Letter to The
Chronicle of Higher Education(published 13 May, 2005)Read What Malraux Wrote
To the Editor: It is good to see Carlin Romano's essay on
André Malraux, an author who merits much more attention than he
receives ("André
Malraux: the Last American Frenchman," The If only Malraux had been a Sartre or a
Derrida, rarely venturing out of his I notice also that Carlin Romano says,
somewhat condescendingly, that "Man's
Fate and Man's Hope remain
readable, believable, and heartfelt." Has he forgotten The Voices of Silence and The Metamorphosis of the Gods,
arguably among the best works on visual art written in the 20th
century? Not to mention the Miroir
des Limbes series, beginning with the Antimémoires? My advice to readers interested in Malraux is
to forget the biographies and the endless additions to the Malraux
myth. Large dollops of it are unreliable, if not outright fantasy. Read
Malraux himself. Judge him by what he wrote. He saw himself first and foremost as a
writer, and it's as a writer, I believe, that he would want most of all
to be judged. Derek Allan
|