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PARTISAN REVIEW
it, their power is stronger than their good will. Sartoris, Popeye, Joe
Christmas, rise up; attack, are not understood, destroy what they love,
kill and are killed-because they are themselves. Thus is achieved a
regeneration, a novelistic incarnation, of fatality, by virtue of showing
that it is not in the gods or in society but in the individual, in whatever
is immutably given within himself. ..."
But Ricard seems to make better sense of Faulkner's experience than
Faulkner, with all his power, makes of it himself; and a similar disposi–
tion to over-interpret, over-subtilize, over-intellectualize, is true of much
of the French comment on American fiction. What the critics do is to
translate into general ideas what is merely implicit in the novels-if it is
there at all. And it is significant that a great deal of this criticism also
concerns itself with American movies and other popular arts, which are
likewise made to serve as poignant witnesses to the human condition.
In short it is never quite clear whether to the French the American novel
is merely an assemblage of vivid data or whether it is a work of art.
Evidently the very distinction is a matter of widespread indifference.
Jean-Paul Sartre has said that, unlike Faulkner, "Proust is a classic and
a Frenchman: the French may lose themselves over the week-end but
they always conclude by finding themselves again." And he added that
"eloquence, the taste for clear ideas, intellectualism, constrained Proust
to preserve at least the appearance of chronology" and of logical co-
Vient de paraitre
Ceorges Simenon
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