We speak ill of them, we denigrate them. At the same time, we covet them and we buy them. Literary prizes arouse passions and, in France alone, there are more than two thousand… In Goncourt station. 120 years of literary awardsthe French writer, journalist, critic and psychoanalyst Arnaud Viviant (song of criticism) comments on and dissects, sometimes in a very personal tone, this institution which has now become central to the editorial landscape of France, to the point of structuring “our knowledge of literature in the twentiethe century “. Iconoclastic, clearly left-field, the author, who sits on the juries of the December prize and the Prix de Flore — which are among the ten major literary prizes of the fall — gives here some keys to understanding their mores and “their Machiavellian success “. A matter of interests or friendships (and hatreds, their much more burning reverse side), dismissals, volatile and deadly “living organisms”, prizes are above all a “matter of money”, recalls it, a way of parallel financing of literature.
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