{"id":93443,"date":"2016-01-15T10:30:48","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T15:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93443"},"modified":"2016-01-15T14:54:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T19:54:30","slug":"black-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Ink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henry de Montherlant\u2019s novels have fallen out of fashion, but at their best they\u2019re perfect for our confused age.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Henry de Montherlant, c. 1953.<\/p><\/div>\n

Henry de Montherlant began writing in earnest after he came home wounded from the Great War, a decorated veteran. France in the 1930s made him a literary star, awarding him the Grand Prix<\/em>\u2014yet he hated the Third Republic. Montherlant, a true misfit, had many such contrarian tendencies: though he was gay, he wrote caustic articles for right-wing magazines and loathed modernity. In print, he professed admiration for the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, writing that France, with its \u201cshopgirl\u2019s morality,\u201d deserved to lose the war. His book Le solstice de juin <\/em>counseled \u201cacceptance, then adherence\u201d to German occupation and Vichy; after the war, it earned him a yearlong ban from publishing.<\/p>\n

Even so, Montherlant was elected to the Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise<\/em> in 1960. His plays were staged, his novels published. In 1972, he swallowed cyanide and, to make sure, shot himself in the head. He has made the long slide from fame to infamy, but in his time he was tolerated and even praised, a guilty reminder that there were far more collaborators than Charles de Gaulle\u2019s myth of noble France ever could admit. His literary biographer Lucille Becker writes,\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

Montherlant\u2019s generation had hailed him principally as a moralist, but the postwar generation turned to writers like Andr\u00e9 Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who had been actively engaged in the struggle for freedom. They were indifferent to the counsel of a man who had been unable to accord his own life to his principles. Montherlant had said in L\u2019Equinoxe de septembre <\/em>that France would be saved by those of her sons who possessed the courage \u201cto refuse to play the game, the courage to say no, the courage to be severe, the courage to be unpopular.\u201d When these sons finally appeared in the ranks of the Resistance, Montherlant was not there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Montherlant\u2019s father was a royalist of tenuous nobility, without wealth or distinction, who wouldn\u2019t allow electricity or the telephone into the house, who scorned the post\u2013Dreyfus Affair army as toothless and subservient. In high school, Montherlant was expelled for an affair with another male student. Only the Great War brought\u00a0him new life and fame. Today he is chiefly remembered for the aphorism \u201cHappiness writes in white ink on a white page.\u201d Montherlant\u2019s ink, by contrast, is pitch black.<\/p>\n

Literary history has made its truce with Pound and C\u00e9line, but Montherlant has been consigned to its worst perdition: he is not much read in France, and even more rarely in America, where only one of his novels is in print. (Thankfully it\u2019s one of his best, Le chaos et la nuit<\/em>, or\u00a0Chaos and\u00a0Night<\/em>, <\/em>reissued in 2009.) Les c\u00e9libataires <\/em>(The Bachelors<\/em>), <\/em>his greatest achievement, is not in print, despite its translation into English by the estimable Terence Kilmartin, translator of Proust and Malraux. The novel was rereleased in 1985 by Quartet Encounters, which as far as I can tell no longer exists.<\/p>\n

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

If you haven\u2019t encountered Montherlant\u2019s work, Les c\u00e9libataires<\/em> is the place to begin. It is the story of impoverished petty nobility, the Count L\u00e9on de Coantr\u00e9 and his uncle the Baron \u00c9lie de Co\u00ebtquidan. They\u2019re losing their home on the Rue de Arago as L\u00e9on realizes the amount of debt levied against his late mother\u2019s estate, meager as it is:<\/p>\n

\n

Mme de Coantr\u00e9 had spent twenty years flapping her wings like a frightened bird over which the hawks are hovering. The hawks were her creditors. She grew pale when the doorbell rang, and put letters away unopened in a drawer for days \u2026 She had known ill-shaven lawyers who spoke to her with cigarettes dangling from their lips; all that frightful legal gibberish, a disgrace to a civilized nation; solicitors\u2019 bills demanding up to forty francs for \u201ccorrespondence charges\u201d and fifty francs for \u201cstationary,\u201d whereas the \u201cfindings\u201d and the \u201csettlements\u201d only cost a franc or two; lawyer relations who look after you gratis for three years and then in the fourth year, dissatisfied with the imitation S\u00e8vres you have sent them as a token of gratitude, leave you in the lurch with your affairs in hopeless and inextricable tangle; \u201copinions\u201d requested from arch-pettifoggers in the hope that they will support you in the course you have already taken, and when they advise against it you nonetheless continue on this course out of reluctance to start again from scratch; decisions on which your whole livelihood depends that have to be taken in a quarter of an hour \u2026 All this she had known, as well as the Calvary of being continually on the verge of bankruptcy, the indifference and appalling frivolity, comparable only to that of the medical profession \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though the plot inevitably spirals the household into this financial abyss, Les\u00a0<\/em>C\u00e9libataires<\/em> is also a remarkably funny book, mainly in the relationship between L\u00e9on and \u00c9lie\u2014there\u2019s an endless war in which the L\u00e9on turns down the coal furnace each night to save a few sous, and the stealthy uncle slips down and cranks it back up\u2014but also in the way the uncle and nephew interact with \u201cnormal\u201d people, who respond with a mixture of amusement, mystification, and horror. An event as simple as the unexpected appearance of a five-year-old boy (the housemaid\u2019s son) in the garden leaves them panic-stricken; they dissect it over dinner. The pilgrimages to \u00c9lie\u2019s brother, the wealthy and thoroughly \u201cmodern\u201d banker Octave, to beg for support are little masterpieces of discomfort. In Montherlant, \u201cmodern\u201d and \u201cup-to-date\u201d are signifiers of the crass and the terrifying; the self-made-man Octave has conveniently forgotten that he\u2019s attained his wealth and station only through his schoolmate\u2019s father, but so it goes. The moment of crisis comes when L\u00e9on discovers that they cannot maintain the house at Rue Arago. He and his uncle must part ways. The narrative clock is set to ticking.<\/p>\n

When Montherlant\u2019s father died, he was sent off to live with his grandmother and two doddering, bachelor uncles of Picard nobility. You can sense their influence in the way the jobless L\u00e9on passes his days: gardening, puttering around the Rue Arago, wearing ugly suits decades out of style, and volunteering at a military hospital until he\u2019s encouraged to leave for his incompetence and his rudeness to the nurses. Upon learning he\u2019ll lose the house, his elation and fear oscillate like a sine curve, as will happen to a person faced with all-encompassing change. \u00c9lie, for his part, loves stray cats. He reads soiled newspapers, gathers bits of string and bread and rescues used stamps from the garbage. The aged \u00c9lie is a carbon of his father, who also lived to ripe old age:<\/p>\n

\n

It was malevolence that kept him alive, for malevolence, like alcohol, is a preservative. After a certain age, every biting word uttered, every anonymous letter posted, every calumny spread abroad wins you another few months from the tomb, because it stimulates your vitality. This can also be seen among animals: a particularly cruel hen, a stubborn horse or a vicious dog will live long than its fellows. M. de Co\u00ebtquidan was extremely pretentious; the way he said \u201cpeople like us\u201d was enough to make you want to guillotine him on the spot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyone who\u2019s had seeming immortal elderly neighbors like this\u2014I\u2019ve known at least four, and I\u2019m only thirty-one\u2014will recognize the precision\u00a0of Montherlant\u2019s eye. He\u2019s been characterized as the ultimate cynic, but underneath it all, I find a grudging humanism, a willingness to expose foibles and forgive them. Look at his characters. They are the mumbling men and women you pass on the street, the detritus of history, the malign, the incompetent, the ill-dressed, the politically unsavory, who are ground into nothing by the courts, the bureaucracies, the bill-collectors, the police. Terrifying letters appear for L\u00e9on: new creditors who make claims, chopping his inheritance down to twelve-thousand francs, then six-thousand, then two thousand. \u201cThe tragic thing about anxious people,\u201d Montherlant writes, \u201cis that they always have cause for anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montherlant has been called a pederast, a fascist, a misogynist. Perhaps he was all of these. It\u2019s hard to imagine a fascist with tenderness for such people, or even the patience to deal with them with literary acuity: another of Monthlerant\u2019s contrarian streaks. However uncharitable he could be, he was a perfect expression of his moment: the poisoned atmosphere of the 1930s, the Popular Front years in France, the Spanish Civil War, the financial chaos, the head-spinning rise of fascism. It was an age that brought out the worst in those like Montherlant, who chose one side over the other, grew into its vile expressions, and excused great sins while braying about their ideals. Chaos and\u00a0Night<\/em> traces the long aftermath of a political survivor of the losing side. The protagonist, Don Celestino, is an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, having fought for the losing Republican faction, and has lived out decades as a miserable refugee in Paris, with an unsteady grasp of French and a marked disinterest in his adopted country. I\u2019m not the first to see in Don Celestino a left-wing reflection of Montherlant.<\/p>\n

Yes, he wrote a few wretched books. Les jeunes filles <\/em>has been rightfully excoriated for its easy misogyny, famously dismantled by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex<\/em>. But The Bachelors <\/em>and Chaos and\u00a0Night <\/em>are as paradoxical as his life: acerbic and gentle, hilarious and terrifying, generous in sympathy and generous in scorn. He\u2019s a perfect writer for our confused age.<\/p>\n

Matthew Neill Null is a writer from West Virginia, a graduate of the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop, and a winner of the O. Henry Award and the Mary McCarthy Prize. His debut novel,\u00a0<\/em>Honey from the Lion, was published last year.\u00a0His story collection, <\/em>Allegheny Front, is forthcoming in May.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry de Montherlant\u2019s novels have fallen out of fashion, but at their best they\u2019re perfect for our confused age. Henry de Montherlant began writing in earnest after he came home wounded from the Great War, a decorated veteran. France in the 1930s made him a literary star, awarding him the Grand Prix\u2014yet he hated the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":880,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[489],"tags":[20769,9111,2962,865,15942,247,20767,20771,15537,20768,20770,7740],"class_list":["post-93443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","tag-chaos-night","tag-existentialism","tag-fascism","tag-france","tag-french-literature","tag-germany","tag-henry-de-montherlant","tag-les-celibataires","tag-reissues","tag-royalism","tag-the-bachelors","tag-world-war-i"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoddering Old Men: On Henry de Montherlant\u2019s \u201cThe Bachelors\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Matthew Neill Null recommends Henry de Montherlant\u2019s forgotten classic \u201cLes C\u00e9libataires.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Black Ink by Matthew Neill Null\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 15, 2016 \u2013 Henry de Montherlant\u2019s novels have fallen out of fashion, but at their best they\u2019re perfect for our confused age.Henry de Montherlant began writing in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-15T15:30:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-15T19:54:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"593\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Matthew Neill Null\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Matthew Neill Null\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Matthew Neill Null\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/62af2345c6c2ccd65eef55a87157264e\"},\"headline\":\"Black Ink\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-15T15:30:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-15T19:54:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\"},\"wordCount\":1694,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Chaos & Night\",\"existentialism\",\"Fascism\",\"France\",\"French literature\",\"Germany\",\"Henry de Montherlant\",\"Les C\u00e9libataires\",\"reissues\",\"royalism\",\"The Bachelors\",\"World War I\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Books\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\",\"name\":\"Doddering Old Men: On Henry de Montherlant\u2019s \u201cThe Bachelors\u201d\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-15T15:30:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-15T19:54:30+00:00\",\"description\":\"Matthew Neill Null recommends Henry de Montherlant\u2019s forgotten classic \u201cLes C\u00e9libataires.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Black Ink\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/62af2345c6c2ccd65eef55a87157264e\",\"name\":\"Matthew Neill Null\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d8eda6b97daccf603d229240e34c998a0c1b0bae9db0bcb3c9ba5c47bfd050fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d8eda6b97daccf603d229240e34c998a0c1b0bae9db0bcb3c9ba5c47bfd050fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Matthew Neill Null\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mneillnull\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Doddering Old Men: On Henry de Montherlant\u2019s \u201cThe Bachelors\u201d","description":"Matthew Neill Null recommends Henry de Montherlant\u2019s forgotten classic \u201cLes C\u00e9libataires.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Black Ink by Matthew Neill Null","og_description":"January 15, 2016 \u2013 Henry de Montherlant\u2019s novels have fallen out of fashion, but at their best they\u2019re perfect for our confused age.Henry de Montherlant began writing in","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-01-15T15:30:48+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-01-15T19:54:30+00:00","og_image":[{"width":800,"height":593,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Matthew Neill Null","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Matthew Neill Null","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/"},"author":{"name":"Matthew Neill Null","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/62af2345c6c2ccd65eef55a87157264e"},"headline":"Black Ink","datePublished":"2016-01-15T15:30:48+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-15T19:54:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/"},"wordCount":1694,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png","keywords":["Chaos & Night","existentialism","Fascism","France","French literature","Germany","Henry de Montherlant","Les C\u00e9libataires","reissues","royalism","The Bachelors","World War I"],"articleSection":["Books"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/","name":"Doddering Old Men: On Henry de Montherlant\u2019s \u201cThe Bachelors\u201d","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png","datePublished":"2016-01-15T15:30:48+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-15T19:54:30+00:00","description":"Matthew Neill Null recommends Henry de Montherlant\u2019s forgotten classic \u201cLes C\u00e9libataires.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/demontherlant.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/15\/black-ink\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Black Ink"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/62af2345c6c2ccd65eef55a87157264e","name":"Matthew Neill Null","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d8eda6b97daccf603d229240e34c998a0c1b0bae9db0bcb3c9ba5c47bfd050fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d8eda6b97daccf603d229240e34c998a0c1b0bae9db0bcb3c9ba5c47bfd050fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Matthew Neill Null"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mneillnull\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/880"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93443"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93535,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93443\/revisions\/93535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}