I've read a lot of books as part of the prep for my novel. For my first "real" post of the blog (after the welcome message), I thought I'd write a few words about these books. My novel is about art in Occupied Paris and immediately after the Liberation and about the political responsibilities of artists in face of evil. I'll share more about the plot itself as the writing process draws to an end.
One of the first books I read as part of the prep is Journal des Annees Noires by Jean Guehenno (click here for the book page on Amazon.fr). Of course the diary tells only a fraction of the story of that remarkable university professor, since he heavily self-censored out of fear his notebooks would fall in the hands of the Nazis. In particular, the diary does not detail any of his activities for the Resistance.
Again as part of the prep, I recently finished Resistance by Agnes Humbert, who was involved in one of the earliest Resistance networks, a network that happened to have ties to academia; her book - also a diary - chronicles the few activities her network was able to organize before its members were betrayed, but focuses mostly on her long years of incarceration in labor camps.
Both books are four-stars-out-of-five kinds of books: very good books that are moving because of the topic and the main characters' incredible courage, but rather slow at times when the diary's author muses at length on what is happening around him/her. In fact, I'd thought about giving up on the Guehenno diary, because I have other books that can give me more information and I need to spend time writing (it is so easy to do research forever). Then, after a long hiatus, I picked up Journal des Annees Noires and almost immediately reached the paragraph where Guehenno describes the execution of all the men in Humbert's network, which he learned from Jean Paulhan (my own translation follows this excerpt from the French paperback edition, p.243):
On les avertit dès le matin du lundi qu’ils allaient être fusillés. Vildé vit sa femme dans la matinée et eut la force de ne rien lui dire. L’après-midi, on les conduisit de la prison de Fresnes au mont Valérien. Ils traversèrent tout Paris entassés dans un camion avec leurs gardes. Ils chantaient. On épingla à chacun un carré de papier blanc à la place du cœur et ils furent tués presque à bout portant. Vildé, comme il l’avait demandé, fut exécuté le dernier.
Translation: They were told on Monday morning that they would be executed. Vildé saw his wife in the morning and had the strength not to tell her anything. In the afternoon, they were brought from the Fresnes jail to the mont Valérien. They went through Paris crammed in a truck with their guards. They were singing. Someone pinned for each a square of white paper in front of their heart and they were killed almost at close range. Vildé, as he had requested, was executed last.
Guehenno's prose is stunning in its clarity and brevity, and makes me ache for the achievements civilization was deprived of, because the men in Humbert's network were murdered by the Nazis.
