Rivages Cover of James Ellroy
PARIS – Rereading this interview that I did 25 years ago with
François Guérif, the director of the crime writing collection at the Rivages publishing house in Paris I am actually astounded by all of the interesting aspects to the link between the French publishing world and the American one. François Guérif had already been directing the collection at Rivages for 10 years, and he only left the job in 2017, so this interview is still in its own way relevant. But among the stories that makes this worth reading today are those linked to Guérif’s discovery of James Ellroy, to his hand in helping revive several careers of American writers, like Barry Gifford, and his work with Claude Chabrol, the film director. So as part of my decision to put up on this blog and publish for the first time ever these interviews in their entirety that were done as research for my article on French crime writing in the 1990s, here is
my interview with François Guérif, then of Rivages, and certainly one of the most interesting of the Q&As so far!
