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I can still picture him as he said those words and I regret the fact that I did not question him further. That “not very interesting” is as frustrating in its laconism as a Zen koan. Did he mean to show his contempt for an act of resistance that would immediately have triggered the execution of a dozen French hostages in reprisal? Was he trying to tell me that the idea of Free France was not, in itself, a subject likely to fascinate him? Or was he, more profoundly, trying to let me know that it seemed to him “not very interesting” to assassinate someone in the metro regardless of the motive? I don’t know, I still don’t know; but doubtless, in my case too, the mark of my father still carries weight.

*Khâgne is the preparatory course for the arts section of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.

*Jules Régis Debray (born 1941) is a French intellectual and journalist most noted for introducing the discipline of “mediology” in his book Transmitting Culture.

*Les Chantiers de la Jeunesse Française was a French paramilitary organization during World War II known by the occupying German forces as Französische Arbeitsdienst.

March 21, 2008

I don’t know which of us will get first prize as the better “recorder.”

But I have to say, dear Michel, that you are surpassing yourself when it comes to enormous, provocative confessions that will give the blabbermouths something to talk about.

Let’s go over all this slowly, calmly, without being contentious and particularly without getting annoyed. (It’s quite possible that in our little exchange you’ve already won over the mockers, the sniggerers, those with a sense of humor, whereas I’m known not to have one, so I’m not going to add to that …)

The problem with your last letter is, of course, not your civic abstention, your nonallegiance, your attitude of “just pretend I’m not there, actually I’m not there anymore, I go from bubble to bubble, from one private home to another, I don’t identify with any community, I feel less and less of a citizen, more and more depoliticized and free, a literary Bartleby with his ‘I’d prefer not to,’ throwing open the door to the ‘possibility of an island.’ ” Why not? After all, that may be an acceptable definition of a writer.

Nor does it have anything to do with your living in Ireland and your fiscal expatriation. It’s true that in my case I could technically do this too, since between my American adventures, my trips, and the way I live, according to my lawyer’s expert calculations I end up spending far less than the famous “six months a year” that qualify you as a tax resident in Paris. The fact is, I don’t take advantage of this and continue to pay those confounded taxes like a good boy, a good citizen. But why, fundamentally? Is it really out of virtue? Purely out of my civic duty? Or is it also—let’s be frank—because I don’t dare, I haven’t got your nerve, and it would make a mockery of the big fuss I make with my concern for mankind. (“What, he makes us feel guilty, he makes us look like swine who put their interest before honor, happiness before justice! He spares us none of his indignation! He denounces so-and-so! He calls on you to vote for some other one. And now we find out that he’s stashed all his money away in Ireland or Malta, yuck …”) So it’s nothing to show off about. Nor is it a good idea to try to be too crafty.

What troubles me, what I find staggering, is not even what you say about war, that it makes you feel sick, the lack of courage you attribute to yourself, your “good soldier Schweik”* side, hesitating as in Hašek between disobedience and lack of respect, passive resistance and militant anarchism, affability as a strategy, internal desertion, shirking, the silent revolt. That’s how everyone functions. No one, apart from fools, deliberately exposes themselves to danger. It’s only in books and particularly in the weak novels of Drieu, Jünger,* or Montherlant† that combatants are courageous in the