Françoise Sagan ( June 1935 – September 2004) was a French
playwright, novelist, and screenwriter, best known for works with strong romantic
themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Remarkably,
her best-known novel was her first – Bonjour Tristesse (1954) written when she was a teenager and considered
scandalous at the time. The characters from that book, over the decades, became
icons for millions of disillusioned French teenagers, similar to those of J. D.
Salinger in the United States. The novel was an international success and Sagan,
due to her talent and age, became a star within a few months. The book also
made her rich. She quickly ran through most of the money “wasting it
indifferently on racing cars, gambling and night life with her beloved brother
Jacques and a group of wild friends whom she supported for years.”
Her son added “The money
slipped through her fingers. Her publisher would pay all the bills and channel
the necessary sums; our lives were conducted on a high level and with
generosity toward that gang of parasites who surrounded her. Most of the time
she would read, walk around and dream. She loved to wander around flea markets
and discover small and dusty Impressionist oil paintings. She would come home
with them, we would clean them together and then look for the artist's
signature in the hope that we had found a lost treasure. For the most part she
would give away her paintings - even those that were very valuable - to those
who loved them. When the publisher called and warned that the money was running
out she would closet herself and write another book. She wasn't lazy, it was
just that she knew how to make an impression of enjoying an endless vacation,
of nonchalance"
Born to a prosperous family, she took the pseudonym "Sagan" taken from a
character named Princesse de Sagan in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps
perdu (In Search of Lost Time).
In the 1960s, Sagan she began to write regularly and became a
devoted playwright and novelist. Sagan
produced dozens of works, many of which have been tureen into films The
conversations between her characters are often considered to contain
existential undertones. In addition to novels, plays, and an autobiography, she
wrote song lyrics and screenplays.
Sagan had an interesting personal life. She was married to Guy
Schoeller, an editor, who was 20 years older than Sagan and then to Bob Westhoff,
a young American playboy and would-be ceramicist.
Westhoff was born in Minnesota and enlisted in the U.S.
Air Force at the age of 16 with forged papers, it was easy for him. He was handsome, of above-average intelligence,
original and charming.
After military service in
Alaska, he ended up in Canada, where he joined the ice ballet troupe Holiday on
Ice. Afterwards he studied plastic arts in Mexico City and modeled for fashion
photos.
"One day he decided to
visit Paris for only two weeks," says his son, "but he stayed there
until the end of his life. On the boat that brought him to France my father met
the young aristocrat Charles de Rohan-Chabot, who was known for loving
men," writes Denis Westhoff. "My father had no objection to such
affairs either, and the two became close friends.
Rohan-Chabot
was a close friend of Francoise Sagan, who at the time was intimate with Paola
Saint-Just, a rich and beautiful woman, and primarily - a lover of women. Paola
and Charles Rohan-Chabot decided to marry for 'business' reasons and came to
spend their honeymoon with my mother at her home in Normandy. Charles was
joined by his American friend Bob. When quarrels erupted between the new
couple, and the plates flew in all directions, my mother and Bob would get into
Francoise's Lamborghini and flee to the forests or the beach. That's how the
love story between them began, a story than lasted for about a decade, and for
about another two years after the divorce.
"I
was born to a happy and loving couple, who celebrated by night and slept by
day. My godfathers were dancer Jacques Chazot and Paola, my mother's friends.
Jacques chose my name, Denis. My parents got along very well and decided to
divorce for practical reasons only: He returned to men only, my mother to women
mostly.
"My
father was a sculptor, and an opera lover, who was a great expert on the
subject. He arrived in France without knowing a word of French, but within a
short time he became an expert on the language, someone who was more meticulous
about rules of grammar than any Frenchman. He modeled, sculpted, translated,
continued to love men and was famous for his elegance, his personal charm, and
his pleasant behavior. Unfortunately, he died at a relatively early age from an
illness."
Sagan also had an on-again-off again relationship with 1970s fashion
stylist Peggy Roche, who reinvented Sagan’s look. Roach, a former model, was
the wife of French actor Claude Brasseur.
Sagan and Roach were together for fifteen years and in some
part, she helped to raise Sagan’s son who wrote “Between these two women, it was a mixture of
passion, tenderness, mutual admiration, mutual recognition, friendship and
collusion as my mother never knew, in my memory, neither before nor after her.”
However, Sagan never publicized her bisexuality
and during her affair with Roach kept their relationship in absolute discretion.
There were also relationships with Bernard Frank, a married
essayist obsessed with reading and eating. Aside from Roche and Frank there was
also a long-term affair with the French Playboy editor Annick Geille.
A 1957 car accident in the US almost killed Sagan and left in
a coma for weeks and then confined her to her bed for months.
It was at the point that she became addicted to morphine and despite several
hospitalizations to end the addiction, she repeatedly returned to it until her
death.
She returned to France after her recovery.
"In
1959, my mother, who was already famous and being chased by paparazzi, tired of
the annual vacation in Saint Tropez, which had become too popular and crowded.
She looked for a quieter place for herself and her friends and rented a house
in a Normandy village for one month, from July 8 to August 8. The place was
dangerously close to the casino in the vacation village of Deauville and to the
roulette table. Sagan and her friends, author Bernard Frank and dancer Jacques
Chabot, really did end up spending their nights in the casino.
"On
the last night of the vacation, and after having dropped huge sums in the
casino during the course of the month, Sagan won 80,000 francs. She gathered up
the money and toward morning the three returned home drunk and lighthearted and
went to sleep. When the landlord arrived as planned on August 8 in order to
check the condition of the house, Francoise, too tired and sleepy to undergo
the inspection, asked him whether he wanted to sell it. 'Yes,' replied the
owner.' 'How much?' asked Francoise. '80,000 francs.' She pulled out the sum
she had won the previous night, bought the house, and went back to sleep. That
was on the eighth day of the eighth month at 8 A.M., and the house cost 80,000
francs."
"Peggy
(Roach) took over the running of the house and the accounts, kept away the
exploiters, the cheats, the drug dealers and the parasites who surrounded my
mother, and even fired some of the devoted servants who had been with us
throughout the years. There were some who accused her of total domination of
[Sagan's] life, but it suited my mother and she was happy. ... Peggy ran the
household, created a calm atmosphere and shielded Sagan from everyday worries.
They moved frequently, and then too Peggy took care of everything; my mother
would go to live in a hotel during the transition period and when the house was
ready, she would come, get a key and a tour of the new place: 'Your room is
here, your clothes are hanging here,' etc.
"My
mother also financed Peggy's professional adventures. Peggy opened a fashion
house in a trendy location on the Left Bank, but despite her talent and her
refined taste in fashion, she knew nothing about business. After my mother had
financed several collections and lost a fortune, the company failed."
Roach’s death in 1991 devastated Sagan "With the
disappearance of Peggy” her son wrote “it was as if my mother had been torn to
shreds, that we would have torn pieces of her alive" And so began a long
descent for her into drug and debt. She had simply lost control of her
complicated life with out Peggy Roach there to manage and protect her. Her spending increased unguarded, her debts rose,
and her use of coke increased. She was charged with and convicted of possession
of cocaine several times including one arrest for drug dealing
because of the large quantity found in
her possession.
The French Tax office hounded
her for back payment. For a while she was protected by the French President François Mitterrand “a friend
and a lover of literature” shielded her. That ended when an international businessman
named Andre Guelfi, succeeded in convincing
Sagan to ask intervene with François Mitterrand for the
sake of his oil business in Uzbekistan. In return, Guelfi promised to pay for
the renovation of her house in Normandy. Sagan had no head for business and
naively wrote to Mitterrand
asking for help. Shortly afterwards it turned
out that the business deal involved fraud, Sagan was accused of tax evasion.
Her health declined badly in the in the 2000s. In 2002, she
was unable to appear at a trial that convicted her of tax fraud in a case
involving the François Mitterrand. (She received a suspended sentence.)
Sagan with a nurse at a rest home where she went to recuperate
Her last
relationship, a destructive one, was with Ingrid Mechoulam, the much younger
wife of a Mexican Jewish billionaire Felix Mechoulam. Ingrid lived in a luxury
apartment on trendy Avenue Foch in Paris (It was one of five residences) and freely
spent her husband’s money.
Ingrid and Sagan
Sagan had Ingrid snap this photo after she crashed her jaguar
Ingrid fell
in love with Sagan, and after her husband's death, when Sagan was broke and ill,
(suffering from osteoporosis and pelvic fractures, was confined to her bed most
of the time) moved into her house. But Ingrid was a big cocaine user, which
Sagan didn’t need at that point in her life and her dependency on Ingrid cut
her off from all her friends and her son.
Sagan, 69, died of a pulmonary embolism in Honfleur,
Calvados, on September 24, 2004. At her
own request she was buried in Seuzac (Lot), close to her beloved birthplace,
Cajarc.
Her son, Denis Westhoff, wrote “When she died in 2004
my mother left behind a debt of over a million euros. She died ill, penniless.
The house in Normandy, the furniture, the personal items, the many paintings
she collected during her life, the manuscripts - everything was seized or sold
at public auction. Had I agreed to accept this 'inheritance,' I would have
found myself within a few months in exactly the same catastrophic situation
that she had been in. All my property - and there isn't much - would have been
taken away from me, the authorities would have pursued me. Only after years of
negotiations with the Finance Ministry and the Culture Ministry was I able to
reach a repayment arrangement that enabled me to receive the rights to her
books and to ensure that they would be reprinted in France and abroad”
Sagan, of course, being a writer, wrote her own obituary for
the Dictionary of Authors "Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, Bonjour
tristesse, which created a scandal worldwide. Her death, after a life and a
body of work that were equally pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for
herself."
"She was wonderful, full of
humanity, generous, refined, warm.” Her son wrote of her “I'm not saying that because she was my mother
- it's simply that everyone who knew her well knows that. She loved night life
and mainly the people you meet over a glass of whiskey on smoke-filled nights
of drinking. She knew that night people tend to tell tall tales about
themselves but claimed that they were far more interesting and entertaining. 'I
prefer them to those who tell the boring truth,' she said. She had a weakness for outsiders, for
wanderers, for adventurers. She hated any form of racism, and I recall a dinner
when I was a child, with people I didn't know, where someone made anti-Semitic
comments. She suddenly got up, grabbed my hand, and said, 'Come, Denis, we're
leaving!' and left without saying a word. My mother hated loud and vulgar
quarrels. She frequently handed out huge sums of money to beggars - she simply
couldn't tolerate poverty. She also trusted people endlessly and that's why she
eventually suffered so much from the betrayals of those who called themselves
'friends.'
Art must take reality by
surprise.
One can never speak enough of
the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.
It seems to me that there are
two kinds of trickery: the 'fronts' people assume before one another's eyes,
and the 'front' a writer puts on the face of reality.
To jealousy, nothing is more
frightful than laughter.
Of course the illusion of art
is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly
the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
Every little girl knows about
love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.
Writing is a question of
finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time
life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells
oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
Jazz music is an intensified
feeling of nonchalance.
After Proust, there are certain
things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of
your talent.
Marriage? It's like asparagus
eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.
I had a strong desire to write
and some free time.
For me writing is a question of
finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.
Much of the time life is a sort
of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is
like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
I've tried very hard and I've
never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my
novels.
It would be bad form for me to
describe people I don't know and don't understand.
All my life, I will continue
obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people
I know. The rest don't interest me.
I dreamt of being a writer once
I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the
Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.
I've read Proust and Stendhal.
That keeps you in your place.
You should celebrate the end of
a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter,
dancing and a lot of wine.
I always believe things are
going to work out.
Every time I see a film about
Joan of Arc I'm convinced she'll get away with it. It's the only way to get
through life.
