Durtain, Luc

(pseudonym of André Nepveu). Born Mar. 10, 1881, in Paris; died there Jan. 29, 1959. French writer. Physician by education.

In 1908, Durtain published the collection of poems Pegasus, written in the spirit of unanimism. The ideas of this school influenced all his work, which depicted the fate of the “little man” in the clutches of bourgeois civilization. His books on America, such as The 40th Floor (1927; Russian translation, 1928) and Frank and Marjorie (1934), contrast the achievements of technology with the intellectual impoverishment of contemporary bourgeois society. In the cycle of novels Remembrances of Your Life (vols. 1-4, 1947-50) he painted a rather broad picture of French society. In 1927 he visited the USSR, then sympathetically described his impressions in the book A Different Europe: Moscow and Its Faith (1928).