SOURCE: “A French Satirist,” in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CCVII, January-June, 1961, pp. 102–03.

In the following essay, the anonymous critic reviews The Proverb and Other Stories, finding that it affirms that Aymé is “a born storyteller.”

Marcel Aymé, currently represented by The Proverb and Other Stories, has been highly praised by American reviewers, and I find it a bit puzzling that he should have so limited an audience. He is, to be sure, an oddity among contemporary French writers, but his oddity is such as might be expected to recommend him to American readers. Aymé has never become involved in literary and ideological cults; he is an old-fashioned individualist, more interested in people than in ideas. He is, moreover, a born storyteller, one of the best practicing in any language, and even in translation his prose is elegant and extremely readable. What possibly disconcerts some Anglo-Saxons is that Aymé's...