Dard, Frédéric (1921-2000). Prolific French author of parodic detective fiction, much of it under the penname of San-Antonio, the sexually irresistible and apparently immortal narrator-hero of over 150 linguistically inventive novellas. Dard's Rabelaisian style, combining vulgarity with punning neologisms, is occasionally as brilliant as the néo-français of Queneau's Zaziedans le métro, which it resembles. His self-designatedly ‘big’ novels, notably La Vieille Dame qui marchait dans la mer (1988), give a vision of life as sombre as those of Simenon, whose La Neige était sale Dard also adapted for the stage. Dard's ribald plots are often weak, his reappearing characters are shallow; but his vast output, motivated by Christian moral convictions, can be read as an irreverent answer in a ‘low culture’ genre to the ‘high theory’ of the Nouveau Roman.

— David Bellos

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.