The approach of Easter suddenly reminded me of an article, written in haste exactly three years ago, for a Europe issue in preparation on Albert Cohen. All the articles had arrived, there was only missing an interview, deemed indispensable, that the person in charge of the dossier proposed to carry out without delay. We're still waiting. Without entering into the secret of deliberations, it was with great difficulty that I had won, at the Journal Committee, the principle of an issue devoted to this Magnificent 20th century novelist. By not delivering his copy, the said coordinator makes me ashamed, besides treating his colleagues with contempt! No question that I deprive my readers of it, nor the amateurs of the geste of the Valiant.
Done in Cephalonia on 02/04/2015

"Today is Thursday. There's no school. This morning, I went to Talmud Torah, to listen to episodes of the Pentateuch and learn (so little) biblical Hebrew. In the afternoon, I'm forbidden to play with the little comrades in the courtyard. I'm supposed to do my homework and advance my work for the end of the week. We pushed the kitchen table against the wall. I work there distractedly. Since my mother has her back turned and doesn't watch me, I open a comic strip carefully covered with kraft paper that the communal friends lent me. No question of being caught reading such nonsense! This time it's The Leadfoot Gang in America, but last week it was a Bibi Fricotin. The Tarzans, the fights in the jungle give me fever. Above all, I prefer the adventures of the Leadfoot Gang.

As I see again, some fifty years before me, young Albert Cohen returning from high school, in Marseille. His parents, like mine, had left shores that memory made perpetually happy, forgetting the obscure reasons that had made them flee, the threats of pogroms, an authoritarian regime, endless vexations."

Read the Valiant Leadfoot Gang