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Friday 4 July 2008

1968 and all that

Allan Massie remembers 1968

Roger Scruton has called Les Orphelins by Louis Pauwels the best French novel since the 1939-45 war. Since it seems unlikely that even Professor Scruton has read all the good French novels of the last 60 years — after all, who among us has read all the good English or American ones? — this really means little more than that he thinks very well of it. He is quite right to do so. It’s a remarkable novel. I’ve just read it a second time and think even better of it than before.

It was the approach of the 40th anniversary of the Paris events of May ’68 which prompted me to read it again. Though the novel is set in 1970, the events of May ’68 hang over it, those violent days animated by young people who, in the opinion of the principal character, Antoine Cartry, industrialist and business mogul, ‘sought to change the world before they had begun to understand it’. Cartry’s son, Michel, sentimental and idealistic leftist, has been an activist in these May days. They are now estranged, have had no communication since, though Michel still visits his mother and his half-sister.

The outline of the plot is simple. It’s the plot of a thriller (and the novel is a very good thriller, though much more besides). Cartry is woken in the middle of the night by a telephone call. His son has been kidnapped. He will receive further instructions.

It’s ridiculous, he thinks; one of Michel’s silly games. So he takes almost no notice, goes about his life as usual. He is quite right; the idea has come to Michel and his ‘copains’ during an evening of drinking and drug-taking. Michel himself is doubtful. ‘My father won’t pay a ransom .You don’t know him. He doesn’t care for me.’ He too is right.

But then things turn nasty. One of the ‘copains’, a playboy leftist, seeks help from an acquaintance, Max, who is a fanatical idealist. Max believes that to bring on the Revolution, you must attack the Left, not the Right. He goes to Germany to get help from the comrades there (the Red Army Faction).

The result is terrible: murder and a real kidnapping. What will Cartry do? Play a lone hand to save his son and assuage his guilt? Or co-operate with the police and the security services? That’s his dilemma; no need to explore the plot further.

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