Today's (short) post is about another nonfiction book - after The Shameful Peace by Frederic Spotts, which I wrote about here - that will be of interest to those readers of my novella "Isolde 1939" who want to learn more about cultural life in Paris during the Occupation: And The Show Went On, by Alan Riding.
While General de Gaulle "above all people purveyed the healing notion that the French had been united in their resistance except for a few traitors and weaklings" (from the New York Times review), it has been known for a long time that the situation in Occupied France had many more shades of grey than what was politically correct to admit at the Libération. Riding, a former cultural correspondent for the New York Times, focuses on the shades of grey seen in cultural and intellectual Paris.
The Financial Times review provides this quote of professor, literary critic and Résistant Jean Guéhenno, included in Riding's book and which I can't resist to share with you: "The species of the man of letters is not one of the greatest of human species. Incapable of surviving for long in hiding, he would sell his soul to see his name in print." This gives you a preview of many intellectuals' attitude during the Occupation.
I didn't find the book to be a page-turner - at least not in the way I found Villa Bel Air by Rosemary Sullivan, about Varian Fry, to be a page-turner - but it is very well researched and I liked how Riding, in the words of the Guardian reviewer, "traces how [the collabos] came to be by painting an elaborate picture of the terror of the German invasion, the collapse of French morale following the first world war, the immense humiliation and fear of a defeated population." It is only by understanding why some people chose to collaborate with the invaders that we can, perhaps, prevent such behavior from happening again.The book provides a stunning picture of the compromises people make with their conscience in devotion to their art - or their name in the headlines.
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