ABSTRACT
Francois Mauriac called himself ''a Catholic novelist'', then later ''a Catholic and novelist''—an important distinction. The new biography of Francois Mauriac is by Jean Lacouture, himself from Bordeaux, like the novelist. Mauriac once wrote that the truth about an author's life is not to be found in memoirs and confessions, but in his novels. One of Mauriac's strengths was the openness with which he upheld bourgeois or middle-class values, property, tradition. In an ugly attack, Roger Peyrefitte—the writer of scandalizing novels, not to be confused with his cousin, the minister—branded Mauriac a secret homosexual. The Mauriac of the novels and of the chronicles is one and the same—yet they seem two separate writers. The world of the novels is based on themes that Mauriac absorbed in his childhood; the articles and notes are based on an alert awareness of contemporary realities. The novels refer to a provincial milieu, the journalism to Paris.
