{"id":112504,"date":"2017-07-13T18:38:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T22:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=112504"},"modified":"2017-07-14T12:16:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-14T16:16:09","slug":"aux-armes-citoyens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/13\/aux-armes-citoyens\/","title":{"rendered":"Aux Armes, Citoyens"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Robert Delauney, Tour Eiffel<\/i>, 1911.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The magazine\u2019s called The Paris Review<\/em>, so you\u2019d think our archive would be lousy with poems about Bastille Day. Like, you couldn\u2019t pluck a back issue from the shelves and point to a random page without <\/em>coming across some rousing commemoration of quartorze juillet <\/em>and the indomitable French spirit.<\/p>\n

Well, you\u2019d be wrong. There are zero poems about Bastille Day in our archive. Not even a stray mention. We\u2019ve failed in our duties as Francophiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, to find anything worthy of this occasion, you have to go all the way back to our first issue, from Spring 1953. There you\u2019ll find an essay by one C. Chesnaie, \u201cThe Year in French Literature<\/a>.\u201d If you\u2019re curious about midcentury French novels, boy, are you in for a treat\u2014this thing is full of them! And Chesnaie doesn\u2019t bother much with adornment. He\u2019s giving it to you straight. Here are two of his recommendations, for instance:<\/p>\n

If you prefer the humorous (which, like full print skirts, is in fashion this year), you should read\u00a0Au Bon Beurre<\/em>\u00a0by Jean Dutourd. For psychological novels (not done much these recent years but enjoying a return to favor), you should read\u00a0Les Amants du Theil<\/em>\u00a0by Paul Bodin, or\u00a0La Farandole<\/em>\u00a0by Andre Brincourt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There. That\u2019s all you need to know. And he cannot tell a lie. If you were to ask for his opinion on Le Dos au mur <\/em>by Gilbert Sigaux, he would tell you: \u201cI cannot say anything about\u00a0[it] because it is still at the press, except that the author already has a practiced technique and is now one of our most moving novelists.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish I could offer you something better for Bastille Day, but the well is dry. And this is not an isolated incident. A search for \u201cLa Marseillaise\u201d also yielded zero results. As a consolation prize, here\u2019s a picture of our Summer 1968 issue, which had the Eiffel Tower on its cover:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll try to get our act together for next year\u2019s July 14. Till then, we can only hope that French literature continues to prosper, as it did in Chesnaie\u2019s day: \u201cthey opened the bookstores to an enormous production of novels,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwhich for the past five years have been served up to the public like so many Lucky Strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I checked the whole archive. There\u2019s squat. We\u2019re sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[16304,370,2877,26616,29537,14748,865,29536],"class_list":["post-112504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-archive","tag-back-issues","tag-bastille-day","tag-digital-subscription","tag-eiffel-tower","tag-failure","tag-france","tag-july-14"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe\u2019re Called \u201cThe Paris Review,\u201d But We\u2019ve Got Nothing for Bastille Day<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I checked the whole archive. There\u2019s squat. 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