Roger Grenier

As a youth, Grenier lived in Pau, where Andrélie opened a shop selling glasses. During the Second World War, he attended classes taught by Gaston Bachelard at the Sorbonne while participating in the French Resistance before actively participating in the 1944 liberation of Paris. In his memoir Paris ma grand'ville, Grenier describes being briefly arrested and narrowly avoiding execution by the Occupation forces on the boulevard Saint-Germain. He was only able to escape after an argument in German broke out among his captors. After the Liberation of Paris, he joined Albert Camus at the newspaper Combat. Grenier later went on to write for the newspaper France Soir. As a journalist, he followed post-war trials which inspired his first essay in 1949 Le Rôle d'accusé. He left professional journalism in 1964 to assume a position on the editorial board of the prominent French publishing house Gallimard. A true man of letters, Grenier was actively involved in many aspects of literary production and criticism. In addition to working as a radio host and a writer for television and cinema, he was a member of the board at Gallimard from 1964 up until his death. Young authors frequently sought out his advice and submitted manuscripts to him for consideration. Grenier was well connected among French authors of his time, such as Joseph Kessel and Albert Camus (whose works Grenier edited after Camus died in 1960), and writers abroad, such as William Faulkner and Yukio Mishimo. His own writing has been recognized by some of the most prominent literary institutions in France. He is recipient of the Grand prix de l'Académie française in 1985 for his body of work of more than thirty works: novels including the best-sellers Le Palais d'hiver 1965 and Ciné-roman Prix Femina in 1972, as well as essays on Chekov and F. Scott Fitzgerald and memoirs. He is best known in the United States for his work The Difficulty of Being a Dog (Les larmes d'Ulysse), translated by Alice Kaplan. Until his death, he was writing and a busy conference attendee, speaking about his works, literature, Gallimard, or his friends: Albert Camus, and Brassaï.

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