Paris Letter
A MINOR SCANDAL
W
ILL ALL THOSE
who believe that Life is Worth Living kindly raise
. their right arm? Hold it for a moment, while I count the stony–
faced jerks who haven't budged. Not because they have any idea whatso–
ever about Life (who does?) but simply out of principle-what business
have I got fumbling with their psyche, etc., etc.
It
is clear, in any case,
that they are good Americans, everyone knows that in our country Life
is real, Life is earnest. Whereas here, in the miraculously intact fac;ade
of the ruined continent, the grave is indeed the goal. Here in Paris sum–
mer has come, the streets are sticky with the heat, the monuments are
half-covered under the enveloping sand, and Life is completely sense–
less.
I s it not characteristic of my incurably literary mind that I begin
by telling a lie? I am not in Paris at all, but in a lovely Spanish villa
on the Basque coast. Moreover, although I have been here only a few
days, I haven't read a newspaper in a month; and I'm quite incapable
of telling you what is happerung in the capital. I haven't been to the
Surrealist exposition at the Galerie Maeght. I haven't read Jean Paul–
han's latest epistle to the members of the National Writers' Committee.
At regular intervals I receive a copy of
Fontaine, Poesie 47
or
Les Temps
modernes,
note duly that
J.
P. Sartre is still going on and on about
"What is Literature," and find that I have nothing to cut the pages
with. Sartre's idea of his role as a
chef de file
involves systematically
misunderstanding his predecessors: this would make amusing reading,
along with Breton's dignified counterattack. And Artaud's screaming
damnation of the body, part of which I heard him read like an hallucina–
tion, on a corner of the Rue J acob, the other night. And Boris Vian's
animadversions of Simone de.Merlartre, Sarleau de Pontrevoir, Merloir
de Beauvartre, etc. But there you are-Breton, Sartre, Vian, Max-Pol
Fouchet, all are defe ated for lack of a paper-cutter.
For some time now, I have had the feeling that there is a monstrous
inconscience in the world's return to Peace. My friend X is having
another baby and writing another review. C is having another divorce.
Barman, on va remettre fa.
The evening papers in Paris are running
six-column spreads on the annual cross-country bicycle race.... A few
days before I left Paris, I went to see a young man who lives with his
