Jérôme Peignot, specialist in typography, eclectic writer and former animator of the “mask and the pen”, on France Inter, died in Paris on July 19, at the age of 99. Born in the same city on June 10, 1926, he was the son of the singer Suzanne Peignot, linked to the group of Six, and Charles Peignot, heir to a large line of typographers and director of the Deberny and Peignot foundry (the big poster Cassandre created for her a PEIGNOT writing in 1937).
As a teenager, under the Occupation, Jérôme Peignot refuses to greet the collaborationist writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle whom his father proudly presents to him: “We do not shake the hand of someone who has just signed in Gringoire A “anthem to the German soldier”. »» His father replied with a slap as he has never received. It would take more to change the opinion of the high school student, who engages in resistance.
After studying at the Estienne school and a license in aesthetics at the Sorbonne, Jérôme Peignot supports a dissertation on Latin calligraphy, extended three decades later by a State doctorate. While working in the edition, he published at the Seuil, then at Gallimard, several novels with a very marked autobiographical character. The third, The gold of madmenearned him the Sainte-Beuve price in 1962.
You have 68.75% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
