Jacques Silberfeld

Jacques Silberfeld (known as Michel Chrétien; 4 July 1915 – 17 January 1991) was a French translator and man of letters.

Silberfeld was born on 4 July 1915 in The Hague, Netherlands. His grandfather, Lazare Silberfeld, served as a rabbi in Kraków, Poland), in the Kazimierz district, while his father, Ernest Silberfeld, worked as a diamond dealer in Antwerp, Belgium.^[2] He married the daughter of Armand Megglé. He is the grandfather of Magaajyia Silberfeld.

He passed the baccalaureate at Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, began Medical studies, and met Alexandre Vialatte. On the advice of Fernand Mossé, he enrolled in English studies at the Sorbonne and wrote a thesis on The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.^[3]

During World War II, he joined the 21st Foreign Volunteers Marching Regiments, then, after being demobilized, joined the Libération-Sud resistance network and used several pseudonyms. Arrested multiple times, he escaped first from Stalag XVII-A in Austria, was imprisoned in Saint-Michel Prison (Toulouse), then escaped from the "ghost train" to Dachau during the summer of 1944.

Close to Raymond Lévy, Christian de Roquemaurel, Jean-Jacques Demorest, and Jean Dutourd, who dedicated his first novel, Au Bon Beurre,^[4] to him, he chose the pen name Michel Chrétien in homage to the character by Balzac: Michel Chrestien in The Secrets of the Princess of Cadignan and Lost Illusions.

He died on 17 January 1991 in Paris.^[5]

He taught at the Journalist Training Center in Paris, then helped Bernard Pivot, publish his first novel with Calmann-Lévy.

A devoted follower of Pierre Boutang, assistant to Charles Maurras, a proeminent Vichy regime theorist, he was noted as a consistent literary critic for La Nation française^[6] and admitted to sharing the feeling of being a sheep.^[7]

• 1954: Vérité Prize

• Mind, Are You There, from Rabelais to Sacha Guitry, 1200 Funny Stories, 1957
• Humor, When You Grab Us: From Christopher Columbus to Winston Churchill, a Thousand Anglo-Saxon Funny Stories, 1959
• A Century of Anglo-American Humor, Michel Chrétien and Jacques Sternberg, preface by André Maurois, 1961
• Beasts Not Stupid or the Time of Animals, 1965
• The White Book of Black Humor, 1967

• Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, 1940
• The 21 Balloons by William Pène Du Bois, 1947
• The Glory Maker by Guido Orlando, 1953
• Action Française by Eugen Weber, 1962
• Political Prisoner by Paul Ignotus, 1962
• Mao Tse-Tung: Emperor of the Blue Ants by Paloczi-Horvath, 1963
• Skinner by Hugh C. Rae
• My Name Is Aram by William Saroyan
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
• Double Star by Robert Heinlein
• Panic at the Bank: And Other Literary Skids by Stephen Leacock
• Christmas Time Tales by Henri Pourrat
• On Revolution by Hannah Arendt, 1985
• Black Radio Operation: Black Boomerang by Sefton Delmer
• To Men, the Stars: They Shall Have Stars by James Blish
• The Scottish Vampire by Hugh Crawford Rae
• Living Reptiles of the World by Karl P. Schmidt and Robert F. Inger
• Like Rats: The Wax Boom by George G. Mandel
• Earth, My Friend by Peter Townsend
• Châtelain in Poland: Memoirs of Count Potocki, Master of Lancut by Alfred Potocki