To Wives and Mistresses

...To Wives and Mistresses MEMOIRS By Clara Malraux Translated by Patrick CBrian Farrar, Straus and Gtroux 372 pp $6 95 Reviewed bv DONALD SUTHERLAND A uthor, "Gertrude Stem A Biography of Her Work" The last third of this book deals with the discovery and theft of some Khmer statues in the jungles of Indochina, with the arrest of Clara and Andre Malraux, with her amusing escape and desperate intrigues in Paris to rescue him from the clutches of the French colonial government This much makes a thrilling adventure story, vividly described, artfully narrated and prettily rounded off The preceding two-thirds are interesting mainly as a study in the technical difficulties of autobiography Claia Malraux, long divorced trom the great man, naturally keeps his name and just as naturally is concerned to establish her own existence That existence, betore and after the momentous years with Malraux, must have been and must still be very rich going, but with the exception of a few priceless family anecdotes, it makes remarkably wearisome Teadmg Even European women of roughly her class and kind must find it puzzhngly thin Mme Malraux was born Clara Goldschmidt in 1900, a German Jewess of the industrial bourgeoisie of Magdeburg, but raised from early childhood m Paris What with the climate of the Dreyfus case, World War I, and visiting back and forth, so international and privileged an upbringing—certainly that of so sensitive, bright and vaguely gifted a child—ought to be a natural for a book, a sort ot Bildungsi oman m itself, regardless of the high and public escapades that came later They indeed are the trouble Clara Malraux' life has been divided between events of private importance and public importance, and her appraisals of them can get amusingly mixed She can treat her adolescent sexuality somewhat officially and an mternational scandal with girlish hght-headedness On the whole, her gift is for the public rather than the private, she is a better journalist than novelist The earlier material of this life asks for a Colette, but Mme Malraux' talent for registering intimate moods or even sensuous impressions is very limited, or perhaps crippled by the abstractions of a psychologizing point of view She announces her tactile propensities, yet not much touch or texture is conveyed in her writing Her visual descriptions—perhaps because of 20 years with Malraux?are not direct, but those of a cultured dilettante Within the conventions of a sophisticated vision they are often delightful Emerging into northern Italy after a night on the train, she sees that "the vines rose high like young trees and the houses no longer narrowed toward the top " Good, but that is that, and we are off into narrative She will not settle long enough into description or narration or poetizing or analytical disquisition for any of it to gather weight or emotion Oddly enough, she is not a good gossip, if she were, the sporadic manner would be a triumph, as in running conversation In writing she mentions by name her wide and fascinating acquaintance among writers and painters of the time?Max Jacob, Rene Crevel, Raymond Radiguet, Juan Gns, Marc Chagall and so on and on—but she does not render them personal by anecdotes, remarks, or physical details Except for the names they could be anybody Andre Malraux is hardly there either, or not much of him the public does not already know—the big eyes, the facial tic, the passion for intellectual and political involvements He appears in several magnificently written scenes that exhibit general moral quahties, both handsome and awful, instead of conveying a person No doubt in the light of his ex-wife's grievances he flattens out into a moral case In the same way, her mother has become a psychological factor and not a woman, although her life ended in suicide and offers excellent material for a novel Clara Malraux somehow misses even the melodrama, and her journalistic sense goes numb France Soir itself would have done better by Mme Goldschmidt In spite of all these shortcomings and in spite of her claim to being a mere buff at narration, the section on Indochina is superb Mme Malraux is first of all a woman of action—cultural trimmings or no cultural trimmings—and she rises best to occasions of preposterous adventure This volume brings her only to 1925 and, considering that her life with Malraux continued for some 16 years more, the next volume should be far better, more steadily in command of its material And perhaps she will have tired of her grievances True to the American method in international affairs, I am prompted to offer a five-point program tor wives and mistresses of the Parisian great, in the event of memoirs 1 If you have grievances, let him have it Do not try to be fair Even if you do think him as great as Chateaubriand, never say so, say he is a midget Berenson whose knack for Surrealist politics has landed him in even lordlier housing It is not enough to show youi claws, use them 2 Check your eyes and ears with a psychiatrist Unless they are the phenomenal recording instruments of Picasso's Jacqueline, concentrate rigorously on what happened, not on what you saw oi heard 3. If you have general ideas, conceal them, as you would in conversation Or if you must show them, turn them with an adorable silliness Mme Malraux sometimes does this to perfection He is divorced from me, he is a misogynist Gertrude Stem once said, "Vous avez toujours ituson Cela ne vous fatigue pas''" Even if always being right does not tire you, it will certainly tire the reader 4 If you have deep feelings about it all, do not clothe them m maturity and wisdom On reflection they are perfectly commonplace, so try to be as surprised at everything as you were at the time Cultivate the unflagging innocence of Simone de Beauvoir 5 Be a born writer If that cannot be arranged, at least be no more hteraiy than you can help Beware of French education, it encourages women to think they can write by mere literacy and a good taste in literature It has brought on a sad vogue for the genie mal ecrit (a bad risk, I think I but the genie bien ecut, if not done out of necessity, casts a chill as deadly as Kunstpiosa and probably will for years to come...