The cloth burns between the writer Eric Vuillard and the historian Robert Paxton. The order of the day crowned in 2017 by the most prestigious literary prize of the French-speaking world has been translated into English last year (under the title The Order of The Day ). And the book has not convinced the american historian and specialist of Vichy France, who, in a long article published in December in the New York Review of Books, criticizes in passing the jury of the prix Goncourt, accused of passing on the side “of the great authors of their time.”

“a Lot of great French authors of the Twentieth century, such as André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Celine and Colette have never received the Goncourt. Éric Vuillard will he be one of the winners that will be remembered? There are reasons to doubt,” says the historian.

agenda back on the coming to power of Hitler, the Anschluss, and especially on a supposed unwavering support of the industrial German machine of war nazi.

” READ ALSO – Éric Vuillard, the fire of the story

” good fiction requires no justification utility, but can contribute powerfully to the teaching of History. Some novels are better than others ”

Robert Paxton

In the famous literary magazine bi-monthly american, the author of Vichy France has challenged this thesis. “In recent years, detailed research” showed that if the large companies have well funded the nazi party, they gave money to all parties involved in non-marxist. “In fact, supports Paxton, the nazis were not the largest recipients” of the funds provided by the major German companies.

” READ ALSO – The Order of the day: a Goncourt in disregard of History

“The German engineering preferred widely the conservative parties traditional”, wrote the historian who concedes that big business welcomed the coming to power of the nazis who suppressed the trade unions and abolished the right to strike. The German companies “have used the workforce reduced to slavery during the war, and seemingly without much worry about it,” he wrote. According to him, Vuillard has been rewarded by the Goncourt more because of his style (“muscular, concrete, richly inventive, ironic, sardonic, and dogmatic”) that the veracity of his story.

” The professor Paxton imagine that writing is nothing more than a matter of ornamentation, composition, and balance. It is free to apply these classes boring to his own books ”

Eric Vuillard

” READ ALSO – Éric Vuillard, Goncourt 2017: “The story is a way of looking at this”

Stung to the quick by the term “dogmatic”, Éric Vuillard comes to reply to the criticism of the historian in the columns of the american magazine. The novelist accused Robert Paxton to have been a disciple of the historian “maurassien” Raoul Girardet, close to the Organization of the secret army (OAS) during the Algerian war and the author of the classic Myths and mythologies policies . “This is what Robert Paxton considers a historian’s neutral,” quipped the writer. “Professor Paxton imagine that writing is nothing more than a matter of ornamentation, composition, and balance. It is free to apply these classes boring to his own books,” he wrote.

“good fiction requires no justification utility, but can contribute powerfully to the teaching of History. Some novels are better than others,” he replied dryly Robert Paxton.

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