1. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the British Academy for the research project on which this paper draws.
2.
Le Sang des autres (Paris: Gallimard-Folio), 296-7.
3.
Gide makes the point after interviewing survivors from the First World War : see Journal 1889-1939 (Paris: Pléiade, 1951), 913-4. Camus reports a similar situation in respect of soldiers from World War II: 'Ils répètent les journaux. Ce qu'ils y ont lu les a bien plus frappés que ce qu'ils ont vu de leurs yeux.' Carnets I (Paris: Gallimard,1962), 234.
4.
See Raymond Queneau, Zazie dans le métro (Paris: Gallimard-Folio ), 36.
5.
See Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Paris: Gallimard ,1975), 292.
6.
See Jean Baudrillard, La Société de consommation (Paris: Gallimard-Folio-Essais), 30-35.
7.
See Dominique Borne, Henri Dubief, La Crise des années 30, 1929-1938 (Nouvelle Histoire de la France contemporaine, 13) (Paris: Seuil-Points, 1989),86-7.
8.
See my 'Cultivating the fait divers: Détective', Nottingham French Studies, vol.31 no.2 (Autumn 1992), 71-83.
9.
Le Temps, dimanche 8 octobre 1933, p.1. The line is in fact a quotation attributed to Montherlant, applied to the current situation.
10.
See Borne and Dubief, op.cit., 186-7.
11.
This is the date arrived at on the basis of textual evidence by Contat and Rybalka, in their edition of Sartre, Oeuvres romanesques (Paris: Pléiade, 1981), 1940.
12.
L'Age de raison (Paris : Gallimard-Folio), 140-141.
13.
Détective (mars 1939), no.540, 8.
14.
L'Oeuvre (30 mars 1939), 5.
15.
Paris-Soir (1 avril 1939), 3.
16.
Paris-Soir (30 mars 1939), 3.
17.
Oeuvres complètes de Colette, Vol.XIII (Paris: Le Fleuron, chez Flammarion , 1950), 435-41.
18.
Ibid., 440.
19.
Paris-Soir (2 avril 1939), 3, cols 4 & 5: 'Le dernier jour, Weidmann a souri à la mort.' This item is omitted from the bibliography in the latest volume of the Pléiade edition: Colette, Oeuvres, III, sous la direction de Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991). According to chronology, it should appear in the forthcoming volume IV in the series. It would appear that Colette was not the only woman to acknowledge such sentiments. Détective, no. 540, 2 mars 1939, has a report that refers to 'Ce monstre, que certaines "piquées" ne craignent pas de déclarer non antipathique (elles n'osent pas encore dire sympathique)...' Colette's comments on Weidmann assume their full significance when read as part of her remarkable ongoing, long-standing meditation on the criminal in articles such as those she devoted to Landru and Mahon.
20.
See Camus, Carnets 1, op.cit., 143-4.
21.
Albert Camus, Théâtre, récits, nouvelles (Paris: Pléiade, 1962),1203.
22.
22. Idem.
23.
Ibid, 1204.
24.
Ibid., 1422, 1424.
25.
This is indicated by Jacqueline Lévi- Valensi in a review of a thesis by André Abbou: Albert Camus 14, Revue des Lettres Modernes (1991), 202.
26.
Albert Camus, Essais (Paris, Pléiade, 1965), 1025.
27.
27. Idem.
28.
Théâtre, récits, nouvelles, op.cit., 1185. See my 'Albert Camus and the fait divers', in French Cultural Studies, iii (1992), 8.
29.
Similarly, Camus appears to have had little time for the cult that surroundedGenet. See my 'Le criminel chez Camus', in Albert Camus, les extrêmes et l'équilibre, actes du colloque de Keele, réunis et présentés par David H. Walker (Amsterdam: Rodopi, coll. 'Faux Titre', 1994), 17-32.
30.
Paris-Soir (19 mars 1939), 4.
31.
Paris-Soir (1 avril 1939), 3.
32.
Paris-Soir (2 avril 1939), 3.
33.
Théâtre, récits, nouvelles, op.cit., 1199.
34.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Huis Clos suivi de Les Mouches (Paris: Livre de Poche), 86.
35.
The photo is referred to in similar terms later in the novel. See Notre-Dame-desfleurs, in Oeuvres complètes de Jean Genet, vol. II (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 67.
36.
Edmund White neglects to mention this, drawing instead, for his assessment of Weidmann's presence in the text, exclusively on the coverage in Détective which appeared almost a week later: see Genet (London: Chatto & Windus, 1993), 181-2.
37.
Op.cit., 10.
38.
See my 'Antecedents for Genet's persona', in Existentialist Autobiography, ed. T. Keefe and E. Smyth (Liverpool : University of Liverpool Press, 1995).
39.
Op.cit., 174: the initial, full quotation is on p.12. The source, as indicated above, is Paris-Soir (2 April 1939), 3.
40.
See White, op.cit., 182-3, and 748, note 49. The erroneous supposition which White gives credence to is in Roger Colombani, L'Affaire Weidmann (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989) ; 259.
41.
Op.cit., 54.
42.
Ibid., 141.
43.
See Harry E. Stewart and Rob Roy McGregor, Jean Genet: a Biography of Deceit (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 93-4; Albert Dichy and Pascal Fouché, Jean Genet, essai de chronologie 1910-1944 (Paris: Bibliothèque de littérature française contemporaine, 1988), 159-160.
44.
Journal du voleur (Paris: Gallimard, 1949),159-60.
45.
Oeuvres complètes vol. XIII, op.cit., 438.
46.
46. See 'Antecedents for Genet's persona', loc. cit. White, op.cit., 294, 368, provides evidence to show that the picture of Weidmann was transformed into a veritable icon: Genet gave copies to his friends and hung it in rooms he inhabited.
47.
White, op.cit., photographs between pp.372 and 373. White's translation of this text on p.294 is inaccurate: he appears to have misread the handwriting.
48.
I shall be considering only 'Les Ecrits sinistres' in my discussion of Le Roi des aulnes. In effect, the material covered in this section constituted the whole of the novel in an initial version written by Tournier some ten years before the final full text. See Le Vent Paraclet (Paris: Gallimard-Folio) , 193-4.
49.
Le Roi des aulnes (Paris: Gallimard-Folio ), 151.
50.
Ibid., 155, 162, 164.
51.
Ibid., 183.
52.
Ibid., 166.
53.
Ibid., 184.
54.
Ibid., 155.
55.
Ibid., 164.
56.
Ibid., 183-4.
57.
Ibid., 185.
58.
Ibid., 65.
59.
Ibid., 75.
60.
Ibid., 82-3.
61.
61. Idem.
62.
Ibid., 185.
63.
Ibid., 186.
64.
Ibid., 190.
65.
Ibid., 192.
66.
Ibid., 199.
67.
Ibid., 200. The severed head links Weidmann and Tiffauges with the headless child referred to later in the novel, and with a significant series of allusions to wounded flesh: see Emma Wilson, 'Toumier, the body and the reader', French Studies, xlvii, no. 1 (January 1993), 43-56, esp. 45 and 54 n.7.
