Mauriac and Aragon were still the two great writers of 1966 - along with Malraux and Sartre - representatives of two enemy churches: Catholic and Communist, Rome and Moscow, Le Figaro and L'Humanité.
Mauriac dominated the literary and political scene of the season, with his weekly "Bloc-notes" in Le Figaro littéraire. Like Aragon, he straddles the line between politics and literature, and enjoys a dual legitimacy. In September 1965, Flammarion published his latest examination of conscience, Nouveaux Mémoires intérieurs (after Mémoires intérieurs in 1959), a collection of articles and excerpts from the "Bloc-notes", with an "Epilogue" and an "Afterword". The reception was unanimous in its praise, and the book was acclaimed both in print and by critics. But one of the major events of the autumn was his eightieth birthday, which took the form of a truly national commemoration. The high point came on November 10, 1965, with a dinner at the Ritz organized by Bernard Privat and Yves Berger, on behalf of Editions Grasset, before two hundred guests, in the presence of Georges Pompidou, Prime Minister, Christian Fouchet, Minister of Education, and numerous writers including Julien Green, Ionesco, Robbe-Grillet, François Nourissier, Matthieu Galey and Princess Bibesco. Through him, it was the coronation of the last great reigning writer, joining Bourget and Robbe-Grillet, even if this recognition was accompanied by fierce hatred on the part of some: a great anti-Gaullist arc hostile to Mauriac stretched from the Nouvel Observateur to the nationalist right, for example on December 15, 1965, when the writer presided over the Gaullist meeting organized at the Palais des Sports by Malraux.
The link between Mauriac and Aragon could be made through Godard. Mauriac was the grandfather of the young Anne Wiazemsky, who was about to shoot Au hasard Balthazar ; Godard met her on the set of Bresson, whom he had come to interview. In the summer of 1965, Godard was at the center of controversy with the release of Pierrot le fou. Aragon reacted to the attacks on the filmmaker with a beautiful eulogy: "Qu'est-ce que l'art, Jean-Luc Godard", in Les Lettres françaises in September 1965. In it, he declared his love for Godard, "because he is all language. [The disorder of our world is his material This support for Godard earned him attacks from Guy Debord in L'Internationale situationniste.
