Publication of L’Orage

The publication of L’Orage was Romain Gary’s first conspicuous literary success: a full page in Gringoire carried his short story and his name, bringing a thousand francs to a young writer who had been nearly out of money. The event briefly seemed to promise security, but its deeper consequence was more complicated: it gave his mother a public victory, while setting Gary up for the disappointment of six months without another accepted story.

Circumstances and First Publication

At the time, Gary had no more than fifty francs left and was on the verge of asking his mother for money again. Opening the weekly Gringoire, he found an entire page devoted to L’Orage, with his name printed prominently. The discovery did not make him feel excited; he folded the paper slowly and went home sad and tired. The achievement seemed to him only a drop of water beside the ocean—the impossible distance between one published story and the literary task he believed lay ahead.

A Public Triumph for His Mother

The story’s reception in the Buffa Market transformed the modest publication into a celebration. The traders held an apéritif in his mother’s honor, with toasts and speeches delivered in the local accent. She kept the issue of Gringoire in her bag and carried it everywhere. When challenged, she would produce the paper, point to the page bearing her son’s name, and leave with her head held high. His private success thus became an instrument in her public contests: the printed name gave her a visible proof of the future she had long claimed for him.

Money, Confidence, and Reversal

Gary received a thousand francs for the story, a sum he had never before possessed. He immediately spent as though the money had ended want for good: at the Brasserie Balzar he ate two helpings of choucroute and a large plate of pot-au-feu, then took a fifth-floor hotel room overlooking the street. He wrote his mother a composed letter claiming that he had a regular contract with Gringoire and several other publications, and that she need only tell him if she needed money. He also sent her a large bottle of perfume and arranged for a bouquet to be delivered by telegram.

His new prosperity extended to himself: he bought a box of cigars and a sport coat. The cigars made him sick, but he smoked them all, determined to inhabit the grand life his sudden success appeared to promise. That confidence proved premature. He quickly wrote three more stories, all of which Gringoire and the other Paris weeklies returned; for six months none of his work appeared in print, the stories being judged too literary.

The Lesson of the Setback

Looking back, Gary connects the rejections to his urge to solve the largest artistic problem at once: to reach the last ball at any cost and get to the bottom of everything in a single stroke of the pen. The publication had encouraged him to mistake a first success for mastery. His ambition, which had seemed to lift him beyond constraint, instead carried him into the role of a clown dancing on the tennis court at Parc Impérial, unable to control what he could not yet grasp.

The episode also marks a change in his understanding of writing. He came to recognize that a reader was entitled to consideration, and that a writer had to orient a newcomer rather than assume the reader already knew the way. He compares that obligation to explaining the room number, switches, key, and necessities to a new arrival at Hôtel-Pension Mermonts. L’Orage therefore stands both as an inaugural publication and as the beginning of a more difficult education: success gave Gary money and his mother a trophy, but the silence that followed taught him that literary ambition required more than intensity.