This page contains both the 1988 and 1998 prefaces to "188 Tales to Settle".
Stormy, his life was erratic, both private and material, not to mention his uneven career: forty published books have not assured him the status of a successful author. He is said to be unclassifiable, undoubtedly because he was never limited to a single literary label. He could have remained a novelist, a playwright, a film screenwriter, or a pamphleteer columnist. But in reality he had, above all, a passion for short texts that will never leave him. This earned him his most demanding readers and recognition in a certain number of literary circles as being among Maupassant, Poe, Kafka, Gogol, Mérimée... Strange associations...
***
These "188 tales to settle" remain to me a shocking book in my fluctuating personal journey, a landmark one as well. Exhilarating in 1988, sadly tinged with tragedy in 1998. The first drafts of the book go back a few years when, in 1984, my personal dictionary was refused by Albin Michel* that I had always been working on, over the years, following my ideas. I found myself really stunned for the first time in my career, although it was full of brutal descents, especially since Francis Esménard believed in me and had paid me monthly for my novels, which were all published, which gave me a living, between my dinghy and my old typewriter, the best years of my life.
* - [Editor's Note: This section refers to Sternberg's novel "Dictionnaire des idées reçues" ("Dictionary of Reviewed Ideas", no relation to his 1973 book "The Devil's Dictionary") being turned down by the publisher Albin Michel.]