Volume 7, Number 5 · October 6, 1966
Malraux: Behind the Mask
By John Weightman
Malraux: A Collection of Critical Essays
edited by R.W.B. Lewis
Prentice-Hall, 181 pp., $1.95 (paper)
André Malraux: The Indochina Adventure
by Walter G. Langlois
Praeger, 259 pp., $5.95
The Rhetorical Hero: An Essay on the Aesthetics of André Malraux
by William Righter
Chilmark, 92 pp., $3.95
Of all the outstanding figures in contemporary French literature, André Malraux is probably the most difficult to assess. At times he appears as a remarkable genius, one of the key writers of the first half of the twentieth century, with a range of reference in life and art that no one else can equal. At other times, he exasperates by a certain looseness of texture or assertive jumpiness; we begin to wonder if we are dealing with an entirely solid achievement, or with something that is partly collective mirage, like the legend of T. E. Lawrence—significantly, no doubt, one of the culture heroes by whom Malraux was most inspired. Are the obscurities and apparent contradictions of the life sublimated in the works? Are the works themselves as rich as they first appear, or do they eventually break down into a number of conflicting attitudes, reiterated in different guises?
Review, 4281 words
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