Bernard Comment


Bernard Comment is a Swiss writer, translator, scriptwriter, and publisher of books.

Early life

Bernard Comment was born in Porrentruy, Switzerland, on April 20, 1960. He is a son of the artist Jean-François Comment. His elder brother Gerard is the proprietor of a record store Collector Shop in his hometown.

Education

Comment studied Literature at the University of Geneva under Jean Starobinski and at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris under Roland Barthes.

Career

Comment moved to Tuscany, where for four years he taught at the University of Pisa. He worked as a sports journalist, before moving to Paris to join as a research fellow at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

Literary

He published his first novel L'ombre de mémoire in 1990. Between 1993 and 1994, he was awarded a residential fellowship at the Villa Médicis, which inspired a tract against this kind of State-supported grants.
Comment has translated several books of Antonio Tabucchi into French.
In 2005, he succeeded Denis Roche as director at Fiction & Cie, and was appointed president of the Commission of the Novel at the Centre national du livre, which he held till 2008.
In 2010, with Stanley Buchthal, he edited Fragments, a collection of intimate writings, poems and letters of Marilyn Monroe.

Film and broadcasting

Along with Alain Tanner, he co-wrote the screenplays for the films Fourbi, Requiem, Jonas et Lila, Til Tomorrow, Paul s'en va. He also created with Bertrand Theubet, Le pied dans la fourmilière based on one of his novels.
He was a member of the international jury at the Locarno International Film Festival and Fribourg International Film Festival.
In 1999, he was appointed as director of fiction at France Culture.

Other

In the 1980s, Comment was a secretary of the Swiss Association of Football Players.
From October 2011, he has been an advisor of programming at Arte.

Awards and honours

Collections

As editor

Translations