The Collaborator : The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach

Rating:
Summary: A major work of literary and cultural criticism
Review: Alice Kaplan's new book "The Collaborator" is a major work of literary and cultural criticism. In her investigation of the writings and the trial for treason of French fascist intellectual Robert Brasillach, Kaplan combines erudition with a sensitivity to the importance of writing and literature in modern France. The purge of 1944-1947 was a unique moment in French history: for the first time since the Revolution a group of writers was tried for having jeopardized the interests of the nation. The Brasillach case was exemplary. At the heart of Kaplan's book is not so much the story of the life and times of Robert Brasillach as the question of what it means when a nation decides to condemn one of its writers for treason. The great merit of "The Collaborator" is that Kaplan answers this question by looking in detail at the documents from the period. In her research she reads and analyzes Brasillach's articles in the collaborationist press, in particular those that appeared in the notorious and antisemitic weekly, "Je Suis Partout." She deftly guides the reader through the transcript of Brasillach's trial. In one of the most original parts of the book she identifies the four jurors at Brasillach's trial, describing in detail their personal history, their politics and their role in the Liberation of France. She is one of the few scholars to have looked at the Brasillach pardon file, submitted to de Gaulle in February 1945, and her conclusions about de Gaulle's reactions to the file are startling. Throughout, Kaplan is unfailingly honest about her discoveries and the parts of the trial that remain a mystery. Brasillach was a complex character who seems to have made up in racist diatribe what he lacked in literary skill. Kaplan's point is not to give us a psychobiography of the writer. Rather "The Collaborator" is a sober and compelling reflection on literature and the memory of World War II today.

Rating:
Summary: A Superb Book
Review: Alice Kaplan's new book "The Collaborator" is a major work of literary and cultural criticism. In her investigation of the writings and the trial for treason of French fascist intellectual Robert Brasillach, Kaplan combines erudition with a sensitivity to the importance of writing and literature in modern France. The purge of 1944-1947 was a unique moment in French history: for the first time since the Revolution a group of writers was tried for having jeopardized the interests of the nation. The Brasillach case was exemplary. At the heart of Kaplan's book is not so much the story of the life and times of Robert Brasillach as the question of what it means when a nation decides to condemn one of its writers for treason. The great merit of "The Collaborator" is that Kaplan answers this question by looking in detail at the documents from the period. In her research she reads and analyzes Brasillach's articles in the collaborationist press, in particular those that appeared in the notorious and antisemitic weekly, "Je Suis Partout." She deftly guides the reader through the transcript of Brasillach's trial. In one of the most original parts of the book she identifies the four jurors at Brasillach's trial, describing in detail their personal history, their politics and their role in the Liberation of France. She is one of the few scholars to have looked at the Brasillach pardon file, submitted to de Gaulle in February 1945, and her conclusions about de Gaulle's reactions to the file are startling. Throughout, Kaplan is unfailingly honest about her discoveries and the parts of the trial that remain a mystery. Brasillach was a complex character who seems to have made up in racist diatribe what he lacked in literary skill. Kaplan's point is not to give us a psychobiography of the writer. Rather "The Collaborator" is a sober and compelling reflection on literature and the memory of World War II today.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful analysis of the trial of Robert Brasillach.
Review: Brasillach was a political (anti-semitic, racist) commentator and novelist in France before and during WWII.
As we can read in his memoirs, he was intellectually seduced by the racist and nationalistic work of Charles Maurras (L'Action Fran?aise). He had probably homosexual tendencies.
After the war, he was condemned (3 against 1) for high treason and executed.
For me, the author proves convincingly that the trial was excessive and unfair - the Liberation courts were essential Vichy courts! Brasillach was guilty for his writing, but should not have been shot. There was no strict cause-effect relationship between Brasillach's words and the murders and deportations that did take place in France.
But I agree also with the author that with this trial there was much more at stake: free speech, the capacity of language to do real evil, the accountability of writers and intellectuals. It was a warning by the political power elite at that moment.

Good portraits of Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir.

A model study. Nearly every sentence in this book is supported by a reference.
It is a signing on the wall that this book was written by an American. The ghosts and demons of WWII are still not dead in Europe.

Rating:
Summary: Appetizer better than main course
Review: The most compelling part of this study of Robert Brasillach for me was not the courtroom rhetoric - framed as the payoff of this book - but the contextual descriptions of the open anti-Semitic and pro-fascist political advocacy of pre-war France.

It's important to be reminded that anti-democratic and racist thought was not confined to Germany in the 1930s. I found, however, that the more I read about Brasillach the less pivotal a character he became. Here was a clever but sad follower of the dashing fascists, but a follower whose chief weapons were mockery and verbal attack. Brasillach may have become a martyr for the right, but only for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, not for being a philosophical or popular leader.

Kaplan has done an excellent job in presenting a relatively dispassionate report on the case, but the case itself is more a fluke than an historic watershed.

Rating:
Summary: Guilty of Political Correctness
Review: This biased and rather mean-spirited investigation of the life and trial of French author Robert Brasillach is an attempt on the part of the author, Duke University professor Alice Kaplan, to establish the guilt of her politically-incorrect target.

Robert Brasillach (1909-1945) was a French author, critic, and (need I say?) idealogue. Guilty not of acts but of expression, his death at government hands might be just another sad addition to the crimes of totalitarianism - except that Brasillach was a RIGHT-winger, condemned and executed by the post-liberation French authorities. Brasillach was among many accused collaborationists (or suspected conservatives) who were 'purged' following the liberation of France, often by leftists with old scores to settle. There are two important issues this affair raises for me: what regard for justice can we expect in a passionate time, and why do people embrace extreme views? These are not Kaplan's concern. She wants us to consider the profound question: why can't people whose views I hate just keep their damn mouths shut?

Brasillach neither served the Germans in any official capacity nor participated in any war crimes. Nevertheless Kaplan claims that Brasillach is guilty, although hedging that his punishment was excessive. She accuses Brasillach of three crimes: denouncing French citizens to an enemy of France (punishable by death under a 1944 revision to article 84 of the French penal code), treason (article 75), and calling for the death of French politicians. The accusations never get off the ground.

While it is fair to denounce Brasillach's anti-semitism and hostility to democracy, Kaplan presents no proof that he denounced fellow citizens personally, except for politicians already imprisoned by the Vichy government. There are serious legal and even ethical problems in condemning a man for sympathizing with foreign agents whose authority is sanctioned by his own government. The closest Kaplan comes to a justification of Brasillach's legal guilt is when she quotes the damning remark (left out of Brasillach's compiled works!!!): "One was asked to point out the Jews." Kaplan, who expends several pages in interpreting the quote as meanly collaborationist, says "It is a fudge, a syllable away from a confession that he did..." Perhaps just a bit more than a syllable: a verb, a personal pronoun or two, maybe a conjunction...

Kaplan's aggressively prejudicial interpretations are the body of the work, together with some irrelevant detail about contemporary events. Her argument is simple: Fascists are bad, so what they do is bad. If a Fascist goes for a walk, he walks in a bad way. Brasillach wrote several books; one was nominated for the Prix Goncourt, France's highest literary award. Kaplan says they were all bad books, so THERE!!!

The valueless childishness of this sort of thinking seems self-evident to me. The 20th century political arena showcased an endless parade of troupes of righteous zealots, all convinced that they had identified the Bad Guys responsible for humanity's woes, all shouting down any questioning voices, each exiting the world stage disgraced by odious crimes - to become the bad guys of the NEXT troupe!

The job of the thinking man is to gong this crap, without falling into the trap of ideological despair. We need to blame crime, not opinion, and if we disagree with opinion we need to present a case that is not based on ad hominem attacks on our opponent's character! As U.S. political debate slides into steadily increasing invective, the need for fair-mindedness is getting greater.

Rating:
Summary: Wobbles
Review: This book, which is mostly an account of a once-famous-in-France trial, has evoked particularly incompetent reviews (except for the anonymous "reader from Illinois:). Even the best (and first) of them significantly misrepresents. Kaplan shows the defense attorney producing a lofty, incomprehensible-to-the-jurors plea, but "Brasillach's insistence on rambling on for days ensured his death sentence" is totally wrong. The whole trial was done in a day. Brasillach declined to make the closing speech that was his right. When he spoke at length was in the interrogation by the magistrate, the first stage, which Brasillach dominated. (I do agree with Kenyon that there should be photos of the main characters though.).

Guernseybookman is viciously mistaken that "A critic of our own generation might be more likely to ask how many homosexuals were drawn into the resistance out of disgust with Vichy's family values" is dumb and anachronistic. It is a statement about possible present perspectives which Kaplan is DIRECTLY CONTRASTING to those of 1945. Moreover, she is exceptionally careful to distinguish the widespread perception that Brasillach was homosexual from any direct evidence that he was (or that the judge, a "lifelong bachelor" with a longer life was). No male sexual partners have been revealed, and from the amount of writing Brasillach did and the pallidness of personal experience portrayed in his fiction, one can easily believe that he had no sex life.

I sort of agree with the anonymous Mass. reader that "it is not at all clear from Ms.Kaplan's book why Brasillach was considered such a great talent," but this is in large part because she is NOT a postmodernist, unwilling to make judgments of literary worth. She forthrighlt criticizes Brasillach's novels for their sentimentality and the remoteness of their narrators from human (especially sexual) experience. Kaplan does explain why Camus and other Resistance writers sought clemency for Brasillach, including praise of his writing that she obviously does not concur with. And Kaplan shows how an assumption of homosexuality and a link between homosexuality and worshipping fascist domination was used by the prosecutor. This analysis is not at all anachronistic.

I don't see that there is any relevance of the case for American hate crimes, since the latter are not about publications that are complicit with conquerors (unless someone is writing advocating killing Native Americans), though there are analogies to South Africa.

OK, the book is not as luminous and tightly packed as FRENCH LESSONS. Not many books are!

This book sometimes seems rambling. And there are some repetitions from earlier chapters in the chapter on the trial (the author expecting readers to skip them?). And it is not true that one can find out anything with research. For instance, Kaplan did not find out the jury vote or whether the prosecutor held the defense attorney's speech against him. And she seems oddly reticent to press what seems to me the most compelling reason to execute Brasillach: the precedent of his own arguments for executing the leaders of the Third Republic. She notes that his complicity with genocide was not pressed by the prosecution, but it also seems that there was not careful demonstration that those he denounced (in print) were rounded up by the Nazis. There was a rush to judgment, even though I come away thinking the judgment was right.

I am surprised that a Duke literature professor does not discuss "performative" speech (à la John Austin, not Judith Butler) and disappointed she does not comment at all on the treatment of the WWII treasons of an indisputably major writer, Ezra Pound. But at least she does render her own final judgment on the case. I don't think that the book entirely gells, but it includes many interesting analyses and a clear narrative of a very slippery case.

Rating:
Summary: France purges its Vichy past once again.
Review: This is an unusual book on France's purge of its collaborators during the German occupation. By focussing on novelist and critic Robert Brasillach, Alice Kaplan tells us as much about literature as about politics. By the standards of today, Brasillach's propagandist work is naive. His glorification of the Reich, for example in Je Suis Partout of which he was editor in chief until 1943, is hopelessly romantic (even managing to quote Virgil in support) and bore no relationship to the experiences of ordinary French people living under the occupation. He seems to have been part of a pro nazi, elite homosexual coterie who found in fascism an outlet for their love of uniforms and male bonding. Kaplan has explored in depth the trial records and notes that Brasillach's insistence on rambling on for days ensured his death sentence. He would have done better to have remained silent. It is argued that he has become a martyr for the extreme right in French politics, but this thesis not really stretched beyond references to John Marie Le Pen's admiration. One is left with the feeling that Brasillach, like Vidkun Quisling in another context, left a weaker legacy than he thought he would. The complete lack of photographs, apart from a blowup on the dust jacket, gives the impression this book will largely have a specialist readership.