“Me, I don’t sell literature” or the rejection of the “industrial literature” of the “rich amateur”

Starting from the text of Sainte-Beuve, this article analyzes the rejection of “industrial literature” of the “rich amateur” Larbaud, guardian of symbolist values and uncompromising customs officer of the “general public” by questioning his denigration of “right bank” literature, vitiated by the cult of money, and of mass literature soon stamped, in an anti-American spirit, “made in the USA”.