Climb and Bunishment

I've been so preoccupied with books lately I've been neglecting the 'Paris activities' narration. The last Sunday in March is, apparently, International Tree Climbing Day, so I went to the Parc Buttes Chaumont and shimmied up one. (More like five.) Unfortunately I don't have a 'view from the top' photograph but it was a little like this:


Then last Wednesday I mooched round the exhibition on 'Crime et Châtiment' at the Musée D'Orsay, after hearing a segment on France Inter, the French old people radio I listen to, broadcast live from its opening. We began at the beginning, with Paradise Lost and the slaying of Abel by his brother Cain, and continued via various mugshots of moustachioed criminals. The line between art and historical documentation was satisfyingly vague, with newspaper accounts of gruesome fin-de-siècle murders shoulder-to-shoulder with Goya and Magritte depicting crime, transgression and bloodshed in their own fantastical ways.

The French Revolution subject of the 1793 murder of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday was, er, done to death, both immediately afterwards and posthumously, around the sort of time the Pre-Raphaelites were doing their Ophelias and such. Great lesson in 'who's the good guy' and how it changes over time. Needless to say, my favourite part was the AMAZING gooey blueberry muffin in the café, though I did have some reservations about my plastic cup of tepid water which I received after ordering tea:

Me: 'Excuse-moi m'sieur, mais c'est quoi ça, s'il vous plaît?
Waiter: 'Ah! Désolé, j'ai oublié le thé.'

Hands me a Lipton's teabag. (Obligatory 'I hate this country' moment.)

Here's a fantastic little video (courtesy of le Figaro, in French) which takes you round some of the ace paintings.

Ok, and then today, a surprise Venetian Carnival on the banks of the canal at Bastille, where head-to-toe Dukes and Duchesses behind creepy fixed masks were wandering around mingling with the commoners. They disguised (badly) the bridge as, like, Venetian, and stalked gracefully across it fanning themselves and inclining their heads to the crowd. We think they're the French aristocracy who have to pretend they like living in a republic the rest of the time. It's probably the one day of the year they get to come out and be cheered and receive the adoration they feel is their due. I did feel a bit like a mob, but no irrational desire to guillotine, luckily, though there is one in the Musée D'Orsay until the 27th of June...


Reading List

Man in the Dark, by Paul Auster

I think I chose this book because of the Chatroulette Piano Guy and his 'Man in the Dark' improv section. (Tell me you've seen it. No? Really? Sigh.) Merton, the Piano Guy, is better. This is yet another book in which the perfect couple are happily married for many years, until he makes the dire mistake of leaving her for a sexy younger woman, the wife is devastated but recovers, and he regrets his error for the rest of his life. Like 'Everyman,' like Lonoff in 'The Human Stain,' like, well, nearly every one of these recent American novels of mine has an incidence of infidelity. I think it's the mark of the noughties, the presence of this problem that, while men and women hold an increasingly equal footing (financial, emotional, professional) in their relationships with one another – or maybe because of that fact – it's still gut-wrenchingly shocking when you find out he's got a floozy. And I don't know what it is with Paul Auster, he's good, but he makes me feel bad. (Lit Crit at its finest, wouldn't you say?)

I haven't really digested this book yet so I can't give stars.

Rats, smiles, Jasmine and rosemary.

When I sceptically googled, “Where can I find fresh rosemary in Paris on Easter Saturday morning?” I didn’t expect much of a response. Maybe an American gift brand of ‘Paris Soap’ scented with herbs, shipping direct to your home. But I’m cooking roast lamb for Easter Sunday lunch tomorrow, and fresh rosemary is a must, so I set myself the mission of locating some.

Half an hour later, having deliberately dressed down in jeans and a hoodie, I arrived at Barbès-Rouchechouart Market. Held Wednesdays and Saturdays under a railway bridge a couple of streets behind the Gare du Nord, in a quartier often delicately described as ‘cosmopolitan,’ this enormous improvisation of stalls feels like a different country. Bright fabrics give way to mint and merguez, stallholders address their customers in French, Spanish, and Arabic, and each other in ten more languages. I feel a bit (ok, I lie, exactly) like Jasmine in Aladdin when she escapes from the Palace and is startled by the fishmonger shoving a trout in her face. I had barely been there ten minutes before I got fed up with “Anglaise! Elle est anglaise! Serve la dame anglaise!” I was stopped and fed bits of orange and sausage, propositioned very politely at least four times, often accompanied by compliments on my smile (I was very overexcited) and having left the house for rosemary, I came home with:

- Three little cantaloupes, one of which I am eating now for lunch and which is so sublime my eyes keep rolling back in my head and I keep losing focus on the screen (€1)
- Five parsnips (€1) The French don’t really know parsnips that well, the small boy running the stall told me he couldn’t give me any fewer than 5 for €1 and as he piled them into a bag curious French ladies looked over and asked me what they were. “Mais, des panés, Madame! Très bien roti avec un peu de miel,” was my too-enthusiastic response. That’s how people know I’m English.
- A kilo of Moroccan haricots verts (€1) These are €3.99 per half-kilo in Franprix. From Kenya.
- A handful of spicy olives (€0.80) for tomorrow’s pre-lunch picking, and five ripe tomatoes (€1 something, we had a bit of a mix-up) for the same.
- A big bunch of mint, to make mint sauce for the lamb (will have to call my Granny and find out how, though) (€0.30)
- A bunch of rosemary (€0.50) Actually, I’m not sure about this, I was too excited at having found what I came for to pay attention to how much it cost. Cheap, anyway.

I'm now back in my apartment counting my purchases and listening to some very Parisian accordion waltzes drifting through my ceiling. On my way home, a girl on the metro had two delightful rats in a cage.

Yesterday my bank account was blocked and my card swallowed, so I couldn’t buy my monthly Navigo pass for the metro. Could it be the one day there’s a contrôle at my stop? (Do bears shit in the woods?) Of course it could. Luckily I brandished an old ticket and hurried through it unscathed. In the evening, I had dinner with the French-Italian couple (I go for the company, I stay for the parmesan) and related my woes. He said, “But that’s the difference between France and Berlin. In Berlin, you’d be stopped and told ‘ah, I know you are only a tourist, but you have bought the wrong zone ticket, you should have used the machine to select the right tarif and the right zone, it is a crime to break the laws of the transport system, I am fining you €50’ but in Paris– ah, in Paris, we only pretend to care.”

Paris, for once, is in my good books.
Speaking of good books…

Reading List

Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth

I have lots more to say on Roth and American Lit which I shall do very soon. I have been to the library and got two more Austers and an Updike so had better shift PR out of the way before I get too into those. The above is apparently Nathan Zuckerman’s final appearance. I found the writing weakened in this book and linked it mentally with the protagonist’s age and decline. So I should either take away or add a star for that, depending on whether Roth intended it or not, but since I will never know that (or know whether, in the end, it matters) I won’t.

Score: Four successive kings [of] Denmark. (If Roth can quote Hamlet, so can I.)

Belle de Jour, by Joseph Kessel

This I read in French. And, my God, what French. I marked a passage mentally for quotation as I read it, and just now opened this short but intense novel at precisely the right page:

L’endroit ou Hippolyte se rendit était un petit bar ouvert toute la nuit en face de la Halle aux légumes. Là, on commençait à sentir le bouge. Les tables souilleés, les détritus sur le carreau glissant, le vide de la salle et une bizarre lumière, à la fois fatigante et confuse, serraient le coeur. Dehors passaient de lentes voitures chargées d’un butin imprécis, avec des chevaux luisants et des homes à moitié endormis, chaussés de grosses bottes et munis de fouets énormes. Une sorte de barbarie régnait sur le lieu.

My translation (sorry, I couldn’t find one, it’s not perfect):

“The place at which Hippolyte rolled up was a modest all-night bar opposite the Halles vegetable market. There, one began to sense the shady atmosphere. The grimy tables, the detritus on the slippery tiled floor, the emptiness of the room and a strange light, at once tiring and vague, all clutched at the heart. Outside, slow vehicles passed, laden under unspecified loot, with glistening horses, and men half-asleep, shod in fat boots and bearing enormous whips. A kind of barbarity reigned over the scene.”

Very good practise, incidentally, for my past tense revision, lots of it being literarily written in the passé simple. The heroine is one of the most selfish, boring, annoying characters you’ll ever have the misfortune to meet in fiction, but the writing more than makes up for her, and I can’t pretend the plot isn’t edge-of-seat stuff. We all know the story: repressed bourgeoise ‘ousewife by day, masochistic prostitute…also by day, actually, she does it with a procession of lower-class men in the afternoons. Ends badly. Buñuel made a film of it starring Catherine Deneuve, who is on the front of my book, looking startled and rabbity and very blonde.

Four stars: Plat du jour

What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt

Guess what, it's about intellectuals in New York being friends with each other and going to gallery openings! Nah, it's better than that. A good, in parts very good, novel, but the second half could be more tightly-plotted, especially as I got the feeling that was the important part. It reminded me of a badly-focused photograph in which the face of the subject is blurry and indistinct and yet the fern, the table, the lamp in the background are sharp, precise, exact.

Score: Three New York intellectuals (This is how I will grade her books from now on.)