle featuring quirky characters. His stories will then be published in (TO BE CONTINUED), the monthly comic strip from Casterman. These chronicles have been collected in two albums, People from France in 1988 and People from elsewhere in 1990.
The same year, Jean Teulé receives at the Angoulême festival a special jury prize for his “outstanding contribution to the renewal of the comic book genre”.
Jean Teulé continues parallel to the comic strip, to which he remains faithful all his life, a career as a novelist. We owe him Rainbow for Rimbaud, his first novel, published in 1991 by Julliard, which tells the odyssey of an ordinary man from Charleville-Mézières, in the footsteps of the famous poet. Then The Easter Eye (1992), Walk for a Forgotten Father (1995), Darling (1998) which is a great success in bookstores. This fictionalized biography of a shipwrecked woman was adapted for the cinema by Christine Carrière, in 2007, with Marina Foïs and Guillaume Canet. The Suicide Shop published in 2007 was also adapted for theater and cinema by Patrice Leconte in 2012.
The novelist digs into the offbeat biography genre that began with his first novel with works that earned him great popular success: O Verlaine (2005), I, Francois Villon (2006, biographical narrative award) or even Damn it, Baudelaire! (2021).
In thirty years, Jean Teulé knew how to clear with this singular vein a special place in the French literary landscape and a place of choice in the heart of a large readership. Agincourt in rainy weather, his latest novel, published in February 2022 by Mialet-Barrault editions, has been printed in 300,000 copies.
Jean Teulé also had a career as a journalist and actor. We remember his interventions on the set of the show The English plate, on Antenna 2, in which he told his stories of unusual people. He then continued his career on television by collaborating on the show None else on Canal+.
Many of his works have also been adapted for the theatre. We have recently seen an exciting adaptation of the Montespan (Ed.Pocket) by Salomé Villiers at the Théâtre de la Huchette.
Jean Teulé was the companion of the film actress Miou-Miou.