Los Desaparecidos

Today I went to a free event at my local library on 'Los Demonios'. It's both a novel and a play, written simultaneously by a French author called Valérie Boronad, currently showing at the Vingtième Théâtre. VB gave a lecture on her work and read extracts from it, before a group discussion.

She seemed to find it difficult to get away from the topic of how someone who has no connection whatsoever with the events she describes has the right to enter into their world, almost as if she feels guilty for doing so. The group vacillated between the admission that all horror is shared human pain, whether it be the war in Algeria, Nazi atrocities, Bosnia, Spain under Franco, or Argentina's Dirty War, and the criticisms of two Argentinian woman who had fled to France during the period and who had plenty to say, largely along the lines of, "I know this is fiction, bien sûr, and not la vérité, but honestly if your protagonist had done that he would have not been allowed to live, he would have been shot instantly." Boronad patiently (yet slightly defensively) tried to explain that in her novel, Luis is more useful to the junta alive than dead, and he will die soon in fulfilling his mission, but they laughed together and speculated that, in fact, he was more useful to the author alive than dead. They may have had a point.

We had assembled in the amphithéâtre underneath the Bibliothèque Place des Fêtes, a warm, carpeted space with wicker chairs and lamps, perfect for intimate readings and discussions. It became full of ghosts, from Tango's dead father, Luis, to the invisible audience of one to whom all art is, perhaps, directed. One Argentine lady with a deep, husky voice was a singer: "When I sing," she said, "I don't sing for the audience, or even for myself. I sing to some intangible being who becomes the focus of my expression." Boronad agreed. She quoted Russell Banks, the American writer, who she implied wrote to 'The Angel On The Roof,' and who defines the relationship between the reader and the writer thus: ‘A story is ultimately, of course, about the teller, but the ambition is to try to make it seem like it's about the listener or the reader.’ You write for your imaginary audience, though you don't yet know who they are. The connection, the moment of identification, of reaching out and hooking in whoever happens to be standing by is what counts. Strangely, she tried to convince us that she wasn't one of those authors who writes only about themselves, but one to whom a story arrives, fully-formed, as if she is merely the conduit. A mysterious example of this, she explained, was the occasion on which she invited members of the Argentinian association for los desaparecidos to watch her play. Beforehand, they were reticent, skeptical that some foreigner could claim to grasp what they had been through. After the performance, they were profoundly moved. She had created something genuinely Argentinian, (she said) they said.

I was tempted to go to the play, which is apparently a mixture of theatre and film, an experience rather than an entertainment. It even incorporates smells, for example, the perfumed, maternal smell of the mother who leaves her husband and her country clutching her infant to her breast. Wacky and cool. As the boat pulls away, the baby tastes salt. The salty sea, which has a great presence in the novel, blends with the tears of Anna, and to her child's senses they become one.

At the end of the reading, we're discussing the evocative nature of the sea-scenes. Boronad says she was born by the sea in the south of France and grew up by the coast. It is always there, she says, always present in her mind. You can't not write about yourself, I think, even if you don't realise it at the time. I am with Russell Banks on this one, and so have shifted him to the top of my reading list. Man sounds great. Can't wait to dive in.

Cycling, cinema, lots of books.

I cycled home from school yesterday because I sensed that Spring had arrived. It was still pretty cold on the knuckles, but I wasn’t far off. Beautiful day. And I went to a film called ‘An Education,’ about an intelligent and precocious schoolgirl who has an affair with an older man. I agreed with my landlady’s verdict: “Elle a perdu un homme, c’est pas le fin du monde, quoi.”

Reading List

The Human Stain, by Philip Roth

Continuing my foray into American Lit, everything I read by Roth makes me like him more. This one has some interesting takes on perspective: he gets behind everyone’s face, under everyone’s skin. I should take a star away for his persistent writing-about-and-perhaps-exclusively-for-academics but I can’t. I also can’t reveal the plot because there are excellent twists.

Score: Five Stains

The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt

Possession is to A.S. Byatt what Midnight’s Children is to Rushdie, the big prize-winner that lends a flavour to all subsequent work but can never be topped. I’m not sure this one was worth all the hours the author clearly spent at the V&A researching it. Fewer glazed pot and fabric and Morris wallpaper descriptions and a tighter plot might have helped. Also, at the end of any novel containing the words, ‘1890,’ ‘Edwardian,’ ‘Golden summers,’ ‘cricket on the lawn’ in the blurb, you just know every young male character bought it in the trenches before you open the cover...

Score: 3 stars

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon

This one’s a cracker, Italo Calvino’s ‘If on a winter’s night a traveller,’ as written by Hunter S. Thompson. Mysterious, deep yet light, and terribly accomplished. I will remember and recommend and re-read.

Score: 49 stars, look out for the best renaissance tragedy plot ever



Entre Les Murs, by François Bégaudeau

Great French semi-autobiography which became a film, English title: ‘The Class,’ about teaching French in a collège in the 19e. I loved this because of the snippets I recognised from my own staff room:

‘Personne sait faire le recto-verso sur la photocopieuse?’
‘Non, mais ‘y a des gateaux secs si t’en veux.’

Inspiring, authentic, a colloquial classic.

Score: cinq étoiles, moi j'sais pas

The photocopier was broken yesterday, stretching our creativity to the limit and singling out the lazy worksheet-centred teachers from the improv. masters. A little spot of pendule filled the gap nicely.

The above are overdue at the library so I'm heading up there this afternoon. I have done many more interesting things but will have to leave them for another time.

Verlaine (1844-1896)

Reading in French is so incredibly good for my language skills. I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose; the reason my English is so good is because I’ve spent so much time with my nose in a book. I remember being at primary school (another of those resurfacing memories caused by teaching in one) where occasionally someone would ask me how to spell something or what the right usage of a word was, and I would tell them without thinking about it. Seeing long words and uncommon grammatical structures in front of your eyes helps you recognise what’s right and what’s wrong instinctively. I like reading biographies in French because they’re interesting yet factual, apart from the occasional 'Paul Verlaine fled to London again like a bat out of hell' they’re blessedly free of complicated metaphors or double meaning or philosophical debate and so very easy to understand even if the vocabulary and the grammar are more advanced than I’m used to (i.e. more so than ‘Direct Soir’).

Anyway, Paul Verlaine is a nasty piece of work. The spoilt only child of an indulgent mother who kept her miscarried foetuses in jars, PV is classic self-obsessed wild artist type, keeps losing decent jobs obtained through connections, drinks, whores, eventually marries nice little French girl and before she even gives birth to their son is running around Europe with young poet Rimbaud (who, this biography says, is an intolerable peasant type who insults everybody and abuses PV dreadfully.) After he shoots Rimbaud in the arm (!) he goes to prison, during which he, remarkably, embraces Catholicism. Renouncing all vices, he writes religious poetry. When he gets out he runs to Stuttgart to find and convert Rimbaud, who is having none of it (PV spoils his case slightly by going for a romantic walk with R and frantically trying to embrace him.) After this fiasco he lives in England by himself teaching French for a while. (At some point the poor wife finally dumps him.) Comes back to France, indulges pastoral fantasies, develops various ill-considered attachments to young men who remind him vaguely of Rimbaud. (Still drinking and whoring throughout.) Works as English teacher by virtue of his time spent there, invents technique of talking French with an English accent (no, seriously, his pupils must all say Bon-jewer Mon-sewer Verlayne when he comes in). When his poetry takes off, he surrounds himself with young protégés who remind him vaguely of Rimbaud. (All these are mentioned in the biography as ‘young men who remind him of his own dear son, forbidden to him since the separation’ (balls).

Aged about 50 but looking about 80, he catches on to the wheeze of foreign lecture tours fairly late in life, and, dressed like a tramp, staggers around Europe mumbling incoherently before room after room of aghast foreign academic and literary circles, gleefully spending his fees on, yup, drink and whores.

Dies in excruciating (and not entirely undeserved, in the opinion of this biography reader) pain.

Another reason I like reading biographies is the occasionally breathtaking gulf between how a person appears to the world – in where they live, who they know, how they dress – and the work produced by that inner hidden self that can so outshine the former. Why were all those Belgian and English literary circles so surprised at the disparity between the poetry that had inspired them to meet the author, and the reality of the man himself? In my edition of French Grazia a couple of weeks ago there was a short interview with some yummy intellectual, now aspiring film director, who gave Rimbaud as his main influence. Une Saison en Enfer is cited with reverence as a pivotal literary work. Rimbaud gave up writing when he was 21 and his life was a mess through his leg amputation to his early death. I don't know what to take from this.

Is the gap between the mundane and the visionary at its greatest for the artist? If so, are these great works produced because their real lives are so crummy? Or are their real lives so crummy because they can’t handle the magnitude of the creative force inside them?

Or is this gulf present for everyone? In which case, every single person is a mass of emotions and desires and beautiful, poignant thoughts and impulses hidden behind an ordinary face and body, nondescript clothes, an undistinguished existence. The artists don’t have more feeling than everyone else, they are just the lucky ones who manage to squeeze some of it out. And when they do, we turn to them in awe and admiration, exclaiming, ‘that’s just what I wanted to say!’ projecting our own mute experience of feeling into their words, their pictures, their music.

I'd like to talk to a French person about Verlaine and Rimbaud, and see if they think the end product was worth it. I can't get very far at all without hitting words I don't understand, and being put off by too many exclamation marks and dot dot dots. (Or maybe they are just rubbish.)

Cinéphiles look away now

I knew never going to see new films at the cinema would pay off eventually.

UGC is showing the 25 best films of 2009 at €3 each this week. Last night I went to 'Le Concert' at Bercy.
It's one of those films that would fit into the New Yorker Cartoon Lounge's bit on 'Confusion at the Cinema':

Homme A: "Tu vas voir le concert ce soir?"
Homme B: "Mais quel concert?"
Homme A: "Non, je veux dire 'Le Concert,' tu y vas?"
Homme B: "Je sais pas, un concert de quoi?"
Homme C: "Et où sont 'Max et les maximonstres'?"

Ok, the last bit doesn't translate at all.

See it. I loved it. During the opening credits, I realised with an inward groan that this film was going to make me miss playing in an orchestra. It also made me want to speak Russian, and go to the Théâtre du Châtelet, and drink an entire bottle of vodka when I realised none of the above were going to happen.

The plot revolves around classical music, but it's not un film intello, it's something anybody can watch and love and feel that they want to participate in. Without wanting to give spoilers, I drew an analogy between the orchestra and the soloist in the beginning of the final scene, and the audience and the film itself. (See, another point in favour of 'Le Concert': it brings out beautifully everyone's inner ridiculous pretentiousness, but that's okay, once in a while.)

When You Say The Year, Now You Start With 'Twenty'

I'm back in Paris for deux mille dix. (I said I would incorporate French eventually.)

Almost everyone here is mad for the soldes, every shop is offering 10%, 20%, 40% off, and I am assured they will get even more extreme before it's all over. In my experience January sales involve crushing around in busy hot shops taking your coat on and off to try on optimistically a) the top with the great floral pattern that turns out to be four sizes too big and b) the perfect versatile pencil skirt that ends up being four sizes too small. Still, sales are all about optimism, so I went to Printemps, the huge department store, on Thursday to check them out. I was just like Dougal in the lingerie department. Burberry swimsuits swam in front of my eyes and blaring music assaulted me from every direction. Heavily-made up fifty-year-old ladies in killer heels verbally abused the concession staff in Spanish, Russian and Japanese, and the staff then took their frustrations out on the queue for the changing rooms by verbally abusing them in French.

I eventually found the loos and had to hand over €1 to an air hostess holding a spray can, who escorted me to my cubicle. The waiting males outside were slapping each others' shoulders and squeezing out tears of mirth at the six different colours of toilet paper on display, and the various potions and lotions available in this highly superior urination station. I have never seen men outside a toilet less bored. I left.

Reading List:

Favourite Christmas book goes to 'Faces of Humph: Cariacatures and Memories' by Humphrey Lyttelton, which got me through that interminable stretch of Christmas Day between the Queen's Speech and the trifle and salmon sandwiches.

Score: Take Five stars (it's a jazz book. Sorry.)

'The Cleft' by Doris Lessing

This great woman (born 1919) is still alive and writing, despite having written a perfect novel ('The Golden Notebook') in 1962. I can say that of no other author. She won a Nobel in 2007 for 'The Cleft,' clearly because it was too late to give her one in 1962. Anyway, it's a fable about the origin of the sexes, in which a tribe of women who live by an enormous vagina-shaped rock slowly discover and are discovered by a new male gender. I know what you're thinking, so I'd like to quote her on feminism:

"What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 'Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.' Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion."

– Doris Lessing, The New York Times, 25 July 1982

She's one of the good guys.
Score: Three Nobel Prizes (probably more if by anyone else, but I'm comparing it to a perfect novel)

'Runaway' by Alice Munro

A lot of people make a big fat fuss about Alice Munro. This collection of short stories could be titled by short story cliché: "Is She Or Isn't She Adopted," "Is She Or Isn't She Psychic," "She Married The Wrong Brother," "He Had A Twin All Along," "She Went Funny-Religious," "Who Knew He Was Going To Jump In Front Of That Ole Train," etc. I did enjoy reading this. There was some great writing in it. But I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that all the characters were either Alice Munro or unfair caricatures of people who didn't like Alice Munro. Also, I'm sick of reading about generic wild environments e.g. coastline, islands, forests, etc.

Score: Three stars

'Oracle Night' by Paul Auster

Paul Auster is the one married to Siri Hustvedt, you know, the one I said wrote about "intellectuals in New York coping with the past, having dinner parties with each other" well, guess what, this is about a novelist in New York, I'm sure there is a dinner party involved, or at least some picking up of supper from a specialist deli. It's one of those books where the title of the book is also the title of the protagonist's book, which we are allowed to glimpse extracts of. (Like 'The Golden Notebook,' in fact.) Actually, beh, er, in this case it's the title of a book within the protagonist's work-in-progress. It's three-deep, clever, but Paul knows it, and Siri does too, and I bet they're in their New York loft right now eating very expensive delicatessen supper and talking about how clever they are.

Score: Four stars, it was damn good really, despite my resentment.

'Everyman' by Philip Roth

I can't believe I've never read any Auster or Roth. One would be understandable, neither is inexcusable. I loved this. This is about 'The Life and Death of a Male Body,' as the protagonist would call it, as he says from inside the book, if he'd ever been a writer. The most similar thing I've read recently was DeLillo's 'The Body Artist,' because they don't just address Death in an expansive, philosophical sense: I felt they both really try hard to understand the physical nature of a human body, its potential, its limitations, and how these fit with who we are inside it. I finished this feeling like I'd made friends with an author. You know. Next time you see them on a shelf you'll give an affectionate smile, they'll take precedence over other shiny books you haven't read. You give them a room and a key, then they start to put out tendrils in your mind and link with other experiences you've had, people you've known, books or films or pictures you're drawn to.

Score: Five stars, I'm feeling generous.

I'm having a New World literature phase, because at first, after reading so much classic old English waffle, Margaret Atwood sounds like Don DeLillo sounds like Alice Munro, but the more I read, the more these voices disassociate from each other and speak out separately. It's like when you read 'Trainspotting' and at first you think, 'oh, balls, it's all in Scottish,' then by the end you know the accents so well they have personalities of their own; characters, almost.

I'm being slightly facetious to make up for my shocking ignorance in having done a literature degree yet read virtually no modern American literature.

I am fulfilling my own prophecy in finding it an endless struggle to go to stuff and have time to write about going to stuff. It may be one or the other. A while ago I went to see La Clique at Bobino for €10 (standing, lounging, perching or otherwise squashing up tickets, rather than actual seats, but still.) It made me want to keep a pocketful of silver stars on me at all times and toss a shower of them in the air whenever I do anything remotely impressive. It's in London over Christmas, so if you're looking for presents of the 'doing not having' variety, I can thoroughly recommend it. My favourite act:


Reading List

Midnight Express, by Billy Hayes
The story of a young American hippie's 5-year stay in a Turkish prison for possession of hash, and his subsequent escape. Translated into French so simple even I can understand it. Quite heart-warming in a way, I think there's a movie too.
Score: Two stars

The Body Artist, by Don DeLillo
Stark. A grieving woman tells stories with her body by forcing it under the most perfect control, and an idiot man can only speak in the words of others. Gets under your skin. Full of images that stick, and half-conscious repetition. One to read again when I have more life experience.

Score: Three stars.

The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt

Paul Auster's Norwegian wife writes wryly and wittily about intellectuals in New York coping with the past, having dinner parties with each other, etc. It's the kind of book where someone would find a lost childhood toy in an attic and talk about it for an entire chapter, including flashbacks. Protagonist has a respected and lucrative yet, importantly, not soulless profession: in this case psychiatry.

Score: Four and a half stars, lose half a one for being the famous novelist wife of a famous novelist. Pah.

My Balls On Your Pas Encore Payé

The chocolate event at Galeries Lafayette was magic. (That was Thursday 12th.) Their Christmas decorations are up, making the entire outside look like a huge Russian palace of some variety, at least until you get close enough to see the animated teddy bears in the windows. Maison du Chocolat were giving out tiny cups of heavenly melted chocolate – happiness in a vessel – and Dalloyau were making chocolate rings in moulds brushed with edible metallic paint and handing them out as soon as they were dry. Too beautiful to eat. Pierre Hermé (of Maracons fame) was signing his new book. He looks exactly as you would imagine, i.e. like he's fond of chocolate macaroons.

I'm tempted to make a massive generalisation about French people and chocolate, or the French and self-indulgence, or the Parisian obsession with appearance, but it's been done so often, and besides, no-one does Paris-based generalisations better than Olivier Magny, so I'm just going to give up with those and encourage you to read his fabulous (and accurate) blog instead of this one.

On Sunday I went to my second Parisian salon: Papilles en Fête. There I got talking to (and sampled the wares of) a rabbity fellow promoting terrine du lapin, pointy-nosed wine vendors, fat-fingered butchers selling pork cured fifty ways, and the inventor of the Foie Gras Strawberry, a lump of goose liver pâté painted with a jammy red exterior and topped with a real strawberry stalk. (Get them while you can...) And then I did something which means I will never integrate into this society. I came across the snail stall, where a quiet man with slightly bulgy eyes was putting foil trays into a microwave. The smell of garlic butter was fabulous. I glanced over his propaganda, showing the snails in their natural habitat, pictures of him with snails, explanations of potential predators of snails, etc. Then he stuck a shell under my nose, nestled in a paper napkin, with a cocktail stick poking out, the other end attached to the innards of said mollusc. I stared at it. With one swift motion I flicked it into my mouth and chewed. I told myself I'd eaten them before, as a child, on holiday in rural France, and loved them. By this point all the butter had gone and I was left with pure snail. I reminded myself I was daring, cosmopolitan; a try-anything-once, pleasure-seeking citizen of the world. Then I went behind the honey stall and spat it back into the shell. This was a huge mistake, as I could then see what it looked like.



Thursday was Beaujolais Nouveau day. At lunch in the school cantine all the teachers were complaining because normally one gets Beaujolais on the third Thursday of November (it's Beaujolais day, duh) but there wasn't any.

Apparently it's like when a Harry Potter book comes out, people hang around at midnight for the first taste. I thought they were taking the piss, but after school I went to my supermarket and they wheeled a massive trolley of pink and red bottles out: "Ahh, c'est le beaujolais? Oui oui c'est aujourd'hui, ça coute combien par bouteille? Un euro quatre-vingt? Pas possible! Deux quatorze? Ahh, beh, tant mieux quand même, je prends trois." €2.14 each. They're saying it's a good year, the Beaujolais is fine, the crise (credit crunch) is lifting, the cows are getting fatter. (Wine is what single-handedly keeps French farmers busy. Not subsidies.)

After a refreshing verre of Beaujolais Nouveau, I went to a 'concept' soirée called My Balls On Your, the idea being to show contempt for any noun you like in the illustrated format.

I have a bunch of stickers. Look forward to seeing where that is going.

I'm not completely frivolous. I m'inscrired at the library on Friday (free, Paris-wide access to up to 40 materials of my choice for 3 weeks) to give me something to read. If I were in need of a certain text or edition I'd be screwed, but as I'm just browsing for pleasure and random enlightenment it's fine. Also on Friday, I re-discovered Culture Rapide off rue de Belleville (between métros Belleville and Jourdain I think), a very cool café-bar with reasonably-priced coffees, snackage and booze, plus a weekly programme of events from free buffets to poetry slams.

...and we're back to frivolous: today found me in St Germain, then at Bistrot des Artistes on rue des Anglais (excellent) for a rum-and-coco milkshake. A lovely French girl had tickets to Grizzly Bear tonight at La Cigale in Montmartre, but couldn't go and couldn't sell them, and as it started in an hour, she gave them to us with a plea to "just go and enjoy it, I would rather someone used them!" Bought tickets with (now ex-) boyfriend? Unwanted birthday present? Sudden allergy to sweat and or beer? I don't care, they were great, and if I ever see her there again I will thank her more enthusiastically than I did this time (basically just a nod and a smile for the €25 face-value of the ticket).

Oh, and an addition to my post on French marketing: how could I forget sex. Sex sells anything that isn't sold using anything else, i.e. virtually everything.

Reading List
'Gomorrah' by Roberto Saviano: The author is a journalist from the region who risked his life to write this passionate and unflinching exposé of the Naples mafia. Heart-poundingly dangerous.
Score: Five, and no jokes (too serious).

'The Satanic Verses' by Salman Rushdie: a few magical moments, and some great prose infused with Rushdie's idiosyncratic wordplay; the rest of the book is worth it if you're a fan, but if you're not, it can all get a bit Bend It Like Beckham.
Score: three stars, zero fatwas.