Mauriac, Claude

▪ 1997

      French critic and novelist (b. April 25, 1914, Paris, Fr.—d. March 22, 1996, Paris), was best known for his innovative multivolume, nonchronological diary, Le Temps immobile (1974-88), a reflection of his literary and political life. Mauriac was the son of Nobel Prize-winning novelist François Mauriac. The relationship gave him some of the material for his biographies of such figures as Jean Cocteau and André Malraux as well as for his journals. He served as a private secretary to Charles de Gaulle (1944-49) and worked as a film and literary critic for the newspaper Le Figaro (1945-77). In 1957 he published the first of several novels, Toutes les femmes sont fatales (All Women Are Fatal, 1964). It revealed his interest in the stylistic conceits of the nouveau roman ("new novel"). Like the series of novels it initiated—all five known under the general title of Le Dialogue intérieur—it was essentially formless, concentrating on states of mind and shifting perceptions of reality rather than on the more standard elements of plot, character, and theme. Although he also wrote several plays, he was probably best remembered as a memoirist and critic.

* * *

▪ French author

born April 25, 1914, Paris, France

died March 22, 1996, Paris

      French novelist, journalist, and critic, a practitioner of the avant-garde school of nouveau roman (“new novel”) writers, who, in the 1950s and '60s, spurned the traditional novel.

      A son of the novelist François Mauriac, he was able to make the acquaintance of many notable French writers at his father's house and later during his career as a journalist. He worked as Charles de Gaulle's private secretary from 1944 to 1949 and was a columnist and film critic for the newspapers Le Figaro and Le Figaro Littéraire from 1946 to 1977.

      Mauriac established his own reputation as a novelist with four works published under the general title Le Dialogue intérieur: Toutes les femmes sont fatales (1957; All Women Are Fatal), Le Dîner en ville (1959, Prix Médicis; The Dinner Party), La Marquise sortit à cinq heures (1961; The Marquise Went Out at Five), and L'Agrandissement (1963; “The Enlargement”). These books deal with the adventures of Bertrand Carnéjoux, the hero and narrator, who is both an irresistible womanizer and a cold-hearted egoist. These highly experimental novels focus on characters' states of mind and their varying experiences of time within a general atmosphere of sexual intrigue.

      Mauriac's best-known work, the 10-volume Le Temps immobile (1974–88; “Time Immobilized”), consists of excerpts from letters, documents, and parts of other writers' works interspersed with entries from his own diaries. These books paint a rich picture of 50 years of French intellectual life, with separate volumes devoted to his father, de Gaulle, and Marcel Proust. Mauriac is also known for L'Alittérature contemporaine (1958; The New Literature), a collection of essays on 20th-century writers.

* * *