Benoît Duteurtre

Benoît Duteurtre (dytœʁtʁ) (born 20 March 1960) is a French novelist and essayist. He is also a musical critic, musician, producer and host of a radio show about music. He spends his time between Paris, New York and Normandy. Benoît Duteurtre was born in Sainte-Adresse, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, where he spent his first years. He is the son of Jean-Claude Duteurtre and Marie-Claire Georges. He is also the great-grandson of the French president René Coty. He attended Saint-Joseph, a catholic educational institution in le Havre. Duteurtre began to write at an early age. At fifteen, he presented his firsts texts to Armand Salacrou, a French dramatist established in le Havre, who encouraged him to pursue his efforts. Le Havre, a heavily destroyed city during World War II and rebuilt in the structural classicism style will often reappear in Duteurtre's later works. At the age of sixteen, Benoît Duteurtre was fascinated with modern music, especially the work of Pierre Boulez. In 1977, Benoît began musicology studies at the university of Rouen, France. That same year, he met Karlheinz Stockhausen and, a year later, Iannis Xenakis. In 1979, Benoît Duteurtre studied for a month with György Ligeti, whose musical theory later had a strong influence in his life. He graduated with a license in Musicology. However, Benoît Duteurtre also kept writing. In 1982, he sent Samuel Beckett a text called Nuit (Night); Beckett later convinced Duteurtre to publish it in La Revue des Editions de Minuit. At the time, Duteurtre lived in Paris, occasionally playing piano at the French music festival Le Printemps de Bourges, at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (in the Paris suburbs), or in a pop music French hit called Paris Latino. After that, he worked as a pollster, as a seller in a bazaar and worked as an accompanist in dance courses. He also wrote articles for the French Playboy magazine. Duteurtre's first novel, Sommeil Perdu, is about a depressed young man leaving his hometown to live in Paris.