Books: Clochemerle 1923

THE SCANDALS OF CLOCHEMERLE—Gabriel Chevallier—Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

Nobody denies that the French know how to cook. And when it comes to turning the raw material of life into a souffle of light literature, the French are there again. For U. S. readers with ticklish palates, books like The Scandals of Clochemerle will prove an agreeable morsel.

Clochemerle, a small French provincial town in the Beaujolais wine district, was governed in 1923 by a shrewdly ambitious mayor. Progress within reasonable limits, and to the greater glory of the administration, was his realistic policy. What Clochemerle needed, thought the mayor, was a public urinal. The thing was erected, and unveiled with fitting ceremony before the whole town. And then the trouble began.

Clochemerle had been without this convenience for more than 1,000 years, but use & wont was not the difficulty. Unfortunately for peace, the worst old maid in town had her window very near by. Her complaints merely attracted more unseemly goings-on than ever. A merciless churchgoer, she embroiled the gentle parish priest in her quarrel, soon had all Clochemerle divided into Urinophobes and Urinophiles. Scandals grew and burgeoned, culminating in a near-riot in the church itself. After that, disasters followed fast. Jealous citizens from a neighboring village came by night, blew up the urinal; the Government, with mistaken zeal, quartered troops on Clochemerle and precipitated a real riot; the old maid went frankly, starkly crazy. Even then there was no telling what might have happened if a terrible thunderstorm had not descended on Clochemerle, ruined the grape harvest, cooled off everybody’s passions.

Author Chevallier’s moral: Clochemerle 1923 is barely fit to drink.