There is no such thing as genius, Jules Renard writes in one of his earliest Journal entries. There are only sloggers and slackers. “What is needed is to pick up the pen, rule the paper, patiently fill the lines. The strong do not hesitate. They settle in, they sweat it out, they keep going to the end. They run out of ink, they use up all the paper.” The slacker never even starts.
Renard was a slogger with a slacker’s inclinations. Born in rural France in 1864, Renard became a prolific novelist, journalist and playwright. Although he is little known in Britain, the book for which the red-headed Renard is remembered in France is Poil de carotte (“Carrot Top”), published in 1894. Poil tells the
