Read Things and A Man Asleep for Free Online

been able to say which - into genuine debt. Their flats, flatlets, lofts, two-roomed conversions in dilapidated houses, in selected neighbourhoods — Palais-Royal, Contrescarpe, Saint-Germain, Luxembourg, Montparnasse-were very similar: the same dirt-encrusted sofas, the same allegedly rustic tables, the same heaps of books and records, old glassware and old jars used, indiscriminately, for flowers, pencils, small change, cigarettes, sweets and paper-clips. They dressed roughly in the same fashion, that is to say with that middling tastefulness which, for men as for women, is what is so right about Madame Express and, by repercussion, about her husband also. What is more, they owed a great deal to that ideal couple in the women's pages of their favourite weekly magazine.
    L'Express was without doubt the one weekly magazine to which they paid heed. They didn't actually like it very much, but they bought it or, at the least, borrowed it from each other, read it regularly and often, they confessed, even kept back-numbers. As a matter of fact, they disagreed very frequently with the political line taken by L'Express (on one occasion, they had penned in righteous indignation a slim pamphlet against "The Style of the Lieutenant- Editor") and for news analysis they preferred Le Monde by far, which they subscribed to faithfully to a man, or even the positions adopted by Libération , which they tended to consider a decent sort of newspaper. But L'Express , and that magazine alone, matched their art of living; each week, they would find in its pages — and it did not matter whether they could view them justifiably as misrepresented or distorted - the really current issues in their daily lives. Not infrequently they took offence. For in all honesty the style, heavily marked by false modesty, the implied meanings, the veiled contempt, the ill-digested envy, the shallow crazes, the kicks in the shins, the knowing winks, together with the great advertising parade which made up L'Express in its entirety - its end and not its means, its most necessary aspect — as well as those little details which mean everything, those bargain items which were supposed to be really fun, those businessmen who understood the real issues, those specialists who knew what they were talking about and made sure you knew it too, those bold thinkers, pipe-suckers all, who were dragging the world into the twentieth century; in short, that panel of responsible directors who foregathered each week around a table or in a forum and whose po-faced smiles made you think they were still clasping in their right hands the golden key to the managers' toilets - all that could not fail to make them think (as they repeated the not very good pun with which their pamphlet had begun) that though it was not obvious that L'Express was a left-wing paper , it was as clear as daylight that it was a sinister one. That wasn't right either, as they well knew, but it reassured them.
    They didn't hide from the fact that they were made for L'Express. No doubt they needed their freedom, their intelligence, their high spirits and their youth to be, at all times and in all places, properly represented. They allowed L'Express to take them under its wing, because it was the simplest thing to do, because their contempt for it kept their consciences clear. And the harshness of their judgment was equalled only by the extent of their submission to it: they thumbed through the magazine muttering curses, they would crumple it up and throw it away. They would go on for hours, sometimes, in high dudgeon at its outrageous- ness. But they read it, indisputably, and they took it all in.
    Where could they have found a truer image of their tastes and yearnings? Were they not young? Were they not wealthy, up to a point? L'Express held out to them all the signs of comfortable living: thick bathrobes, brilliant unravellings of murky truths, fashionable beaches, exotic cookery, useful tips, intelligent news