The BNF's new show is x-rated

A fulfilling morning at the Bibliotheque Nationale reading porn and (unusually) not feeling guilty. Here you can while away the hours looking at pictures of tumescent aristos and lusty nuns and pretend it is all in a good cause. The excuse is the National Library's "Enfer" exhibition, featuring the collection of banned erotica that it has built up since royal times. The collection, of about 2,000 books, was dubbed "Hell" in the 1830s in a rare moment of humour by the library's censors. No-one was allowed access until the late 60s, when the walls came down here as elsewhere. This is the first time the erotica/ pornography has been brought together for public display, and pretty strong stuff it is too. I particularly enjoyed (because I have read a lot about it recently ) the libellous material concocted against Marie-Antoinette. You can see why she grew to hate the Paris mob. Filthy. There are almanachs giving the names, specialities and addresses of early 19th century whores; boxes of eye-popping photographs; an extraordinary 1921 porn-flic which leaves nothing to the imagination; and lurid engravings from the 18th century novel "Therese philosophe" about the sexual awakening of a young woman. Plus the Marquis de Sade of course. All in all, enough to bring out the rude in any prude. Adults only.

A classic cover

A certain book to be published this week in France can expect to sell between 100,000 and 200,000 copies -- but, oddly, don't expect to read any reviews. "Hostage of the Taleban" is the latest (171st!) in the monumental series of S.A.S action thrillers by Gerard de Villiers. The first novel starring his Austrian aristocrat hero Malko Linge was written in 1965, and since then he claims to have sold 150 million books around the world! (S.A.S. stands for Son Altesse Serenissime -- Linge's honorific). Anyone who knows France will have seen the books -- though oddly enough not in book-shops. Places like FNAC refuse to stock them. Instead they are on sale in stations and airports, where they go by the bucketful. There's no denying the books are pulp. I have just read "The defector of Pyongyang". After a few pages I had the measure of it, and had no great desire to continue. But what is fascinating is the way such a massive literary success story (however low-brow) is simply ignored in France. Part of the reason is that de Villiers is uncompromisingly right-wing. He has said some things that are certainly provocative, and as a result is seen as a pariah. The other reason is that the literary establishment regards the books as beneath them. I agree they are crap, but no worse than a lot of other shlock that the shops are happy to put on sale. And in their favour, it has to be said that the S.A.S. novels are impeccably researched. "Hostage of the Taleban" was written after a trip to Afghanistan this year, where de Villiers drew on his excellent contacts in the French armed forces and intelligence. The books may be turgid, but he knows what he is talking about. Every story is rooted in some real-life geopolitical crisis. The next is set in Kosovo -- where de Villiers (just back from the scene) warns of an impending explosion. De Villiers features in the next edition of Champs-Elysees. Check it out.

Just finished Maria Fairweather's biography of Madame de Stael. What an amazing woman. Daughter of the Swiss banker Necker -- the man who tried to rescue the French monarchy from bankruptcy -- she was a supporter of the early revolutionaries, but had to flee Paris after the September 1792 massacres in which she nearly lost her head. Writer, lover, intellectual, politician, conversationalist, salon-iste, de Stael had a vast network of influence across Europe and her home at Coppet in Switzerland became the successor of Voltaire's Ferney -- a safe place where free thinkers could gather and share ideas against a turbulent political background. Napoleon feared and despised her, and refused to let her back to Paris after he became emperor. She played a not inconsiderable part in his downfall, using her contacts in Sweden (her late husband was a Swedish diplomat), Russia, Germany and England to help knit the alliance that brought him down. The most touching thing is the devotion that surrounded her. She worshipped her father, and had an insatiable urge for human love. Lovers included Benjamin Constant and quite possibly Talleyrand. This deep fund of emotion coexisted with an intellect of prodigious proportions. Come back Germaine. We need you now.

Jonathan Littell

Congratulations to Jonathan Littell for his Goncourt prize. He is the first native English-speaker to win the top literary award for new novels in French. Right, that's that out of the way. Now let us be honest. His 900 pages inside the brain of an SS executioner are an excruciating, unreadable, exploitative pile of rot. Les Bienveillantes has been a classic marketing success story. Some 200,000 copies were sold even before the Goncourt. But I have yet to meet a single person who has got past the first few pages. It is dense, overwritten and dull. I tried and gave up very quickly. It really makes you wonder about the book business. I simply do not believe that any normal person could enjoy the book. And yet look at the extravagant praise that oozed from the Paris literati. The event of the half-century, said Jorge Semprun. A hugely important original tome that it was morally imperative to read -- that was the message. As usual, ordinary people will feel they have been taken for a ride. It is a book for the cognoscenti who will no doubt congratulate themselves on their elevation above the masses. What bloody nerve. While I am in rant mode, this week's Le Canard Enchaine has fun pointing out some of the Anglicisms that permeate Littell's supposedly perfect French. Such as "engagement" for "fiancailles" -- and, it says, hundreds of others. A petty point maybe, but I feel very angry about this book --which does not deserve any of its adulation.

I should have checked about Medora . Of course it exists. It's North Dakota's "top family holiday destination". A long way from the marquis's slaughter-house

Marquis de Mores

An extraordinary fact: the chairman of the 1884 Republican party convention in Chicago was a black man. Not strictly French this blog entry, I concede. But i am reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and these details are surely worth airing. But there is one fascinating French connection in the book: in the person of the Badlands cattle rancher and French aristocrat Antoine Amedee-Marie-Vincent Manca de Vallombrosa, better known as the Marquis de Mores. The Marquis was Roosevelt's neighbour in Dakota when the future president moved there in search of open space and solace after the deaths (within hours of each other) of his wife and mother. De Mores had married an American heiress called Medora Von Hoffman, and named his frontier settlement after her. Does it still exist? Must check google earth. He was an incorrigible schemer, renowned gunslinger and obviously a total crackpot. Roosevelt seems to have liked him -- though their relations were at times tense. De Mores's ranching business went belly up in 1885, and he went on to lead an equally bizarre life in French Indochina and North Africa. He became virulently anti-Semitic and was challenged to a duel by Camille Dreyfus, a Jewish member of parliament in Paris. Dreyfus missed, and de Mores winged him. In 1896 de Mores was murdered by Touareg tribesmen - a fittingly adventurous end. He is buried in Cannes.

And it was thereby decreed that May 17 be known throughout the world as Da Vinci day. And the multitude gathered before the great glass pyramid to celebrate the progeny of the godhead. For on that day were the eyes of the people made open, and they beheld the image of the word. And in the city of Cannes they rolled out the red carpet and watched the film for the first time. And thanks be to God -- they thought it was a load of old bollox. I have vowed to be the last person in earth who has not read the book. And I am extremely glad that the film looks like being panned. (This is written within hours of the premiere). Yes I am a pedantic Dan Brownophobe. I skimmed through the first pages of the book a year ago and could tell straight away that we were dealing with first-grade garbage. And I am sick to the back teeth of people -- apparently intelligent people -- saying either 1)that maybe there's something in it because when you think about it women have been repressed by the church for two millennia or 2) that it isn't normally their kind of book and no they don't belive a word of it -- but what a cracking read! No it is not a cracking read. It is a painfully written potboiler that takes cheap shots at an easy target i.e. the catholic church. And no, there is nothing in the slightest bit credible about the story. I am sad to see France succumbing to the hype. The Champs-Elysees metro stations have been turned into Da Vinci code emporia, and a Eurostar train has been specially repainted. I am reminded of friends of mine who -- when the craze for glossy "people" mags first broke out 20 years ago -- used to buy them with the disclaimer that they weren't really interested in the doings of Princess Di, but it was all a nice bit of fun. Rubbish. That's exactly what the celebrity purveyors want you to say. So do the world a favour -- boycott the lot of them -- Dan Brown, Princess Di, Paris Hilton and all.

Sigmund Freud

A book has just come out in France which is causing one hell of a stink among the men in white coats. It is called the "Black Book of Psychotherapy" and it is an 800-page diatribe against Sigmund Freud. So what's new, you may rejoin. In the US and Britain, it is years since the teachings of the bearded Viennese came under sustained fire. So much of his work has been discredited that the couch-and-notebook school of psychiatry is now almost a thing of the past. It has been more or less replaced in the Anglo-Saxon world by so-called cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) -- which has a scientifically proven success rate in dealing with depression, phobias and other disorders. But in France ... I need hardly go on. Here Freudian psychoanalysis remains the norm. Some 70 percent of psychiatrists use it in their treatment, and Freudism dominates the teaching hospitals. By contrast CBT is practised by a strict minority. Hence the row. the book's authors accuse Freudians of holding back mental health care in France by decades. They say the very high levels of tranquilliser consumption in France are the result of the failures of psychotherapy -- and the lack of any alternative. They say that up to 10,000 heroine addicts may have unnecessarily died because Freudians disapproved of methadone and other replacements. They say the lives thousands of mothers of autistic children have been destroyed because they were told by Freudians that it was their fault. And they say that only last year the Freudians succeeded in suppressing an official report that found that CBT actually worked and should be encouraged. The Freudians in their turn are furious at the calumny. For them cognitive-beahviour therapy is a superficial and dehumanising way of conditioning patients into becoming "useful" members of society again. At least Freudian psychotherapy tries to understand the inner meaning of mental illness, they say, rather than merely addressing the symptoms. Put simply: CBT = Anglo-Saxon "productivism" = bad.