Jean DUTOURD (1920-2011). Autograph manuscript signed, Chroniques, 1992-1997; one small in-4 volume (22 x 17.5 cm) of 375 leaves written on both sides, gray cloth boards. Manuscript containing the draft of 197 journalistic chronicles by the Gaullist pamphleteer, lover and defender of the French language and culture, and humorously observant of politics and society. The manuscript, in black ink, features numerous erasures and corrections, with some passages crossed out. It is dated at the top 15-4-92, and at the end 29 January 1997. The flyleaf bears this dispatch: "To Isabelle, who, week after week, has worn out her pretty eyes deciphering, until she understands them better than I do, my fly's feet, this manuscript which is due to her more than to any other. Jean Dutourd January 29, 1997. Here are a few titles: Cohabitations (1st chronicle), Méstriche, La Cigarette de la Terreur (against the Evin law), Le Modèle anglais, La Seita gourmande, La Droite maëstrichienne, Le Bicentenaire de Septembre (about the September massacres), Le Grand Bazar de la Vierge (Virgin Megastore opening), Les Nuls de l'ère scientifique (about illiteracy), La Sabirophonie, Eurochiens, La difficulté d'être potiche, La Maison du Nez (about Blair House and GATT), Le Couple France-Allemagne, Les Séquelles de Néron (about Fête de la Musique and Jack Lang), La France gâteuse, Adam et moi, Prix Nobel de dynamite, L'Inconnu du Paris-Bruxelles (Delors), Prosopopée de Lionel, Le déjeuner avec l'Ogre (Fidel Castro at the Elysée), Perdu par l'ambition (B. Tapie), Le Calvaire de la Gauche, Éloge des bouts de chandelle, Madelin ou du suicide, Le bonheur de déplaire, Le Triomphe de Knock, La grève des nantis (la S.N.C.F.), Deux septennats de silence, Bélisaire et Walesa, L'Euro-to, Le mois de la flemme, B.B. entre Cérès et Léautaud, Le Panthéon des non-fumeurs, La Wallonie française, La France de la flanelle, Nos ancêtres les Gauloises, Tonton gateau (Mitterrand); the latest: Les intestins sont dehors (on the renovation of Beaubourg). Dutourd's favorite targets are Mitterrand and his ministers: Jospin, Tapie, Jack Lang in particular; the Maastricht Treaty, the P.S.; also Pasqua, Balladur, Chirac, Mgr Gaillot, Le Pen and the F.N., Alain Madelin, Xavière Tibéri, etc. As a sharp-witted moralist, Dutourd discusses the election of Clinton, the death of King Baudouin, the bioethics debate, the Grande Bibliothèque de Tolbiac, European standards, cohabitation, the Club des Ronchons, the Eurotunnel, the Opéra Bastille, the bicentenary of the Institut, sales, the denier du culte, the euro and the ecu, the Foreign Legion, sexual liberation, sport, Eurodisney, the scandal surrounding the resignation of the bishop of Bâle père, and more. In the literary field, he evokes the memoirs of Agricol Perdiguier (Avignonnais la Vertu), Antoine Hamilton, Mérimée, Henri Béraud, André Malraux, Julien Green's resignation from the Académie Française (Le green et le vert), Jean-Edern Hallier ("it's not only French literature that's in mourning, it's also French morals and spirit")... etc. We enclose a P.A.S. "J.D.", remarques sur un roman (2p. in-4); a printed speech, L'esprit de contradiction fondement de la vertu (1996) with a.s. dispatch; and a typescript, L'Habit vert.