French culture is not dead

The writer Maurice Druon, member of the Academie Française, virulently responds to the American magazine 'Time', which announced the 'death of French culture on the front cover of a recent issue of its European edition. "Every four of five years, the United States is overcome by an anti-French fever about which one of its major publications informs the universe. ... The author [Donald Morrison] has a completely false and muddled mind, as does most of his readership. He throws Proust, Monet, Piaf and Truffaut under the same heading and considers France is dead because we have no celebrities of the same calibre at the moment. ... Culture is not determined by the week's box-office. Culture is exercised over time. ... And the fact that creators from all over the world are welcomed in France is not a weakness but proof that this land is a land of culture, as it has been for centuries and, let it be hoped, will be for centuries to come."

» full article (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » Public Culture, » France, » U.S.