Prizes and Profiteroles

At one o'clock one afternoon last week a crowd of 100 eager, jostling Frenchmen stood behind a police cordon outside the Drouant restaurant in Paris. Inside, another 200 journalists and photographers circulated among the tuxedoed waiters of the establishment, possessor of two proud ** in the Michelin guide. Finally, a representative of the literary ladies and gentlemen who had been deliberating over a luncheon that included foie gras des Landes en gelee au porto, faisan roti au pommes en liard fromages and profiteroles (enhanced by Batard-Montrachet 1970 and Chateau Nenin 1967) emerged from a private dining room on the third floor, stepped before the microphones and pronounced the verdict. The 1974 Prix Goncourt, the most illustrious of the 2,000 awards that France annually bestows on its writers, went to Pascal Laine, 32, for his novel La Dentelliere (The Lacemaker).

In becoming the 71st recipient of the Prix Goncourt, Laine joins a distinguished list of former winners that includes Proust, Malraux and Beauvoir. He also, however, removes his name from an equally distinguished list of former losers: Colette, Cocteau, Gide, Camus and Sartre. Novelist Franc,oise Mallet-Joris, a member of the Goncourt jury, defended its spotty record last week by pointing out that "we are judging a book by a young author who might have written only one or two earlier" --a process that is apparently as unreliable as judging a book by its cover.

Although jurors anguish over how their decision will be judged by posterity, publishers are more concerned about how it will be received by this year's Christmas shoppers. The 50-franc ($10.63) prize money will scarcely allow Novelist Laine to do more than make a polite purchase of the runner-up's oeuvre. Nonetheless, the honor should secure his novel sales of up to half-a-million copies. Even if public taste should deem La Dentelliere a "bad" Goncourt, the odds are that at least 200,000 Frenchmen will be reading what the author calls a "novel of noncommunication" and what one reviewer more fully described as the account of an unhappy love affair between a broken-down aristocratic student and a working-class beautician who goes mad when he drops her out of boredom.

For those Frenchmen whose notion of a seasonal good read is not met by Laine's downbeat romance, there are the 1,999 other award-winning works to choose from. There are no fewer than 275 prizes for poetry--or roughly one prize for every French poet, according to a cynical Paris critic. There are prizes for the best novels about soccer, vacations, volcanoes and happy old age. The Grand Prix Litteraire des Vins du Perigord de la Region de Bergerac goes to the best literary celebration of the glories of Perigord wine. First prize: half a barrel of Perigord wine. The Prix Mystere et Cognac, which was unfortunately abolished this year, traditionally went to the best detective novel whose hero drank cognac. There are even awards for losers. The coveted Prix Cazes goes to a writer who has never won any other prize.

Herculean Efforts. One thing the prizes have in common is a tradition that the jury deliberations should take place over a meal. On the day the Prix Goncourt was awarded, juries for this year's Prix Renaudot and the Prix de Createurs were also meeting in private dining rooms at Drouant. Not all the juries, however, feast in such sumptuous surroundings. The editors and critics who awarded the Prix Gulliver dined at the unpretentious Bistro de Paris, which has no stars in Michelin at all. Their main course was a modest fricassee de poulet au vinaigre, and the wine a nonvintage Cotes de Bourg.

The jurors may be the only ones besides the author ever to read certain of the prizewinners. While the French honor their writers more than other nations do, they also read them less. The statistically average Frenchman completes less than half a book per year after he reaches the age of 15. Despite the herculean efforts made by the publicity departments of the nation's 1,400 publishing houses, half the population admits to owning no books at all.

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