He was born in Turin, Italy, but emigrated to France with his parents when he was very young,[1] settling in a Lyon suburb where he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence.
[2] Over the span of his career, he published a variety of works, including “a fantastic profusion of novels, short stories, essays, plays, poems and erotica of a particularly distinguished vulgarity that created genuine excitement in the most blase connoisseur”.
[3] In 1956, he moved to Mornant in the Monts du Lyonnais, where he wrote Septentrion, a work accused of being pornographic, and which was consequently censored and banned from being sold.
Calaferte continued to regularly publish collections of poems and stories of an intimate and sensual nature; some of these were dreamlike and strange, and they were often linked to childhood.
[8] Calaferte’s notebooks also present his audience with another aspect of the author’s artistic personality, demonstrating his passion for painting[8] and his literary inspiration, which derives from the works of numerous established thinkers, including Paul Léautaud and Franz Kafka.
Among them was The Way It Works with Women (1992) (La méchanique des femmes), an unclassifiable short novel[10] he published two years before his death, which was adapted for the screen in 2000 by Jérôme de Missolz ; however, it did not experience great success.
[11] Calaferte reflected on his life as an author, saying: “For having written so much between the ages of thirteen and twenty, having presented two plays in Paris, and having my first book published at age of twenty-two, I deem myself to be talented beyond my years...The development of my thoughts and my ability to understand only flourished as I gradually matured over the years.”[2]Over the course of his career, Calaferte produced hundreds of works, mainly poetry and short story collections, as well as plays and notebooks.