In 1921, Marcel Proust, in the last months of his life, chose to excuse himself from what he called a temporary lodger who had taken up residence in his brain, a foreigner (étrangère) he identified as Death, and set pen to paper to write a rambling preface to Tendres stocks, a volume by the young Paul Morand. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Proust's text is his opening reference to an observation – on style – by his “master Anatole France.” For France, of course, had prefaced Proust's early volume of stories, Les Plaisirs et les jours. Here then was a legacy: in identifying Morand as “le nouvel écrivain original” par excellence, Proust was inscribing him in the grand tradition he no doubt felt he himself had joined, at the beginning of his career, with the blessings of France. And as if such a godparent were not sufficiently auspicious, Tendres stocks would soon be set into English, under the title Fancy Goods, by none other than Ezra Pound. The next generation of the West's literary pantheon would weigh in with even more forceful votes of confidence. Céline opined that in the year 2000, Morand and (to be sure) he himself would be the only two contemporaries still being read.