PAR IS LETTER
,
..
FRANCS AND RUBLES
The season began. The long summer vacation was finally
over and life in Paris resumed. This time it was Fran<toise Sagan who,
with the traditional three blows of the hammer, rang up the curtain.
She had just published her third novel. Her publisher, Julliard, confi–
dent that there would be no letdown of the public favor that has con–
sistently been extended to the most famous,
if
not the youngest, of his
prize authors-not everyone can be a Minou Drouet and begin to write
at the age of eight- issued a first printing of 200,000 copies.
It
appears
that this was the number that were sold in advance.
I am not at all sure what the million readers that Fran<toise Sagan
has accumulated with her first two books are hoping to find in this
one. Everyone agrees that, good, bad or indifferent, her novels have
been successful for reasons that are more sociological than literary in
origin. Speaking for myself, I liked the first two. One could not avoid
noticing numerous instances of maladroitness of style and thinking. But
I felt that as a writer she had what, after all, matters most-a voice
of her own. It is a voice that is both precious and grating to the nerves,
therefore well-suited to express the revolt of our time, so well typified
by
that now famous but wholly fictitious character invented by our
chansonniers
and known under the name of Marie-Chantal.
In short, Fran<toise Sagan is in a way our Paul Morandelle, and
expresses what, at every period of history, has been one of the char–
acteristics of the spoiled, super-rich bourgeois youth during times of
stress-a sort of ennui which, depending on their years, they counter
either with high-sounding sentiments or the refusal to feel anything at
all;
that is to say, with their passions or with cynicism. Fran<toise Sagan's
answer is the latter. But hers is a cynicism that is always well-bred,
never excessive, done in monotone. Readers may put into it whatever
they choose, and this is probably why there have been so many of
them. The very adroitness and grace of her writing, too, are an invi–
tation, even to the wary.
But it looks as if she has been in too great a hurry. Surely she was
too
quick to take the advice of her publisher, who never had any cause
