“I chose as my future the past of a great immortal and I tried to live backwards. Between the age of nine and ten, I became completely posthumous.”
In the end, Sartre describes his literary vocation as a tracing paper version of religion. Having recovered from his childhood fantasies, he concludes, “I’ve given up the office but not the frock: I still write. What else is there to do?”
“What else is there to do?” was Beckett’s response, too. Asking why we need to write and knowing whether writing gives life meaning are intimidating questions (in intimidating, there is intimate). All we can do is circle round and round the question, as if we were scared of getting burned. “What else to do?”: that may be the last word.
Footnotes
1. From Stendhal: “Italy is the ‘land of poets.’” Translator’s note: We’ve used existing translations whenever available and occasionally adapted or edited them for accuracy. When Grenier refers to the title of a work for which no translation exists, the title is given in the original French, with an English translation in brackets. Full bibliographic references to works from which the author quotes and that are available in English can be found in Works Cited at the end of the book.
2. Arsène Lupin is the gentleman thief in Maurice Leblanc’s early detective novels.
3. Nathalie Sarraute’s The Age of Suspicion: Essays on the Novel (New York: George Braziller, 1963) begins by arguing with Grenier’s claim that the novel of the day, much like the news stories, favored Kafka’s “homo absurdus” over Dostoyevsky’s psychological dramas.
4. Christine and Léa Papin, housemaids, were tried in 1933 for murdering their employer’s wife and daughter. Their crime inspired Jean Genet’s The Maids.
5. Lacenaire (1803–1836), a poet-murderer made famous by Marcel Carné’s classic film Les enfants du paradis (1945).
6. In 1919, protesting the Paris Peace Conference, the decadent writer and sometime war hero Gabriele D’Annunzio led the seizure of the city of Fiume, in Croatia, and declared it an independent state with himself as “Duce.”
7. You can find the same theme treated more crudely in Dino Buzzati’s famous The Tartar Steppe. Apparently he was inspired by observing his colleagues at the Corriere della Sera, seasoned journalists who’d spent their lives looking for a scoop.
8. Jean Balue (1421–1491), a cardinal and minister to Louis XI, was imprisoned for eleven years for plotting against the king, though not, as legend has it, in an iron cage.
9. “The Pope’s Mule,” a 1925 story by Alphonse Daudet, is about a mule who waited seven years to deliver a vengeful kick to a young man in the pope’s court at Avignon who had tormented him.
10. A founding document of the French Revolution, adopted in 1789 by the first National Constituent Assembly.
11. Accounting for inflation, that would be the equivalent of 128,800 euros, or $166,550, an astonishing sum for a document that belonged to a virtually unknown figure.
12. Le Petit Chose, or Little What’s-His-Name—the nickname of the main character and the title of Daudet’s 1868 novel, based on his own difficult experience as a boarding school monitor.
13. Édouard Drumont (1844–1917), virulent anti-Semitic crusader, author of La France Juive [Jewish France]; Léon Daudet (1867–1942), polemicist and editor of L’ Action Française, Charles Maurras’s nationalist-monarchist newspaper.
14. A polite version of the same sentiment appears in Jean Stein’s 1956 interview with Faulkner in The Paris Review 12: 28–52.
15. Napoleon and de Gaulle, respectively.
16. In a series of television commercials in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the Italian village priest Don Patillo (inspired by the popular Don Camillo stories and films), appears before God to defend his love for Panzani brand pasta.
Works Cited
In addition to many works mentioned by Roger Grenier, we list here, chapter by chapter, readily available English translations or original English editions of works from which the author quotes.
“The Land of Poets”
Barthes, Roland. Critical Essays. Translated by Richard Howard. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972.
Baudelaire, Charles. My Heart Laid Bare and Other Prose Writings. Translated by Norman Cameron. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1975.
De Quincey, Thomas. “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Blackwood’s Magazine, Jan–June 1827.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.
Faulkner, William. Pylon. New York: Random House, 1985.
Musil, Robert. The Man Without Qualities. Translated by Sophie Wilkins. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Proust, Marcel. “The Filial Sentiments of a Parricide,” in Marcel Proust: A Selection of His Miscellaneous Writings. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. London: A. Wingate, 1948.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.
Stendhal. Lamiel. Translated by T. W. Earp. New York: New Directions, 1952.
———. The Private Diaries of Stendhal. Translated by Robert Sage. New York: Doubleday, 1954.
Waiting and Eternity
Apollinaire, Guillaume. Alcools. Translated by Donald Revell. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1995.
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press, 1958.
Baudelaire, Charles. “Dream of a Curious Character,” in The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Keith Waldrop. Middletown, CT: Weslyan University Press, 2006.
———. “To a Woman Passing By,” in The Flowers of Evil.
Beckett, Samuel. Happy Days. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
Blanchot, Maurice. Awaiting Oblivion. Translated by John Gregg. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Translated by Matthew Ward. New York: Vintage, 1989.
———. “Summer in Algiers,” from Nuptials. Collected in Lyrical and Critical Essays. Translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy. New York: Vintage, 1970.
Chekhov, Anton. “A Boring Story,” in Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Random House, 2000.
———. Uncle Vanya: A Comedy in Four Acts. Translated by Jenny Covan. New York: Brentano’s, 1922.
Conrad, Joseph. “To-morrow,” in Typhoon and Other Stories. New York: Doubleday, 1921.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs. Translated by Jean McNeil. New York: Zone Books, 1999.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. Translated by David McDuff. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Ernaux, Annie. Simple Passion. Translated by Tanya Leslie. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.
Flaubert, Gustave. A Sentimental Education. Translated by Douglas Parmée. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Gide, André. Fruits of the Earth. Translated by D. Bussy. New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 1970.
Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1996.
James, Henry. “The Beast in the Jungle,” in Selected Tales. New York: Penguin, 2001.
———. “The Bench of Desolation,” in The Complete Stories of Henry James: 1898–1910. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Mansfield, Katherine. “The Young Girl,” in The Garden Party and Other Stories. New York: Knopf, 1922.
Pascal, Blaise. “Discourse on the Passion of Love,” in Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works. Translated by O. W. Wight. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Leave-Taking
Bataille, Georges. The Bataille Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.
Baudelaire, Charles. “Solitude,” in Baudelaire, His Prose and Poetry. Translated by Joseph T. Shi
pley. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919.
Beckett, Samuel. Molloy. New York: Grove Press, 1994.
Blanchot, Maurice. Faux Pas. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage, 1991.
———. The Stranger. Translated by Matthew Ward. New York: Vintage, 1989.
Carlyle, Thomas. “Novalis.” The Foreign Review 4.7 (1829): 97–141.
Chekhov, Anton. Uncle Vanya: A Comedy in Four Acts. Translated by Jenny Covan. New York: Brentano’s 1922.
Conrad, Joseph. ’Twixt Land and Sea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
du Perron, Edgar. Country of Origin. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
Flaubert, Gustave. A Sentimental Education. Translated by Douglas Parmée. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
———. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1857–1880. Translated by Francis Steegmuller. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940.
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. “The Tale of Night Six Hundred and Seventy Two,” in The Whole Difference: Selected Writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Lajolo, Davide. An Absurd Vice: A Biography of Ceasar Pavese. Translated by Mario and Mark Pietralunga. New York: New Directions, 1983.
Leiris, Michel. Aurora. Translated by Anna Warby. London: BCM Atlas Press, 1990.
Malraux, André. La voie royale [The Way of the Kings]. Paris: Grasset, 1996.
Malraux, André. Lazarus. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1977.
Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener. New York: Melville House, 2004.
Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Translated by Donald M. Frame. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958.
Pavese, Cesare. This Business of Living. Translated by A. E. Murch. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Histoires Extrordinaires [Extraordinary Stories]. Translated by Charles Baudelaire. Paris: Éditions Nilsson, 1929.
Private Life
Balzac, Honoré de. The Letters of Honoré de Balzac to Madame Hanska. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1900.
Chekov, Anton. Notebook of Anton Chekov. Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf. New York: Ecco Press, 1987.
Conrad, Joseph. A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005.
Cortázar, Julio. “A Leg of the Journey,” in Unreasonable Hours. Translated by Alberto Manguel. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1995.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Devils: The Possessed. Translated by David Magarshack. New York: Penguin, 1971.
Dickens, Charles. Quoted in John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens. Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1872.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Edited by Matthew Bruccoli. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Translated by Lydia Davis. New York: Penguin, 2010.
James, Henry. “The Real Right Thing,” in The Altar of the Dead, The Beast in the Jungle, The Birthplace, and Other Tales. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909.
Nerval, Gérard de. Daughters of Fire. Translated by James Whitall. New York: Nicholas L. Brown, 1922.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
Proust, Marcel. By Way of Sainte-Beuve. Translated by Sylvia Townsend Warner. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958.
———. Jean Santeuil. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
———. Time Regained: In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. New York: Random House, 1999.
Roubaud, Jacques. Something Black. Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1990.
Sand, George. Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand. A group translation edited by Thelma Jurgrau. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Valéry, Paul. Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci. Translated by Thomas MacGreevy. London: J. Rodker, 1929.
Woolf, Virginia. “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being. New York: Harcourt, 1985.
Writing about Love, Again . . .
Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1969.
Camus, Albert. Notebooks: 1935–1942. Translated by Philip Thody. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010.
Chekov, Anton. The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov. Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson. New York: Cassell and Co., 1925.
Huet, Pierre-Daniel. History of Romances. Translated by Stephen Lewis. London: J. Hooke, 1715.
Kafka, Franz. “Blumenfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.” Translated by Tania and James Stern. In Kafka: The Complete Stories. New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1995.
Prevost, Abbé. Manon Lescaut. Translated by Leonard Tancock. New York: Penguin Classics, 1992.
A Half Hour at the Dentist’s
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Crazy Sunday,” in Babylon Revisted and Other Stories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960.
———. The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Edited by Andrew Turnbull. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963.
James, Henry. The Real Thing. New York: Macmillan, 1922.
O’Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.
———. Mystery and Manners. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970.
Unfinished
Bashkirtseff, Marie. Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. Translated by A. D. Hall and G. B. Heckel. New York: Rand McNally & Co., 1898.
Baudelaire, Charles. “To a Woman Passing By,” in The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Keith Waldrop. Middletown, CT: Weslyan University Press, 2006.
Chekhov, Anton. A Life in Letters. Edited by Rosamund Bartlett. Translated by Anthony Phillips. New York, Penguin, 2004.
———. Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories. Translated by David Magarshack. New York: Penguin, 1995.
Faulkner, William. The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem). New York: Vintage, 1995.
Faure, Elie. History of Art, III. Translated by Walter Pach. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1923.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender Is the Night. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995.
Nerval, Gérard de. “Artemis,” in Selected Writings. Translated by Richard Sieburth. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Potocki, Jean. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Translated by Ian MacLean. New York: Penguin, 1996.
———. Cited by Roger Caillois in the preface to The Saragossa Manuscript. Translated by Elisabeth Abbott. New York: Orion Press, 1960.
Proust, Marcel. Time Regained: In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. New York: Random House, 1999.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “Notes for the Reveries,” in Religious, Moral, and Literary Writings. Translated by Christopher Kelly. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2006.
———. Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated by Peter France. New York: Penguin, 1980.
Schulz, Bruno. Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass. Translated by Celina Wieniewska. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster. London: Bell and Daldy, 1871.
Do I Have Anything Left to Say?
Balzac, Honoré de. The Letters of Honoré de Balzac to Madame Hanska. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston: Little,
Brown and Co., 1900.
Bernhard, Thomas. My Prizes: An Accounting. Translated by Carol Brown Janeway. New York: Knopf, 2010.
Bolaño, Roberto. Interview with Mónica Maristain for Playboy, Mexico Edition, July 2003. In Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Translated by Sybil Perez. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2009.
Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Camus, Albert. “Encounters with André Gide,” in Lyrical and Critical Essays. Translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy. New York: Vintage, 1970.
———. The First Man. Translated by David Hapgood. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Chateaubriand, François-René. Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb. Translated by Robert Baldick. New York: Penguin, 2014.
Chekhov, Anton. The Seagull. Translated by Laurence Senelick. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
Chekhov, Anton. “The Swan Song,” in The Plays of Anton Chekhov. Translated by Marian Fell. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916.
Conrad, Joseph. Tales of Unrest. New York: Doubleday, 1925.
———. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 2007.
Faulkner, William. William Faulkner to Joan Williams. In Selected Letters. Edited by Joseph Blotner. New York: Vintage, 1978.
Gide, André. So Be It: or, The Chips Are Down. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Knopf, 1959.
Grove, Sir George, ed. Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Macmillan, 1911.
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