Claude Lanzmann, the author of Shoah - that monument - has published a memoir with the incongruous title "Le liévre de Patagonie" which I have been reading - nay, devouring - compulsively. The whole thing may be faintly anachronistic - Lanzmann is 85 years old, he was a great friend of Sartre and longtime husband of Simone de Beauvoir - he remains faithful to both of them - he is a somewhat old fashioned fellow still living in the masculine myth "par excellence" - the myth of the hero, himself of course, the intrepid youth who fought in the resistance, the globe-trotting journalist, who met Kim il Sung, Bouteflika, Sofia Loren and Silvana Mangano, the fearless intellectual who directed "Les Temps Modernes" for twenty years. But the real theme of the book is jewishness, his own to begin with, Israel, the Shoah, his masterwork. With what deep reserves of emotion, and incomparable "verve" does Lanzmann recount his adventures, his very own personal odissey! C'est poignant, parfois bouleversant, a ne pas perdre!
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