ABSTRACT
Anyone convinced that contemporary French literature is humorless has not yet read Pierre Autin-Grenier. If his writings initially provoke laughs, they leave a bitter aftertaste. Behind his clown's mask, Autin-Grenier has embarked on an existential quest--as was in fact already clear in the more directly expressed despair of his first books, Les Equevilles du ciel, Exil, and Histoires secretes. The smoke-filled room with sawdust on the floor is surely a final resort or dead end for most of the habitues. Yet as Autin-Grenier puts it compellingly, it was at least one of those bistrots that managed "to maintain a certain number of lives in an upright position." If one takes into account all his stories, certain contradictory details demonstrate that this autobiographical narrator is not always the same person, nor even the author himself. In his collection, he admits that his thinking is “un tantinet biscornue”; he confesses that he often stirs, in his head, a “puree of black thoughts.”
