Pierre Gamarra

Pierre Gamarra was born in Toulouse on 10 July 1919. From 1938 until 1940, he was a teacher in the South of France. During the German Occupation, he joined various Resistance groups in Toulouse, involved in the writing and distributing of clandestine publications. This led him to a career as a journalist, and then, more specifically both as a writer and a literary journalist.^[1]

In 1948, Pierre Gamarra received the first Charles-Veillon International Grand Prize [fr] in Lausanne for his first novel, La Maison de feu.^{[n 1]} Members of the 1948 Veillon Prize jury included writers André Chamson, Vercors, Franz Hellens and Louis Guilloux.^{[n 2]} The novel is described in Books Abroad as "a beautifully written tale of humble life, which Philippe and Jammes would have liked".^[3]

From 1945 to 1951, he worked as a journalist in Toulouse. In 1951, Louis Aragon, Jean Cassou and André Chamson offered him a position in Paris as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Europe.^[4] He occupied this position until 1974, when he became director of the magazine. Under Pierre Gamarra's direction, Europe continued the project initiated in 1923 by Romain Rolland and other writers.^{[n 3]} Until 2009, Pierre Gamarra also contributed to most of the magazines's issues with a book review column titled "La Machine à écrire" (The Typewriter).^{[n 4][5]}

Most of his novels take place in his native South-West of France: he wrote a novel trilogy based on the history of Toulouse and various novels set in that town, along the Garonne^[6] or in the Pyrenees.
John L. Brown, in World Literature Today, writes that Pierre Gamarra's descriptions of Toulouse, its people and its region were "masterly", "skillfully and poetically" composed "with a vibrant lyricism"^[7] and that:

Few contemporary French novelists can communicate a feeling for place, melding poetry and realism, myth and history, more movingly and convincingly than Pierre Gamarra.^[8]

Pierre Gamarra is also the author of The Midnight Roosters,^{[n 5]} a novel set in Aveyron during the French Revolution.^[9] The book was adapted for the French television channel FR3 in 1973. The film, casting Claude Brosset [fr], was shot in the town of Najac.^[10]

In 1955, he published one of his best known novels, Le Maître d’école;^{[n 6]} the book and its sequel La Femme de Simon^{[n 7]} (1962) received critical praise.^[11]
Reviewing his 1957 short stories collection Les Amours du potier,^{[n 8]} Lois Marie Sutton deems that, although war affects the plots of many of "all (those) delightful thirteen stories", "it is the light-hearted plot that Gamarra maneuvers best" and that "as in his previous publications, (the author) shows himself to be a master delineator of the life of the average peasant and employee."^[12]

In 1961, Pierre Gamarra received the Prix Jeunesse [fr] for L'Aventure du Serpent à Plumes^{[n 9]} and in 1985, the SGDL Grand Prize^{[n 10]} for his novel Le Fleuve Palimpseste.^{[n 11]}

Pierre Gamarra died in Argenteuil on 20 May 2009, leaving a substantial body of work, not yet translated into English for the most part. The Encyclopædia Britannica sees in him a "delightful practitioner with notable drollery and high technical skills"^[13] in the art of children's poetry and children's stories. His poems^{[n 12]} and fables^{[n 13][17]} are well known by French schoolchildren.^[18][19][20]

In French unless otherwise stated

Literature for the youth edit

Stories edit

Fables collections edit

• Salut, Monsieur de La Fontaine (2005), ill. Frédéric Devienne, ISBN 2-916237-00-3
• La Mandarine et le Mandarin (1970)

Poetry edit

CD edit

• Les Aventuriers de l'alphabet (2002) ISBN 2-7404-1278-9

Adaptations edit

• Les Fariboles de Bolla (1981), La Farandole [fr], original Swedish text and ill. by Gunilla Bergström, ISBN 2-7047-0232-2

Novels edit

• L'Empreinte de l'ours (2010), De Borée (Sayat) ISBN 9782844949899
• Les Coqs de minuit (new ed. including Rosalie Brousse) 2009, De Borée ISBN 9782844949097
• Le Maître d'école (new ed. including La Femme de Simon) 2008, De Borée ISBN 9782812903007
• Les Lèvres de l’été (1986) ISBN 2-209-05808-2
• Le Fleuve palimpseste PUF (1985) ISBN 9782130385868; SGDL Prize for the novel
• Cantilène occitane (1979) ISBN 9782070385027
• La Femme et le Fleuve^{[n 14]} (1952)
• L’assassin a le prix Goncourt^{[n 15]} (1951)
• Les Enfants du pain noir (1950) ISBN 9782812908491
• La Maison de feu (1948), Éditions La Baconnière (Neuchatel)/Éditions de Minuit, Charles Veillon International Prize [fr]

Reedited De Borée (2014) ISBN 9782812911491

Editions of the book since 1948

• Toulouse trilogy:
  • 72 soleils, 1975 ISBN 9782201013522
  • L'Or et le Sang, 1970
  • Les Mystères de Toulouse, 1967

Short stories edit

• Les Amours du potier, Éditions La Baconnière [fr] (Neuchatel), 1957
• Un cadavre; Mange ta soupe, Prix National de la Résistance 1944

Poetry collections edit

• Mon Pays l'Occitanie (2009), Cahiers de la Lomagne
• Romances de Garonne (1990) ISBN 9782209063390
• Essais pour une malédiction, Hélène Vacaresco Prize for Poetry 1943

In French unless otherwise stated

Book reviews in English edit

• List of reviews of Pierre Gamarra’s books (Worldcat)including:
  • Les Lèvres de l’été reviewed by John L. Brown, World Literature Today, Vol. 61, No. 2, The Diary as Art (Spring, 1987), p. 236 (University of Oklahoma)
  • La Maison de feu reviewed by Georgette R. Schuler, Books Abroad, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring, 1949), p. 156

Literary journals special issues edit

• Poésie Première "Tarn en Poésie 2003: Avec Pierre Gamarra"
• Poésie Première No. 29 (2004)

Interviews edit

• Tohoku University Faculty of Letters Bulletin, No. 27 (Year 2007) (Sendai, Japan)
• Vivre en Val-D’Oise, No. 112, November–December 2008 (Argenteuil)

Homages edit

• Charles Dobzynski, Michel Delon, Jean Métellus, Roger Bordier, Béatrice Didier, Raymond Jean, Bernard Chambaz, Michel Besnier, Marc Petit, Claude Sicard, Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, Henri Béhar, Gérard Noiret, Francis Combes, in Europe No. 966 (October 2009)
• Les Cahiers de la Lomagne (Los Quasèrns de la Lomanha), No. 15 (Year 2009), pp. 1 & 16-29

Two streets (one in Argenteuil, one in Montauban) and a cul-de-sac in Boulazac—, two schools (one in Montauban, the other in Bessens^[22])— and two public libraries (one in Argenteuil,^[23] the other in Andrest) are named after Pierre Gamarra.

• Europe (magazine)