The funny thing in France is that writers are not allowed to retire, because the French government say you are still earning money from books you wrote 20 years ago.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Retiring from writing is not to retire from life.
I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.
I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education.
When a French book becomes an international hit it is because of the author and not because of the language. The same goes for movies.
Retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product in almost every case.
France has lived a long time - eight or nine centuries - and yet art in France, too, was derivative up until the 19th Century.
I don't know a writer who doesn't feel some sense of glamour and magic and a complex, wistful sadness emanating from the expats of the twenties in France. Some of the sadness, of course, is that we weren't there.
Some major American publishing houses still seek work by foreign writers.
In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?
France is very welcoming to foreign writers.
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