The latest addition to my website is François Mauriac‘s Génitrix (Genitrix). This one is still the gloomy tale that we usually find with Mauriac. In this case, it involves a mother who treats her fifty year old son as a child and gets very jealous when he marries a much younger woman. She is even more jealous when the wife, Mathilde, becomes pregnant but not at all disappointed when Mathilde dies following a miscarriage. However, to her horror, she finds that Mathilde dead is far more of a rival for her son’s affection than Mathilde alive. As always, it is not the people who win but the Catholic gloom and guilt.
Real life – and books about reality- do not work well with simple minded North Americans- they just want to see always happy endings- look at your horribly shallow lives – those are not happy lives or happy endings. Indifferent nations should not point a finger at a great works of art-because you do not understand it clearly. If you live on hamburgers and pop- no brain can be intelligent enough to grasps depth and beauty of the whole life.
You sadly are so in love with yourselves, that we just can pity you. Look at wise, beautiful and good in life, and learn fast for your own sake. Francois Mauriac has a talent, that talks about reality- and yes – life is gloomy and hard- but can you comprehend that- your artificial smiles, face lifts and bodies that you adore so much/ how can you admire a ton of fat/ speak clearly about your values a priorities. Francois is great author- for sure he is not a stupid soap opera or cheerleader- or other clowns that are your idols. Be humans- go deeper- do not read garbage- because it is teaching you live a garbage.
Two things. It really is massive over-simplification to say all North Americans are simple-minded. Some may be as some French, or example, may be. And I am not North American.
This simple minded American reviewer greatly admires Mauriac. The simple minded Frenchman Sartre was even more obtuse than the reviewer of Mauriac’s great novella.
RESPONSE TO ‘IVA’
I am appalled at the prejudiced and vicious views regarding north Americans that were deemed relevant to a review with which Iva did not agree, I am English, and Mauriac is one of my favourite French writers. I love his style and I have reread many of his books, always reading them in the original wonderfully written French language. If I were to disagree with someone’s negative view of even a work I regard as a masterpiece, I might respond by giving them some ideas on what there is to appreciate. I am shocked by the ignorance and nastiness expressed and the caricatural and pejorative clichés attributed to a complete stranger. Imagine discussing books you’ve read and being face to face with such an unpleasant ignoramus with an ill-merited sense of intellectual superiority.