Roland Topor died in Paris in April 1997, at age 59. He left behind an abundant, incomparably diverse body of work. But who really was this acrobat of the imaginary? Draftsman, painter, novelist, screenplay writer and actor, he enjoyed an international, though often sulfurous, reputation. Who can pride himself on actually knowing him well? Why did he take such care to hide his life, distilling his secrets with infinite precaution? Where there dark secrets? Wounds?
Frantz Vaillant followed the trail of this exceptional destiny, meeting Topor’s sister and son, and other witnesses to his life, and gained access to unpublished documents. This biography starts with the arrival in France of Abram, Topor’s father, a Jewish artist originally from Poland. When, in 1930, he stepped foot in Paris’s Gare de l’Est, he had just one ambition: become a famous sculptor. Fate would decide something quite different. Young Roland’s life began 8 years later, in the run-up to a war that would soon be raging around the world. The Topor family managed to escape first the Vel d’Hiv round up, and then Klaus Barbie’s militia, eventually finding refuge in the Alps. When France was liberated, his schooling started. Then came the Beaux-Arts School, and his earliest successes. Work, parties, friendship… this unbridled libertarian obeyed just one law: that of pleasure. Sternberg, Pauvert, Losfeld, Panique, Derrida, the humor magazine Hara-Kiri… Topor worked with them all, but always refused to get trapped in a single image. Fame didn’t affect his good mood or creativity, yet nor did it ever calm his fear of death. For that is the one true constant source of his work. Portrait of an era that seems distant now, and of an artist whose obsessions have remained universal, Roland Topor or Strangled Laughter is the first biography of the artist.