French Writers and the Politics of Complicity: Crises of Democracy in the 1940s and 1990s (review)

The resilience of the Vichy Syndrome — 'a past that would not pass', in Richard Golsan's awkward paraphrase — inevitably infuses this book. Its first three substantive chapters deal individually with Montherlant, Châteaubriant and Giono, novelists who all, in their different ways, collaborated with the Pétain regime and Nazism; and the last three concentrate on, respectively, Finkielkraut, Debray and Courtois, intellectuals who have interpreted recent history within the pervasive aftermath of the Second World War. Golsan, who has previously published on Montherlant and La Gerbe, Papon and Le Pen, Vichy and Sarajevo, is well placed to survey the scene. His introduction draws in large tracts of territory (Baudrillard, Schlink's The Reader, the films of Louis Malle, the de Man debate, Mitterrand's war record, and much besides) as well as explaining the 'initially puzzling, if not implausible' linkage of the two periods. For all the obvious disparities — between Pétain's state and the Fifth Republic, or literary writers and philosophes, or essentially French controversies and those centred elsewhere — Golsan insists that 'the history and especially the memory of Vichy' provide 'a constant frame of reference through which contemporary crises [are] interpreted'. The six subsequent chapters aim to cling tightly to their allotted subjects. Montherlant emerges as a confused and confusing writer shuttling, over a long career, between contrasting political and ethical positions, but clearly pro-Nazi during the war; Châteaubriant, at best a slight figure, serves as a strident and uncritical mouthpiece for the occupier; and Giono, genuinely talented novelist of the 'return to the soil' and sincere pacifist, goes from militant anti-war propaganda in the 1930s to extensive complicity during the Occupation. In the second set of chapters, Finkielkraut, for all his liberal credentials, slips, with Comment peut-on être Croate? (1992), into supporting a very dubious Croatian nationalism; Debray, the 1960s revolutionary, dismays his friends with his 1999 open letter to President Chirac defending Serbian actions in Kosovo; and the historian Courtois, in his introduction to the Livre noir du communisme (1997), not only exaggerates Communist crimes but risks endorsing Nazism. In all of this, Golsan is a diligent observer and recorder of significant detail. At the same time, though, the strong impression persists that much more would be necessary to turn this series of informative case-studies into a compelling thesis. The book's complex title itself suggests a diversity of focus beyond what Golsan acknowledges; the first set of chapters in practice involves a wider time-span than the 1940s, and the second, which does stick to its decade, needs background far beyond what is offered. For all the symmetry of the ground plan, the individual chapters can be disjointed; the writers' style and rhetoric are underplayed; and Golsan himself lacks an intermediate gear between the passive summary of plots or critics and his own assertive judgements. Golsan's 'Conclusion' recognizes that since 9/11 the debate has moved on, and that today's 'New World Disorder' has created fresh challenges. His book as it stands, if somewhat short of focus and cohesion, nevertheless gives us telling insights into the dominant concerns of the preceding half-century.