SOURCE: "The Early Fiction and the Short Stories," in François Mauriac Revisited, Twayne Publishers, 1995, pp. 28-50.

O'Connell is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, he surveys Mauriac's short stories and relates them thematically to the novels he was writing at the time.

Mauriac's short fiction appeared during his lifetime in two principal collections: Trois récits (1929), (Three stories) and Plongées (1938), (Fathomings), which contained another five stories. In addition to these collections, there are two more stories, "Le Visiteur nocturne" and "Le Drôle," which were published separately and not gathered into a collection until publication of the Oeuvres complètes. These 10 stories represent the only short fiction that Mauriac chose to pass on to posterity.

With the exception of "Un Homme de lettres" and "Le Démon de la Connaissance," all the stories are more or less directly related to Mauriac's novels. In...