Memory exercises: how Jean Cau tells his story without romanticising it

In *Ritratti e immagini* (Adelphi), Alberto Arbasino describes Via Veneto in Rome before *La dolce vita* as follows: “Before Fellini’s film, Via Veneto was deserted at night; a car would pass by once an hour. People would sit at Rosati’s or the Caffè de Paris just to have a quiet chat amongst friends”, and Jean Cau does no less in Exercises in Memory (Edizioni Settecolori, translated by Giovanni Acuto, 250 pp., 23 euros), completely debunking the existentialist myth: “Saint-Germain-des-Près? Am I the only one who’ll tell future generations that THIS THING [in capital letters like a furious social media user] never existed? That no reality preceded its mythical essence, and that certain myths are like the mayonnaise in bargain-basement restaurants: the fewer eggs there are, the more you have to whisk it”. No one better than Arbasino and Cau managed to celebrate the mythology of those places precisely by dismantling them – a practice now entirely lost in an age where nothing remains to be mythologised, but everything recurs in the form of an anniversary, with eulogists dedicated from time to time and called upon to extol the dear departed, who is in the process of being mythologised or embalmed.

Jean Cau was part of that quintessentially Parisian era of cinema and intellectual engagement, a time he navigated with irreverence and disillusionment whilst working as Jean-Paul Sartre’s secretary for over ten years. Exercises in Memory, however, is not merely a cheeky portrait of untouchable legends; more boldly, it is an intimate glimpse that also turns its gaze upon the small, everyday miseries that punctuate the life of every human being, even a mythological one. We thus move from Mitterrand, who daily and proudly gauges his own level of narcissism, to Albert Camus, considered far too comfortable in a house that is far too well-furnished, but who subsequently reappears in brilliant passages dedicated to Arthur Koestler, with whom Camus – following a heavily alcohol-fuelled evening – engages in a contest to see who can cross Place Saint-Michel on all fours the fastest. Camus wins, but Koestler accuses him of cheating.

For Jean Cau, memory is a most serious exercise; it is not, in fact, a matter of setting out proven facts (the effectiveness of which is always overestimated), but of giving full form to the humanity that has passed before his eyes, portraying it as it was, whilst leaving tributes and sycophancy to those who owed their favours to long-begged favours. Exercises in Memory is a useful tool for observation, helping to restore a little balance, especially today when anyone can become famous and anyone can easily be dragged through the mud for a single misstep. For Cau, suspicion never lies in dirt, but in extreme cleanliness: ‘I have never, in my entire life, met a man who was cleaner, whose appearance was more impeccably clean – hands, nails, shirt, scalp, ears, beard, everything. Who could ever imagine Giscard with stubble?’ This portrait of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing stands in stark contrast to that of his beloved Jean-Paul Sartre, who always appears flustered, wearing an old dressing gown half-open over his pyjamas, like a boxer ever ready to step into the ring.