In the recent takeover of Éditions de Minuit by the Madrigall group, Gallimard’s parent company, we can see a historical continuity, a gathering of images and values of excellence, but first and foremost, and in the first degree, a astonishing graphic convergence: is a monopoly of white covers in the process of being established? The publisher Benoît Virot, who founded Le Nouvel Attila (recently integrated into the Seuil group), wonders about the permanence and circulation of white on the covers of French books.
“Can you give me any atypical publishing houses? ”Is one of the questions I ask students of publishing at the start of the year. “Midnight,” replied a hesitant young man two years ago in Aix.
“Why Midnight?
– Because they always do the same… ”(long hesitation)
Without knowing whether he was referring to the text or the cover, I completed this young man’s sentence: “There you are. Because they still do the same book. »An aesthetic purity symbolized by a graphic permanence: one of those famous white covers which frame the French editorial landscape of the last XXe century.
Gallimard and most of its collections, POL, Verticales, Minuit… all that is missing is L’Olivier and José Corti’s contemporary estate to bring together under the same banner the range of the great French fiction houses. The “white blanket” (expression chosen for the almost syllable-to-syllable association with other myths of XXe century that are the “white collection”, “white writing” and “white literature”) is associated in the collective unconscious with French prestige.
As the successes gleaned by Gallimard, decisive from the beginning of the 1930s, and the homages or even unconscious imitations of his successors, the cream cover, adorned with a monogram and a double red and black border with alternation of colors from one line to another, becomes an implicit reference, as if it had marked a date, a break with previous decades. Many publishers will follow this path.
1942, Midnight. Vercors designed, in the purest of clandestinity, the famous “netless” blanket, with a single monogram (like Gallimard), which a few years later would frame a blue border, with alternating colors line by line. This template will apply to all texts, literature (blue and black text) as well as essays (red and blue text), except for the collection “Le sens commun” by Pierre Bourdieu or exceptional works such as the Historical dictionary of the streets of Paris by Jacques Hillairet (the translated collection “Voices from outside the world”, whose repeated name formed a frame of words around the title, lasted for a short time).
1952, the Threshold. The cover is initially white with strong titles matched with large nets or ornaments in the 1950s (Chris Marker is housed in the same boat as Don Camillo, in white covers, certainly, but not exempt from a certain baroque) , then the very refined “Red Frame”, “Green Frame” and “Gray Frame” (this one belongs to Tel Quel) appeared from 1958.
1962, 10/18, which has not yet been taken over by Christian Bourgois, innovates by making white paperbacks. They are essentially classics, with the exception of a few authors of the Nouveau Roman like Claude Simon. In 1966, it was precisely Christian Bourgois who adopted immaculate white, much more radical than Gallimard et Minuit, and in a more oblong, more visible format for his large formats (it is difficult to know whether there was an influence of 10 / 18 since at the same time it makes the pocket charter evolve towards violent flattering of color).
1977, POL makes its mark of absolute sobriety. Paratext first black at the beginnings of the house (from the appearance of the collection at Hachette to the beginnings as an independent in 1983), then blue and gray… like a certain Minuit.
These are just a few salient and fairly lasting examples of a long history whose actors should be questioned in order to retrace links, lineaments and exceptions. But, contrary to what the memory unconscious retained, the NRF was far from being the first: Ollendorf, Flammarion, Albin Michel, Grasset oscillate regularly at the turn of the XXe century between white, cream and yellow (sometimes very intense at Grasset). Better, in 1899, was founded in Brussels The White Review… in contrast to the purple cover of the magazine Mercure, which then holds the top of the pavement.
Many other publishers in fact cultivate the flat: yellow for publishers affiliated with poetry, such as Lemerre (1866) or the editions of Mercure de France (1893), green for Grasset’s green notebooks (1921), red in Kra and Sagittarius (1919), verdigris in Rieder (1913). In the absence of a line, French publishers mainly adopt a color. Tradition that will continue to this day: light blue (Le Mercure, “La Librairie du XXe century ”from the Hachette period, Philippe Rey), dark blue (Stock,) gray (with white oval cartouche at the post-war Denoël), yellow (Grasset, Buchet-Chastel then Les Lettres Nouvelles)…
Faced with this monochrome ocean, color very quickly becomes a means of distinction: without going as far as the generous wood engravings which took up all the space in the “Cosmopolitan Cabinet” of Stock before the Second World War, the refusal of uniqueness signals the franc-tireurs that are Losfeld, Pauvert (passing from the red flat of a Raymond Roussel to the yellow of the XIXe century, and even a multicolored rainbow for the Schrumm, Schrumm by Fernand Combet, one of the rare novels to stand out “from behind” in any library!). Closer to home, risky polychromy, Verdier has long, in terms of translations, sported one color per linguistic area.
If the NRF innovated, would it not be primarily by its systematism? As well as by the quality of the paper, much whiter than the average, and by the typographic choice: the didot was a royal typography, developed under Louis XIV and the prerogative of the Royal Printing until 1811. Art collector, Gaston Gallimard presides over the appearance of elaborate formats, sticks to them, and makes it felt. From the outset, the assurance of keeping a line, and not deviating from it.
Even before printing, the white of the paper immediately bears a mark. The trace of an erasure. To become a virgin, it is thoroughly cleaned. A process of eliminating colors and components which is reputed to be, with all due respect to supporters of white, the most polluting step. All printed paper is by nature a palimpsest (and the material itself suggests that you never invent anything under the sun). That all writing, all literature, is tension between the trace (pen, ink, press, sometimes a simple watermark) and the absence of a trace is all the more glaring.
Neither the white nor the cover is in fact obvious in the printing press. Until the XVIIe century, the convention of The writing continued was like printing the words continuously to mimic orality. White space was the first punctuation mark between the words… conquest of breath and balance.
The roof was also a progressive construction, relatively “modern”. The printed cover was born at the beginning of the XVIe century to distinguish books in the face of increased production, with an especially protective function, while waiting to entrust the pages to a bookbinding workshop, this one remaining the alpha and the omega of the conservation of books in the libraries (leather, then fabric, then marbled paper, replacing a removable cover).
The clear covers register both against the heritage of old bindings (works in themselves adorned with illuminations, engraved, embossed, with clasps, embroidery or gold threads) and against the empire of illustration, prerogative , yesterday as today, apart from a few luxury editions, of the popular novel. The eye-catching patterns and colors displayed on the covers of two-penny novels, such as first popular editions (Fayard, Ferenczi) and future paperback books, obey the same codes as those of the press and booklets. A certain idea of French literature is turning away from it, and for a long time.
This distinction contrasts from the outset with the customs and work of foreign publishers, who continue, thanks to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and also German, of “ hardcover », From bindings to elaborate covers, whether typographical or highly illustrated. To cite just one example, the English avant-garde was then embodied by a magazine, The Yellow Band, which presents on yellow flat (color derived from wood pulp), very imposing engravings by Audrey Beardsley. In France, to give an idea of the gap, it is the subversive works which are covered with yellow paper to conceal the cover, as happened in Backwards the Huysmans.
So what is white a sign of? In heraldry, the absence of color is synonymous with elevation above the human condition. During the Crusades, white symbolizes the light against the blood of the English Red Cross. It remains permanently associated with the French kingdom (the white scarf is the rallying point of several of the national armies), and it is by virtue of this royal reminder that it is taken up again, in 1830, in the center of the tricolor flag.
In a hyper-centralized country, marked by a literary aristocracy, endowed with irremovable prices, and of a genre, the novel, which dictates the hierarchies and the values of the time, difficult not to see in the queen collection of Gallimard, paragon of classicism, this echo to an almost divine transcendence. The white blanket applied to the French domain is overdetermined by aesthetic values, not to say moral …
« Whites assume importance », Wrote Mallarmé as a manifesto in« A throw of the dice will never abolish chance ». And Gide makes Edouard say, in an expression of Counterfeiters that we will often recall when creating the NRF, that it is necessary to “ clean up the novel “. So, does NRF wash whiter?
Literature began in the XIXe century emancipated from religion, preparing what some, following Paul Bénichou, have called ” the coronation of the writer », Linked to a very French image of the author and the publisher. Is it a concern for readability or commercial purity, this idea that the (French) novel does not bother with ornament or image, that it is sufficient in itself? Is it a vertigo worthy of the white masses which assail and blind – in Edgar Poe – Ahab or Pym? Seeing the example of Minuit and POL, is it the door to a clear line in the novel, a formal minimalism bringing together form and content? Or even an old little white complex (could we add with bad faith, in these times of decolonization of minds)?
We will try the hypothesis of a very French paradox: the absence of style suggests style. The erasure of the editor overdetermines the role of the editor. The house makes the book. Reflection of an ideal of whiteness and transparency which publishers cultivate the surface, at the risk of neglecting its substance.
–
