ABSTRACT
All lovers of twentieth-century French literature have heard of Jean Paulhan. From the onset of his career, Paulhan was fascinated by love and sexuality, in all its manifestations. In one malicious reply, Paulhan mystified Mauriac by letting on that he was the author. Only in the mid-1990s was it revealed that the novel was penned by Dominique Aury, Paulhan's lover and colleague at Gallimard. Basically realist and autobiographical in orientation, Paulhan simultaneously employed an "abstract style," as the poet Catherine Pozzi observes in a letter. By means of a sequence of short prose texts, Paulhan typically expresses ideas, memories, and closely focused perceptions in a crisscrossing way that suggests not so much a continuous flowing narrative as a cubist painting. Paulhan went on to compose a superbly ironic book about the clichés of Swiss life, Guide d'un petit voyage en Suisse, and an fantasy about spending one's days riding the Parisian metro, La Metromanie ou les dessous de la capitale.
