Description:''
Every generation needs a Jean Dutourd and a book like "Taxis
of the Marne" to put the times in to perspective. Although the story is
somewhat autobiographical, the subject matter takes in great swaths of
French national history and offers personal reflections on the movers
and shakers in the author's own time.
Dutourd wrote "Taxis" about
five years before another great work of his, “The Horrors of Love,”
which I highly recommend. These two works are rich and sentimental,
which I have always loved about the French.
For instance, sample this passage from "Taxis":
“For
once I had gone out without my buddies, prey to a longing for solitude
which takes hold of me from time to time and which used to even at the
age of fifteen. Solitude produces a special exaltation which seems to me
a state of happiness, a vacancy of the mind and heart propitious to the
most captivating adventures. I was walking along without any special
place to go, picking up noises as a flower picks up pollen, watching, so
to speak, my scattered ideas and feelings fall into place inside
myself, and feeling a deep joy at observing the involuntary order
establishing itself in my head and heart.”
Off the cuff, I just
don’t think that kind of expression comes from any other source than a
true Frenchman. A Russian might come close, but a little more harsh or
self-loathing? "Taxis of the Marne," page after page, is filled with
this stuff.