Jean-François Josselin

Jean-François Josselin was born with Brest the January 19th 1939. Gone up to Paris, it comes into contact with Jean Cayrol which accommodates it in its collection of young authors, “To write”. In 18 years, it publishes a first text there where it resorts to the “strange psychology, disturbing” which characterizes its work.

Three years later, it presents in its first novel, Don Juan under the rain (1960), an image reversed of famous in love conquering: a passive being, that its success terrifies. He writes also a history of love with Miss Irnois according to Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (Echo of the Mode, 1968). Chronicler with the Express train, it passes to the Nouvel Observateur in November 1969 to work within the literary service. “Always having shared or having followed the ideas political of Jean Daniel”, it of between step less many times in conflict with him for personal reasons or professional. Gradually it is essential like the number two of the service and, in July 1978, is officialized “to advise literary” newspaper. It then passed to Grasset where it bound of friendship to Francoise Verny and where it published When I was star (1976), a kind of fantasmée autobiography passing subtly from the dream to reality and playing with talent of ambiguity, the shift and personalities of loans. If A few days with me (1979) is noticed less, the Hell and Co (1982) brings to him the dedication with the attribution of the Prix Médicis. From this very controlled book, it draws a play interpreted by Francoise Fabian and Michel Duchaussoy. As from 1983, it occupies also a place of chronicler with “Letter-box” on FR3.

Large admiror of Gerard Philippe, Simone Signoret and Catherine Deneuve but also of Patricia Highsmith and George Cukor, fine expert of the court of Louis XIV and the plates of Hollywood, this faithful of the Festival of Avignon is fascinated for the faculty of the actors to shine in the light without never revealing itself, under names and faces of loan.

Friend of Jeanne Moreau, his enchantment for the actresses of cinema reflects in the hero of the Sea to broad the (1987), published at Gallimard where it followed his friend Francoise Verny.

Offering in the daily life “a jovial appearance, an exuberant humor, remarkable talents of imitator”, this “eternal young man full with talents and anguish” died in Brest on April 2nd, 2003. His/her friend Jerome Garcin regarded it as “the Charles Trenet of criticism”, “the natural child of Jean Genet and the countess of Ségur, a porcelain heart under a docker of docker”.

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