In 1989, J.B. ("Jibé") Pontalis started the imprint "L'Un et l'autre" at the French publishing house Gallimard.
It's a conceit only the French could think profitable, but, for a translation junkie and adaptation fetishist, also a thrilling enterprise: a collection of books dedicated to stories told at an angle by narrators whose subjects are famous works or famous people and whose object is to climb inside these structures worn smooth by familiarity and see the world through them instead of in them. Each story, as with any act of mediation, is the story of the story and the story of its telling, the story of the triangle made between narrator and event and reader, a triangle of eyes trained on each other, devouring each other.
At newstands these days one finds a glut of celebrity profiles, one leg of the triangle. How refreshing to tilt the viewfinder for a moment to explore the experience of the viewer instead of the viewed. To live within the effects of art instead of trying to wriggle back into the intentions behind it.
This is what L'Un et l'autre has to say about itself, on the dustjacket of Monsieur Bovary:
"Life stories, but as invented by memory, remade by imagination, brought to life by passion. Subjective accounts, a thousand miles away from traditional biography.
Someone and an Other: the author and his secret subject, the painter and her model, linked by a powerful and intimate bond. Where is the line between portrait and self-portrait?
Someones and Others: those who burst onto center stage as well as those who only perform in the theater of our minds, people and places, forgotten faces, names effaced, silhouettes misplaced."
(translated by The Bunny)
http://www.gallimard.fr/collections/fiche_unautre.htm
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