10 Another Life 1976–1977
Ever since the early 1960s, Marguerite had freed Jacques from most
of the constraints of everyday life. To enable him to work in the
most favourable conditions, she took on every aspect of domestic
life, including money matters and the children’s education. This
did not stop Derrida being an aff ectionate and attentive father. As
Pierre says:
I don’t remember him telling us many stories or really playing
with us when we were little, but he was tender and loving and
could give time to us. Later, he didn’t help out much with
schoolwork. It’s true that Jean and I were always very good
pupils, which sometimes made him proud. Both my mother
and he were rather easy-going and rarely said no to us. The
evenings when there were guests, I tried to stick around as long
as possible. I clearly remember evenings with Paule Thévenin,
Sarah Kofman, Jean Genet, Jean Rista, Camilla and Valerio
Adami, Chantal and René Major....^1Jean, his younger son, remembers a father who was almost always
working:
From when we were very young, we were used to seeing him
shut himself away, and we weren’t tempted to go in without
good reason. The handle on his study door was placed in the
upright position when he didn’t want to be disturbed. This was
a code that my brother and I knew and respected. But through-
out our childhood, he travelled much less than later on, and
he was at home almost every evening. When the TV news was
on, he asked us to be quiet, then he’d enjoy watching a fi lm or
a serial. Even though he thought what was on TV not much
good, he must have got something out of it. I think that it was
a form of therapy for him. He was generally very open towards
us and didn’t intervene much. For instance, he took care not