Michel Tournier Biography and List of Works

French writer, who found fame at the relatively late age of forty-three with his first novel, VENDREDI, OU LES LIMBES DU PASIFIQUE (1967, Friday), an ingenious adaptation of the classic Robinson Crusoe theme. Rather than recycle old stories Tournier parodies them in order to comment upon the contemporary world.

"Je suis le peintre de la profondeur, et la profondeur d'un être transparaît sur son visage, dès que cesse l'agitation de la vie triviale, comme le fond rocheux de la mer, avec ses algues vertes et ses poissons d'or, apparaît aux yeux du voyageur quand cesse le médiocre clapotis provoque à la surface par les rameurs ou une brise capricieuse."
(From La goulette d'or, 1986)

Michel Tournier was born in Paris. His father and mother met at the Sorbonne where they both studied German. Tournier also learned to speak German at an early age, when his mother took her children on frequent summer holidays to her favourite boarding house in Germany. After being wounded in World War I, his father had given up the idea of becoming a teacher. He started a business collecting royalties for authors' record rights. From these recorded texts, and the tales of Andersen, Selma Lagerlöf, James Oliver Curwood, arose Tournies's hunger for the world of imagination and his love of books.

Tournier was educated at St.-Germain-en Laye and at a large number of private schools, mostly religious. During World War II Tournier completed his undergraduate studies and continued to higher degrees in philosophy and law at Sorbonne. He spent four years at the University of Tübinbeg (1946-50), planning a career in philosophy and education. Like his father, he did not pass the agrégation, a competitive state examination for admission to the most important teaching jobs.

From 1949 to 1954 Tournier wrote and produced for French radio and television. He was the chief editor for the publishing firm of Plon (1958-68), a press attaché at the Radio Europe I (1964-1968), and hosted the television series La Chambre Noir in 1960-65. He wrote for the magazine Nouvelles Littéraires and translated Erich Maria Remarque's novels into French. In World Authors 1975-80 Tournier describes this period as an excellent time to prepare his first novel and reconcile fiction and philosophy using myths as a vehicle. He wrote three novels, which he did not consider worthy of being offered for publication.

"A dead myth is called allegory. The writer's function is to prevent myths turning into allegories."

Tournier's mythic novels hit the literary scene in the right moment, when the audience was tired of the nouveau roman, with its difficult style of writing, avoidance of character analysis, absence of clear narrative, and emphasis on description instead of dramatization.

With Friday Tournier won the Grand Prix de Roman in 1967. It retells Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe but gives the story a philosophical depth. The famous hero is marooned on the desert island with his pipe tobacco, a copy of the Bible, and a modern identity problem. After abandoning his cultural background and sinking into animalism, Crusoe returns to the world of the spirit by the noble act of writing. "A new life thus began for him - or more exactly, it was the beginning of his true life on the island, after that period of degradation which he now thought of with shame and sought to forget." Crusoe develops a mystical relationship with his island, which he names Esperanza. When the rescue ship appears, Crusoe rejects the brutality of civilization reflected in the ship's crew. He stays on the island, and Friday chooses to leave, not accepting Crusoe's version of the world.

Three years later Tournier published his second novel, LE ROI DES AULNES (1970, The Ogre), which won the Priz Goncourt. The story combines the myths of St Christopher and the Erl King, set against the background of East Prussia during the Third Reich. In the novel the ogre, Abel Tiffauges, is a monstrous and innocent character, a French prisoner in Germany who assists the Nazis by searching for boys for a Nazi military camp. In the end he perishes rescuing a little Jewish boy. LES MÉTÉORES (Gemini) was published in 1975, a baroque treatment of the spiritual and sexual implications of twin ship, which can be read as a contemporary version of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. Tournier's fourth novel, GASPARD, MELCHIOR ET BALTHAZAR (1980, The Four Wise Men) reworks the familiar Christian legend of the three kings who journeyed to Bethlehem in order to honour the Messiah's birth. The fourth Magi, according to Russian myth, travelled from India. He did not reach Bethlehem in time, but rescued a group of children from the Massacre of the Innocents. The story weaves together realistic elements with the fantastic, and makes a groundbreaking move away from the formalism of the French nouveau roman. After the publication of The Four Wise Men, Tournier was at the height of his career and considered to be France's leading novelist.

LA GOULETTE D'OR (1985) was intended partly as an attack on France's racist attitudes toward its African migrant workers. In the poetic story about the plight of these labourers the protagonist is Idris, a young Berber. In the middle of the desert he meets a beautiful white woman who takes a photo of him, promising to send it to Idris. He waits for the picture in vain, and then decides to travel to France, to find the woman. In Paris he experiences all the humiliations of an outsider and faces the superficial world of pictures. To save himself in the labyrinth of mirages, he starts to learn the art of calligraphy. "Le signe est esprit, l'image est matière." LE MÉDIANOCHE AMOUREUX (1989, The Midnight Love Feast) includes a novella, short stories, and short 'fables'. In the novella 'The Taciturn Lovers' examines the basic psychological warfare between men and women: "What is a domestic scene? It's the woman's triumph. It's when the woman has finally forced the man out of her silence by her nagging. Then he shouts, he rages, he's abusive, and the woman surrenders to being voluptuously steeped in this verbal downpour."

ELÉAZAR; OU, LA SOURCE ET LE BUISSON (1996) recounts the journey of a family of 19th-century Irish settlers to a new home in California and explores the question of God's refusal to allow Moses to enter the Promised Land. Tournier's next work is his long-awaited novel on Saint Sebastian.

"Le ciseau du sculpteur libère la jeune fille, l'athlète ou le cheval du bloc de marbre. De même les signes sont tous prisonniers de l'encre et de l'encrier. Le calame les en libère et les lâche sur la page. La calligraphie est libération."
(from La goulette d'or)

Tournier has also written essays, short stories, prose poems, a travel book LE VAGABOND IMMOBILE (1984), and juvenile novels. Friday was rewritten for children as Friday and Robinson (1971). In 1977 Tournier published his literary autobiography under the title LE VENT PARACLET.

For further reading: Myytti ja usko Michel Tournierin tuotannossa by Anne Fried (1994); World Authors 1975-80, ed. by Vineta Colby (1985); Michel Tournier by W. Cloonan (1985); Michel Tournier by S. Koster (1985); Michel Tournier, ed. by P.E. Knabe (1987); Michel Tournier, Philosophy and Fiction by C. Davis (1988); Michel Tournier by Francoise Merllié (1988); Michel Tournier: Le Roman mythologique by Arlette Bouloumié (1988); L'In-difference chez Michel Tournier by Mireille Rosello (1990); Michel Tournier's Metaphysical Fiction by Susan Petit (1991); Michel Tournier by Martin Roberts (1994); L'Evangile selon Michel by Lorna Milne (1994); Michel Tournier, ed. by Michael Worton (1995); Tournier élémentaire by Jonathan Krell (1995); Michel Tournier's Children by Christopher Anderson (1998)

VENDREDI, OU LES LIMBES DU PASIFIQUE, (1967)