Imaginary interview with François Cavanna
by Charactorium · François Cavanna (1923 — 2014) · Literature · Society · 6 min read
One afternoon in the late 2000s, somewhere between a Parisian apartment cluttered with books and the stubborn memory of the cobblestones of Nogent. François Cavanna receives without ceremony, his mustache bushy, his voice gravelly like a street urchin who grew up between his father's trowel and the typewriter. He talks fast, cuts off, laughs, gets angry: eighty years old and not an ounce of bourgeois politeness.
—When you look back on your childhood, what image comes to mind first?
Rue Sainte-Anne, in Nogent-sur-Marne, with its smells of stew and fresh plaster. My father was a mason, a rital from Brianza, who arrived with his big hands and three words of French. At home, they spoke the dialect from over there; at school, they taught me the fine language, the one that dots the i's. I spent my childhood being a go-between for these two worlds, translating my father to the world and the world to my father. That's why I wrote Les Ritals in 1978: to give that kid back his neighborhood, his trowel, his dented pride. As I put it in black and white: "The rital is the immigrant Italian, the one people look down on, the one who works hard and speaks with an accent. My father was a rital, a mason, and proud of it in his own way."
I spent my childhood translating my father to the world and the world to my father.
—Why did you reclaim that word, "rital", which was an insult?
Because an insult, when you wear it like a medal, loses its sting. Rital — they spat it in our faces as if it were dirty to have a father who mixed mortar. So I took the word, washed it, and made it the title of a book, in big letters on the cover. At home in Nogent, we ate polenta and my mother's pasta, we lived in a modest apartment where every penny counted, and I was never ashamed of that. The shame was on the side of those who looked down on us. Writing Les Ritals was turning the tables: saying that these people, these masons, these laborers, were worth as much as the clean gentlemen who looked down on them.
An insult, when you wear it like a medal, loses its sting.
—In 1943, you were swept up by the STO. Do you remember the departure?
You remember that for your whole life. I was twenty, the age when you think the world belongs to you, and the Service du travail obligatoire plucked me like a rabbit. They pushed us into cattle cars, headed for Germany, without asking our opinion. I wrote exactly what I felt in Les Russkoffs: "They loaded us into cattle cars, headed for Germany, for the STO. We didn't know what awaited us, only that we were leaving everything." Over there, near Berlin, we slaved away on construction sites under the falling bombs. We were twenty and already we knew that youth was just a word for posters.
We were twenty and already we knew that youth was just a word for posters.
—That book, Les Russkoffs, won the Prix Interallié. What did that recognition mean to you?
The Prix Interallié, in 1979, had a strange effect on me, I won't lie. A rital from Nogent, a former STO worker, rewarded by those gentlemen of letters! But above all, it meant that people had finally listened to those kids sent off to Germany, those no one ever talked about, caught between the heroes of the Resistance and the collaborators. We were neither: we were the rounded-up foot soldiers, under Allied bombardments, repairing what the war broke. I told of the hunger, the filth, the fear, but also the friends and even the loves amid the chaos. A prize doesn't make those years less ugly, but it gives them a place in memory. That was already something gained.
We were the rounded-up foot soldiers, neither heroes nor collaborators, those no one ever talked about.
—How did the Hara-Kiri adventure begin in 1960?
It started like a bunch of kids messing around in a basement, except we were printing. In 1960, with Georget Bernier, that magnificent madman known as Professor Choron, we launched Hara-Kiri, a monthly we called "dumb and mean" before the critics did it for us. We printed on bad paper, sold it at newsstands, and we attacked everything: priests, soldiers, the self-righteous, taboos. It was the opposite of the stiff press of the time, which spoke with a pinched nose. Satire, real satire, that scratches where it itches — no one wanted it in polite society. We made it our profession. Banned several times, we came back stronger, censorship almost serving as our advertising.
We called our newspaper "dumb and mean" before the critics did it for us.
—What were your days like as editor-in-chief?
A joyful mess. I got up early, the discipline of a writer: in the morning, I wrote, alone, in the quiet, my columns and my books. In the afternoon, I'd show up at the office and it was all hustle and bustle: proofreading texts, yelling at a cartoonist, discussing the cover, cutting articles with my editor's pencil, because I was a language maniac. In the evening, it would continue over a drink, jokes flew, debates too, and it was in that hubbub that our "dumb and mean" spirit was forged. A newspaper isn't made in air-conditioned offices; it's made at the deadline, at night, with cold coffee and fits of laughter. I loved that life, messy and free.
A newspaper isn't made in offices; it's made at the deadline, at night.
—November 1970: the famous cover on the death of General de Gaulle. Tell us about that moment.
Ah, that one! On November 9, 1970, de Gaulle died at Colombey. A few days earlier, there had been a fire at a dance hall where dozens of people had burned, and the whole press had made it their headline. So we linked the two, in our way, and we headlined: "Tragic Ball at Colombey: One Dead." Five words. The next day, it was the end of Hara-Kiri Hebdo: outright ban, under the pretext of protecting youth. We had touched the sacred, the great man, and that doesn't go unpunished. But we never apologized. A cover is a slap on paper; that one slapped so hard it cost us the paper.
A cover is a slap on paper; that one slapped so hard it cost us the paper.
—Banned overnight, how did you bounce back?
We didn't give up, no way. Banning Hara-Kiri was like banning a word: another one immediately sprouts up. Within the week, we started a new weekly to bypass the censorship, and we called it Charlie Hebdo, in 1970. Same team, same ink, same nerve. The authorities thought they had muzzled us; they just forced us to change the name. That's satire: a hydra that grows two heads when you cut one off. We kept drawing, provoking, laughing at the powerful, because laughter is the one thing a power can never truly put in prison. Well, it always tries, the rascal. And sometimes it succeeds, for a while.
Banning a newspaper is like banning a word: another one immediately sprouts up.
—In your later years, you faced Parkinson's disease. How did you tame it?
By giving it a name, of course. You can better control what you can name and yell at. I ended up calling it Parkinsonne, like a clingy woman you can't get rid of. In Lune de miel, in 2011, I wrote: "Parkinson's, I call it Parkinsonne. She moved into my place without knocking, and she doesn't plan to leave." She's a companion at the end of life that I didn't invite, who steals your hands, your writing, your voice. But a dumb and mean guy doesn't whine: he laughs even when he trembles. I preferred to make a book out of it, mocking and lucid, rather than a deathbed. As long as you can make fun of your own carcass, you're not completely done for.
As long as you can make fun of your own carcass, you're not completely done for.
—What would you say to those who will read your books long after you're gone?
If I could imagine being read in a century, I would tell them: don't take me for a monument, I'd hate that. I was a kid from Nogent, a mason's son, a guy who banged away all his life on a typewriter like his father banged on stone. All I ever wanted was to say true things, with everyone's words, and laugh at what takes itself seriously. Read Les Ritals for a father's love, Les Russkoffs for stolen youth, and above all remember that a free man is a man who refuses to shut up. The rest — honors, statues — you can keep. I prefer to be read laughing.
Don't take me for a monument, I'd hate that.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in François Cavanna's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.