Stephen Romer
Carrot Top Speaks
Journal 1887–1910
By Jules Renard (Translated from French by Theo Cuffe) (Selected and introduced by Julian Barnes)
riverrun 384pp £20
It puzzles me that in my forty years of toiling in the vineyard of French literature, I should have managed to sidestep, until now, the work of Jules Renard. To be sure, I had seen copies of his Journal frequently in bookshops, and in various battered Pléiade editions at the bouquinistes stalls along the Seine, where it crops up as inevitably as volumes of Flaubert or Balzac. It may very well have been the sense I developed, whether by symbiosis or hearsay, that the author of Poil de Carotte (‘Carrot Top’) and L’Ecornifleur (‘The Sponger’) was a man apart, a one-off, a kind of eccentric, that made me defer and delay. Anyway, when the invitation came to write about his Journal in these pages, I accepted gladly. He turns out to be excellent company, and I particularly recommend him to the grumpy middle-aged male.
Born in 1864, Renard was the son of a peasant farmer who became mayor of the village where he lived in Burgundy, an office that Jules took over after his death. Like his father, Jules was anti-clerical, republican and socialist by inclination; he was also pro-Dreyfus. His strange life commuting
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm