New York
A letter to the mother of my children from the greatest living French writer, Michel Déon, one of the 40 immortals of the French Academy, shows me to be a philistine. Michel kindly points out that Mozart’s Don Juan was inspired by a Molière play, not by a Beaumarchais one, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago while defending womanisers. I think I knew that, but I guess my mind was on Harold Pinter and the prize he got for writing unwatchable plays, and I scribbled the wrong name. Michel also writes that he doubts Marie-Laure de Noailles ever had a German lover because she was too ugly. This I find quite funny. Michel Déon obviously likes beautiful women, ergo he judges Prussian officers by his high Gallic standards. Unlike in the case of Molière, however, I’ve got an excuse for this one. I was quoting from Duff Cooper’s diaries about Marie-Laure, although it is a fact that in wartime even ugly women manage to get shagged by good-looking officers.
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