“It’s curious,” Lempereur said finally, “that we remain so close to the chosen authors of our youth. One might think, after a century or two, that such passions should have faded, that as academics we might accede to a kind of literary objectivity, et cetera. And yet, not at all. Huysmans, Zola, Barbey, Bloy—they all knew one another, were on good terms or bad, formed allegiances, quarreled among themselves. Their shared personal history is the history of French literature, and more than a century later, we keep reenacting it. We remain loyal to our old heroes. We’ll always be ready to love
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