Vélo de printemps, printemps de vélo — Le Cycle, May 1971, by René Fallet

A spring essay by the novelist René Fallet for Le Cycle n° 119, May 1971: “Vélo de printemps, printemps de vélo”, on the hunger for the bicycle that spring brings, with Georges Brassens, Paris-Roubaix and the sports journalists, with his photograph, a handwritten dedication to the magazine’s readers and a list of his novels and their films. The title, caption, dedication and list are transcribed as printed; the essay is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page image carries it in full.

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LE CYCLE

Vélo de printemps printemps de vélo

René FALLET
écrivain, dialoguiste et cycliste pratiquant

Vélocipédiquement vôtre et 13 à vous
René Fallet

PRIX INTERALLIE 1964
FANFAN LA TULIPE . . . . . . . . . . (scénario)
6 films tirés des romans :
LE TRIPORTEUR, PORTE DES LILAS, LES VIEUX DE LA VIEILLE, LES PAS PERDUS, PARIS AU MOIS D’AOUT. UN IDIOT A PARIS.
Prochainement :
« IL ETAIT UN PETIT NAVIRE », film de Michel AUDIARD avec GABIN.

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. René Fallet writes that for him the first rays of spring sunshine are the first rays of the bicycle. Muffled in the Paris winter, sunk in fog and damp, he can think only of a red racing vélo gathering dust in a country garage; between two métro rides and two appointments he sees it again, and the roads that know it and on which he suffers, and he feels a hunger for the bicycle (he sets the phrase in italics) that gives him the most delicious dizziness. Until the day he tightens his cale-pieds there is nothing to do in Paris but talk about the blessed vélo. A friend dreams that if he wins the tiercé he will buy himself a machine costing two hundred billets; unluckily he never bets on the tiercé, which does not stop him picturing himself in the saddle of a fabulous machine. Georges Brassens, ever the poet, has taken it into his head that he once belonged to the Guidon Sportif Sétois, which Fallet finds fanciful at the least: Brassens claims he was among the fastest downhill but that his weight held him back on the climbs, and the two of them coast off into the comparative merits of Poulidor and Anquetil. This year Fallet means to take Brassens along on the most fabulous of roads, that of Paris-Roubaix, and promises a fine show of mustaches in the following cars. What delights him there is that his friends the sports journalists, whom one might think blasé, disillusioned or even sick of racing, are nothing of the kind: the smallest breakaway makes them jump, a feat of arms draws shouts, and he pays tribute to a love of the bicycle that they share only with their equally noble love of Beaujolais. Spring has come and with it the vélo: his postmaster in the Allier mounts his cycle and draws one or two of his postmen along on heroic rides; in Ile-de-France the PDG rides on his secretary’s wheel, and keen sexagenarians circle the Bois de Boulogne among boys whose Beatles hair spills out from under their caps. Soon it will be his turn: he will pump up his boyaux, pull on his white socquettes and set off, and his wife will tell callers that he is on the road, the road of the spring buds; he closes with a salute to spring and to the vélo. The caption calls Fallet a writer, a dialogue writer and a practicing cyclist. The handwritten dedication beside the close of the text is signed René Fallet. The block at the foot of the left column lists his Prix Interallie of 1964, his screenplay for FANFAN LA TULIPE, six films made from his novels and a coming film by Michel AUDIARD with GABIN.]

[A photograph in the left column shows René Fallet, mustached and bespectacled, in a knitted cap and a patterned knitted sweater, standing with his hands on his hips astride a light-colored road bicycle with dropped handlebars on a country road. The handwritten dedication and signature, reproduced in black, fill the space below the close of the text at the right. The page carries no drawings.]

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