Jacques-Laurent Bost
See also: Bost
The last of a family of ten children, Jacques-Laurent Bost is resulting from an easy medium marked by the moral rigorism of a Pasteur father to the Havre. But he wants to be quickly in rupture with this last so much so that he quickly recognizes himself more in agnosticism that in the religion.
According to its secondary studies with the college of Le Havre, it is dazzled there by the original thought and the behavior iconoclast of its professor of philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre. It thus follows it to Paris where, registered into the Sorbonne, it is integrated into the sartrienne small family. He becomes the lover of Simone de Beauvoir with which he exchanges an importance correspondence. Called “small Bost” because of the notoriety of his older brother Pierre, novelist and scenario writer, it carries out some small trades in the cinema. In 1939, it is always student when it is mobilized. Adapting with difficulty to its regiment, it marks a rejection of the officers at the point to refuse to go up in rank. But it is distinguished with the face by its heroism which is worth the to him Military Cross. Wounded during the rout, it Marie with Olga Kosakiewitcz and does not engage in Resistance.
With the Release, it is engaged by Camus with Combat and is sent as war correspondent in Germany where it discovers in particular the horror of the camps with Dachau. It is also in the collection which Camus at Gallimard directs (“Hope”) that it publishes its newspaper of war under the title Dernier of the trades (1946). Become international reporter, it accomplishes some voyages for Combat but it prefers Paris where it has his friends sartriens: Jean Cau, Astruc, Scipion, Pouillon, Pontalis. He is besides founding member of the Modern times at the sides of the couple Sartre-with Beauvoir of which he is the close friend and the first of the admirors. It ensures it the chronicle of the “Course of the things” with wild papers from where a whole vein sulky person, gloomy and aggressive arises.
Member of the Steering committee of the review, it also writes under pseudonym a quantity of works of order. He publishes under the name of Tartar Claude of the film critics with the Express train where its nephew Serge Lafaurie works. But if its work of cinematographic criticism is very well remunerated, it really does not feel in agreement with the projects of new formula of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. It thus carries a glance attentive with the project that its nephew and Jean Daniel subject to him, namely that of launching a new formula of France Observer . Moreover, the political line of the Nouvel Observateur appearing to him “at least blessed by far by Sartre”, it is ensured to be there with its ease.
Thus, even if it is found with “wages infinitely smaller”, it joined its team a few months after her fusion” and, as from February 1965, publishes in a regular and intense way papers of company or interior policy.
In its first paper, he denounces the leniency of Justice as regards murder under self-defense. But as of June 1965, it ceases writing articles regularly, being satisfied to publish in two articles per annum. Only the summer 1969 sees it a little more intervening, that to greet the film Papillon , to pay homage the work of Boris Vian or to criticize the book of Jerome Deshusses on the Left reactionary. He then prefers definitively to take refuge in the rewriting in the name of criticisms that Jean Daniel had made him on one of his papers. Promoted with the row of Editor association without exerting the effective functions of them if they are not those to give the approved for printing of the newspaper to printing works, it assists its nephew in his direction of the drafting.
In the few articles which it publishes thereafter, it is made in particular the echo of the productions of the band of Charlie Hebdo , of work on Ernest Nolte ( Fascism , 1973) or judgment of Beate Klarsfeld (July 15th, 1974). But especially, it maugrée with Michel Thicket on a political line too droitière compared to their ideal. Indeed, “complaining permanently, of the direction and the orientations of the newspaper, always too on the right with its direction”, it is caught of it in Olivier Todd for the angle too anticommunist of one of his reports on Vietnam in 1973. Politically then marked by a transfer of “its Protestantism to Communism”, it does not support “that the least evil of the P.C.F is said if it did not begin itself”.
Eternal “1848 revolutionary grouser morose, timid and aggressive” with the alcoholic tendencies, it appears with the eyes of Todd like somebody who, at 50 years, is stuffed of bitterness after having been it of doubts with 40 and of talent with 30. Its sensitivity bougonne does not do of them less one of the most popular characters of the newspaper. But in 1978, several elements bring it starting from the newspaper. Initially, the assumption of school raised by Jean Daniel considering like possible the cohabitation on the same plan of Sartre and Aron raise its indignation. Then, publication, in May 1978, of an article of Jules Roy who, greeting the merit of the French parachutists having jumped on Kolwezi, runs up against his sensitivity antimilitarist deeply. The arrival in June 1978 of Francoise Giroud which it does not support completes to convince it to leave.
In November 1978, it is definitively replaced. But, Jean-Paul Sartre having never declared it officially, it finds himself with a ridiculous retirement. Claude Angéli then finds to him a post of rewriter to the Canard Enchaîné where he works until his death in 1990.
Sylvie the Plug Beauvoir published its correspondence with Simone de Beauvoir in 2005: cross Correspondence , Gallimard, 2005.