To the Editor:

I am a devoted reader of COMMENTARY and have always felt your reviews and articles to be reliable guides to new intellectual developments. I would, therefore, like to convey my disappointment with the article by Roger Kaplan, “France’s ‘New Philosophers’ ” [February 1978]. I went to considerable trouble to obtain from Europe the works that Mr. Kaplan praised, particularly The Master Thinkers by André Glucksmann. Although French is my native tongue, and my reading comprehension would seem to be average or above, I found the book totally unintelligible. Nothing led me to expect the disjointed paragraphs, the use of hints and allusions as a substitute for exposition, and the delight in obscure references. . . .

There is latitude, of course, for readers to hold opposite opinions regarding the meaning and value of a publication. However, when an essayist in your columns does not prepare his readers for the difficulties and obscurity that will confront him, it is disillusioning indeed. . . .

Jonas Brachfeld
Willingboro, New Jersey

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Roger Kaplan writes:

Jonas Brachfeld is not alone in finding French philosophical writers hard to follow. One of the characteristics of some contemporary French writing is its corruption of the beautiful and lucid French language for the sake of smart-alecky one-upmanship. Some French intellectuals seem to be constantly outdoing one another’s opacity, on the theory that they will fool people into thinking they are smart. The sad truth is that they have very little to say. Unfortunately, they live in an environment partly shaped by a tyrannous intellectual establishment shot through with stinking orthodoxies considered holy because considered subversive. Many French intellectuals want to be subversive. And this leads them to produce a great deal of cant.

The so-called “new philosophers” learned to think and write in this unhappy school. To the degree that they represent it, I have no praise for them. However, I applaud their attempts to break out of it. I believe I did not belittle the distance they have yet to travel before they can truly claim to have something new to offer, though I think it is no exaggeration to say that in some of their writings, particularly André Glucksmann’s, they have already made interesting contributions to our understanding of the intellectual traditions to which they are the self-conscious and often bitter heirs. As for the manner in which Glucksmann writes, I am hardly to blame. Writing on the “new-philosopher” phenomenon, I did not sense the need to dwell on the formal problems of The Master Thinkers. But I would have thought anyone familiar with contemporary French writing would be prepared for a certain amount of unintelligibility, not to mention straight crap.

Or, to put it another way:

En effet, les soi-disants nouveaux philosophes ne sont pas au niveau de Racine ou de Montaigne en ce qui concerne le style, et j’avoue que les lire peut présenter des difficultés pour la matière grise. Pourtant, ce n’est pas pour lire des bandes illustrées qu’il nous a donné la matière grise, le Bon Dieu.