Journal 1887-1910 (riverrun Editions) An Exclusive New Selection of the Astounding French Classic

<p><b>'As a mayor, I am responsible for the upkeep of rural roads; as poet, I prefer to see them neglected.'</b><br> <br> Jules Renard was a French literary figure of the late nineteenth century. Not a Parisian but a committed countryman, he was elected mayor in 1904 of the tiny village of Citry-le-Mines in a remote part of northern Burgundy. He had the soul of a rustic bourgeois but the ambition of a metropolitan, and his wife's money allowed him to move in elevated circles, though he seemed an awkward customer, a badger, and looked like one. He wrote fiction, journalism and drama, very successfully, but the <i>Journal</i> is Renard's masterpiece, the least categorizable work of the French <i>fin de siècle</i>.<br> <br> The <i>Journal</i> constitutes a profusion of entries, without stitching or pattern: mordant reflections on style, literature and theatre; portraits of family, friends and the Parisian literary scene; quasi-ethnographical observations on village life and notations of the natural world which are unlike anything except themselves.<br> <br> Samuel Beckett spoke of Renard in the same breath as Proust and Celine, wrote of the <i>Journal</i> that 'for me it is as inexhaustible as Boswell ' and believed his style was learnt from despair. Gide said the <i>Journal</i> was 'not a river but a distillery'. Sartre wrote that 'He invented the literature of silence'. But above all it is a moving and splintery piece of self-scrutiny.<br> <br> Julian Barnes has admired the <i>Journal</i> for many years and has made this new selection from the twelve hundred page Pléiade edition. Theo Cuffe's translation will help bring this fierce judge of human foibles to a new generation of readers.</p>