Lyon

I have finally been somewhere in France other than Paris, look:

For some reason a DELF B2 exam costs around €100 more in Paris, even when you take into account the train fare to elsewhere, so I made it into a day trip to Lyon. It went fine apart from the listening part, imagine a stuffy, uncomfortably-warm classroom, clock ticking slowly towards 5pm, tape broken, tape machine broken, the waiting, the agitation, "ok, we'll start again," which fatally wounded my ability to concentrate. Lyon's team were playing Bayern Munich so the town was full of jubilant German parties singing, "Baaayern München, tra la la la la!" I have never before seen football spectators so unthreatening. Everyone, in general, was lovely. The lady at the postcard shop, the waitress where I had lunch, my examiners, people I asked directions, two guys I bought a salad off before I left – everybody was charming and respectful and smiley.

And then I got back to Paris. Since I last updated I've had a gun pointed at me at the fairground, been to the lovely Musée Marmottan and the pretentious 'resto tendance' La Gare,
wandered through centquatre (of which more soon), and popped into the delightful sweat shop, which I'm sure you've read about in the Guardian, darling, squeezed in between those articles about how great Nick Clegg is and how he reads Beckett and speaks five languages. (I don't know why people are calling him a '2nd Tony Blair,' he appears to have stolen that dubious crown from Cameron lately, but come on, my french accent is better than Tony Blair's. )

Oh, I can't remember if I talked about Le Bistrot du Peintre or Chartier, or a million other places Paris has revealed to me recently, like Baron Samedi's. That place is covered with vintage jazz swing soul posters, and a flicking projection of retro advertisements (mosty for cars and cigarettes) adorns the back wall. A wire sculpture of the man himself sits on a high shelf, throwing an eerie shadow of his top hat and, underneath, his grin, onto the wall behind him. A bar with a late feel, they do a v respectable €2.50 half, but though happy hour's only until 20h00, you'll pay €3.50 for pints and €4.50 for cocktails. They swing open the windows so inside and outside can mingle. Oh and they do €9-platters, the kind where they plonk a sausage, a hunk of cheese and a bowl of cherry jam on a wooden board, and accompany it with a whole Poilâne thin-sliced loaf in a basket. Enough; it's cool, essentially.

I am starting to get melancholy and even slightly panicky about leaving. If I can once more draw the analogy between Paris and a difficult relationship, it's been good to me, it's been bad to me, it frustrates me more than I can express, but now I'm finally leaving it, all I can think of are the good times. After my first go at packing, I'm heading out for an aimless wander through the centre, just to soak up some atmosphere, and maybe buy myself a leaving present. A nice slicing knife, perhaps, or a kooky household gadget from pylones, or some shoes, or sunglasses. It's been fun, Paris, now loosen your grip and let me go. No clinging to my knees. No. I have a train to catch. Get up. Honestly...

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.)

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.)