← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

An Amusing French Tale is Just Beginning…

… to be told, and we few, we happy few here at University Diaries, are settling ourselves in to a front seat. Croyez-moi, there’ll be a piece on this in the New York Times in the next few days, one of those arch little numbers observing the French and their ways with description but no comment…

But why wait for that? I’m giving the thing to you here and now. Plus I’m telling you what to think about it. So listen.

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of Albert Camus is coming up (January 4), and Sarkozy wants his remains transferred to the Panthéon.  This article about it in the Irish Times (only English-language piece I’ve seen so far) duly notes l’absurde squabbling about it, right left and center, in Paris.

This Le Monde thing announces that Jean Camus, the man’s son, has in any case refused permission because Camus just wasn’t a Panthéon type…

So why did he accept the Nobel?  Nobel yes, Panthéon no?  Sartre turned down the Nobel, but Camus didn’t have any trouble…  I doubt he would have minded the Panthéon.

But anyway.  The spat guarantees plenty of publicity for the writer, and will certainly generate the sort of statements you and I love to make limericks out of.

Margaret Soltan, November 21, 2009 11:57AM
Posted in: intellectuals

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=19547

4 Responses to “An Amusing French Tale is Just Beginning…”

  1. MattF Says:

    Arthur Goldhammer comments on why Sarkozy admires Camus here.

  2. Dave Stone Says:

    Ecoutez-vous le nouveau contretemps?
    Plant Camus in le beau Pantheon!
    We can’t take this deceased
    Pied-noir arriviste.
    Voltaire’d say "Consider me gone."

  3. Dave Stone Says:

    Mathematician sagé R. Descartes
    And bug-eyed penseur J. P. Sartre
    Are both buried elsewhere.
    The Pantheon was trop cher,
    Plus it’s rumored they sell off your parts.

  4. LY/PauvrePlume Says:

    Just found this blog post (also from Ireland, re: the memory of the dead and governmental abuse of authority): http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94860

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories