2023-11-12 15:11:09
– Dearest René
Published today at 4:11 p.m.
“When times are troubled and the shadow of vultures draws near, I always turn to the Bible,” Hunter S. Thompson, who lied a lot, liked to say. Anyway, to each their own. For me, it’s René Goscinny to whom I like to return when the birds of prey are flying too low and in too tight circles. The situation in my case is more complex because the scavengers are regularly the very ones who claim to be the heritage of the most holy man, who died in November 1977 as stupidly as his life was singular, in front of his doctor, in the saddle of a bicycle, during an exercise test.
I was too young to mourn him then. To tell the truth, I didn’t yet know how to read, I barely knew how to speak. But everything was in place for the late screenwriter to accompany me during my childhood (and teach me to read, in passing) thanks to another René, my grandfather, who since the publication of the first “Asterix”, in 1959, meticulously acquired each new adventure, the colored slices of which he polished on the shelves with the same jealous care he took to polish the labels in his cellar.
The same goes for “Lucky Luke”, whose entire collection published by Dargaud occupied one floor of the library. So you can be a dermatologist and love good wine and cowboys who smoke cigarettes.
It’s not to brag, but I definitely felt that things had changed when I read “The Great Divide.” A loss of finesse in the second degree, a story with big hooves, one thing less which made the Gaul with the mustache more clumsy, almost trivial.
Unsurprisingly, I later learned that this album was the first that Goscinny had not written. Too good-natured or pragmatic (as a good businessman, he had set up several successful periodicals), he had not forbidden the peddlers from perpetuating the vein, unlike Hergé, who had the good idea to padlock his work. Or was he too confident in his doctor’s stress tests? Was he taken by surprise? At 51, you still have your genius ahead of you…
Anyway, since that time, each new album released before Christmas (this is the case once more this year) gives me a blow to my morale and reminds me that greed is shared much better than talent. Goscinny’s intelligence was so complete, his fantasy so brilliant, that the heartbreaking nullity with which “Asterix” flirted with the blessing of the late Uderzo always struck me as clear proof of the blindness of the crowds and the lack of nobility in the face of easy money. Against his will, another object lesson bequeathed with the eternal sly smile of René Goscinny.
Read alsoFrancois Barras is a journalist in the cultural section. Since March 2000, he has been recounting current, past and perhaps future music.More info
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