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PREFACE que je n'y verse, et que je n'y veuille faire entrer: ce que je vois, ce que je sais, tout ce que m'apprend la vie des autres et la mienne. . . . J'y travaille d'une facon tres curieuse . . . sur un carnet, je note au jour le jour l'etat de ce roman dans mon esprit; oui, c'est une sorte de journal que je tiens, comme on ferait celui d'un enfant. . . . C'est-a-dire qu'au lieu de me contenter de resoudre, a mesure qu'elle se propose, chaque difficulte . . . chacune de ces difficultes, je 1' expose, je l'etudie. Si vous voulez, ce carnet contient la critique continue de mon roman; ou mieux: du roman en general. Songez a l'interet qu'aurait pour nous un semblable carnet tenu par Dickens, ou Balzac; si nous avions le journal de V Education sentimentale ou des Freres Karamazofl L'histoire de l'ceuvre, de sa gestation! Mais ce serait passionnant . . . plus interessant que l'ceuvre elle-meme. . . .'
To a great degree sociologists construct books: they enforce a formalised unity by way of an apparent logic. I was more concerned that the reader should become familiar with the raw materials out of which, ultimately, a sociology of film (or perhaps even of society as such?) might be built. In a way this book applies to sociology what James Joyce and T. S. Eliot have achieved in Ulysses and The Waste Land, from which I was allowed to borrow the epigraph. And why should the sociologist not learn from the poet, who is so much nearer to the immediacy of human experience?
It will be obvious to the reader that this is a book which approaches film from the consumer's end, an approach which has recently been quite useful for economic theory, but I have deliberately neglected the economics of the film industry. The reader will do well to consult after, or even better before, he reads this book the admirable White Paper (Board of Trade) on Tendencies to Monopoly in the Cinematograph Film Industry, which is an indispensable source of information on the economic structure of the British film industry. This recommendation does not imply that I agree with all the conclusions which this important White Paper suggests. I believe the authors of this White Paper still underrate the monopolistic and restrictive effects of the cinema circuits in so far as they only advocate the restriction of 'further expansion'; nor have they studied the moral impact of films, particularly on the younger generation. It seems to me that an analysis of the economic structure of the film industry can never be separated from its moral or 'political' effect.
Furthermore, there is very little in this book about film as a
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