Word: giono
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...HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (426 pp.) -Jean Giono-Knopf...
...begins the latest problem novel by France's Jean Giono. For dust-jacket purposes, it may be described as the stirring adventures of a young Italian officer making his way home through the south of France during the terrible 1838 epi demic of Asiatic cholera. But at bottom, it is not a costume novel at all; it is a new appraisal of an ancient subject -human mortality. Death, and the behavior of people in the face of death, make its subject matter, but its main question is: How should man behave, ideally, when confronted by his oldest, most ruthless...
...Jofroi, a prewar Pagnol comedy based on a story by Jean Giono, proves the brightest thing in the package. Jofroi (well played by Vincent Scotto) is a hidebound old peasant, suspicious, ignorant and proud. The old man sells his orchard to his neighbor, Fonse (Henri Poupon), then pulls a gun when he sees Fonse uprooting precious trees. When the village priest forces a compromise that will give Fonse the orchard after Jofroi dies, the old man announces that he will commit suicide to put his death on Fonse's conscience. After some 30 suicide attempts, he intimidates Fonse into...
This pessimistic view of contemporary life is even further pointed up by the fact that the other writers in this book deliberately turn their backs on it. André Gide and Noel Devaulx hide their talented heads in reminiscences of life before World War I. Nature-Boys Jean Giono and André Chamson wallow in a woody dreamland of hefty peasants and prime wine. Only Jean Cassou gives an impression of both vitality and veracity. His macabre story is an up-to-date version of Romeo & Juliet, in which Juliet ("a nice, retiring person . . . the sort who hates being conspicuous...
...Pacifist Giono was soon released from jail and allowed to go on with his writing. According to some, he became a collaborationist, a spokesman for Vichy and Pétain. According to others he worked with the Underground. Many Frenchmen regard his politics as still suspect. Says he in Blue Boy (1932): "There is no glory in being French. There is only one glory: in being alive...