Early life and career

Charles Dantzig was born into a family of professors of medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

. He obtained the baccalauréate

Baccalaureate

A baccalaureate is an educational qualification. The term may refer to:*A bachelor's degree*Baccalauréat, France's national secondary-school diploma*Romanian Baccalaureate, Romania's national secondary-school diploma...

 at the age of seventeen, but rather than following the family tradition or taking up his place to prepare the entrance exams for the Ecole Normale Supérieure

École Normale Supérieure

The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

, he decided to study Law. Having completed a doctorate in Law from the university of Toulouse

University of Toulouse

The Université de Toulouse is a consortium of French universities, grandes écoles and other institutions of higher education and research, named after one of the earliest universities established in Europe in 1229, and including the successor universities to that earlier university...

, he moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.

A few years later, at the age of twenty-eight, he published an essay on Remy de Gourmont

Remy de Gourmont

Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...

 entitled Remy de Gourmont, Cher Vieux Daim ! (Le Rocher, 1990), soon followed by his first collection of poems, Le chauffeur est toujours seul', to critical acclaim.

Author and publisher

Charles Dantzig joined the publishing company Les Belles Lettres

Les Belles Lettres

Les Belles Lettres is a French publisher specializing in the publication of ancient authors. Its publications include the Collection Budé.The publisher house, originally named Société Les Belles Lettres pour le développement de la culture classique, was founded by the Association Guillaume Budé,...

, launching three new collections: "Brique", specialising in contemporary literature, "Eux & nous", in which French writers discuss the authors of classical Antiquity, and "Trésors de la nouvelle", which, as its name suggests, specialises in short stories. He published the first French translation of a collection of poetry by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

, Thousand-and-First Ship (Mille et un navires), and himself translated the play The Vegetable (Un legume). He also translated the first French edition of a collection of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

’s journalism, Aristotle at an Afternoon Tea (Aristote à l'heure du thé). Charles Dantzig also oversaw the publication of Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob was a Jewish French writer.-Biography:He was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine on 23 August 1867...

’s complete works (Œuvres, Les Belles Lettres).

Les Belles Lettres published his early essays, including Il n'y a pas d'Indochine (1995) and La Guerre du cliché (1998), and his poetry collections Que le siècle commence (1996, awarded the prix Paul Verlaine), Ce qui se passe vraiment dans les toiles de Jouy (1999), and À quoi servent les avions ? (2001), which foreshadowed the events of 9/11. He later wrote, “A few people have said to me that the mysterious power of poetry is such that it foresees events. I’m not so sure. […] Poetry reasons rather than foresees. The result – as in all literature, and even in all works of art – is thought. Except that rather than obtaining it by sparking speculations, it does so by sparking images, within the demands of rhythm, and in some cases, prosody” (J'ai interrompu très tôt une carrière de poète). A selection of his poems was published in 2003 with the title En souvenir des long-courriers. 2003 also saw the publication of the Bestiaire, a collection of animal poetry.

He then moved to Grasset, where he oversees the "Cahiers Rouges" series, breathing fresh life into the list by publishing cult classics such as Jean de La Ville de Mirmont’s L'Horizon chimérique and Jean Desbordes’s J'adore, as well as major twentieth-century diarists and authors of memoirs, such as Harold Nicolson

Harold Nicolson

Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West, their unusual relationship being described in their son's book, Portrait of a Marriage.-Early life:Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the younger son of...

, George Moore

George Moore

George Moore may refer to:*George Edward Moore , G.E. Moore, British philosopher*George Moore , Member of Parliament for Dublin City 1826–1831*George Moore , landowner and High Sheriff of Derbyshire...

, and Robert de Saint Jean. He wrote the preface to a hitherto unpublished novel for young readers by Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

, Summer Crossing (La Traversée de l'été), and was also responsible for the first publication of Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

’s lessons, based on notes by one of his students (Brigitte Le Juez

Brigitte Le Juez

Brigitte Le Juez is an author and academic at Dublin City University:-Published works:Books by Brigitte Le Juez include:* Beckett avant la lettre, Grasset, 2007....

, Beckett avant la lettre). Other works he has published include a collection of famous critic Bernard Frank’s articles for Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

 from 1985 to 1989 (5, rue des Italiens) and Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

’s famous Philadelphia speech on race in America.

Between 2006 and 2008, Charles Dantzig penned the epilogue for the special reports in the monthly Magazine Littéraire, offering his faithful readership his reliably iconoclastic literary views on everything from the French-speaking world to authors and psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

.

He was awarded the Grand Prix Jean Giono for his body of work in October 2010.

Since september 2001, Charles Dantzig writes the literary chronicle in the Magazine Littéraire, and is a producer on the cultural public radio France Culture

France Culture

France Culture is a French public radio channel and part of Radio France. Its programming encompasses a wide variety of features on historical, philosophical, sociopolitical, and scientific themes , as well as literary readings, radio plays, and experimental productions...

, where he created "Secret professionnel", on the artistic creation.

Novels

Charles Dantzig’s first novel, Confitures de crimes (the title refers to a line from a poem by H.J.-M. Levet: “Le soleil se couche en des confitures de crimes”), was published by Les Belles Lettres in 1993. It recounted the life of a poet elected president of France, who went on to start a war. This work of fiction was the first indication of Charles Dantzig’s passion for literature and his ironic handling of posturing and comedy. His second novel, Nos vies hâtives (Grasset, 2001), was awarded the Prix Jean Freustié and the Prix Roger Nimier. The third, Un film d'amour, was published in 2003. It was a choral novel with a scholarly structure that supposedly drew on a TV documentary on the death of a young film-maker by the name of Birbillaz. “At first, the reader takes this book – intelligent from the first line to the last – for a formalist whimsy, before grasping that it aims for a kind of totality, like all great books. It leaves behind its ostensible subject, the portrait of the absent figure, Birbillaz, to focus on his brother – his double, his mirror image – like something out of Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

: a failure in life, bitter, rotten to the core, who says no to everything, to the point of obstinacy and pain. No to love, to talent, to creativity, to goodness, to beauty. A “no!” that he shouts in people’s faces, to the very gates of Hell – and no doubt beyond.” (Jacques Drillon, Le Nouvel Observateur

Le Nouvel Observateur

Le Nouvel Observateur is a weekly French newsmagazine. Based in Paris, it is the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation ....

, October 16, 2003). Grasset published Charles Dantzig’s fourth novel, Je m'appelle François, in 2007. It was inspired by the real-life crimes of Christophe Rocancourt, which the author transformed and transfigured into a new fictional destiny. In august 2011 appears "Dans un avion pour Caracas", a novel entirely happening in a plane flight between Paris and Caracas.

Essays

2005 saw the publication of Charles Dantzig’s Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature française, which was awarded a number of prizes, including the Prix Décembre

Prix Décembre

The Prix Décembre, originally known as the Prix Novembre, is one of France's premier literary awards. Its winners are generally far more radical choices than the more staid and conservative Prix Goncourt...

, The Prix de l’Essai de l'Académie française and the Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle. The Dictionnaire gave him free rein to develop his aesthetic vision of literature, illustrated with numerous comments on style. The work enjoyed considerable critical and popular esteem, not only in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 but also abroad, and was hailed as the major literary event of the year.

"A bestseller in the francophone world, Dantzig's Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature française is en extraordinary undertaking, and anyone who buys it is expecting a fact-filled reference book will be either disapointed or, more likely, happily surprised. Biased, mischievous, provocative, Dantzig is also massively well read, funny and instructive. He is an elegant writer, and is clearly passionate about books." Patrick McGuinness, Times Literary Supplement, jul, 14. 2006

In January 2009, Grasset published a new major work by Charles Dantzig. The Encyclopédie capricieuse du tout et du rien, written as a compilation of lists, enjoyed considerable success. It met with wide critical acclaim and made the front cover of Le Monde in a cartoon by Plantu. It won the Prix Duménil in May 2009 following a unanimous vote.

Charles Dantzig published his essay on reading, Pourquoi Lire ?, in October 2010. It again met with immediate critical acclaim and popular success and was awarded the Grand Prix Giono.
"Divided into over seventy short chapters, the book is an impassioned, wide-ranging and occasionally humorous meditation, buttressed by well-chosen quotations, on reading in all its aspects from "Learning to read", in which he says that he has never understood the pejorative tag attached to the word "bookish", through "Reading aloud" to "How to read".", Adrian Tahourdin,

Poetry

In January 2010, Charles Dantzig published two books of poetry simultaneously: a collection of his own new poems in Grasset’s Collection Bleue, Les nageurs, and an anthology of his poetry with new writing and critical essays, La Diva aux longs cils. The poems were selected by Patrick McGuinness

Patrick McGuinness

Patrick Joseph "Paddy" McGuinness is an English stand-up comedian, comedy actor, television personality and presenter. Born in Farnworth, Bolton, he is best known for his performances alongside comedian Peter Kay, and as the host of dating programme Take Me Out.-Early life:He attended Mount St....

 of St. Anne's College, Oxford. At the same time, Charles Dantzig’s novel Je m'appelle François was published in paperback and his translations of Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald were republished in the Cahiers Rouges collection. Les nageurs and La Diva aux longs cils were presented at the Maison Française in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 in 2010.

Art

Charles Dantzig’s cultural interests are not limited to books. He is also a connoisseur of art, regularly contributing to arts and aesthetics reviews, working alongside artists such as Philippe Cognée and Antonio Segui

Antonio Seguí

- Biography :Seguí is the oldest son of a middle-class and has three siblings. In the years from 1951 to 1954 he traveled through Europe and Africa, was visiting student at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris,...

. He inaugurated the Petit pan de mur jaune series at the Musée du Louvre in 2007, giving a presentation in front of Van Dyck’s painting Les princes Charles-Louis et Rupert du Palatinat. He was an associate curator of the inaugural exhibition of the new Centre Pompidou museum in Metz

Metz

Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...

, Chefs-d’œuvre?, where the Charles Dantzig Room explored the notion of the masterpiece in literature.