I Always Suspected That

Here's a 1967 interview in The Paris Review of Jorge Luis Borges, one of my favorite writers from South America.  It's mostly about literature, but this quote caught my eye:

"During this century, as I say, the epic tradition has been saved for the world by, of all places, Hollywood. When I went to Paris, I felt I wanted to shock people, and when they asked me—they knew that I was interested in the films, or that I had been, because my eyesight is very dim now—and they asked me, “What kind of film do you like?” And I said, “Candidly, what I most enjoy are the Westerns.” They were all Frenchmen; they fully agreed with me. They said, 'Of course we see such films as Hiroshima mon amour, or L’Année dernière à Marienbad out of a sense of duty, but when we want to amuse ourselves, when we want to enjoy ourselves, when we want, well, to get a real kick, then we see American films.'"