Bernard Pivot, for more than two decades the greatest disseminator of culture in his television program Apostrophes, died at the age of 89. Between 1975 and 1990, Apostrophes became an unusual popular phenomenon only available to highly literate audiences and responsible public television. It is the totally opposite example of that of Spanish television, which has chosen to hire a comedian, paying him a salary never seen before and wasting resources from the treasury to give a propaganda boost to the private channels.
Pivot connected with millions of viewers who were already reading to encourage them to read even more, at what would be prime time. While in other places the artificial beauty of mamachichos invaded home screens, in France books were the stars of primetime television. The man who made millions of viewers love literature was a great interviewer who knew how to surround himself with the best collaborators. Nabokov, García Márquez, Umberto Eco, Marguerite Duras and Milan Kundera, among other heavyweights of writing, passed through his program. In 1978 he brought Bukowski from the United States in the midst of the explosion of his overrated talent, something that skyrocketed the program’s audience figures but still made him uncomfortable. Bukowski made it a condition that they serve him two bottles of good French wine before appearing on air, he did not stop raising his elbow during the broadcast and finally left the set drunk like a shipwrecked sailor in a pond of whiskey. He also had an extraordinary echo in his interview with Serge Gainsbourg, in which the author was involved in an altercation with Guy Beart about the meaning of words and the difference between composing with piano and guitar. Pivot asked Nabokov if the popular success of “Lolita” gave him a literary rash, and he wanted to distance himself from Conan Doyle, who repudiated Sherlock Holmes, his great character, in favor of minor African novels. Great moment, I saw it again yesterday.
