French novelist
René Bonnefoy (16 December 1896, Lempdes-sur-Allagnon – 30 December 1980), known under the pen names B. R. Bruss and Roger Blondel, was a French science fiction and fantasy writer. Before his career as a writer, he had been a journalist and a civil servant under the Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime (1940–44).
Biography
Vichy collaborationist (1940–1944)
Bonnefoy was the editor-in-chief of the Moniteur du Puy-de-Dôme [fr], a newspaper bought by Pierre Laval in 1927.[1]
After Pierre Laval dismissed the team of Je Suis Partout from Radio-Vichy in September 1940 due to their extremism, he entrusted the direction of information to Bonnefoy, who became responsible for developing the themes of the Révolution Nationale over the radio.[2] Upon the return of Laval to power in April 1942, Bonnefoy replaced Paul Marion—then in charge of Information for the Vichy government—as the head of press control.[1] In liaison with Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Bonnefoy expelled Jewish teachers from universities and created a chair on the history of Judaism at the Sorbonne University, entrusted to Henri Labroue.[3] After the liberation of France, he went into hiding and was sentenced to death in absentia in 1946.[4]
Novelist (1946–1980)
While still in hiding, Bonnefoy reinvented himself as a successful science fiction and fantasy writer, using a pseudonym. His first novel, Et la planète sauta..., was published in 1946.[5] In 1955, he surrendered to the authorities and got a retrial for his activities during the war. He avoided being sent to prison but was sentenced to five years of national indignity.[4] In 1956, he released the novel Le Mouton Enragé under the pen name Roger Blondel,[6] adapted to the cinema in 1974 as Love at the Top and featuring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Jane Birkin.[7] He remained a regular contributor to the science-fiction collection Fleuve Noir Anticipation. His other well known novels include Bradfer et l'éternel (1964), Un endroit nommé la vie (1973) and Graffiti (1975).[6] In 1978, he declared to the magazine Nouvelles littéraires: "I took the non-serious as center of gravity. The central subject of all my fables is the definition of the primordial sputtering. The one which is spontaneous, banal, overabundant, the one we hear in the street, at the coffee shops, in the subway, all these sonorous graffiti that show us daily that our world is empty..."[6]
He was the father of literary critic Claude Bonnefoy [fr; ro].[6]
