Fiala Francese I was amused to see that the Times
Literary Supplement has been coming in for some whole- hearted attacks in the French press. With a truly English perfidy its number devoted to criticising French literature actually had some criticisms to make, and the reaction on the other side of the Channel has ranged from sorrowful shock to the intimation that we have not got any novelists either. The assumption behind this reaction appears to be that, when we speak of each other's literatures, our voices should be hushed in tones of funereal admiration and our postures of ritual respect only varied by the occasional award of honorific distinctions to some safe, but fre- quently unsuitable, recipient. Well, 1 suppose we can all run literary white elephant stalls, if that is what is wanted, but I think that I have suffi- cient confidence in English writing to let Paris say what it will without worrying overmuch, and sufficient chauvinism to entreat French critics to display a little more of that banal quality: an English sense of humour.
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