“Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i. e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic duties to society and who are compromised by our intellectually dubious commitment to virtue, which can be defined by the perpetual smear-word of French polemic: the bourgeois. (Bourgeois equals humanist.) This word has long been anathema in France where categories are part of the ruling notion of logique. The word cannot be readily matched in England or America.”

— V.S. Pritchett

"Jean Genet: A Modern Nihilist", p. 102
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

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V.S. Pritchett 23

British writer and critic 1900–1997

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