Since his switch to French to write, more or less. I've not totally given up hope he will rebound with a late masterpiece. I prefer his mid-career books (a bit vague, let's say the end of his Czech period, so L'insoutenable légéreté de l'être and the two novels before that) to his earliest ones, though I suspect it could be due to a translation problem (he's another the translator embellished a lot, ruining his style). I didn't buy the translations he revised himself after he moved to France but I've heard his early novels feel a bit more like the middle career ones now, the evolution of his style more natural and logical.



Possibly. It's hard to pinpoint, but it's not just the US. Only a few of our writers are recognized internationally, and Anglo-Canadians ones the same (Richler and a handful of others like Nancy Huston who writes all her books in both languages). I've heard said half in jest many potential great writers likely just have been too busy building up these new countries to write a line in their life, especially in the centuries European literature truly flourished.



The problem for you with Vian is that his truly great novels are spread between two La Pléiade volumes. You can't miss L'Écume des Jours or L'Autumne à Pékin if you're to read Vian, but they're with his youth novels, minor works that are really interesting only to huge fans of Vian. Then, there are two of his fake American pulp novels, which are mostly interesting to those interested in the person of Vian and his biography (the scandal surrounding J'irai cracher sur vos tombes was perhaps the greatest tragedy of his life and destroyed his literary career in the end), but Vian was the first to say they had no literary value in his eyes (one was written in two weeks...). So there's like 200 really essential pages in the volume, not counting his novellas (some of which are true gems, others not) and his earliest screenplays.

The second volume has his two other essential novels, and the rest of the Sullivan novels - the second phase ones, written after the scandal when everyone knew Vian was really Sullivan, not his translator. Those are more in the Vian vein and unlike the other two that were mean to fool these were more facetious and they read a bit like pastiches of Flemming with disctinctly Vian fantasy touches. His later period novellas and screenplays are included.

This chronological division didn't bother me much (and is traditional for Pléiade), as Vian has been a writer who's followed me since my youth and there was no way I'd pass on his entrance in the collection (I'd rather been hoping for it for years...). It is a disappointement that his poetry, his songs and his plays weren't included, but I had all those in the paperback Complete Works edition already.



Same here. I tried Ulysses both in French and later in English and I just can't get into it.

As for Zola, I wouldn't recommend buying the Pléiade right away unless money is really, really no object to you. He has a much dryer (if elegant) style than the French writers you seem to like the most. He also has an angle on things, an strong agenda about the milieu he described you might say, that some people like and some really don't. I wouldn't recommend starting at the beginning of the cycle, but rather with one of his best known works (Germinal, for instance. The Folio edition usually uses the Pléiade foonotes and presentation) and judge if he's your cup of tea. In Zola's case, "cycle" is an extremely loose term anyway. The novels are only very loosely connected, can be read in any order, and are all stand-alones. Not every novel has the strength of those that became classics, obviously.

(as an aside, it makes me smile every time you call La Pléiade hardcovers, as Raymond Queneau introduced the collection in the beginning as upscale but affordable "paperbacks" (sic. The equivalent French term is Livre de poche) for book lovers on a budget who wished to start a proper library that would last but could not afford the bouquinistes and their antique editions, nor had the luxury of space to keep a full library. Books for students and artists and middle-class intellectuals. The books haven't change one bit, except the production costs skyrocketed over the decades. Nowadays they're kept under lock in bookstores - really not for the students anymore!

One excellent thing about them is that there's a good second-hand market for mint condition Pléiade volumes, and since the design hasn't changed... (they periodically redo the critical material, though) . I bought about 10 new over the years, and about the same number second-hand.



Oh no, not at all! There's no real Jordan-esque figure in France. The dividing line between great literature and popular literature is clearer.

It's just that Druon was a pedantic dinosaur with an extremely high opinion of himself, and a very high opinion of his works (all written many decades ago, he dried up early as a writer and became a public figure). He was the Perpetual Secretary of L'Académie Française to 2009, so we had to suffer his vocal opinions (especially here, he had very gratting and mysogynistic opinions about Québec). For him, French grammar is caught in amber, a ludicrous notion to anyone who know a bit the history of the language and how much it used to evolve rapidly and adapt itself. That used to be a strength of French, until the more conservative wing of the Académie in the 20th century started worshipping the past too much. E.g. Québécois expanded the vocabulary to introduce feminine forms for positions that were not traditionally filled by women. We say présidente and professeure, for example. It's perfectly in the normal line of evolution - whenever a position used to be filled by men and women both, a traditional masculine and feminine forms exist, and whenever men enter a new field, a masculine form is automatically created (it would be unthinkable to call a fashion designer "une couturière", the masculine couturier was immediately coined). According to Druon and the reactionary wing, the same shouldn't be done in modern times for "hysterical feminists", and he once called the OLF (which plays the regulatory/advisory portion of the mandate of the Académie here) barbarians for advising (and enforcing, in governemental communications) the practice. Which means whenever women fill traditional roles, they're called by a feminine title, but whenever they fill new roles (politics, academia and so on), they should be called by the masculine title only. Madame le député, Madame le professeur.

Anyway... let's say he's not terribly missed here (nor by many in France, as I understand. He was considered by many a pedantic dinosaur there too, and that since a long time.). The way he talked, Druon seemed to think he was a kind of new Hugo and that Les Rois Maudits stood with the 19th century classics. IMO, it's far more like the sort of novels a Dumas might have written had he been freed serial publishing (it's in many ways the same universe and devices Dumas used, the same distorted and exploitative vision of history and events) and I don't think he even matches Dumas for style (his writing is simpler). Les Rois Maudits is quality popular entertainment, but no more. I don't think Druon is such an exceptional writer. He's a good storyteller, though.



I'm curious to see if you'll like it or not, and if strippig a Dumas-like writer of the irritating aspects of the feuilleton genre (repetitions, the too episodic aspects, the filling of space etc.) will be enough for you. Druon has attempted to create Dumas-like characters, with two of which he more or less succeeded, though they'll never become icons like Dumas's, IMO.


I really liked the books a lot as a kid (at the same age I was handled Dumas by dad, right after finishing LOTR), but I've read a lot of History since, and as I tried to re read Druon (at the same time I decided to re read Dumas) I found him mildly irritating and his vision of the French middle-ages simplistic, full of shortcuts and too melodramatic. I don't have as much time as I used to to read, so I gave up on the re read. He systematically picks the legends over the facts, very Dumas, without the excuse of having written this in the early and mid 19th century (Dumas had this opinion that he had to aim for the general idea of a period, rather than presents the facts. He was conscious that for many of his readers, his novels would be their only contact with History, and he had an agenda, a vision of Ancien Régime he meant to share). I'm not sure why it didn't irritate me with Dumas but does with Druon, perhaps because I can place Dumas and his time - his biases and all - in context, while from a contemporary writer I find the same thing leaning toward facility. I also don't like so much the fact he mixes well-done research (I mean, the world the books present is hardly wholly innacurate!) but very dubious choices when it comes to present some events and figures, preferring the false but more spectacular versions also systematically.

It's very entertaining though if you get past all these irritants (and if you're not too tired of poisoners and good old Templar maledictions and whatnot), and if you get to like the players, immersing. Writing-wise you could do worse. It's old fashioned and conventional, but not badly written at all. The major weakness of the series may be the lack of an underlying vision, something more than the story itself. The series remains immensely popular today (even more so after the second mini-series) - it's still a favourite vacation/beach book for many.