Deceased September 21, 2019
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In Memory
Jean-Paul Delamotte, writer, literature lover and staunch promoter of Australian culture in France, died in Boulogne-Billancourt (France) age 87.
His life began Oct. 21, 1931, and ended Sept. 21, 2019. Jean-Paul Delamotte died one month before his 88th birthday in his home in Boulogne surrounded by his lifelong passions—literature and his wife, Monique, whom he had met when she was an 18 year old and he, a handsome 33, at the Boulogne Film Studios. Their house in Boulogne hosted thousands of Australian authors, publishers, filmmakers, artists, musicians, politicians and diplomats, whom the Delamottes introduced to French counterparts in an attempt to make Australian culture known to French intellectual and political spheres throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
When a few years later family difficulties back in France brought the couple back to Paris, the Delamottes endeavored to promote Australian literature and culture to French literati—who thought that French literature should be world renowned but made no effort to reciprocate and acknowledge the value of other literatures. Jean-Paul Delamotte became a pioneer in the move to open literature to otherness. French Publisher Philippe Picquier, champion of Asian literatures in France, wanted to meet him in his early days. Jean-Paul became a staunch promoter of cultural reciprocity. He lobbied diplomats and personalities like former president Jacques Chirac, a friend from his university days at Paris’s Sciences Po. He was a great admirer of committed Francophile Gough Whitlam; reciprocating, Margaret Whitlam granted her patronage to the Association culturelle franco-australienne which he launched with Monique in the early 1980s.
Jean-Paul had briefly studied at Science Po before his studies were interrupted by military service in Algeria. Upon his return, he had thought to apply for the degree anyway, and when the head of the school refused, 20-year-old Jean-Paul proceeded to say, “Je me considère comme diplômé de votre école, Monsieur!” and left. He later earned a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, but his fondest school memories were of Amherst College and Harvard. Thanks to composer Darius Milhaud, a relation of his beloved and well-connected grandmother, he had found a teaching assistant job there. Not only had he had the pleasure to observe American girls, but he had hitchhiked all around the United States and Canada with a board saying “French Student” which seemed to attract enough interest.
He had discovered literature in his grandparents’ library in an old house of Boulevard d’Auteuil, in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the leafy west of Paris. He had spent his wartime childhood with limited schooling but quality education and love, in the privileged surrounds of a country house garden where the donkey was called Kiki and the pig, Adolf. He was 14 when his father had returned from the war and walking towards him on a country road, he was uncertain that he would recognize him. His childhood taught him a staunch love for freedom which his parents did not understand. He started a diary at the age of 14, and literature always was a part of his life. He published books with publishers Plon and Gallimard, thanks to the patronage of Jean Paulhan, and knew Beckett, Roy and Ionesco. But when this old generation gave way, he found less support in publishers and made a living from working in the film industry as a managing producer. When publishers in the 1990s and 2000s asked him to handle the Australian collections they were setting up, he declined, out of fear of being constrained.
He wrote his whole life—novels, short stories, essays, poetry. His diary is thousands of pages long. Thanks to Monique’s devotion, he remained to the end in his peaceful home in Boulogne and stopped living when he could no longer write, talk or type.
Guibourg Delamotte