Jackpots

"Why," asked the American, "are all the women in cocktail dresses at noon?" "Custom," said the Frenchman. "Why," asked the American, "are the men in mufflers and overcoats though it is hot?"

"Custom," said the Frenchman. "Why," asked the American, "does everyone stand looking at the little door with the steps leading up to it?"

"Behind that door," said the Frenchman, "the members of the Goncourt Academy are selecting the best one of the 300 novels published in France this year for Edmond de Goncourt 's 5,000-franc prize."

Five Pouilly-Fuisses. At the Restaurant Drouant in the Rue Gaillon, the academy members were taking longer than usual to make their annual selection. A waiter battled his way through the crowd, muttering: "My God, four ballots and five Pouilly-Fuisses and still these gentlemen have decided nothing!" Someone said: "They are not going to award a prize this year, they are not..." A voice roared: "Passageway! Clear a space for the photographers!" The door of the inner room opened, and looking solemnly down on the surging crowd stood Pierre Mac Orlan, painter, novelist, .and youngest (67) member of the academy, who, by tradition, must announce the winner. Slowly Mac Orlan came down the steps, pushed his way to the microphone. Said he: "The Prix Goncourt for 1950 goes to Paul Colin for his novel Les jeux sauvages"

There was silence, then someone yelled: "Who the hell is Paul Colin?"

At that moment sharing a chicken luncheon with his father and father-in-law in a working-class apartment in the dusty, dirty Batignolles district above the Gare St. Lazare, Paul Colin was not aware that he had captured the year's literary jackpot. Novelist Colin, a thin, retiring young man, was living on unemployment relief.

But a few hours later, guest of honor at a publisher's reception, he was on his way through an amazing series of adventures. Colin, who would have found it hard to get into the editor's office of Figaro on Monday, wrote Figaro's front-page literary essay on Wednesday. A short story that Colin could not place on Monday appeared Thursday in Les Nouvelles Litteraires. By Saturday his novel was being serialized in France-Dimanche, a sensational weekly. All week the presses roared, boosting the total printing of his book (a modest story about a group of adults who try to recapture the happy camaraderie of childhood on an estate in the Sologne region, and fail because they no longer possess the simple cruelty of children) from the original 5,000 to 100,000.

Three Martinis. Something similar, though on a smaller scale, was happening simultaneously to a score of other French authors. The Prix Femina had gone to Serge Groussard for his La femme sans passe, a grim story of a murderess' flight on a river barge; the Prix Theophraste Renaudot to Pierre Molaine (in real life Major Leopold Faure, tank officer in the French army) for his Les orgues de I'enfer, a story about a resistance fighter hiding from the Gestapo in an insane asylum. The fourth big prize, the Prix Interallie, was yet to come.

But there were plenty of smaller prizes. A group of writers who like to dine in the Brasserie Lipp on the Boulevard St. Germain met, drank three Martinis, and awarded the international prize of the French Book Club to Robert Penn Warren for the French translation of All the King's Men. The same group of men then got up, walked across the street to the Cafe des Deux Magots, and awarded the Prix des Deux Magots, sponsored by the owners of the cafe, to Jean Masares for his Comme le pelican du-desert. Over on the Right Bank that same afternoon the editors of the newspaper Parisien Libere were awarding its Prix de la Verite to a book reporting bad conditions in French hospitals. The Prix Scarron for books of humor went to Ernestine Gilbreth Carey and Frank Gilbreth Jr. for their Treize `a la douzaine (Cheaper by the Dozen). The prize, which is supposed to be 500 gold ecus, was paid off this year in 500 ten-franc aluminum pieces, all in a spirit of high good humor. The Prix Rabelais (50 liters of Brouilly wine) went to H. P. Gassier, a cartoonist.

It was, indeed, the prize-giving season. Outside the Restaurant Drouant in the Rue Gaillon, a policeman remarked to the driver of a Radio Diffusion Franchise truck that he had sensed a new vitality in French literature this year.

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