SOURCE: "Private Worlds: François Mauriac," in An Age of Fiction: The French Novel from Gide to Camus, Rutgers University Press, 1957, pp. 114-15.

A French-born American educator and critic specializing in French literature, Brée is widely acknowledged to be an expert on the life and work of Albert Camus. In the following excerpt, Brée and Guiton discuss Mauriac's focus on the morality of material possessions and the "inner landscape" evident in his novels.

As a novelist, François Mauriac himself, as he has admitted, is haunted by the secret that lies at the heart of all human beings. In one of his last novels, L'Agneau (The Lamb), 1954, he analyzes the satanic nature of the fascination we exercise over each other, preying one on the other to satisfy our emotional needs. The spiritual crisis he went through in mid-career was in part due to his own uncertainty...