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Francoise Quoirez Biography |
Françoise Quoirez, (born 21 June 1935) in Cajarc, (pen name Françoise Sagan)is a French playwright, novelist and screenwriter, known best for portraying the rather uneventful lives of middle-class people. Her pseudonym was taken from a character in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. At the beginning of World War II, her family moved to Lyon, and Françoise later attended the University of Sorbonne, but did not graduate.
Her first novel was published in 1954, at the age of 19. Bonjour Tristesse (the title means "Hello, sadness"), concerning a young woman discovering her father's affair, was an immediate international success. The novel allegedly influenced the Simon & Garfunkel song The Sound of Silence. She has produced dozens of works from then until 1996, many of which have been filmed. After the movie, Sagan became something of an icon for disillusioned teenagers, in some ways similar to J.D. Salinger.
Sporting the austere style of the French psychological novel even while noveau roman became popular, the conversations between her characters are often considered to be revealing of existential undertones.
Fond of travelling in the United States, she was often seen with Truman Capote, and nearly died in a car accident. She has twice married (Guy Schoeller and Bob Westhof) and divorced.
In the 1960s, Sagan began writing more plays than novels, which, though lauded for excellent dialogue, were moderately popular. Afterwards, she chose to continue writing novels.
Her health is reported to be poor in the decade of the 2000s; in 2002 and was unable to appear at a trial in which she was convicted of tax fraud involving François Mitterrand, and she received a suspended sentence. The character Margot Tenenbaum from The Royal Tenenbaums is allegedly based partially on Françoise Sagan.
Novels
Un certain sourire (A Certain Smile)
Les merveilleux nuages
Aimez-vous Brahms...
La chamade
Les yeux de soie (Silken Eyes)
Le lit defait (The Unmade Bed)
Le garde du coeur (The Heart-Keeper)
Autobiography
Avec mon meilleur souvenir (1984) |
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