One begins to understand TomnWolfe’s passion for exactitude, even ifnit means knowing a character by thenprice of his suit. Whatever its othernmerits, The Bonfire of the Vanities is anrare event on the literary scene becausenit is accurate. Yet what a storm ofncritical controversy have Wolfe’s pricenlists unleashed! Brand names, dialects,nprices are too close to the truth, and donnot belong in good “fiction.” Once anjournalist, always a journalist (as anRussian emigre grande dame once saidnof Dostoyevsky). By contrast, a novelnabout a dinner party that ends with thenguests eating each other is literature.nChekhov, by whose prose worldnculture is to be measured, never wrotena single line of “fiction.” Nor did henever attempt to write a novel: toonartificial, too contrived, too pretentious.nThe Russian language has nonword for “fiction” — only “prose” —nand a quick look in the Oxford dictionarynconfirms that the English wordnhas an appallingly undistinguishednpedigree. (“Books,” Emerson wrote innhis Journal, “are the destruction ofnliterature.”)nWhat would Chekhov (or Emerson)nthink of our best-seller lists, dividedninto “fiction” and “nonfichon”? Thendivision is spurious, not because everynwriter must be like Chekhov and describenlife as truthfully as he can, butnbecause the spiritual relativism of contemporarynWestern literature obliteratesnall such distinctions. Like SocialistnRealism in post-1917 Russia, it devaluesnhonesty, imagination, and style,nreplacing them with an inflated currencynof sterile, conformist inventions,neagerly published, promptly reviewed,nand quickly forgotten. Shall we call itnCapitalist Surrealism? Or is “fiction”nbanal enough?nLiterature is not everything. But it isna symptom, and those who care aboutnliterature can extrapolate the point toncomprehend the cultural crisis as anwhole. Are not the dominant trends ofnWestern foreign policy (e.g., Kissinger’sndetente), or psychology (e.g.,nFreudian psychoanalysis), or journalismn(e.g., Krushelnycky’s reporting)nbased on the same disregard for thentruth that distinguishes our literature?nSomething to think about.nAndrei Navrozov is poetry editor ofnChronicles.nLetter From Parisnby Curtis CatenA Visual AtrocitynIt used to be a pleasure to cross thenSeine from the Left Bank to the Right,nand to pause for a moment by thenLouvre to take in that glorious vista,nadmired by innumerable busloads ofntourists and many others besides: thenview one gets, framed by the gracefulncentral arch of the diminutive Arch ofnTriumph of the Carrousel, of thenfountain-filled Tuileries Gardens, ofnthe Place de la Concorde, and up thensloping Champs-Elysees to its crowningnmonument. Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe.nBut the pleasure — for me atnany rate — is now marred by the sight ofna cancerous growth of grayish concretensmudging the distant horizon. I cannnever view this visual outrage withoutnasking myself how such a thing couldncome to pass. Can it be that the French,nwho from the late Renaissance on andnthrough most of the 18th century succeedednthe Italians as the finest architectsnin Europe, have totally lost thatnsense of aesthetic elegance and measurenthat so long distinguished them?nYears ago, in a blistering article entitledn”The Gangsters of the AppiannWay,” Niccolo Tucci tore into the vandalsnwho, he claimed, were disfiguringnthat ancient roadway with neon signs,ngas stations, and other modern commodities.nThe Appian Way, he pointednout, did not belong to the Romans, nornto the Italians, nor even to the Europeans;nit belongs to history, to mankind,nto the world.nI feel the same way about thatnincomparable Carrousel-Tuileries-nChamps-Elysees vista, which a newngeneration of French vandals — andnthey include, alas, President FrangoisnMitterrand—have disgracefully disfigurednand, skyscrapers and high-risenbuildings being easier to put up than tontear down, perhaps irreparably desecratednfor the foreseeable future.nIn a typically grandiloquent passagenof his memoirs, Charles de Gaulle oncencalled the Champs-Elysees “le plusngrand axe du monde.” The Champs-nElysees may be praised for manynthings, but it is not “the greatest axis innthe world” either in length or in widthn—as de Gaulle, who was something ofnnna German scholar, should have known.nIn the 18th century the Berliners decidednto prolong their broadest, treelinednavenue, Unter den Linden, in anwesterly direction, and the result wasnan enormously wide boulevard runningnon for miles through the so-callednTiergarten (originally a deer-fillednwood) and the village of Charlottenburgnalmost as far as the Havel Lake.nIn terms of beauty this “great axis”ncannot stand comparison with thenChamps-Elysees. This is because thenBrandenburg Gate, with its severenDoric columns, is a ponderous piece ofnneoclassic architecture compared tonParis’s two arches of triumph, while thenSiegessaule, or Victory Column, whichnwas put up to commemorate BismarckiannPrussia’s successive battlefieldntriumphs over Denmark, Austria,nand France, is an ugly specimen ofnlate-19th-century pomposity.nIf the Parisians were luckier, it was asnmuch by accident as by design. Thenenchantingly but deceptively namednChamps-Elysees (Elysian Fields) wasnoriginally a wood extending from thenwestern limits of the Tuileries Gardensn(one of Catherine de Medicis’ gifts tonthe city) all the way to the crest of anhill, which extended southward towardnthe villages of Chaillot and Auteuil.nThrough this wood, for the benefit ofnriders and horse-drawn carriages, wasncut a sandy swathe leading westwardnover the crest of the hill and down thenother side and across a loop of thenSeine and so on as far as Saint-nCermain-en-Laye. In 1807 Napoleonndecided to crown this wooded crestnwith a monumental Arch of Triumph,nwhich was intended to be far grandernthan the recently completed Arch ofnTriumph in Rome.nIn 1789 — the convulsive year thatnthe French will soon be commemorating—nthe Phrygian-bonnetednrevolutionaries had gone on a rampagenand proceeded to tear down the Bastillen(no loss, it had always been anneyesore) and also Louis XIV’s final,nold-age “folly,” the Chateau de Marly,nnear Versailles. Fortunately, theynspared several magnificent equestriannstatues, sculpted by Coustou andnCoysevox. Later someone had the brilliantnidea of moving them into Paris,nJANUARY 1989/43n