The White Peacock

One autumn – it must have been 1985 or 6 – leading up to our winter meeting in Varkala, I wrote to René from Bangkok and asked him to bring me a French novel. When he got to Varkala he handed me a novel of DH Lawrence, "The White Peacock." I was disappointed. He said French novels were never translated well into English. I didn't read it. I should read it now!

I remember in the autumn of 1989 when staying with René in his Paris flat. He complained about having to be a literary judge for a certain "young French writers competition." It was a result of his winning the Fénéon Prize in 1954 that René was more or less required to be a judge. He told me how hard it was to read all the novels, and related how the woman who chaired the award jury would phone him and insist that he read them all. But he never read them all, he told me, only parts.

I had only then recently become aware of the art-critical term "Minimalism" – mainly in reference to painting and music. "Could there be a minimalist novel?" I asked René. He considered the question and suggested, "Yes..."

When in Paris in February 2008, I spoke with gallery owner Michel Broomhead who related to me, "Of all the art critics that [Laubies] knew, René esteemed Pierre Restany above all."