The bumpy ride of ‘The Blue Bicycle’ by Régine Deforges
Somehow, my wife got a copy of The Blue Bicycle in the mid-1980s, possibly from one of several people with whom she traded books, and it didn’t take long for her to discover that the book was similar to Gone With the Wind. Too similar, we thought.
The author was sued for plagiarism by American Trust Company Bank who represented the rights to the Margaret Mitchell novel. Deforges, a popular French author, lost the case and was ordered to pay $330,000 in damages. The book was a bestseller in France.
However, according to the New York Times, Deforges was cleared on appeal in 1990. The French “appeals court agreed that Miss Deforges’s book began with a character similar to Miss Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara. But it said the two novels then followed different paths.”
Deforges died in 2014. The book is still available on Amazon.
From the Publisher
“‘The little savage from Montillac’ is what her suave lover Francois calls Lea, the passionate heroine of this frankly lush, romantic novel of France during the war years 1939-1942. Daughter of a rich wine grower in Bordeaux, Lea sees her adored childhood sweetheart, Laurent, married to his cousin, namby-pamby Camille. Lea has lovers but never stops carrying the torch for Laurent, while tending pregnant Camille during Laurent’s service at the front, holding down the family estate of Montillac, where Germans are billeted, and cycling through occupied checkpoints with messages for the Resistance. Deforges, a bestselling writer in France, gives us moving scenes of civilian panic and carnage and glimpses of Paris high life enjoyed by collaborators and black-marketeers. Radio broadcasts by the still unknown de Gaulle, and defeatist Petainhead of the Vichy puppet regimefire French patriotism and keep the underground going. Plenty of entertainment here, and echoes of Gone with the Wind, though it’s hard to tell what lusty Lea sees in Laurent.”
I taught college-level communications law. By no means an expert, I do not agree with the appeals court’s decision because I think the material Deforges copied went beyond the scope of fair use.
–Malcolm
