Volume 5, Number 5 · October 14, 1965
Enfant Terrible
By Harold Acton
The Exile of Capri
by Roger Peyrefitte, translated by Peter Fryer
Fleet, 284 pp., $4.95
The Prince's Person
by Roger Peyrefitte, translated by Peter Fryer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 212 pp., $4.95
Though Gallic wit will always continue to flourish even if it is driven underground, it has become increasingly hard to seek in modern French literature. Possibly this may be due to the last war: a heavy pall of bleak pretentious boredom has descended—one hopes only temporarily—on the purveyors of contemporary fiction. The recent winners of prominent French literary prizes reinforce a suspicion that these are allotted by masonic agreement between publishers and critics. Politics may also play its deleterious part, and the personal magnetism of such avantgarde exponents as M. Robbe-Grillet and M. Le Clézio, but the Muses are seldom present at the coronation. The prizes insure a large sale, if not an enduring reputation. The crowned novels are read, or rather skimmed, in a spirit of curiosity by a public eager to keep abreast of the times. How many readers are doomed to disillusion! Surely never before has there been such a spate of pompous drivel parading as creative literature. Let us then be all the more grateful to M. Roger Peyrefitte, who upholds the virtues of crystaline lucidity, barbed wit, subtle insight, observation, and elegance of style which have distinguished the best French writers in the past. These virtues even percolate through translation, though le mot juste is most difficult to render.
Review, 1686 words
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