What I Am Reading: "A Taste for Intrigue: The Multiple Lives of François Mitterrand" by Philip Short

François Mitterrand first came to my attention, fittingly, in a conspiracy novel, The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet. This is fitting because Mitterrand was often famous for his scandals, from a secret second family to a fake assassination attempt to various financial improprieties. I picked up this book more for fun, scandalous reasons than anything, but the career of Mitterrand is a heavy topic. As a young man, he defected from the Vichy to the Resistance; in the Fourth Republic, he served as a cabinet minister in many different capacities throughout the tumult; in the sixties and seventies, he helped merge the various left factions into a coherent socialist party (and carried their banner in a series of increasingly close Presidential elections), and in the ‘80s, he served as the first left-wing leader of France in the Fifth Republic.

Mitterrand underwent many political changes throughout his career, but he maintained the same character throughout. He was reserved and ambiguous, preferring to play his cards close to the vest. Many thought that he was shifty or scheming; in fact, I am often reminded of the fevered caricature that the right paints of the Clintons in our own discourse. He could exercise absolute power, but sometimes undermined his own agenda by allowing problems to fester or undercutting those whom he put in place to enact his agenda. Some of these same individuals are familiar from idle readings on recent French politics, and a few are even still in the arena today. This is history much more recent than I usually read it.

Mitterrand’s career was one of high highs and low lows: on one hand, he helped to integrate Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, and earlier laid some groundwork in maneuverings to keep the continent under the shield of American nuclear deterrence. Some of his lows are some of modern France’s lowest moments, including dithering in the face of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, and, earlier in his career, support for extreme state violence against the Algerians during their independence struggle. I am deciding that my summer vacation permits me to skip out on a thorough summary of this book, but I thought that this was a good biography, though lacking in footnotes (hence I usually prefer works by academics!). Our old friend Jean Lacouture even appears a few times, including writing an authorized biography as Mitterrand neared the end of his life (also at the end of his term in office, having assumed France’s presidency at a late age). Lacouture also of course wrote about Léon Blum, the other leading light of the historic French left, and about de Gaulle, the man whom Mitterrand shaped his political career in opposition to, in many ways. De Gaulle may always be the more important political figure, but Mitterrand came a close second in modern French history.