Of Books, Bombs, and Backward Thinking: Jean Dutourd’s Reactionary Literary History

Against the backdrop of the Cold War and its bitter politicization of Parisian artistic circles, author and columnist Jean Dutourd complained in 1973 that rival acolytes no longer settled their quarrels through mocking battles of wit: “Jadis, on disait que le ridicule tuait… Aujourd’hui, ce sont les cocktails molotovs lancés par des sauvages hirsutes, fanatiques et analphabètes” (CE 20). He was to receive unwarranted evidence of this trend a few years later (though apparently the extremists were literate after all). On November 13, 1977, a small incendiary device was ignited in front of his building, causing minor damage to a local business. Unfortunately, during the July holidays of 1978, events took a much more serious turn. Dutourd returned to Paris to discover that his apartment had been blown up. This second attack consisted of a 54-lb. bomb detonated just outside his door. The blast propelled the elevator cage through the wall and across his bedroom, leaving little more than rubble in its wake.