Vol. 26 No. 18 dated 23 September 2004
Union Sucrée
Perry Anderson
"The wider puzzle remains: what explains the strange contrast between a unique literary cosmopolitanism and so much intellectual parochialism in France? It is tempting to wonder whether the answer lies simply in the relative self-confidence of each sector: the continuing native vitality of French history and theory inducing indifference to foreign output, and the declining prestige of French letters prompting compensation in the role of a universal dragoman. There may be something in this, but it cannot be the whole story." http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n18/ande01_.html