Goncourt

Mobilized at the beginning of the war, French Novelist Philippe Heriat found himself on duty guarding the Goncourt subway station in Paris. Fortnight ago, the name took on a new meaning for Novelist Heriat. He won the Goncourt Prize (5,000 francs), France's highest annual award for fiction.*

A tall, big-jawed, witty bachelor, Philippe Heriat considers himself to have been one of the three worst students in his school. The other two: French Air

Minister Guy La Chambre and Film Director Rene Clair. In 1916 Heriat gave up his studies to enlist, fought for 20 months. His first book, The Lamb, won the Renaudot Prize in 1931. The Spoiled Children, winner of the Goncourt, is his seventh.

The Spoiled Children has for heroine a Paris Stock Exchange broker's daughter, Agnes Boussardel, who ups and goes to the University of California. There she loves a 200% American with Indian blood, leads the fast, far-weekending, Sierra-smitten life of the Golden West. Back in France she finds her family stuffy, marries her cousin, learns that her family when pressed can raise considerable hell.

Author Heriat got his U. S. material when Actor Charles Boyer called him to Hollywood as historical supervisor of Conquest. Himself an actor on the Paris stage and for various European movie companies, Heriat prefers a suede zipper jacket to a uniform, has lately been transferred from the Goncourt subway station to the post of censor at the Hotel Continental.

*Given by the Goncourt Academy, founded in memory of Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt (1822--1896) and his brother, Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt (1830--1870), collaborating novelists, historians and authors of the famed Goncourt Journals.

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