Publishing, the Rules of the Trade

La Campagne de France. Journal 1994

Renaud Camus, Librairie Arthème Fayard,original edition, 2000, Coll. Bfm - Limoges

The withdrawal of a book that is already on sale, when no legal decision dictates it, is extremely rare. La Campagne de France by Renaud Camus, his diary of the year 1994, created a polemic because of anti-Semitic passages, notably aimed at the hosts on the radio station France Culture. The publisher, Fayard, accepted to publish the book in spite of not sharing the author’s opinions. After in-house debate, Fayard took the radical decision of withdrawing the book from sale. Before then, Paul Otchakovski-Laurens (P.O.L), publisher of Renaud Camus since the 70s, had refused to publish his Campagne de France. Nevertheless, P.O.L denounced the vehemence of a polemic that focused attention on just a few excerpts. Fayard reprinted the book: white spaces were left in place of the incriminated passages. Renaud Camus tells the story of this incident (Corbeaux, Les Impressions nouvelles, 2000).