It should surprise no one that Gene Wilder is an excellent writer. His only Oscar, after all, is for writing, and Young Frankenstein, the movie he won it for, is a cinematic classic. Still, I didn’t expect Kiss Me Like a Stranger, his autobiography, to be the fascinating, well-paced, top-shelf literary experience that it was.
My French Whore: A Love Story, Wilder’s first novel, is similarly inspired. “Novel” may be a bit of a stretch–it’s a hundred and sixty pages in a small format of large print, and “novella” would probably be a more fitting term. This is as it should be; Wilder here makes an explcit more than passable attempt at imitating the economical style of Ernest Hemingway. Each word and sentece feels turned over and re-examined and re-written until the largest amount of meaning is conveyed in the smallest number of words. It is a small, intricate jewel you can read, as I did, in a lazy afternoon at the beach.
It tells the tale of private Paul Peachy, a none too brave American soldier in World War I, who by unhappy but plausible accident ends up impersonating a high ranking German spy, and is sent to hobnob with French and German aristocrats at an old castle comandeered as a rear operating base. It is there that he meets the titular Frenchwoman, falls in love, and learns what it is to do a brave thing.
In Austin, you can sometimes find this book discounted at book people, and elsewhere perhaps at Barnes and Noble, where I found it. I suggest you give it a read.
