Jaloux, Salmon, MacOrlan, Lacretelle, Drieu la Rochelle, Aragon; musicians like Strawinsky, Milhaud, Honneger, Auric, Poulenc: clear spirits in a troubled age, rich with its spoils, knowing perfectly where to give rein, dominators, seductive, conquerors already, forming an ensemble of which we can well be proud, and which, at the present moment, can be found nowhere else. Let me be pardoned for this testimony of my satisfaction which I give, if not to my own friends, at least to Paris, this infinitely rich background for the displaying of new values.
A certain number of publications, some of them literary, have been agitated for meritorious reasons over the publication of a book by M Félicien Champsaur, entitled Ouha Roi des Singes, in which are delineated the amours of an American young lady with an inhabitant of the trees of Borneo. With all the resources of the Darwinian theory one could hardly develop ancestor worship and the Oedipus complex to this extreme. M F. Champsaur, who is a writer of no value, is worthy of a relative immortality only for the ingenious idea which he had in one of his early books, entitled L'Orgie Latine (we spent our first pocket-money to buy it) of printing the most scabrous passages in red, so as to save hurried readers the trouble of reading the rest. It was recently demanded in the Chamber of Deputies that Ouha be suppressed. However, in our legislation there is no text (except those providing for the case of the obscene publications whose suppression is regulated by international conventions, which is a different story) to permit that measures be taken against a writer—admitting that M F. Champsaur has any right to this title. It is the privilege of the American government to prohibit the importation of his book, and such action could only be advantageous. Let us keep to our own ground: no condemnation is as damning to a book as literary condemnation; it is without appeal. Where a book by Joyce is acquitted, Ouha, after the first page, is sentenced to death.
As sign of the times I noticed this commentary, from the department of sales promotion, on the jacket of a French novel which has just been published: "A distinguished novel—a new study of Love as viewed by other methods than those of Freud—7 francs."
