Word: mauriac
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...Mauriac has written seven novels since then. In most of them the characters win their way to painful knowledge of themselves, gain glimmerings of the love of God. In most, Mauriac writes with surgical brilliance. But only one (Vipers' Tangle-TIME, Nov. 3, 1947) rates with the best work of his unregenerate days: Therese (1927) and The Desert of Love...
...Pained, Mauriac wrote an essay in self-defense. "Christianity," he complained, "makes no allowance for the flesh; it abolishes it." The Desert of Love, written in 1925 and one of eight of his novels (total: 15) published in the U.S., reflects the disturbed Mauriac of those days...
Makings of a Saint. The plot is routine -a middle-aged doctor and his young son each fall in love with the same kept woman-but Mauriac fashions a somber and moving story of frustrated love. The father, Dr. Courregès, has had a drab life, and he idealizes Maria Cross, the mistress of a wine merchant, imagines her as wronged by the whole world. Son Raymond does no idealizing; in his grubby way he just wants to go to bed with...
Though love has led all three into deserts, all three have their attractiveness. Mauriac lets Dr. Courrèges put his strongest case for Maria Cross: "I know that somewhere in her are the makings of a saint...
...Pleasure of Disgust. The Desert of Love was one of the last of François Mauriac's "unregenerate" novels. A year after his cry that "Christianity makes no allowance for the flesh," he underwent deep conversion. He approvingly quoted Pascal: "What pleasure is greater than being disgusted with pleasure...