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Malraux: A Life

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Olivier Todd, who lives in Paris, is the author of numerous books--including novels, essay collections, and biographies, such as his highly acclaimed Albert Camus: A Life (Knopf, 1997). In Malraux: A Life, Todd has written another impressively researched biography.

Andre Malraux (1901-1976) was one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century. An autodidact, he was an omnivorous reader, devouring works of literature, history, philosophy, and art as a starving man devours food. A man of action as well as a man of intellect, Malraux was one of those rare individuals whose life combined adventure and creativity.

His works include The Temptation of the West (1926), The Conquerors (1828), The Royal Way (1930), Man's Fate (1934) Days of Wrath (1935), Man's Hope (1938), The Psychology of Art (1947-1949), The Voices of Silence (1953), Anti-Memoirs (1967), and Felled Oaks (1971).

Malraux suffered from Tourette's syndrome, a rare inherited neurological disease characterized by recurrent motor and phonic tics (involuntary muscle spasms and vocalizations). "Malraux forged an exceptional life for himself," writes Todd, "not because of but despite and in opposition to his nervous tics. Like Mozart, Samuel Johnson, Emile Zola, and Franz Kafka, who also had to compromise with their Tourette's syndrome, Malraux overcompensated and dominated his physical difficulties."

A world traveler, Malraux sought adventures to give him grist for his writing mill. Fascinated by the East, he visited Indochina, China, Japan, Russia, and India. He was arrested and almost imprisoned for stealing a bas relief from the temple at Bantai Srey, Cambodia. He fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and against the Nazis in the French resistance. Although not the second Lawrence of Arabia he envisioned himself to be, Malraux was both a man of culture and a man of action.

When Malraux engineered the loan of La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa) to an art gallery in the United States, John F. Kennedy said, "Malraux has revived the ideal of the Renaissance ... a writer, a philosopher, a statesman, and a soldier. He has demonstrated that politics and art, the life of action and the life of thought, the world of events and the world of the imagination are one." Todd comments: "John Kennedy does not believe a word of what he says. But is designed to please Malraux."

Malraux often spoke of himself as "a religious mind without faith," a description that also characterizes Nietzsche. Such a "spirituality" is in no way connected with ecclesiastical orthodoxy; one must understand the phrase not in a metaphysical, but in an aesthetic sense, with a healthy dose of depth psychology thrown in for good measure.

Deeply influenced by Nietzsche's "the death of God" (some would say "the death of the Absolute"), Malraux was troubled by the advance of nihilism and the relativity of cultures. He sallied forth in a quixotic quest for the Absolute (sans deity), first in revolution, then in Art (with a capital "A"). Hence, the title of Claude Tannery's, Malraux: The Absolute Agnostic; or, Metamorphosis as Universal Law (University of Chicago, 1991).

Incidentally, the compiler of the index to Todd's Malraux did a sloppy job. It contains only one reference to "Nietzsche," but he appears numerous times in this volume, virtually in every chapter.

Was Malraux an "existentialist"? Literary pundits disagree. But Malraux consistently made existentialist noises, speaking of the Absurd, contingency, man's solitude, man's fate (death), man's hope (brotherhood), revolution, freedom, and destiny.

Malraux was interested in pataphysics, a school of thought founded by Alfred Jarry, which saw itself as "the science of what is added on top of metaphysics." He was fascinated by all things mysterious: the enigmatic, the irrational, the unreal, the surreal. "What interests me, above all," he said, "is the question 'What can be transmitted to Man beyond what is intelligible?'" His quixotic quest for a purely secular, humanistic "transcendence" continued.

No assessment of Malraux is complete without an account of the women in his life, and Todd provides an extended exposition in this respect. He details Malraux's two marriages: to Clara Goldschmidt (12 years), who bore him a daughter, Florence; and to Madeleine Lioux (20 years). He describes Malraux's long affair with Josette Clotis, who bore him two sons out of wedlock (they both were killed in a car accident, and Josette was killed when she fell beneath a train), and his romantic relationships with Louise de Vilmorin, and later with Louise's niece, Sophie. One of Malraux's acquaintances commented, "I think that M[alraux] has been very much loved by women, but I don't think he loved in return."

An inveterate opponent of Mussolini's fascism and Hitler's nazism, Malraux became a fellow traveler of Stalin's communism (he never was a member of the Communist Party) and admirer of Mao Tse-tung, with a glaring blind spot for atrocities committed by the leftist dictators. During World War II, Malraux fought in the resistance in France, although he was a Johnny-come-lately to the fray, joining the resistance not in 1940 as he claimed, but in the spring of 1944, shortly before the Allied invasion of Normandy.

After the war, Malraux, finally opening his eyes to the futility of revolution, made a volte-face, gravitating toward the political right, and became an ardent admirer of and apologist for Gen. Charles de Gaulle, and Minister of Culture in de Gaulle's government.

Whatever one makes of him, Malraux had superb taste in literature, and no little talent as a novelist, although, as Todd points out, he is not to be trusted as a historian. Todd calls him "a compulsive liar" and again, "The lie, whether boastful, poetical, political, or risky, was a constant with Malraux." Denigrating "the fiction of objectivity, Malraux's hyperactive imagination transmuted reality into his own romanticized version of history, mythomaniacally and megalomaniacally making himself "the genius" and "the hero" of the plot, thereby putting into practice the claim of Nietzsche's aphorism, "There are no facts, only interpretation."

Malraux is neither hagiography nor hatchet job, although it leans toward the latter. Todd is relentless in his exposure of Malraux's inflated reporting of historical events in which he claimed to be intimately involved and of his numerous character and personality flaws. "Malraux's phrases, writes Todd, "were often like firecrackers. Lots of noise and sparks when lit, but afterwards only smoke."

Todd is eminently fair, however, in his assessment of Malraux's creative talent, calling him, along with Camus and Sartre, one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century. "For me," writes Todd, his [Malraux's] two greatest novels will always be the hybrid, powerful L'Espoir [Man's Hope] and his own staggering, rollicking life."

Roy E. Perry of Nolensville is an advertising copywriter for a Nashville publishing house. (...)

This is the story of a bogus hero. Malraux was a great character who presented himself to the world as a great hero. Some of his exploits were misrepresented by him. Some of them never happened. A few were almost as he described them.

It must be noted that he did have an interesting life. He was a real adventurer who took real risks. Nevertheless, his life was not much like the life he claimed or implied. He always seemed to be a con-man or fabulist. He was not a nice person either.

His reputation is based his writing which was actually quite good. A number of his books are still read with enjoyment. Afew are still highly regarded. Now that it has long been established that he was not really the model for his fictional protagonists, it is possible to enjoy his books for what they are.

The author views Malraux's life with a jaundiced eye, perhaps too jaundiced. Nevertheless, this is a well-done view of an author who appeared, in his day, to have rock star qualities. in addition, Malraux's novels have survived his nonsense in reasonably good shape.