Word: daudet
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Soon it appears that what was intended as an absolutely honest autobiography has turned into a fearlessly candid biography of his wife. A social worker, lecturer and minor fiction writer, Edith was not (as Daudet said the wife of a writer should be) a feather bed. Petite, restless, intense, she scolded at Havelock's manners, dress, undemonstrativeness, called him a mixture of satyr and Christ, alternated between tantrums and protestations of undying love. "The worst of me is in my tongue," she reassured him, but once she kicked him in the head. He discovered strong homosexual tendencies...
...Goncourt Academy, and their sole function is that of awarding 5,000 francs to the author of "the year's best work of fiction." There are supposed to be ten members at the luncheon, but the venerable revolutionary writer, Lucien Descaves, refuses to attend meetings with Royalist Leon Daudet, always mails in his vote. After lunch, the Academy's youngest member announces the prizewinner to waiting newspapermen. Within an hour red bands marked Prix Goncourt have been wrapped around copies of the winning book in Paris bookstores, because the Goncourt Prize, though it involves a small cash award...
Last December one member of the Goncourt Academy died, and the remaining nine, most of them well above 70, disagreed about his successor. Candidates included Humorist Tristan Bernard, Novelists Colette and Jules Romains. But for 23 years Leon Daudet has been beating the drum for his fellow Royalist, dramatist and novelist, gushy Rene Benjamin. Little known in the U. S., where few of his books have been translated, Benjamin is known in France as a winner of a Goncourt Prize himself, as General Franco's most lyric supporter. Interviewing Franco last year, Benjamin called the general beautiful, lovely, ravishing...
Last week Léon Daudet got his way, made Author Benjamin the tenth member of the Goncourt Academy. To French observers his election meant that the Academy, originally politically independent, had at last become as reactionary as Author Daudet has been trying to make...
...slim, dark youth ducked under Frot's guard, seized his wiry black beard and all but yanked it out by the roots. Republican Guardsmen rushed in, hustled Frot and beard-puller away. The beard-puller turned out to be Francois, 21-year-old son of rowdy Royalist Leon Daudet...