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PARTISAN REVIEW
tain, I have the impression that less pornography is produced and
sold in France than in the United States (or England of the mid–
nineteenth century ) ; but it is made more easily available to foreigners
who don't know the ropes
in
Paris or Marseilles than in any English
or American town, with the possible exception of New Orleans, which
trades on its "French" tradition.
The myth of France is an old established one which I imagine
has seen its best days; what I wish to discuss here is a new myth
which is growing up in Western Europe, and which dates almost
entirely from the last decade; this is the myth of the United States
as .a sort of Abbaye de TMleme, in which there are endless op–
portunities to indulge not only all one's erotic, but also all one's
sadistic daydreams. I have the impression that this myth is one of
the more important components in the fear which many Europeans
feel concerning the spread of American culture and influence.
Since the myth is still very young, it is possible to trace at least
some of its sources. American movies of course play an important
role, but it seems as though American novels have been even more
influential, in particular the works of Faulkner, Cain, Hammett,
Chandler, Hemingway and their imitators and followers. All these
authors have had considerable success in England and the con–
tinent, in many cases (as, for instance, Faulkner) comparatively
greater than in the United States. They represent, to a greater or
lesser extent, a new technique of writing, and they depict .a very
strange society, a society in which violence is normal, and normally
unpunished (except for the "criminal" in the detective stories);
where the forces of law are weak, or con-upt, or both and where tak–
ing the side of virtue means taking a great deal of "punishment,"
and where female chastity, when encountered, is promptly dealt
with by rape. The corn-cob in Faulkner's
Sanctuary
might almost
be the emblem of the myth. European readers cannot of course place
these stories in any sort of context.
This myth is producing its own literature, the pendant to
Alone
in Paris;
although on not quite such a low level as the earlier works,
it is extremely unpleasant reading. Two authors in particular have
achieved enormous sales for their dreams of Theleme in the United
States: Rene Raymond, writing under the pseudonym James Hadley
Chase in England, and Boris Vian purporting to translate a fictitious
