Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

How did we get here? Where are we going?

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

 

America is heading for dark times. How did we get here? What can we do? In this new series of posts, we will look at some of the excellent books that tried to inform and warn us. And, as they are published, we will feature the books that offer ways forward. Number 1 on our list, Jane Mayer's Dark Money. 

 

 

Nazi-Era Provenance Research Training, June 24-28, 2024

The Nazi-Era Art Provenance Research Training program is for graduate students and emerging museum and art market professionals.

• Speakers include: Anne Dunn-Vaturi, Senior Provenance Researcher, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Amelie Ebbinghaus, Director, Art Loss Register, London
• Marc Masurovsky, Historian and Co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP)
• Nicholas O’Donnell, Litigation Partner, Sullivan & Worcester LLP, Boston
• Anna Rubin, Director, Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York Department of Financial Services
• Carla Shapreau, Curator, Salz Collection of Stringed Instruments; Lecturer, School of Law; and Senior Fellow, Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley
• Laurel Zuckerman,Claimant in Zuckerman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art, editor Open Art Data
• Jona Goldschmidt, claimant and grandson of Fritz and Thea Goldschmidt
• Carrie Gough, President and Founder, Veritas Fine Art Appraisals & Consulting
• Joanna Gohmann, Provenance Researcher & Object Historian, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
• Jacques Schuhmacher, Senior Provenance Research Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

A talk with author Dominique Godrèche about An Ecology of Consciousness

 

 

UNE ÉCOLOGIE DE LA CONSCIENCE

DOMINIQUE GODRÈCHE

 

 

In her new book, An Ecologie of Consciousness, French author Dominique Godrèche bridges cultures to explore the impact of meditative practices on mental health and society in a time of pandemic.

a Paris Writers News Interview

_______

 

PWN: What is Une Ecologie de la Conscience about?

Dominique Godrèche: The book is a philosophical, anthropological, existential road trip from India to Europe and the United States. A transcultural vision of contemporary societal, ecological issues about psychology, spirituality, with a global perspective. It starts in India, where I followed the Buddhist Vipassana meditation sessions with the Indian master Satya Narayan Goenka, then proceeds to Paris, where I opened the first consultation in France based on meditation, in the department for addictions of Professor Claude Olievenstein, during its experimental phase. It continues in the United States, at the Marc department of UCLA University (the mindfulness research department) where I researched on the use of mindfulness in an institutional context, and the adaptation of eastern philosophical practices to western societies. It relates to Native American culture, while at SAR in New Mexico, the School of American Research of Santa Fe, ( now School of Advanced Research) as an associate researcher during my PhD of anthropology. It describes how different cultures envision health in a broad perspective: individual, collective, societal.

 

What is mindfulness and why is it important?

Mindfulness is the adaptation of ancestral Buddhist meditation to western societies. It was introduced in the United states by doctor Kabat Zinn, who told me during our interview (for Buddha News), “meditation is a way to free oneself from suffering. I looked for a way to introduce this practice without identifying it as Buddhist, because the majority of people do not wish to become Buddhist. So I taught the essence of Dharma without the Buddha dharma, in order to transmit it without the Buddhist connotation.»

Mindfulness is important as it became a way of life today, because it provides peace, serenity, develops the attention, awareness of the present moment. And ultimately prevents violence, through non violent communication. It has replaced the teachings of Buddhist or Hindu meditation, as a secular modern tool to access inner calm and peace of mind, a non medical way to heal anxiety, without the consumption of pills. Because of its multiple usages, it has been adapted to multiple professional contexts –for therapy, but also business…As it helps focusing, and allows to become more efficient, by developing a better quality of attention.

Thus its success and expansion. Also, it is accessible, because it does not imply a religious or spiritual adhesion, and proposed as a simple mental exercise. I have been able to observe that in Los Angeles, in the huge amphitheater of UCLA: hundreds of people were receiving an initiation given by the Marc team in order to access a quick state of relaxation. That is what my book addresses: how sophisticated long term teachings from eastern cultures have been reduced to simple exercises, with no cultural background or philosophical connotation attached. The psychiatrist Dan Siegel, from UCLA, was telling me, “it is just a way of training a muscle”. And Robert Thurman, “Buddha was the first scientist; because Buddhism is a science. Thoughts are a driving force, so we must train our minds. It is neither religious, or dogmatic. But scientific”. A pragmatic approach developed in the United States; so much part of the life style that “mindfulness eating sessions” are advertised.

And with today’s technological addictions, the over use of iPhones and social networks, -Tik tok, Instagram- etc. we have entered a new era of virtual reality, time, and space: the meaning of time changed drastically with the intensive use of technology, a shelter for loneliness. It has replaced live communication, modified usual perceptions. So much that applications have set up time-limit reminders to avoid over usage, and maintain people in a “regular” time frame. In this context, mindfulness is a precious tool as a reminder of real time, versus “elastic” virtual time and spaces. And the “here and now” concept became a mental health help.

 

You've studied the culture and art of Indians of the American southwest for many years. Did this influence this book?

It did; the title, “an ecology of consciousness”, refers to environmental ecology, as much as personal, mental, emotional ecology. Those notions, inherent to Native American culture are reflected in the “Navajo way of beauty”, and its prayer “walking in beauty “ :

“In beauty I walk, with beauty before me I walk, with beauty behind me I walk, with beauty above me I walk, with beauty around me I walk…Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me. I will have a light body, nothing will hinder me. beauty all around me may I walk.”

This approach is illustrated in the Navajo sand painting, which addresses the way the body, the mind, and the universe are interrelated. A holistic concept based on harmony and balance: in the Navajo sand painting, the patient’s body is in contact with a painting drawn on the earth.

 

Harry Walters, a Navajo anthropologist, explains, “Hozho, the Navajo word, describes peace, harmony, balance. The word beauty is related to healing and balance, not to art, a word that does not exist in Navajo; when we say beauty, we mean religion, philosophy, health. For us, everything is related.”

 

I was able to observe this correlation between health and the earth in New Mexico, at the Santuario de Chimayo, a healing place where I was brought by Imogene, a Native American friend. There, I watched the people in search of a relief, a cure, applying the Santuario “healing” dirt on their arms, their legs...A special atmosphere; an experiential situation, where human needs, the earth, and faith meet in a church. This perception of the earth as a healing factor is shared by various Native cultures.

Native American art commonly relates to the concept of Mother Earth, the notion of harmony and balance between the human existence and the land, its health. It addresses the concepts of “life ways”, its philosophy. I felt this power of the land in New Mexico, its physical, mental, spiritual impact. And when I was told my feelings to Godfrey Reggio, -the Santa Fean film maker of the series “Qatsi”, ( the Hopi concept of balance)-, he answered, “it is because the earth here has a special power, and gives you strength. It is a source of energy”.

 

Do you have a personal meditation practice? If so, how did you get started?

I left for India at the age of 17, having studied Indian philosophy, music, and art. I was a great fan of the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, and discovered India through his films. And had the chance to meet him at his home in Calcutta, on my way to Rabindranath Tagore Art School, Shanti Niketan, that he had also attended. Over the years I traveled all over India, looking for spiritual ways and teachings, including yoga with Geeta, the daughter of B. K. S. Iyengar. During my travels, I met fascinating people: the niece of Aldous Huxley, Olivia, in Dharamsala, the American-Russian princess Zina Rachevsky. Both had become Buddhist nuns, and I stayed with Zina, at the Kopan monastery she had founded. I visited various ashrams, from the most utopian

–in Pondicherry (Sri Aurobindo)-, with its city Auroville, to the most traditional, like the one in Tiruvannamalai, where I walked the sacred mountain…I encountered incredible meditators, secluded since decades in the mountains of Rishikesh...Then a friend suggested I join Goenka’s sessions, though he did not know where to find them, as they were itinerant, with no headquarters, like today.

So I started to search for Goenka. His teachings took place in a different location every ten days, and he traveled constantly. But one day, in an airport near Bombay, I was chatting with a gentleman while waiting for my luggage: he asked me the reason of my visit to India. I told him I was looking for Goenka, he smiled, and answered, “I am Goenka ». This is how I attended my first Vipassana session with him soon after; I was 19. I describe this experience in the chapter

«Carnets de Vipassana», a diary of the session explaining the various techniques of meditation.

 

How did you research this book?

The book covers three periods and places: the first one in India, «Santana, a Vipassana diary”. The second, “Return to France, encounter with professor Claude Olievenstein». The third one in the United States, “mindfulness, a north American invention”, at UCLA, an analysis of the north American approach of Oriental meditative practices, and their adaptation to the American culture. It also refers to my research in Santa Fe, at the Navajo psychiatric department, among other internships. I published a comparative approach of French and American psychotherapy, an analysis of memory and time in the therapeutic process of both cultures, and among bicultural populations (Native American, Hispanic American). So the research covers Buddhist philosophy, American anthropology, French and American clinical psychology.

 

Why this book now? Did the pandemic play a role?

Indeed. The book started during the pandemic: my publisher wanted to launch a new edition of Santana (Albin Michel). And I had noticed how the techniques of self control, calm… were advertised online during that period in order to fight the anxiety of the lock down. Also the way the pandemic was reactivating, a “no future” atmosphere, a grim future, lacking dynamics, an absence of projections, addressing the difficulty of living in closed spaces, etc.…in that context, meditation, or philosophical practices, were advertised like well being techniques, gymnastic, with no philosophical connotations attached, but predominantly the sale of sport accessories, - clothes-, etc.…A very materialistic approach of ancestral spiritual technics transformed into commodities. So I decided to write a new book related to the time of the pandemic, and included Santana the Vipassana diary, with a philosophical vision of the lock down, and its impact on our minds in that situation of closure, since we were not allowed to go out, except one hour a day.

It addresses the transformation of spirituality in today’s era in the West. Stuck in the house, I wrote the first part of the book, linking the confinement of the pandemic to the philosophical confinement during a Vipassana session, where we could not go out for 10 days, and introduced my research in New Mexico, and UCLA. The book ends after the confinement, in the south of France, in “Beauty”. It follows different phases: total confinement, philosophical confinement, liberation. It addresses the issues of closure, health, the capacity to stay locked at home, and in ourselves. It questions the issues of inner and outer space, and how they interrelate in different cultures -Asian, European, American-. It ends during the post confinement, with the rediscovery of freedom, -like after a Vipassana session-, when we go back to «normal life», and nature…with a feeling of wonder. So it really followed the process of the confinement. The pandemic has opened new doors of consciousness: about health, our resilience, the relation between ourselves and the environment, survival in today’s world... emphasizing our relationship to the environment. To quote Allen Ginsberg, “Earth pollution identical with mind pollution, consciousness pollution identical with filthy sky”. Goenka used to say that meditation was a way of “cleaning one‘s mind”: an ecology of consciousness.

 

Who did you write 'Une Ecologie de la conscience' for? What are you hoping your readers get out of it?

Une écologie de la conscience is written for a wide category of readers, as it addresses philosophical, psychological, environmental, existential, spiritual issues, on a global scale; in India, in Europe, the United States…it is a story about a personal experience, but beyond: it questions collective contemporary anxieties and life-balance, to which everyone can relate. I see the book as a tool to reflect on health in a holistic sense: mental, emotional, societal…And the relation to the environment, the memory, the status of philosophical practices in the modern globalized world. How to deal with pain, dependency, post traumas, inter cultural relations, identity, time and space…It is conceived as a platform to engage into a debate on various topics, a starting point to address multiple aspects of our lives, -contemplative, or active-. It questions the way we inhabit this world, our ability to cope with extreme, or difficult situations. And how specific practices can lead to a harmonious state of consciousness; to ultimately create, -if not ”a better world”-, a better quality of life, and communication, on a day to day basis.

It also addresses a transcultural approach of health and consciousness, through the eyes of Native cultures, in Mexico, and New Mexico, related to my encounters with traditional medicine people, whose practices are intimately associated to the consciousness of nature and its role in our life balance. And how different times, places and cultures meet on this matter.

 

Is writing a form of meditation? What is your writing practice like?

Writing catalyzes a state of mental absorption. Not “meditation” per se, as meditation consists in emptying one’s mind from any thought. And writing requires a lot of thinking…But the process of mental absorption creates a state of concentration close to meditation, because of the focus needed; and in fine, puts you in a state of deep mental absorption. I write every day; stories for medias, a diary. Notes while walking, mentally; when in a cafe, or a garden, I imagine a story: watching someone, ideas come to my mind about life situations…Writing does not start when I physically write. I might want to write a story about someone by looking at the person talk, walk, or move, by the way she interacts with the space. The environment and the space I find my self in have a lot to do with my writing process and inspiration: in Venice, I constantly have ideas when walking, looking at the houses, the architecture, a square, a “campo”…the people gathering, the sounds of the canals. The space -geographical, architectural, with its sounds…is inspiring. The way people move in this space -narrow streets, endless bridges, small squares, gardens-… Creates a variety of silent and musical environments.

 

Which artists or writers inspire you?

J.M.G le Clezio, Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Paul Eluard, Marguerite Duras, René Guenon, Michel de Certeau, Vladimir Jankélévitch. Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, J. D Salinger, Henri Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Primo Levi, Fyodor Dostoievski... The artists Rothko, Yves Klein, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Anish Kapoor, sculptor George Jean Clos. Native American sculptors Roxanne Swentzell and Craig Goseyiun in New Mexico; conceptual artist Charlene Teters. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, composer Philip Glass. Movie actor Benicio del Toro, whom I interviewed; film makers Carl Dreyer, Wim Wenders, Godfrey Reggio… And many others !

 

What books are you reading?

La maladie de la mort by Marguerite Duras, l’Extase matérielle by Le Clezio, Arcane 17 by André Breton, les Tarahumaras by Antonin Artaud, la Prise de Parole by Michel de Certeau, le Non Lieu by Marc Augé.

 

What are you working on now?

The Jerusalem Syndrome, a religious pathology I studied in Jerusalem with psychiatric, religious, and cultural experts, on which I published articles in Paris Match, Ca m’interesse, le Point among others. It questions the status of religion and faith nowadays, and the impact of religious architecture and sacred geography on the psyche. The book project addresses art, esthetics, history, beliefs, psychology, anthropology, and politics.

Une écologie de la conscience is related to faith and spiritual anxiety in the 70’, 80’, when people were searching for a new life style, in that societal, political era, of a “peace and love” trend originated in the united states, with a large adhesion to oriental disciplines, and the later creation of counter culture communities based on extra European philosophy (mostly Asian). In India, most of the westerners I met were Americans; I met the same groups later in the united states, in communities like the Naropa Institute in Boulder. “An ecology of consciousness” addresses this quest for non violence, for a peaceful mind, and the encounter between Asia and the United States.

This new project analyzes blind, desperate “faith”, the need to believe at any cost and how it can lead to addictive scenarios of violence. It takes place between Jerusalem and the West, addressing transcultural and interfaith interactions, and the role of the “here and now“ concept: real time, real space, versus an imaginary one. It questions life between fiction or reality, how one wins over the other, and the consequences. Ultimately, it interrogates the sense of identity: what does “being one self” mean in today’s society, and the choices people make to create their identity.

 

About the author

Dominique Godrèche is a writer, ethno psychologist, graduated from EHESS Paris, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales de Paris, specialized in issues related to identity, art, faith and beliefs, in the Middle East, United States, Mexico, Europe. Awardee of Le Prix de la Villa Medicis hors les murs in Literature for her essays on contemporary Native American culture, she was the correspondent of Indian Country Today magazine for Europe, and is a contributor to French medias, including Libération, Paris Match, le Point, Le Monde Diplomatique, and We Demain. 

***

émissions de radio/Radio

https://frequenceprotestante.com/events/pour-une-ecologie-de-la-conscience/ "ET MAINTENANT LA GRANDE TRANSITION"  FREQUENCE PROTESTANTE 

 

https://www.airzen.fr/dominique-godreche-pour-une-ecologie-de-la-conscience/ "L'INSTANT PRÉSENT"  AIR ZEN RADIO 

 

Une Ecologie de la Conscience

Publisher: TREDANIEL

Language: French

Pages: 223

Available at bookstores and online

FNAC

DECITRE

AMAZON

 

 

 

Like two scorpions in a bottle: Trump and DeSantis

Trump nicknamed DeSantis "de Sanctimonious" because of the Florida GOP governor's over-the-top God ad and claimed he rigged DeSantis' first election. 

In other words, a normal day in MAGAland.

from The Guardian

In his typical mafioso way, Trump said, “I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/10/trump-paved-ron-desantiss-way-now-apprentice-has-turned-on-master

How Donald Trump attempted to overthrow American democracy: Testimony from the Hearings Day 4

 

 

Links:

Day 1 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://youtu.be/UiL2inz487U

Day 2 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://youtu.be/DtM9Itv6tj8?t=1195

Day 3 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnf4w6rocm8

Day 4 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5hgdGLdh8E&t=1023s

Paris Writers Workshop 2022: A Distinguished Faculty, A Unique Focus on Craft

After two years on-line because of the pandemic and lockdowns, the Paris Writers Workshop is back as a live event, at its usual venue, Forum 104 (104 rue Vaugirard, Paris). It will take place from June 26 to July 2.

This year’s Paris Writers Workshop features a distinguished faculty teaching several genres: novel, short story, creative nonfiction and poetry. The novel master class, taught by Lauren Groff; rapidly filled up. However, here are places remaining in the other master classes. In addition the workshop includes agent consultations, a panel discussion, and a faculty-student reading at the Red Wheelbarrow bookshop. The panel discussion and reading are open to the public, free of charge. For detailed information on the PWW, please visit www.wice-paris.org.

We asked the author-instructors of the classes that are still open to present what will make their master class unique.

Short Story: Alecia McKenzie

The short story class is being taught by Alecia McKenzie, an acclaimed author, journalist and artist. Her stories and first collection, Satellite City, have won Commonwealth prizes, as did her first novel Sweetheart. Sweetheart also won a French prize, the Prix Carbet des Lycéens, in translation.

The short story workshop will help aspiring and experienced writers shape and refine their fiction according to their own vision. The emphasis will be on originality in developing the various elements of a story - character, plot, setting, structure, style, etc. Participants will do in-class writing exercises and will be given immediate feedback, and we will have an added focus on publishing short stories and novellas in today’s market – with a discussion of literary magazines, anthologies, sites, competitions…

Poetry: Jennifer K. Dick:

Originally from Iowa, Jennifer Dick is a long-time French resident. She divides her time between Mulhouse, near the Swiss and German borders, and the Paris region. She is a poet and critic, as well as a professor and department head the University of Mulhouse. She has also recently incorporated an interest in visual art and linguistic diversity into her work

Most poetry workshops tend to take one of 2 approaches—reading over poems written before a workshop by participants and providing feedback or generating new poetry based on prompts during workshops. Both approaches are valuable and will be put to use during the 2022 PWW. But What I am most excited about is not only combining both of these general practices, but opening them to specific on site explorations of language (French-English and other depending on participants or eavesdropping), and of place, city, walking, reflecting on displacement and travel in person and on exploration in order to help each participant envisage their own future book project(s).

Creative Nonfiction: Jeffrey Greene

Jeffrey Greene’s writing has appeared numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, Agni, and the anthologies Strangers in Paris, Intimacy, Nothing to Declare: A Guide to Flash Sequence, and Rewilding. He has published several books, and for many years was a faculty member at the American University in Paris. He currently works with the Pan-European MFA Program.

Despite the range of creative nonfiction subgenres, they all share techniques of narrative craft, many of which are drawn from fiction and poetry. Often the central element is the ability to create the self as character, a first-person narrator who becomes an engaging personality to lead the reader into the world of personal experiences and research. We will look at the narrative structure, description, characterization, dialogue, and tension in your writing, all key elements in making writing spirited and appealing. This workshop invites those of you who are new to creative nonfiction writing as well as writers who have taken workshops before and wish to continue developing skills in the discipline. Individual conferences will be scheduled.

 

• WU271 PWW Novel Master Class: The Anatomy of the Novel (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 9:00 AM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris
• WU273 PWW Poetry Master Class: Poetry: What Can Language Do? (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 9:00 AM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris
• WU272 PWW Short Story Master Class: Writing and Publishing the Short Story (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 2:00 PM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris
• WU274 PWW Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Creative Nonfiction Projects with Jeffrey Greene (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 2:00 PM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris

Interview with Lee Huebner, former publisher of the IHT, on the Fake News Panic

Lee W. Huebner is the former publisher and CEO of the International Herald Tribune newspaper and former special assistant to the President of the United States during the Nixon administration. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Harvard University. Huebner is the Airlie Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where he teaches courses on journalism ethics, media and globalization, political speechwriting, and presidential communication. He is the author of “The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda and the Coercion of Consent.”  

A talk with Lee W. Huebner, former publisher of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, on his book “The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda and the Coercion of Consent.” 

A Paris Writers News Interview

------

Paris Writers News (PWN): Why go back 100 years? What’s the significance of propaganda, fake news today and what happened a century ago?  

Lee W. Huebner (LWH) 

The concept of fake news goes back to the beginnings of time, and the fact that people have always lied to one another, starting with Adam and Eve. The book traces some of this history. 

At first, the word propaganda didn't have a pejorative sense. The word propaganda was after all, the name of the College of Propaganda for the Roman Catholic Church. Its mission was to propagate the faith, much as the ancient Roman farmers used to “propagate” their crops. So, it's a Latin word that suddenly took on a new meaning in the early 20th century.  

The word propaganda was eventually used to describe how people can be misled in a massive way through purposeful misinformation. But that didn’t really happen in a decisive way until the early 1900’s—and especially at the time of the First World War.  

In the early 20th century, Susan Langer, a very thoughtful philosopher, said that you only really see things once you have words for them. So once people started to notice what seemed to be propaganda, and had a name for it, they seemed to find it almost everywhere, heightening their suspicions and their distrust in public information. 

The book explores the reasons why this distrust suddenly exploded, and how “propaganda” became a popular catchword. If you didn’t like some information you encountered, you could simply say “Oh, that's just propaganda.” (Much as people today can say, “Oh, that's fake news!”)  And it really became an obsession, and even a panic, in some ways.  

Because of course, what it meant was that democracy wouldn't function the way people normally expected it to. The public was not the wise source of steady, wisdom. The voice of the people was not the voice of God, and suddenly people had to cope with that realization.  And what I found particularly interesting were some of the parallels with what's been happening recently. 

Lee Huebner in front of the International Herald Tribune headquarters in Paris (courtesy of Lee Huebner)

PWN Did education and literacy have something to do with it? Because around a century ago, as more and more people could read, there was a big boom in publishing from books to newspapers to magazines.  

LWH It was a big factor. Print suddenly exploded everywhere. High speed printing presses were modernized, paper was available much more cheaply, and the railroads and motor vehicles were there to send newspapers and magazines to readers all across the country, and to do so very quickly.  

And all of that had its impact. Two other factors contributed significantly to the new apprehensions. One was social, and one was psychological. The nature of social life was transformed. Woodrow Wilson called it “the de-localization” of American life. The fact that the intimate community, where people knew whom to trust, how to verify things, how to put their hands on the things that counted, all of this began to fade, and more and more it seemed as though more distant places were calling the shots. And that sense of fading local and community control was pretty profound. And with it, of course, came a lessened sense of personal identification with a strong and supportive community.  

One of my former professors, Robert Wiebe at Northwestern University, used to call this the “distension” of American life, mixing the word extension with the word distortion. And then at the same time, people became more and more concerned about the inherently irrational nature of human psychology. Sigmund Freud was among the many serious thinkers who plunged into deep explorations on this subject.  People became more and more concerned about neuroses and complexes, and irrational desires, and with all of that came a huge flood of writing about the mob mentality, about the mind of the crowd, and about the so-called “herd instinct.” And suddenly, human nature didn't seem quite so enlightened or stable or rational, as many had hoped. So, I think those are all factors that contributed to the explosion early in the 20th century of new fears concerning the power of propaganda and its impact on democratic government.

PWN What are some of historical parallels between the idea of propaganda and publicity, particularly before WWII, and the fake news of today? 

LWH There are many similarities. WWI helped to produce a cult of propaganda similar to the current obsession with fake news. But the implications concerning this new power of mass public information were not always negative, especially at first. Those who saw it in a more favorable light tended to talk about the new power of “publicity”— and its great potential for reforming society. President Theodore Roosevelt fell in love with the potential of good “publicity” over a century ago.  He said that publicity “is the great cure, the great antiseptic. If you shine the light of publicity on public affairs, then things will start to go well.”  And his enthusiasm was widely shared during the Progressive Era, by reformers of all sorts and especially by newly empowered investigative journalists, who came to be described as “muckrakers.” 

Yet not everyone shared Roosevelt’s admiration of publicity A popular reaction of big business was to see publicity as a way to serve its interests—and so—at this time—both the public relations industry and the advertising industry got their big starts. And whatever you called it, publicity or public relations, or advertising, or government information, if you didn’t like it you began to call it “propaganda.” And the term came to be used in much in the same way that the term “fake news” is being used now. 

 

PWN One of the chapters mentions a correlation with a fascination of hypnotism during the late 19th century. Tell us more. 

LWH In the late 19th century there was an obsession with hypnotism that is featured in a novel, Trilby, which was one of the most popular novels of its time. The public was captivated with the sinister story of the character Svengali, who hypnotizes a young woman who lacked musical talent and transforms her into a world-class opera singer. Some people thought that perhaps there was a similar method behind mass media and that led to a public fear that maybe these masters of the media could play a Svengali-like trick on you. 

That, combined with people's interest in human mesmerism in the 1900s, and how it could be used to manipulate or heal the unconscious mind, led to even more fears about how mass information might be able to manipulate public opinion.

The concern then and now is that it became increasingly difficult to check out the accuracy of the messages that people are receiving. Society was too distended and the human mind too undependable to sort it all out. 

What democracy traditionally has meant over the centuries is that power to govern in a society depends, in the end, not on the coercive power of its leaders, but on the consent of the governed. But what the discovery of propaganda meant, for many, was that the consent of the governed could itself actually be coerced.

PWN Looking back, fast forwarding to today where fake news has become a huge concern with this disinformation delivery via technology such as social media…Are there lessons in the past, as to how to deal with this now? 

 

LWH Going back in history, new technologies have often been welcomed as having wonderful new potentials. And then there's a second wave, where people are scared to death, and that's happened recently with the Internet and social media. How wonderful, people initially said, that the Internet can allow anyone to say anything to anyone else--or to everyone--until people began to see the downside of that potential. And, strikingly, the same pattern can be seen in shifting human reactions to the advent of television, and the radio, and, indeed to the invention of the printing press, back in the 15th century. And one lesson we can learn from this history is that technologies of all sorts are really just tools. They will neither save us nor need they condemn us. It all depends on who is using them and how—for better or for worse.

And even going back further, I always love to cite the fact that Socrates himself worried a lot about the new technology of his age, which was called writing! Writing! And he said, “No it's going to wipe out the oral culture of ancient Greece, and we won't know anymore where this written information comes from, or how it originated, or even when it was written. We won’t know just whom it is that we can trust anymore. Current concerns about the potential misuses of social media have their parallels going back over time.

So, one of the themes of this book, in a way, is that there's nothing new under the sun. And maybe we can even take some comfort from the lessons of history and the fact that humankind, more often than not, has been able to cope successfully with these recurring challenges.

                                                        ###

 

Biography

Lee W. Huebner is the former publisher and CEO of the International Herald Tribune newspaper and former special assistant to the President of the United States during the Nixon administration. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Harvard University. Huebner is the Airlie Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where he teaches courses on journalism ethics, media and globalization, political speechwriting, and presidential communication. He is the author of “The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda and the Coercion of Consent.”  

Olivia de Havilland honored in Paris

Article by Lara Gabrielle

 

To most, Olivia de Havilland is known as a film star. Few are aware of her devotion to education, and to the American University of Paris (AUP) in particular. As the Monttessuy Center for the Arts opens, with her theater at the center, Olivia de Havilland’s name will be synonymous with educational excellence, her debt to her teachers repaid with each student who walks through its doors. 

In October 2021, the new Monttessuy Center for the Arts officially opened at 9 Rue de Monttessuy, the new artistic home for the AUP. The center will serve the growing liberal arts department at the site of the former library, now relocated to the Quai d’Orsay.  

In the late 1970s, the building that now houses the Monttessuy Center for the Arts was the art history building, so designated due to its high ceilings that could accommodate the slide projectors of the day. Art history classes later moved to Rue Bosquet, where they stayed for twenty years, but when AUP sold that building, the art department was left without a home. Classes and offices were scattered around campus, and there was no central location for art students to meet. But in 2014, a series of renovations grouped those classrooms and offices together again, and interest in the arts surged at AUP. Over the past five years, the arts department has grown 270%. This led the university to renovate 9 Rue de Monttessuy and recreate it as the hub of AUP artistic life. 

The renovation plans included the first ever theater at the university, with the idea that it would host film festivals, art galleries, panels, and classes. It is named after Olivia de Havilland, a two-time Academy Award-winning actress who was an early trustee and board member at AUP. De Havilland had always loved school, was a high-achieving student, and thrived in academic environments. But as a teenager, she went through a period of intense struggle. When she was 16, her stepfather, having learned that she was in a play without his permission, gave her an ultimatum––give up the play, or leave the house forever. De Havilland left the house.  

This was the beginning of a very dark period for her, and her grades began to slip until she was failing classes. It was her teachers, she remembered, who supported her during that challenging time. With the help of those teachers, she bounced back to the top of her class, graduating second at Los Gatos High School. From then on, she felt a duty to give back to the education system that helped her. She went on to an illustrious career as a film star, nominated for five Oscars and winning two. She never forgot her teachers, sending them Christmas cards every year until they had all passed away.

She moved to Paris in 1953. When her son, Benjamin, enrolled at AUP, de Havilland saw a way to actively repay the debt she felt she owed, to help students the way her teachers had helped her. She established herself as an active AUP parent, and in the mid-1960s, she became the first female trustee at the university. In 1970, she became a board member.  

It was a historic time for Paris, for students, and for the world. De Havilland watched the unfolding student unrest from her position as trustee, violence that culminated in the 1968 student revolts in Paris and those at Kent State in 1970. Viewing her position as one of student liaison to the university, she listened directly to student concerns and put students at the forefront of her work on the board. During this tense time, de Havilland brought what was happening in the streets directly to the upper echelons of the university. Fighting for the social change the student body demanded, she gave them an advocate and supporter at the highest level of university administration. 

In recent years, AUP served as a way for de Havilland to remember her son Benjamin, who died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma complications in 1991. She welcomed countless AUP friends, students, and fellow trustees into her home for support and advice, and remained the university’s unfailing champion. In 1994, de Havilland was awarded an honorary degree from AUP. In 2015, she was awarded the AUP Presidential Medal of Distinguished Achievement. 

De Havilland died in July 2020 at the age of 104. To celebrate the extraordinary place she held at the university, AUP began plans for a theater in her honor. It has now reached completion and is ready to welcome students. 

Three days of festivities led to the formal dedication of the theater and the ribbon cutting for the new Monttessuy Center for the Arts. On October 20, donors, friends of de Havilland, and university trustees attended screening of To Each His Own, the film that brought Olivia de Havilland her first Oscar win. Professor Marie Regan introduced the film, calling attention to de Havilland’s extraordinary use of her voice to communicate changes in character. The following night, de Havilland’s son-in-law Andy Chulack introduced The Heiress, de Havilland’s second Oscar-winning role. Chulack, an award-winning television editor, spoke of how well the film was edited and his favorite scene, when de Havilland’s character reacts with fury to her father––perhaps reflecting about her stepfather’s ultimatum and de Havilland’s own feelings when she was a teenager.

At noon on October 22, former OECD Ambassador Amy Bondurant moderated a panel with some of de Havilland’s closest friends and family members, who reflected on their fond and often hilariously funny memories with her. Audience members and panelists opened miniature bottles of champagne together, honoring de Havilland’s famous love champagne. It ended with an enthusiastic imitation of her distinctive laugh, led by de Havilland’s niece Deborah Dozier Potter.

The formal ribbon cutting of the theater occurred that evening. The audience heard remarks from professor Jonathan Shimony, Mayor Rachida Dati, Consul General Colombia Barrosse, university president Celeste Schenck and chair of the board of trustees Doris Daughney, who spoke on the importance of the work AUP is doing for its students and the world, and how this new artistic center will further the development of students’ humanity, the core of AUP’s mission. 

To most, Olivia de Havilland is known as a film star. Few are aware of her devotion to education, and to AUP in particular. As the Monttessuy Center for the Arts opens, with her theater at the center, Olivia de Havilland’s name will be synonymous with educational excellence, her debt to her teachers repaid with each student who walks through its doors. 

Further reading: Paris Writers News blog on I Remember Better When I Paint, a documentary narrated by Olivia de Havilland.

 

***

Lara Gabrielle is a California-based classic film writer and historian. Her blog Backlots is devoted to honoring and celebrating all aspects of classic film. In 2018, she covered De Havilland v. FX Networks LLC, and was in the courtroom when it was heard in the California Court of Appeal. For the past nine years, she has been writing a full-length biography of Marion Davies entitled CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL: The Life of Marion Davies, which will be published by the University of California Press in 2022. 

 

An interview with Cynthia Mitchell author of Hand Me the River

Cynthia Mitchell is a writer, psychologist and psychoanalyst from Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She moved to Paris in 2009, and in 2018 she became a French citizen.  Cynthia worked as the Global Counselor for New York University in Paris for ten years and then worked for three semesters at NYU in Buenos Aires.

Her short stories appear in the international journal, Per Contra.  Hand Me the River, her first novel, was published in 2019 and is available on Apple Books, Amazon, and other digital platforms.

Cynthia is interviewed by Françoise Schall-Wakai, author of Heurs et malheurs d’un restaurateur à Paris.

 

a Paris Writers News interview

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Françoise Schall-Wakai (FSW):  Hello Cynthia ,

While enjoying the progression of the story, the narrative and the main characters, I also learned a lot about bipolar disorder.  The questions below follow my thread of thought while and after reading your book.

What inspired you to write Hand Me the River, and how did you choose the title ? 

 

Cynthia Mitchell (CM):  When the title, Hand Me the River, occurred to me, it felt perfect.  It’s in the main character’s voice.  Lily is speaking, asking to hold all of life in her hands, yet a river, like time, is impossible to grasp.  The title captures Lily’s vast desires and the fleeting nature of our experiences. 

      I was inspired to write the story by the experiences with love and with psychiatric hospitals that I had in my twenties.  While it’s not exactly my story, Lily’s perceptions, her shifts of thought and her sometimes wild associations are known to me.  I wanted to convey the feeling of excitement from the inside, the ways that her world makes sense to her even as it may not to others, and also the way it feels to lose that world and that exhilaration.  I wanted to describe the power and mystery of love and how we are changed by people who recognize — or fail to recognize — us.

      The young people I’ve known have often shared concerns that resonate with Lily’s story — whether about the pressure from parents, the constraints of society, the difficulty figuring out how to use their talents, fears of not being good enough, or about the wish to love and to be loved.

 

FSW:  While reading Hand Me the River, I had flashbacks of people I encountered in my life. And after having read your book I could see them differently.  Was your intent to make bipolar disorder more accessible to a broader audience? Do you think such depictions can increase the general public’s empathy for people with bipolar disorder?

 

CM:  If I’ve made bipolar illness more accessible, I’m very glad.  I was most interested in describing Lily’s wishes, her struggles and her disarray.  I wanted readers to experience Lily’s world not from the position of an observer watching Lily careen through life but, instead, from the inside — to have the reader feel what it’s like to be that person careening through life.  I also wanted to show that one can recover, that life with such an illness or after such an illness can be full and rich.  All sorts of people — judges, car mechanics, teachers, doctors — have this illness and manage it successfully.

At the same time,  bipolar illness is only one aspect of Lily’s story.  The larger story is one all of us share — how to be one’s full self without losing connections to family and friends,  how to claim one’s own life and also live within the constraints of society.

 

FSW:  I found Lily’s manic episodes quite engaging, the way you describe how her own world and “energy expand”.  She says : “it astounds me to see things from so many different places” (…)  “ I’m dissolving”(…)  Could you share how you were able to describe Lily’s episodes so vividly to enable the reader to imagine them?

 

CM:  In my twenties, I had manic episodes and experienced many feelings like those of my character, Lily.  After I recovered, I feared that I might lose those feelings of expansive love and excitement.  In part, I wrote this novel to preserve them.  I drew on my memories and on journals that I kept at the time in order to create my protagonist, Lily.

 

FSW:  Nick is an intriguing character. His attitude of passively encouraging Lily's desire for him was notable throughout the book.  By not saying much about Nick, readers can draw their own portrait of him.  Is Nick typical of a man who gives just enough hope to keep the romance alive or does he have a more profound significance ?  Could Nick be the protagonist of another story?

      Readers have had different reactions to Nick.  I attended a book group on zoom in which one man despised Nick while another saw some of Nick in himself.  Several women have said, “Oh, yes, I had a Nick in my life.” 

Some see him as a cad, a scoundrel.  Others see him as charismatic and enchanting.  Nick provides a space for people to express themselves, he is accepting of all sorts of people, and he validates their creative efforts.  He doesn’t always see how attached others, particularly women, get to him.  Or perhaps he doesn’t want to see that.  He becomes attached to Lily in his way, and at the end of the story he is able to let her know how she affected him.

 

FSW:  Lily says : “Flirting. People who are flirting will say anything at all.  If that click, click feeling is in the air, they could say blah, blah, blah and it would be just fine, maybe even thrilling.” There is humor and also poetry in what Lily expresses : “Why do some people get love to keep while I am like a flimsy scarf floating through that place where love is?”  Who is the poet?  Lily in her manic phase or is she simply channeling the author's poetry?

 

CM:  I’m the writer and the poet.  I am all of Lily though she is only a sliver of me.

 

FSW:  You describe brilliantly how the lithium made Lily’s life “dull” and how she was trying to control herself.  But the therapy had limited effects and a mood regulator was necessary.  Lily asked herself : “Is this how life is?” (…) “Lithium makes me want to cancel my life, as if it were a magazine subscription and I could order a different one.”  Do you think that mood regulators necessarily imply to give up a part of the brighter, more exuberant side of the personality and excitement in life?

 

CM:  No, I don’t mean imply that. Not at all.  It takes time to adjust to lithium and that period can feel extremely difficult and can be a significant loss when it occurs, as Lily describes.  These feelings of loss are temporary and when one gets through it one can have a full range of feelings again though not the extreme highs and lows.

      Though perhaps I didn’t clearly portray this in the novel, I believe the impact of psychotherapy to be as powerful, or more powerful, than that of lithium.  One needs to be able to make sense of all that occurred.  What fueled her mania?  Were there earlier losses that she had not acknowledged?  But Lily couldn’t hear or absorb what her doctors offered without first being stable again with the help of lithium.  So in her case, lithium and psychotherapy worked together.

 

FSW:  She works at a law firm and becomes a better lawyer having more empathy for “eccentric” clients.  So, is this a positive side of her bipolar disorder in the end?  Can you tell us more?

CM:  Yes, she gains a more complex and nuanced view of herself and those around her.  She knows from her own experience that a person can be in what doctors consider serious trouble and come out the other side.  This gives her hope for her clients, eccentric and otherwise, because she knows things can get better.  She learns to step out of her own shoes and to see how the world might appear or feel in the shoes of her clients.  She is not put off or afraid of another’s person’s mind and she learns to look for the meaning behind odd language and disturbing behaviors, to understand what sense those things make through the eyes of the other person.

 

FSW:  I could imagine your book as a movie. Would you consider writing a screenplay one day? 

 

CM:  I love that you asked this.  I’ve also imagined it as a movie with scenes set in Haymarket in Boston, in Cambridge, and on Martha’s Vineyard.  When I first began to write this story, I wrote it as a screenplay but I didn’t have the skill to get inside Lily’s mind in that format.  There are many vivid scenes and dramatic moments.  I would love to have a screenwriter bring Lily’s world to life.

 

FSW:  Will there be a second volume about Lily or sequel to her story? 

 

CM:  I’m working on a new book which I’m calling Burst of Flame.  It’s not a sequel to Lily’s story but the characters are part of Lily’s extended family.  Sylvie, the narrator of Burst of Flame is Lily’s cousin.  Their grandfather, James, who was described in Hand Me the River as “exuberant and headstrong” and who “loved betting on the horses,” is an important character.  In this book, Sylvie struggles to understand herself and her mother, Anna, as Sylvie inadvertently discovers her mother’s secrets.

     

 Hand Me the River by Cynthia Mitchell

 

 

 

A talk with Françoise Schall-Wakai, author of Heurs et malheurs d'un restaurateur à Paris

Françoise Schall-Wakai

Françoise Schall-Wakai is a French-born American who studied Chinese, Japanese and Political Economy at the University of Bonn, Germany.  After a twenty year career in international sales and business development, she made a major career change, opening a wine bistro in Paris, A trained wine sommelier and 500 hours certified Yoga instructor, Françoise has lived in France, Germany, the U.S., Japan, China, Mexico, Brazil, Angola and will soon head to Shanghai.  

Heurs et malheurs d'un restaurateur à Paris (or loosely translated as “The Joy and Misfortune of a restaurateur in Paris”) is the title of her book, which is written in French.  It is available on Amazon and the Fnac.  

 

Interview by Cynthia Mitchell, author of Hand Me the River.

 

a Paris Writers News interview

 

CM:  Hello Françoise, I’d like to begin by asking you about your background, then turn to the content of your book, and finally to ask about your experience as a writer. 

Where were you when you first had the idea of having your own restaurant?    How did the idea evolve into a project?

FSW:   The first time I thought of having a café or a bar was when I was living in Japan and traveling intensely in South East Asia for work.  I was sometimes daydreaming, when I was waiting for a flight, of a “café philo” or something similar.  And then years later, when I had interesting interviews for a new job I suddenly realized I didn’t want to be a world traveling business woman anymore.  I seriously asked myself what I wanted to do and this is when I decided to go for it.

CM:   Other restaurant owners spoke to you about the stresses and uncertainties and cautioned you against opening a restaurant.  Why did you decide to go ahead?

FSW:   I have always enjoyed new challenges and this seemed to be a big challenge with new opportunities and a complete change in lifestyle.  I also thought to myself you don’t have these types of opportunities very often in life and felt it was the right moment for me.  I think most professionals who make a major career change have had similar feelings.

CM:   Your restaurant has a beautiful and unusual name, Le Framboisy.  How did you choose this name?   And what did you later learn about the name from one of your customers?

FSW:   The name was “our little secret”, the nickname my husband gave me. Nobody knew  about it and the speculations amused me.  I would always say: “it’s just an invented name” or “No, it doesn’t have anything to do with raspberry” (Framboise in French), etc.  Then one day a person came in and literally grilled me on the relationship it had with a French female superhero of a seventies children’s book.  Even though I had devoured these books as a child, I had totally forgotten about them.  The customer was very serious about her assumption and very saddened that my answer didn’t satisfy her.  When she left I was quite intrigued by the entire episode.

CM:   In your book, you note that despite all the research and planning you did, there were aspects of running a bistro that took you by surprise.  Can you share one or two examples?

FSW:   One aspect was the physical part of the job. Honestly, I should have done some bodybuilding training before starting my project!  Moving Parisian bistro marble tables with their cast iron legs, carrying wine cases, even worse champagne cases, etc. was really exhausting.  Another aspect that surprised me was the stress related to cash flow issues and their impact on the quality of my sleep.  As the old adage goes, “Cash is king”.   Knowing about it was one thing, living and breathing the experience was quite another.

CM:   Your book is your personal story, but it is much more than that.  You generously offer instructions for anyone  considering — or dreaming of — opening a bistro or bar.  It can almost be read as a how-to manual.  Was that your intention?

FSW:   I personally felt a need for a book like this when I launched my project, most of all in the initial phase.  So, in my recollection of my bistro years, I had a desire to expose in detail what I went through.  My hope was and is to give a sort of roadmap to those daring entrepreneurs dreaming of opening a bistro.

CM:   You portray in vivid detail what it’s like to be on the other side of le comptoir (the counter), to be in the position of the owner and not that of the customer.  You offer insights into the benefits of alliances, the dangers of drinking too much, the combination of cultures, and the perils of choosing a chef.  And you offer glimpses of the people who frequented Le Framboisy — the one-time guests and the regulars.  I especially liked the story of the man who bought Champagne at 3 in the afternoon.  Can you speak about that encounter?

FSW:   In my bistro I regularly had the feeling I was in a “Boulevard theater”, but the day Pierre-André entered Le Framboisy my impression was he was a character straight out of a novel.  His look, demeanor, his voice, the words he deliberately chose, ordering a bottle of champagne at 3 pm and offering a glass to the barmaid and myself, then paying in cash: he was clearly from another world compared to my usual customers.  He became a regular with an unpredictable schedule and we became friendly.  Probably to our mutual surprise! 

CM:   Your curiosity about and appreciation of humanity — in many varieties — shines throughout your book.  It’s evident in your respectful attitude toward all the people you encountered as you advanced in your project — workers, bankers, other restauranteurs, vendors, vintners, and clients.  How have people reacted to seeing themselves described?

FSW:   Many said they were touched and very nostalgic. Some told me it made them cry.  One even said to me she recognized herself despite the fact that I had changed her name, location and gender to make her unrecognizable and protect the innocent.   Catherine and Diane, the widow and the daughter of Jacques Baratier, were thankful I wrote down the memory of Jacques' moments at Le Framboisy.  And of course, the illegitimate couple was more than thrilled to find themselves - unrecognizable to others - in a book.

CM:   Now, I’ll turn to your experience as a writer.  When did it first occur to you to write this book?  Had you been recording your experiences all along?  Do you have a writing strategy?  Or rituals that help you when writing?

FSW:   After I sold the bistro and moved to Mexico City I first didn't want to talk about my bistro for years and even asked my husband to avoid mentioning it in public because I was emotionally exhausted.  But then, as time passed, the memories came back, even though I hadn't taken any notes in real time.  I was so busy and at times overwhelmed during those bistro years that I was not always conscious of my experiences and it took me a while.  

In order to write, I needed to take a break from my routine, isolate myself to focus on the details and develop the story further, be in a different place, like in Chuburnà, in the Yucatan, or on the beach in Brazil, or alone home during some weekends while we lived in New Orleans.

CM:   Your book is comprised of short chapters and, while I read the book from start to finish, it seems that one could open it on any page and find a morsel to enjoy.  How did you decide on the format? 

 FSW:   Deciding on the format, the titles and order of the chapters was the first thing I did and I nearly didn’t alter them.  The more technical part of the book was supposed to be read without following a chronological order.  I wanted the book to be both an entertaining narration while also serving as a reference guide.

CM:   What obstacles did you encounter as you worked on the book?

FSW:   Tapping into my inner awareness to allow my memory to come back and finding my flow…. Technical obstacles were sometimes a deterrent. I once lost all my editing and didn't touch my draft for months.

CM:   What project — or projects — are you tackling now?

 FSW:   I want to work on how to use my book as an educational tool for cooking schools, students studying French language and entrepreneurs in the wine and food industry and to bring the Parisian culture experience to others around the world.

I am also working on some short stories but some are in English, and French, while others are in German or Portuguese. The idea of compiling them is tempting but I am conscious that I need to first agree with myself in which language I want them to be published.

WICE’s Paris Writers Workshop Returns for a Weekend of Fun and Inspiration

Dimitri Keramitas has been the director of the Paris Writers Workshop for the past five years, as well as the director of the creative writing program at WICE. He speaks to us about this year’s edition of the workshop. (for more information please see the WICE website)

a Paris Writers News interview

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PWN: What is special or new about this year’s Paris Writer’s Workshop ?

DK: First, it’s not the “full-fledged” PWW, which is every two years, the next one taking place in 2022. This year we’re having an off-year event called the PWW Writing Weekend.

So it’s a smaller event?

Compared to the regular PWW, yes. However, it’s actually more than a weekend. It runs 4 days, Friday to Monday, June 25 - 28. Also, we’ve expanded the program since the first Writing Weekend. There are two master classes instead of one. Three one-hour writing-craft talks instead of two.

Will it be an on-line event?

Yes. I realize some people may be “Zoomed out”.  And Paris is slowly returning to normal, with more people getting vaccinated, restrictions being relaxed. But we can’t make rash

predictions so the event will still be virtual. After more than a year of virtual events, we

know how to do it reasonably well, and the public knows what to expect. We do hope to go

“live” next year. And there are tentative plans to wind things up with a “live” reading and outdoor reception if things go well.

And in terms of the content? Any particular themes?

The master classes are about new beginnings, which is appropriate for our period. Samantha Chang looks at beginning the novel, on a technical level. What is the best way to open the

story, to hook the reader. Should it be linear, or jump in the middle? The right start should lead organically to what comes next, and carry us along for a few hundred pages!

And Nicola Keegan focuses on the creative and motivational aspects, stimulating your imagination, finding your voice. Plus getting out of your rut if you’re in one, breaking free of writers block. All of us who write have experienced this and it can be pretty dire if you’re dealing with it alone. If Samantha focuses on the first words on the page (or in the file), Nicola looks at what comes before those words: the writer’s mindset.

The talks seem very different from each other. Is there any common thread there?

We didn’t think of that when we were putting them together. But looking at them now, they all deal with bridging gaps of one kind or another. Our poets, Jennifer K. Dick and Geoffrey Nutter, look at collage and other techniques for bridging the gaps between cultures and languages. Alecia McKenzie speaks about settings that transcend borders in fiction. And creative nonfiction specialist Lise Funderburg covers something different, more technical: bridging fiction and nonfiction. When to do so—and when not to.

The emphasis seems more on and/and than either/or—though not always.

Well, our instructors are teachers in distinguished institutions—Iowa, NYU, Rutgers. But they’re also veteran writers. So I don’t think they’re bound by theory. I’d say the emphasis is very hands on. The same is true of the panel.

What’s this year’s topic?

Navigating the Small Presses. We often use that “navigating” motif for the panels. Writers have lots of challenges finding their way in the publishing world, which is increasingly diverse, not to say confusing. The panel is focusing on small houses, not really alternative publishing, which we’ve dealt with before. But there’s a lot of diversity in smell press publishing. We’ll be dealing with it from every angle: we’re featuring authors, publishers, agents, journal editors. It’s pretty comprehensive.

Has it been difficult organizing the PWW this year?

It’s a bit peculiar, in view of the pandemic and lockdowns. On one hand, we’ve gotten used to the situation, and have been able to handle things skilfully, if I say so myself. But like everyone we’re tired of the “old new normal”, and are eager to go back to the “old real normal”! The great thing is we’ve learned to be flexible and collegial. On the whole it’s been enjoyable.

Is there anything you want to say on the practical side of the event?

Well, interested persons can go to the WICE site (www.wice-paris.org) for details. If they want to register, our on-line system is very user-friendly. If you have a specific question you can write to me at [email protected]. The entire package is 350 euros, which is pretty reasonable considering what’s on offer.

If you say so yourself.

I just said it!

Learn more about WICE at https://www.wice-paris.org

 

What portion of the French population is * NOT * fully vaccinated against coronavirus?

 

86 % of French people are not fully vaccinated against coronavirus (May 15, 2021)

I'll admit I'm having trouble wading through all the different statistics on coronavirus. 

The French government used to publish a super clear coronavirus dashboard: new cases, deaths, hospitalisations, Ehpad, vaccinations - but the layout changed recently and I find it confusing.

As the country prepares to reopen in a fit of political optimism which is not necessarily shared by the medical community (there have been dissenting voices), I wonder how many people in France are fully vaccinated.

Should be a super-simple calculation, non?

Worldmeter puts France's population at an exceedingly precise  65,399,347

And, as of today, May 15, 2021, the French government puts the number of fully vaccinated people at: 9,142,420.

Which comes to 13.98%

That should mean that the number of people in France who are not fully vaccinated is:  65,399,347 - 9,142,420 = 56,256,927.

Which puts the portion of people in France who are not fully vaccinated at 86.02%

(May 15, 2021)

 

Lauren Grodstein on Children and Fiction

Lauren Grodstein

 

Novelist Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family, will give a talk this July on Writing the Child as part of WICE’s Paris Writers Workshop.

It’s a striking topic.

Child characters in fiction aren’t for everyone. Many want their stories and novels as limited as restricted housing developments: young adults/thirtysomethings/middle-aged only. And yet there’s something truncated about a fictional world without kids. Conversely there’s something magical about fiction featuring children who come alive as characters, taking us back to our childhoods or reminding us of our own offspring.

 

Lauren Grodstein on Children and Fiction

a Paris Writers News interview

_____

 

Are there portrayals of kids in contemporary fiction that strike you as distinctive?

 I find that well-drawn kids show up in all sorts of works, including those that we don't think are necessarily about - and certainly not for - children (Cormac McCarthy's The Road), for example.  Some of my favorite short stories have kids in them: Amy Bloom's Love is Not a Pie, Judy Budnitz's Dog Days, Lawns, by Mona Simpson, and When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, by Jhumpa Lahiri.  Many of George Saunders's superb stories do too, as does his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. I love the portrayal of kids in Toni Morrison's Sula.  There's a wonderfully drawn group of preteen boys in Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor.  

There’s an even greater challenge when a novel is narrated by a child. Which writers maintain a plausible voice throughout a full-length work of fiction?

There's a very gentle novel called Jim the Boy, by Tony Earley, which is told from the perspective of a ten year old kid in North Carolina in the early part of the twentieth century.  It's just a lovely book: smart, well-told, and never condescending to him or to the time and location of the novel.  And it's a bit of a controversial pick, but I think Mark Haddon does a brilliant job in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime with his autistic teenage protagonist.  I also love the way Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer tell their stories.  

What don’t you appreciate in child characters?

I don't spend a lot of time with books I don't like, so the second something interrupts the narrative for me - say, a poorly written character - I tend to move on to the next book on my list.  But in general, any kid who's too cute, too cloying, too wise, too tantrum-y - those are the kids that really don't work, because they reflect grown up ideas about children instead of children themselves.

What's the best way to capture the way a child thinks?

In general, skew older.  As adults we tend to forget how smart kids are, how observant, and how articulate.  We are surprised, again and again, by what they know and what they're able to understand.  So if you think you're writing a five year old, write someone who you imagine has the capability of a seven or eight year old.  If you're writing a twelve year old, give them the intelligence and humor you'd generally give to a fifteen year old.  Kids - especially today's kids, who have very little defense against the rigors of the outside world - are much more sophisticated than we generally give them credit for.  Give them that credit in your writing.

 

______

 

Bio: Lauren Grodstein is the author of four novels, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family and the Washington Post Book of the Year The Explanation for Everything.  Her latest novel, Our Short History, was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in March, 2017.  Lauren’s work has been translated into French, Turkish, German, Hebrew, and other languages, and her essays and reviews have been widely published.  She teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden.

Lauren’s talk, Writing the Child, is opening this year’s Paris Writers Workshop. It will be presented virtually on July 5, 2020, at 6 pm Paris time. For further details and to register for the talk go to www.wice-paris.org

Even though we were all children once, as authors we sometimes have a hard time capturing the specific mannerisms, vocabulary, and interests of young people.  Sometimes we overcorrect for cuteness (writing children, for instance, who pronounce "spaghetti" as "pisgetti,") and sometimes go the other way, creating wise-beyond-their-years 10 year olds who see the truth the adults always miss.  In this craft workshop, Lauren Grodstein, whose four novels include children of various ages, will provide specific tips on accessing the speech and behavior of young people and ideas about how to create compelling fictional kids.

 

 

 

Logistics in an age of Coronavirus

France is shutting down its famous markets, as part of the world-wide effort to slow the contagion of the deadly coronavirus.

How are logistics professionals dealing with the disruptions in supply chains across the world?

One way to find out it to consult their professional publications.

Don Friddell, the Director of Marketing at Kenco, lists top supply chain management publications known in the industry:

 

American Journal of Transportation 

 

CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly

 

DC Velocity

 

Food Logistics

 

Global Trade

 

Inbound Logistics

 

Journal of Commerce (JOC) (Paid Subscription)

 

Logistics Management

 

Logistics Quarterly

 

Material Handling & Logistics

 

SupplyChainBrain

 

Supply Chain Management Review

 

Supply & Demand Chain Executive

 

Transport Topics

 

Read Don Friddell's full post on the Kenco Group blog here

For more supply chain knowledge, read Kenco's blog post about Top Digital Supply Chain Management Publications of 2018 

(The above publications are in English. We'll look at French supply chain publications in a future post)

Interview: Gideon Taylor on the WJRO and the importance of memory, history and justice

Jewish owned business in Zagreb that belonged to Vilim Weiss

Gideon Taylor is the Chair of Operations of the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). He kindly agreed to answer some questions about the WJRO, its mission and the challenges it faces in today's world.

Sion Dayson book launch at the Red Wheelbarrow September 12th

Sion Dayson, author

It is with great pleasure that I present this interview with Sion Dayson, a talented and extremely interesting young author who I first met in a Paris writers' group several years ago. Her new novel, As A River, has just been released. Sion will celebrate the book launch in Paris at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore on September 12th.

Sion Dayson was born in New York City, grew up in North Carolina, and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, the anthology Strangers in Paris, and many other venues. Her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin. She has won grants and residencies from The Kerouac House, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Program. She also got the chance to spend a month writing in Edith Wharton’s house, The Mount. Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain. As a River is her first novel.

As a River Paris Book Launch

 

Sion Dayson on As A River, 

a Paris Writers News Interview

LZ: Sion Dayson, can you pinpoint the moment when you decided to be a writer?

SD: There was no exact moment, probably because the possibility was always in the air. My mother was a librarian for over 45 years. As you can imagine, the house was filled to the brim with books. She also took us to lots of foreign and independent films and I adored American Movie Classics (I wanted to be a host on the TV channel!). I think being immersed in both books and film from an early age led to a love of storytelling so it wasn’t a huge leap to start writing. Instead of going outside to play like other kids, I would stay inside and type stories on my mom’s electric typewriter. Now it’s a laptop.

How did you hone your craft?

There’s no shortcut. Lots of reading and writing. I took classes, which were helpful. I also did a low-residency MFA. I like the low-residency structure because it allows you to work one-on-one with a mentor – the more independent model (as opposed to weekly workshops) worked well for me. But a program isn’t necessary to write. It’s the hours you spend trying to do the work where the craft gets honed.

Sion

What inspired you to write As A River?

I never start with a grand idea or theme in mind. All of my writing is sparked by something small – a stray line of dialogue, an image, a scent.

The genesis story behind the book is kind of funny. I was walking through Harlem one day and overheard some teenage girls gossiping. One said: “she’s pregnant and never even had sex.” Obviously my ears perked right up!

I went home and immediately wrote a scene inspired by that line. What came out featured a young girl named Esse in a small town in Georgia in an era before I was born. But then I got interested in her daughter, Ceiley. What would it be like to grow up with a mother who claims you were miraculously conceived?

Then a stranger came to town, a handsome man in his thirties with something troubling him from his past. I felt a lot of energy when Greer entered the picture and I knew I wanted to know more about him. That meant getting to know his mother Elizabeth and why she was so sad. And Caroline, his first love. And…you can see the cast of characters kept expanding.

Writing is a craft, but is also somewhat of a mystery to me, too. I stay open to what’s unfolding on the page and follow where it leads. Eventually it becomes more clear what I’m exploring, but even then it can be difficult to articulate. The novel deals with the dangers of silence, the question of shame, our struggles to understand each other, and our notions of identity and belonging. It’s also about the stories we tell ourselves and how that affects the way we move through the world.

Whose story is it?

For the most part, it’s Greer’s story. The story of his return to care for his dying mother – and confront the ghosts from his past. As the book advances, secrets are uncovered and we learn what haunts him.

But as I mention above, there is a larger cast of characters. Relationships, of all kinds, shape our lives. That is life.

So while I mostly stayed in close third person to Greer, there are moments when the narrative breaks out and other characters demand a say. Everyone has a story.

As a River by Sion Dayson

Was there a point in creating this work when you thought: I can’t go on?

I think that about every piece of writing! But yes, a novel is especially daunting. When I began, I thought it was just a short story, but then it just kept growing. It felt almost paralyzing to start thinking of it as a novel. A writing mentor had some sage advice: just call it a “thing.” Ha! It did take some pressure off while I was figuring out the larger project.

I don’t write with a plan in mind. There’s never an outline and I definitely don’t know where things are heading. I also write pieces in disparate, non-linear fragments. A major part of my work is figuring out how the pieces go together. It can be a frustrating process and there are moments when abandoning the project does feel tempting. But it’s also a thrill when things start connecting. I’m so glad I followed through.

You’ve lived in France, in Spain, in the USA. Where do you call home? - and why?

Right now I call Valencia home. For the simple fact that it’s where I actually live, of course, but on a more important level, it’s also because I truly feel great here. My decade in Paris was a gift and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But parts of myself were also suppressed there and I felt somewhat out of step. Since moving to Spain, I feel like I’m blossoming again and am more comfortable in my own skin. Can home be where you feel most like yourself?

When I go back to the USA, I also say “I’m going home.” It’s where I was born and raised. There’s no discounting how deeply our origins shape us.

But yes, this concept of home is not as straightforward as it sounds. I think home is also something we carry within us. The last line in my book’s acknowledgments reads: “home is in the people we love."

What advice can you share with young novelists? 

Novels are big, messy things. It’s impossible to tackle such a huge project all at once. My best advice is to just keep chipping away at it, one sentence, one paragraph, one scene at a time.

What are you working on now?

A lot of promotion for the book! I’m doing wonderful interviews like this. (Thank you!) Talking on podcasts, taking over Instagram accounts. Soon, I leave for a mini-tour with events in Paris, New York, Philadelphia, and Massachussetts.

Publication of this novel was a long day coming. I wrote the first line of As a River in 2005! So I’m excited to finally help it fly out into the world now.

But when this promotional phase starts quieting down, I might return to a nonfiction project that I started a few years ago about my decade in Paris. I wrote a blog for awhile, paris (im)perfect, that would serve as a good springboard for a longer narrative project. Only the future will tell, though. I’m looking forward to seeing where my curiosity takes me.

 ______

About the author: Sion Dayson was born in New York City, grew up in North Carolina, and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, the anthology Strangers in Paris, and many other venues. Her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin. She has won grants and residencies from The Kerouac House, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Program. She also got the chance to spend a month writing in Edith Wharton’s house, The Mount. Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain. As a River is her first novel.

Sion will be celebrating her book’s launch at The Red Wheelbarrow in Paris on September 12 at 7 pm.

Feel free to check out her website for a full list of events. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. She also writes a very occasional newsletter, Sion’s Sparkle Desk.

 

Paris Novel Workshop with Nicola Keegan

Nicola Keegan at a booklaunch for Anne Korkeakivi

In Paris this summer some lucky writers are in for a treat. As part of the Paris Writers Workshop Weekend, Nicola Keegan, the uber-talented author of Swimming and one of our favorite people, will be teaching a Master Class on the novel. 

Bonjour Paris just published a terrific interview with Nicola on writing and teaching.

"I would describe my current novel as a living nightmare," she tells Dimitri Keramitas, with typical honesty. "It makes my toes curl."

It's hard to describe Nicola Keegan because 1) I adore her, and 2) she is disarmingly unique.   Fortunately, shortly after the publication of her first novel, which received rave reviews and was translated into numerous languages, we did a little interview which, I think, offers a pretty good portrait of the artist.  So I'm republishing it today. I hope you enjoy it.

PWW Writing Weekend: June 28-29-30. A master class in novel writing will be taught by Nicola Keegan, the author of Swimming (Alfred Knopf), which received rave reviews from the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. The novel has been translated into several languages and was named a Top Ten novel by Time Magazine. Nicola is renowned for her inclusive and enthusiastic style of teaching. 

_____

BOOKS Nicola Keegan on SWIMMING (reprint of Paris Writers News interview from September 2009)

Authors interview Authors:

 

Nicola Keegan is a unique talent and an amazing person. Her debut novel Swimming was featured by Time as one of the top 10 novels the year it was published.  I have been rereading Nicola's novel this summer with absolute astonishment at the brilliance, humor and humanity of her prose. Swimming is one of those works of art that only gets better with rereading. Interview with Nicola Keegan from 2009.

LZ  In reading Swimming I was struck by the narrator’s powerful and unique voice. 

Judy Bloom said “It’s the most original novel I’ve read all year. I can’t get Pip’s voice out of my mind.”

Where does PIP’s voice come from?

NK  Writing is not living but sometimes living annoys me so deeply, I pretend writing is living which injects a certain type of energy into my work because everything becomes essential, necessary, important, and real.

LZ  You claim that you started to write “bad poetry” because you couldn’t find a writers group in Paris that would take you and finally ended up with a bunch of poets. One of the most remarkable things about Swimming is the language, which I have to suspect is influenced by your intense exposure to poets and poetry. What is the relation between prose and poetry in your writing? Should we all hang out with poets?

NK  People talk about that a lot; prose and poetry, poetry and prose. I don’t know what the relationship is honestly—perhaps how you hear the words in your head and hanging around with poets does affect the way one hears. It affected me anyway. Poets help you listen which makes you think which makes you pay attention which helps you see—so yes, we should all hang out with them…but something tells me they have other things they’d rather be doing. On another note, I didn’t think anyone like Alice Notley existed until I actually met her so that was a surprise. I think poets should have their own special house and they shouldn't have to pay for anything and they should be revered and taken care of and read they should be read. They are the opposite of what is wrong with the world right now.

LZ  James Joyce’s The Dead is one of your favorite works. Why?

NK The snow. I must have been about 18 years old. I was reading in bed. Christmas had just passed and I had a couple of days before going back to school. It was late, way after midnight and I kept reading although I was tired. My bedroom had a long rectangular window that overlooked an empty swimming pool and the dense forest beyond. I was reading smoothly, you know when you read with interest but a certain sense of detachment--like that. The story took over my senses in a wave felt even more intently due to the silence of the house, the insulation of winter,  the visibility of the sky, sharp winter stars, a low moon. I had a physical reaction; my heart beat faster and my mind quickened, I looked out the window--the snow was falling slowly, I went back to the story, the dinner table was breaking up, the wife was weeping, the husband was realizing something about the human heart. Both worlds, the real one, my pillow, the central heating purring in the background, and the James Joyce world sort of muted together. Falling gently gently falling. It was the first moment in my life I felt consciously connected to the whole of the human race. I think of James Joyce often, whenever I see a tall thin man, whenever light flashes off someone's spectacles, whenever it snows, when I'm in Ireland. Sometimes I write what he wrote just to see what it feels like.

LZ  The humor in Swimming is little short of ferocious. God, death, sibling love and hatred, priests and even nuns—nothing is spared. Is there any subject we can’t laugh at?

NK  Oh there are subjects I cannot laugh at, but you have to admit being human is often funny. And the Irish are the WORST by the way. Poor old Michael Jackson's body wasn't even cool yet and the jokes were flying. Horrible awful jokes; something about turning his body into legos so children could play with him for once. See? Awful stuff. Does that mean that they don't give a damn about poor old M. Jackson. No, they care. When they finished laughing they said “poor old sod.” Humor is just a way of dealing with things, a form of decompression and an expression of the meaningless misery and ridiculousness of being human. It often gets misinterpreted as a type of hardness, but it’s the contrary. I once sat on the steps outside a funeral and laughed myself into cramps. I couldn't go in. It was horrible. How many terrible moments of high drama did I catch my sister's eye and just lose it. More than I can count. I know it's awful. A curse. Very black etc. But I just cannot help it.

LZ  Why an Olympic swimmer? What is it about high level sport that attracted you?

NK  An elite athlete begins as a child who loves something and I think that kind of love is good. I’ve always admired people who try really hard and swimmers try really hard every day for years and years and years. When I started to study water I loved the language that scientists used to describe it. There’s a lot of water in SWIMMING in all its forms; it rains for months, it snows in spirals, people sprout like fountains, feelings evaporate. I like the fact that in water people are unburdened by gravity. I like the image of swimmers flinging themselves into water and pulling as hard as they can. I like the idea of beating the clock, being your own principal adversary, human velocity. And there is a solitary lonesomeness about spending so many hours in an element in which you cannot breathe that I found deliciously melancholic. I love female locker room talk, any sort of ridiculous chatter about body parts, the fact that success is a temporary flame. Also, and I might as well admit it--when I started studying swimmers, I grew very attached to them, and when I continued to follow them, I fell in love. That's what happens I guess.

LZ  An admirer of yours told me that, in early drafts, you wrote “like an animal”. How did you manage to channel this intensity into story? By what process did you make your themes, which are rooted in profoundly personal events, comprehensible to the reader?

NK  Yipes—the Big Questions. Yes, I wrote like an animal. The intensity is there naturally so I didn't have to conjure it--it just sort of channeled itself into the work. I had some hard knocks while I was writing this novel and it is at these moments that one must decide what is important. It’s easy to have a good philosophy when things are fine, but when you get your mettle tested and things are a mess, it’s a bit more problematic. I had to choose. Writing anchored me—I felt like giving my best. That's the job of a writer I think--to make deeply personal feelings accessible to people. If they are incomprehensible then I'm not doing my job. I spent a lot of my life being incomprehensible, even to myself, so I know. Actually, when you meet someone one-on-one and talk to them, you can make anything comprehensible—even your most craziest story because bottom line; we are all human and understand human things so I talk to people. And I listen. And, not to sound like a dork, I care, so empathy seems a prerequisite.

LZ  What role did your agent play in your writing?

NK  My agent, Bill Clegg, is the first person who connected to my creative mind in a way I'd always wished for. He sort of obliterated this intellectual loneliness that one can accidentally find themselves locked in. The mind is a vast complicated affair that to find someone with whom you can work in such an effortless funny respectful loving way, honestly, is the biggest gift this whole process has brought me. I love working with him.

 

Nicola Keegan is currently working on her second novel.

 ---

What book reviewers wrote about Swimming when it was published:

Radhika Jones at Time Magazine (top 10 fiction of 2009) 

 Catherine Taylor of The Guardian.

Ron Charles at Washington Post

 

---

For more on  Paris Writers News Interviews

Twitter: @pariswriters

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ParisWritersNews/

 

 

 

Authors interview Authors:

 

Nicola Keegan is a unique talent and an amazing person. Her debut novel Swimming was featured by Time as one of the top 10 novels the year it was published.  I have been rereading Nicola's novel this summer with absolute astonishment at the brilliance, humor and humanity of her prose. Swimming is one of those works of art that only gets better with rereading. Interview with Nicola Keegan from 2009.

LZ  In reading Swimming I was struck by the narrator’s powerful and unique voice. 

Judy Bloom said “It’s the most original novel I’ve read all year. I can’t get Pip’s voice out of my mind.”

Where does PIP’s voice come from?

NK  Writing is not living but sometimes living annoys me so deeply, I pretend writing is living which injects a certain type of energy into my work because everything becomes essential, necessary, important, and real.

LZ  You claim that you started to write “bad poetry” because you couldn’t find a writers group in Paris that would take you and finally ended up with a bunch of poets. One of the most remarkable things about Swimming is the language, which I have to suspect is influenced by your intense exposure to poets and poetry. What is the relation between prose and poetry in your writing? Should we all hang out with poets?

NK  People talk about that a lot; prose and poetry, poetry and prose. I don’t know what the relationship is honestly—perhaps how you hear the words in your head and hanging around with poets does affect the way one hears. It affected me anyway. Poets help you listen which makes you think which makes you pay attention which helps you see—so yes, we should all hang out with them…but something tells me they have other things they’d rather be doing. On another note, I didn’t think anyone like Alice Notley existed until I actually met her so that was a surprise. I think poets should have their own special house and they shouldn't have to pay for anything and they should be revered and taken care of and read they should be read. They are the opposite of what is wrong with the world right now.

LZ  James Joyce’s The Dead is one of your favorite works. Why?

NK The snow. I must have been about 18 years old. I was reading in bed. Christmas had just passed and I had a couple of days before going back to school. It was late, way after midnight and I kept reading although I was tired. My bedroom had a long rectangular window that overlooked an empty swimming pool and the dense forest beyond. I was reading smoothly, you know when you read with interest but a certain sense of detachment--like that. The story took over my senses in a wave felt even more intently due to the silence of the house, the insulation of winter,  the visibility of the sky, sharp winter stars, a low moon. I had a physical reaction; my heart beat faster and my mind quickened, I looked out the window--the snow was falling slowly, I went back to the story, the dinner table was breaking up, the wife was weeping, the husband was realizing something about the human heart. Both worlds, the real one, my pillow, the central heating purring in the background, and the James Joyce world sort of muted together. Falling gently gently falling. It was the first moment in my life I felt consciously connected to the whole of the human race. I think of James Joyce often, whenever I see a tall thin man, whenever light flashes off someone's spectacles, whenever it snows, when I'm in Ireland. Sometimes I write what he wrote just to see what it feels like.

LZ  The humor in Swimming is little short of ferocious. God, death, sibling love and hatred, priests and even nuns—nothing is spared. Is there any subject we can’t laugh at?

NK  Oh there are subjects I cannot laugh at, but you have to admit being human is often funny. And the Irish are the WORST by the way. Poor old Michael Jackson's body wasn't even cool yet and the jokes were flying. Horrible awful jokes; something about turning his body into legos so children could play with him for once. See? Awful stuff. Does that mean that they don't give a damn about poor old M. Jackson. No, they care. When they finished laughing they said “poor old sod.” Humor is just a way of dealing with things, a form of decompression and an expression of the meaningless misery and ridiculousness of being human. It often gets misinterpreted as a type of hardness, but it’s the contrary. I once sat on the steps outside a funeral and laughed myself into cramps. I couldn't go in. It was horrible. How many terrible moments of high drama did I catch my sister's eye and just lose it. More than I can count. I know it's awful. A curse. Very black etc. But I just cannot help it.

LZ  Why an Olympic swimmer? What is it about high level sport that attracted you?

NK  An elite athlete begins as a child who loves something and I think that kind of love is good. I’ve always admired people who try really hard and swimmers try really hard every day for years and years and years. When I started to study water I loved the language that scientists used to describe it. There’s a lot of water in SWIMMING in all its forms; it rains for months, it snows in spirals, people sprout like fountains, feelings evaporate. I like the fact that in water people are unburdened by gravity. I like the image of swimmers flinging themselves into water and pulling as hard as they can. I like the idea of beating the clock, being your own principal adversary, human velocity. And there is a solitary lonesomeness about spending so many hours in an element in which you cannot breathe that I found deliciously melancholic. I love female locker room talk, any sort of ridiculous chatter about body parts, the fact that success is a temporary flame. Also, and I might as well admit it--when I started studying swimmers, I grew very attached to them, and when I continued to follow them, I fell in love. That's what happens I guess.

LZ  An admirer of yours told me that, in early drafts, you wrote “like an animal”. How did you manage to channel this intensity into story? By what process did you make your themes, which are rooted in profoundly personal events, comprehensible to the reader?

NK  Yipes—the Big Questions. Yes, I wrote like an animal. The intensity is there naturally so I didn't have to conjure it--it just sort of channeled itself into the work. I had some hard knocks while I was writing this novel and it is at these moments that one must decide what is important. It’s easy to have a good philosophy when things are fine, but when you get your mettle tested and things are a mess, it’s a bit more problematic. I had to choose. Writing anchored me—I felt like giving my best. That's the job of a writer I think--to make deeply personal feelings accessible to people. If they are incomprehensible then I'm not doing my job. I spent a lot of my life being incomprehensible, even to myself, so I know. Actually, when you meet someone one-on-one and talk to them, you can make anything comprehensible—even your most craziest story because bottom line; we are all human and understand human things so I talk to people. And I listen. And, not to sound like a dork, I care, so empathy seems a prerequisite.

LZ  What role did your agent play in your writing?

NK  My agent, Bill Clegg, is the first person who connected to my creative mind in a way I'd always wished for. He sort of obliterated this intellectual loneliness that one can accidentally find themselves locked in. The mind is a vast complicated affair that to find someone with whom you can work in such an effortless funny respectful loving way, honestly, is the biggest gift this whole process has brought me. I love working with him.

 

Nicola Keegan is currently working on her second novel.

 ---

What book reviewers wrote about Swimming when it was published:

Radhika Jones at Time Magazine (top 10 fiction of 2009) 

 Catherine Taylor of The Guardian.

Ron Charles at Washington Post

 

---

For more on  Paris Writers News Interviews

Twitter: @pariswriters

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ParisWritersNews/

 

An Encounter with Jimmie Durham at the 58th International Art Biennale of Venice

 by Dominique Godrèche

Jimmie Durham and his wife Maria Thereza Alvez (photos: Dominique Godrèche)

 

 

AN ENCOUNTER WITH JIMMIE DURHAM

AT THE

58^TH INTERNATIONAL ART BIENNALE OF VENICE

“May you live in interesting times”

_______

a Paris Writers News interview

by Dominique Godrèche

 

Jimmie Durham, American poet, activist, artist, attended the International Venice art Biennale, «May you live in interesting times», curated by Ralph Rugoff, to receive the Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement.

Born in the United States into a Cherokee family, Jimmie Durham studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, and had his first solo shows in 1965.  He later joined the American Indian Movement during the confrontation with US federal forces at Wounded Knee in 1973, and became Director of the International Indian Treaty Council and its representative to the UN during the 1970s. He moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico in the 90’s, and to Europe in 1994. He now resides in Naples, Italy, and Berlin, where, with his wife Maria Thereza Alves, they created a design company, Labinac, supporting the crafts of Latin American Indigenous populations, and the access to education for Indigenous students. While in Venice, he shared his thoughts with Dominique Godrèche about the Golden Lion Award, Native American art, Beauty, and living in Europe.

Dominique Godrèche: How do you feel about receiving the Golden Lion at this Venice Biennale?

Jimmie Durham: They probably think I am going to die soon! (laugh) I am very honored to be recognized, not as a prize recipient for making art, but for seriously making art. This is my 7th Biennale. I love being in big group shows, around other artists, and this art show exhibits so many people: it gives a chance to see what is going on in the world. I always loved Venice, where I taught art and history at the university: it is a beautiful city. So I am always happy to be here.

 

How did you select the pieces for the Arsenale, and Giardini?

Ralph Rudolph came to Berlin, and told me what he wanted for the Arsenale and the Giardini: I had the skulls of animals from my previous show in Zurich, a year ago, which  he was pleased with. Then I told him about a new piece made of serpentine stone for the Giardini, which he approved.

The eyes of the skulls, shown at the Arsenale, are made of Murano glass: did you work there?

I had a show a few years ago at the Querini Stampalia Museum, and I used broken Murano glass; as I have a friend who works there, and took his left over. I love broken glass, the pieces which are not quite “good”. In Murano they can do anything with glass, except a not good looking piece! Their glass work is too nice, it is made for the bourgeois; I love this beauty, but I know that you cannot make art with beauty, unless you are a really  good artist! Broken glass has so much energy: it vibrates in front of my eyes.

 

Can you elaborate about “art cannot be realized with beauty”?

Art is an intellectual enterprise. I don’t know what is meant by “creative”: I cannot create anything, but I can change the language, by talking, or creating poetry. -My first life was poetry-. But I don’t create language: I make poems, I answer an interview. As artists, we know that what we do in art is not translatable into language, and you cannot say what you mean. Art is important for human society; we need it as much as we need language.

 

But why did you mention that art cannot be beauty?

Because it is too easy, too incomplete. If I write or read a poem only made of beautiful words, it is not enough: there needs to be more complexity. And beauty takes over the complexity.

 

Since how long have you been living in Europe?

We moved here in 1994, from Mexico, and I had previously lived in Geneva for 4 years. I never feel at home anywhere, but I want to be able to participate to the intellectual and artistic life in Europe. As the United States is a colonial country, where people are racist, violent, not interested by culture, - just by money-. So now we have fame and money as a standard, and it comes from America.  When you hear about an American writer, actor…You only hear about how much he makes: that is not the right standard of success, as money has nothing to do with it. But that is the colonial idea of success; and is not good at all for art. In Europe it is still not as bad.

 

Why did you choose to live in Mexico?

We lived in Cuernavaca, as the most magical man, Ivan Illich, was there; and his ideas are more and more meaningful.

And why Naples today?

I never imagined to live in Napoli; we were living in Berlin and Rome. But a friend brought us to Napoli, and we fell in love with the city!

 

Do you identify yourself as Native American?

Yes, I am a Cherokee; but it is not a big deal. It becomes a big deal when craziness, or the media pick it up. What is important is that I never stopped being an activist and an artist since long ago, and I don’t make a separation between the two: if you are an activist and an artist, you don’t choose one over the other.

 

Do you think that your Native American identity reflects in your art work?

The same way Marcel Duchamp’s identity reflects in his art work. When we lived in New York, my art work was about the situation in the United States and the Native culture. Because we are colonized, we cannot make decisions on our own, and it is intolerable. I did not make art to instruct people; I made art that would be liked, and at the same time show a reality abou  racism. It is a sardonic type of art, with as much humor as possible, to show the stupidity of racism in everyday life; but I would not say it is Native American as such.

 Would you consider living in the United States again?

No. It is too frustrating to do art there, as the standard is money, and you cannot get beyond that; and it applies to everything.

 

Are you still concerned with Native American art, and issues?

I never was interested by Native contemporary art from the point of view of the United States: we are cheated by colonialism, and told, as Native American artists, that we should portray our lives, or ways of being, which means being oppressed, not free. And that gets boring very quickly, as they want us to create their romanticized image of ourselves; which is a cheat, and also not good for us.

An issue frequently mentioned by Native American artists…

Yes, but it is a difficult situation, to make art there, and fight colonialism: it is a hard task. You cannot do it directly; and not in America.

 

 

Will you continue to live in Berlin and Napoli?

I do not  like to be “at home”. Berlin is like Los Angeles: big, spread out, nowhere. So it is a good base. I like to live in a place until I reach a point where I hate it so well that I have to leave.

 

The Venice Biennale runs through November 24, 2019

 

Dominique Godrèche, ethno psychologist, writer, journalist, author of "Santana", Albin Michel editions, Awardee of the literary Prix de la Villa Medicis Hors les Murs, is a contributor for various medias (Télérama, le Monde Diplomatique, Geo...) She has published "Mad about God", "the Jerusalem Syndrome", in Paris Match, “Ultra orthodoxy and fashion”, in Le Point, “Religious fiction and Reality” in ça m’intéresse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unceded: Voices of the Land. An Encounter with Douglas J. Cardinal

Douglas J. Cardinal

UNCEDED: VOICES OF THE LAND

CANADA AT THE 16 th VENICE BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE

FREE SPACE

AN ENCOUNTER WITH DOUGLAS J. CARDINAL

Dominique Godrèche

“We see the earth as a Client. Architecture is the play of light, sun, shade, moon, air, wind, gravity in ways that reveal the mysteries of the world. All of these resources are free”, declared the curators of “Free Space”, the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara.

“Unceded: Voices of the Land”, Canada’s official entry, presented by Douglas J. Cardinal, architect of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, curated by David Fortin, Director of the McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University, Ontario, and Gerald McMaster, professor of Indigenous Visual Culture and Critical Curatorial Studies at OCAD University,Toronto, responds to Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara’s statement through the work of 18 Indigenous architects and designers, showcasing contemporary Native Architecture in Canada and the United States.

Divided into four thematic territories --Sovereignty, Resilience, Colonization, Indigeneity-- the exhibition addresses the fundamental values of Native people reflected in today’s architecture, shining the light on Indigenous architecture as a way of being, as underlined by Douglas Cardinal.

Born in 1934 in Calgary, Alberta, from Métis, Blackfoot, German and Algonquin heritage, Douglas Cardinal grew up in Red Deer, Alberta, where he studied at St. Joseph's Convent Residential School. In 1952, he attended the School of Architecture at the University of British Columbia, and later the School of Architecture of the University of Austin, Texas, from which he graduated in 1963. Douglas Cardinal received an award from UNESCO, for best sustainable village, and was awarded “World Master of Contemporary Architecture” by the International Association of Architects. In 1990, he was made Officer of the Order of Canada, in 1999 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and in 2012, he received the Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Settled in Ottawa, he currently works on a sport complex, “Fortitude”, in Orleans, Ottawa. Douglas Cardinal‘s philosophy and ideal envision architecture as a collective adventure, including the clients in their projects, so that the buildings will intimately relate to the inherent nature of their communities.

Invited at the Biennale to present “Unceded: Voices of the Land”, the first ever Indigenous- led exhibition representing Canada, he shared his visions for the future of Indigenous architecture, and his hopes for a global environmental awareness.

What does the topic of “Free Space” evokes, for you, and how did you select the architects?

Free space is about the nature of our people, who always had a sense of freedom, and cared for the beauty of the land: we lived that way for thousand of years before being colonized. David Fortin had the idea to submit Indigenous architects to the Canada Council for the Arts in charge of the presentation at the Biennale. The architects asked me to be the presenter, and I accepted, if we had traditional Native Elders involved, to show the importance of our Indigenous culture to the world. It was a great experience: the people in Venice were very responsive to what we had to present. And of course, being in Venice, so beautiful, was very nice.

What made you decide to become an architect, and who were your influencers?

I was brought up in a convent, surrounded by arts, culture; my mother trained me in music and arts. So I understood the importance of art and architecture, and felt I wanted to become an architect, as I could see how architecture would influence people‘s thinking. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of my influences. And one of my professors introduced me to Rudolf Steiner, who had a great influence on my architecture, because of his spiritual vision, his concern to build with love and care for the people: he was an architect in his approach of education, how he responded to the rhythm and the growth of the children in a natural way, bringing their beauty and values into the world, instead of colonizing them to fit into a patriarchal system of power and control.

Would you say that is what happened to the Native children? How do control and power manifest?

Absolutely; it was all about being forced into a colonial way of thinking, of power and control. But the Indigenous people follow the matriarchal system, of loving, caring, cooperation. The church and state make decisions for the people from the cradle to the grave; and even after. But architecture is about fulfilling people’s dreams and visions, without allowing the system to interfere: it is about freedom. The freedom of choice, not being programed to fit into a patriarchal system. I include the community and the people into the plans of the building, so I can build around their needs. Nobody ever asks the teachers, or students, how to design a class room: but when you do that, you get a building that serves the people properly. The ones who use the building know what works for them: a school genitor knows the school he works in, so you have to consult him.

So when you built the Oneida casino and resort, did you meet with the community before starting the construction?

Definitely. I had them make all the decisions: they had enough people deciding for them in the past, and I do not want to perpetrate that colonial mentality. I make sure they make all the decisions themselves, as they know how to use the space, and what they want. I had the people in the community tell me what their needs were, and I asked them to criticize whatever I do, so I could make changes according to their wishes: I put full responsibility in their hands, as it is for them, so they are the ones who should decide. Architecture is just about serving people, to bring their visions and reality, and not assume that you know all, forcing your vision on people. It is hearing the people’s vision, and carry out their dreams. Architects are usually like the society they serve: it is about power and control. That is not what I do. I do not want to build pyramids for the system, but rather work for the people. It is another way of looking at the world: instead of using your intellect, you look at the world from your heart and feelings. I gave Presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac a tour of the Ottawa Museum of History in Gatineau, and they liked it.

 What is the specificity of Native architecture, which examples would there be?

The architecture built in stones, before the arrival of the Europeans: the Mayans, and the Incas in South America, were great builders, who related to their culture and people. Indigenous people always lived in harmony with their values, and built in harmony with their environment and community. There was a relationship between the structures the people lived in, and their culture: when you live in harmony and respect with your environment and the people around you, whatever you do reflects that. The Indigenous world vision is far more compatible with the planet then the Western view, mainly related to power and control, not harmony.

Do you see an evolution among young Native architects, and do Native companies favor Indigenous architects for their projects?

Yes; the young ones want to be able to bring back their values and culture, and it is very important. Native companies are sometimes forced by the Bureau of Indian affairs to work with architects they have not chosen, but they would rather hire Indigenous architects, who think like they do.

You designed a hospital based on Indigenous beliefs and values: do some spaces have a healing quality, or, reverse, can they be destructive, because they do not fit people’s needs?

Space can be healing, when it reflects caring and loving qualities. And it can be destructive; or just serve the ministry who requested it. We had to build a hospital: who knows about patients care? The nurses know how things should be, so they should be included, with the doctors: I had doctors and nurses designing a hospital, which ended up being different from what the Department of Health wanted to implement. And not only did I include the doctors, but the medicine men who heal the people in the hospital; I introduced Indigenous healers inside the facilities and the operating rooms, where we combined both approach – traditional and medical -. Traditionally, Native people built Sundance lodges, healing lodges for their spiritual ceremonies: certain spaces are healing.

Given the way Native communities have been treated, put on reservations, with poor housing, going through a destructive history of their people, their space, does Indigenous architecture represent a political act today?

The architectural factor, or its absence, was part of the apartheid and the genocide policy of the Canadian government. Architecture has always been important through the ages, and can be very constructive for creating social changes. So maybe will we able to transmit our values, to make changes in the world; so that people become more respectful of the environment.

UNCEDED: VOICES OF THE LAND ARSENALE

VENICE BIENNALE UNTIL NOVEMBER 25

www.djcarchitect.com

 

Alecia McKenzie Talks Caribbean Lit at Culture Festival

 

 

Alecia McKenzie will teach a short story master class  at the Paris Writers Workshop in June

The 5th Latin America and Caribbean Week in France (La Semaine de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes) goes until June 10th, with an exciting array of literary and cultural events in Paris and other cities.

Jamaican author Alecia McKenzie led a discussion of Caribbean literature at the prestigious ESSEC Business School on Thursday, May 13. She was joined by fellow Jamaican Dr. Sondré Colly-Durand, a researcher and lecturer.

McKenzie and two students did readings from her prize-winning collection of short stories Satellite City and her novel Sweetheart. McKenzie also gave insights into the writer’s craft, getting the master’s students to write short pieces that emphasized point of view. She later said that she was impressed by the students’ contributions.

This is the second time that McKenzie has taken part in the annual Semaine de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes. She said that France has seen a growing number of translations of books from the anglo-Caribbean region and from Latin America, reflecting readers’ interest. Trésor, the translation of McKenzie’s novel Sweetheart, was awarded the Prix Carbet des Lycéens in 2017.

In a three-hour interactive presentation, Colly-Durand discussed the poetry of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. The Caribbean literature session formed part of the “Great Novels and Short Stories from the English-Speaking World" course, created by the director of the Languages and Cultures department Michael Kouklakis and American writer Curtis Young, both of whom attended.

Alecia McKenzie is teaching the short story / novella course at the Paris Writers Workshop in June: https://pariswritersworkshop.com/events/master-class-shortstory/

A talk with writer, filmmaker and producer Michael Mandaville

Recently Victoria Cyr had the pleasure to meet with writer, filmmaker and producer Michael Mandaville at a charming cafe near Edgar Quinet. 

 a Paris Writers News interview

 

Victoria Cyr: What inspired you to write your novel "A Cold Death -- An Aristotle Witzer Mystery" and set it in Paris?

Michael Mandaville: I actually saw an article which I still think I have some place which talks about a hidden movie theater in the tunnels under the Trocadero. That little article was so intriguing. Apparently the civil authorities were completely unaware that there was a mini movie theater under there complete with electricity and a bar. People would go there to watch old movies particularly the people who loved the underground tunnels in Paris. Of course, I also mix in a fair amount of some World War II history because I'm a World War II history junkie and the plot starts on its way! 

 Was it challenging to find the right locations for the story?

 The locations are not really the problem. Finding exact elements around the location by doing research, visits, using Google maps was the key. I have been to — at one point or the other –- most of these locations. But there are some places where I extrapolated what I'd read or discussed with some people about the underground, and then used a writer's imagination to work out what would be in the various catacombs and underground areas.

 Congratulations, I understand it's being turned into a series that will be filmed in Paris — can you tell us a little more?

 Well, we're in the formative stages of the process. Like any costly media project, it takes some time to assemble all the data. So I finished up working on the pilot based upon the novel. I could also break down the novel further into the remaining nine or so episodes. We are talking to several people about the talent, the budgeting process, and other resources that would allow us to shoot here in France.

My background is primarily motion pictures where I worked on all the” Taken” movies with Luc Besson’s company so I understand quite a bit of the process that's for darn sure. One of the elements that I'm trying to do is the balancing in my head between the creativity of writing and the necessity of working within budgetary bounds. For example, when you write a certain location or set into the novel or a TV show, then you want to try and come back to that in some way or use a set if it can be modified because that's a cost-effective strategy for doing media projects. In today's world with the advent of mass streaming programs, many companies want to do things for a specific price. So, I do have an advantage in terms of the creativity plus the ability to understand the budget process. 

How did your experience working with Luc Besson deepen your connection with Paris?

For one thing, I now have friends over here that I can talk to and ask a lot of questions whether it has to do with filmmaking, the Paris filmmaking scene, the European sensibility, etc. When you work with people in the film it's usually a very short intense period of time. You get to see people at their best and their worst. And that's when you get to really make friendships that are deep and affirming because you've got a chance to really see what kind of person this is under this kind of pressure. In addition, you also could see people who are very creative…not just at their craft of cinematography and production design, but also very good at problem-solving.

You're also writing a sequel to "A Cold Death" -- when will it be published?

I am aiming for later this year or early next year. It depends if I have a film that I have to work on in the meantime. But I do write quite a bit and fast, especially once I get it into my head on the direction I'm going. For the most part I look at it as a job where you have to report for work every day and accomplish so many tasks. So in that regard I am a diligent little factory worker pounding away on my keyboard.

As a filmmaker and director, how does this influence the writing in your novels?

What I like to think is that I am using my filmmaking capabilities to create a story which is both visual and exciting for the audience — the story itself should be as we call it — a page turner so that the essence of the plot compels one to move forward quicker and quicker. That being said, I am also a lover of history and endlessly curious about how history has informed the present. That's when I allow the novelist to take over and write about whatever interests me as small diversions into areas of interest. 

In “A Cold Death” one of the characters worked at a chocolate factory so I dive into the history of chocolate because it interests the character and they are proud of their time spent in making chocolate. Now that was an interesting moment, but that's what the character wanted to say. One of the characters in my novel Mrs. Fauntleroy talks endlessly and will go on for pages and pages. I needed the scene to be about three or four pages with her discussing an item with the main character, but darned if she just wouldn't be quiet in the scene and so it extended to nine pages in that particular draft. I believe I cut the scene back to four pages maybe five or so, but it was so pleasant as a writer just to let her talk for a little bit! That's when you know your characters are coming alive because you are the medium through which they talk — and you can shut them up!

 

I read that you have a degree in philosophy. Does this influence your writing, and if so, how?

Philosophy, for one thing, is probably a pretty dangerous background to have. For one thing you look at characters in people and see what drives them. What is their philosophy of life? Is it entirely based upon physical attributes of pleasure or the mental attributes of accomplishment? Or something in between? Does the person live a life dedicated to a particular ideal? I think in many ways that’s helped me examine or always remember to examine – the motivations, point of view and ideals of that individual. And by ideals I do not necessarily mean a good person. A criminal has certain ideals – just not the one’s most of society would agree with.

The other interesting part about philosophy is that you break down people's arguments into logical components and questions, then you find out how poorly constructed their arguments or belief systems are. Many are based upon cultural norms, acquired belief systems without substance, or the last several decades rise of political correctness so that we have a” social contract" where you must remain within the norm or be verbally ostracized by your peers. So the question is do your characters have a logic to their system or do they want to do something despite it being illogical? In addition, the use of logic and philosophy has helped create puzzles for plotting and I found it very useful there.

What is your approach to writing on a daily basis?

I write every day, one way or the other. It might be writing down notes in several pads that I always have going on or a more formalized process of outlining or still a more dedicated work on a script or a novel. It's just a compelling habit that I have now which is also quite therapeutic, creative and – wherever I am – productive. I certainly can feel comfortable in any place in the world, just working away on my own little idea which I have done from virtually every place I've ever visited.   

I tend to work with various methods. There is the nonlinear brainstorming part where I'm just scribbling away things and lines in letting the pieces of the puzzle come off the page and through the pen. And then there's the outlining part where I put it in a sequential order. And then where I can also start fleshing out everything in terms of certain scenes to see how to bring it alive. The fun part of writing in that arena is that sometimes I've written a scene in the middle or the end of the beginning which is this little anchor point that allows me to launch the bigger picture.

As a writer and filmmaker, what are the 10 essential items you won’t travel without?

Good one. I have to have certain kinds of pens which I like that have a wide tip. This is the Pilot G2 #10. Those are my favorite pens to write with so I definitely have to have a good handful of those. So being a sneaky writer, I will say that I need five of those with me at all times so I can only answer five more essential items. I definitely need a pad that will fit in my pocket which is a spiral-bound index card set. The index cards are strong enough to take a beating, whereas thin little pad paper will tear off and not last. I also always have a notebook which is always a grid and never lined paper. And that way I could think out of the box and not” stay between the lines”. 

Filmmaking wise, I have my camera on my iPhone which is better than a bulky camera in many ways. I've added to it with the unique little lens system which allows me to have fisheye, polarizer and wide angle. That is incredibly useful. The last item is always going to be some kind of physical map of the location where I am at. Even though we have the convenience of an iPhone and Google maps, it's not the same as holding a map in your hand and being an explorer. There is something old school about having a physical map and having to learn it. You also keep opening up the same map over and get to know it. That allows you to make better and deeper connections with the space I think. From a military standpoint, they call that learning the ground that you’re going to be fighting on. And if you’re writing about Paris or any other physical location that is the ground you are fighting on — to get your writing done!

Where can we buy your books?

You can buy them on Amazon where I would certainly appreciate you doing so and hopefully if you like the book then you will leave a nice positive review and I will take it in either English or French!

 

About Michael Mandaville

Michael Mandaville works as a Line Producer/Unit Production Manager on feature films and TV. He followed in the footsteps of his aunt, Molly Mandaville, who worked as Darryl F. Zanuck's script consultant for thirty-five years during Hollywood's Golden Age. He has worked on films such as "Taken" produced by Luc Besson, "Havoc" with Anne Hathaway, "The Kiss" with Terence Stamp and Billy Zane, and "American History X" with Edward Norton. He’s written several scripts and novels. 

 

About Victoria Cyr

Victoria Cyr is a Paris-based American poet, actress, and singer/songwriter.

The story behind Modigliani's magnificent portrait of a chocolate maker from Lognes

Investigative journalists at The Fifth Estate have done a fascinating documentary on a disputed Modigliani which the Panama Papers revealed was in the possession of one of the most powerful art dealing families in the world.  Anyone interested in art history and provenance could learn a lot, and lovers of Modigliani will certainly enjoy the unwrapping of this mystery.  

 

There is, in addition, an interesting local history connection. The sitter for this beautiful portrait by Modigliani was Georges Menier, who lived in Lognes, a pretty town in the eastern banlieue of Paris of which he was the mayor. He belonged to the great Menier chocolate-making family.

 

  

WIRED's Four Questions For Mark Zuckerberg

US Senators visibly had difficulty questioning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, so WIRED has come to their rescue with the four questions they should ask (reproduced or paraphrased below):

1. How does Facebook track users when they’re not on Facebook?

2. Does Facebook behave like a monopoly?

3. Show us (on a laptop here and now) how to change the privacy settings on a Facebook account.

4. Has Facebook's focus on growth hurt users? How?

 See the WIRED article by Natasha Tiku  FOUR QUESTIONS CONGRESS SHOULD ACTUALLY ASK MARK ZUCKERBERG for a complete analysis. Of course, just because the question is asked doesn't mean it's answered, as Zuckerberg's non-answer to Senator Wicker's reasonable question shows:

 

 

Excerpt from Mark Zuckerberg's not particularly forthcoming testimony.

(Was he testifying under oath?)

How many news articles have been removed under Europe's Right To Be Forgotten?

In Google's study Three years of the Right to be Forgotten,  the search engine giant reports receiving delisting requests for 2,367,380 URLS of which 20% "related to news outlets and government websites that in a majority of cases covered a requester’s legal history." 

A very small number of requestors, mostly reputation management agencies and lawfirms, accounted for a very large number of requests. Google refers to these as "high volume requestors": 0.25% (one fourth of one percent) of  requesters "generated 14.6% of requests and 20.8% of delistings."

 

source: Three Years of the Right to be Forgotten, page 2

Google accepted 43% of delisting requests. 

Today, when you perform a search in Europe, you will frequently see the message: "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe."

It is impossible to find out who requested the removal, what (if anything) was removed or why - even when it is a search for a Nazi war criminal that produces the message. 

There is no transparency. No external audit. No Freedom of Information Requests. No way to know the identity of the person or - as is frequently the case - professional Reputation Management Company that filed the request. There is no way to know the identity of the individual who decides what to remove. 

When the Right to Be Forgotten, championed by European Commissionner Viviane Reding, was decided by the European Court  in May of 2014, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia predicted "memory holes". This is precisely what is happening.

To find out whether your search results might be compromised, launch a search and scroll down to the bottom of the page to check.

This is clearly a story that deserves much more attention than it has received. 

 

***

 

 

Bing has removed 23,895 URLs from its search engine ( out of  62,027 URLs requested for removal) in accordance with Europe's 2014 Right To Be Forgotten.

France, the UK  and Germany account for the lion's share of requests. It is not reported how many of the URLs concern news or official government sites. 

 

 

 

What is Facebook accused of?

Kudos to The Guardian's outstanding investigative journalists for pursuing the story of how Facebook did everything NOT to see how the private information of millions of its users was being harvested, sold, exploited and generally abused in ways the users could not begin to imagine.

This is a big story that is not going to go away.

In Paul Lewis' report from San Francisco, we learn more details about what was happening behind the scenes at Facebook. 

• warnings from Facebook's own employees were ignored
• covert data harvesting was routine
• failure to use enforcement mecanisms to control use of data by outside developpers 
• deliberate looking the other way and pressure not to investigate (“Do you really want to see what you’ll find?”)
• enabling the secret harvesting of information of friends' data through Facebook apps in exchange for a "30% cut of payments made through apps", ("but in return enabled their creators to have access to Facebook user data.")
• blind eye to rogue developpers

For the full Guardian article, go to "'Utterly horrifying': ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine" in Facebook
The Cambridge Analytica Files

 For more info, see:

@Slate The Cambridge Analytica mess is a reminder to check which sketchy apps you’ve linked to Facebook: http://slate.me/2GMdlqN 

 

@WSJ Facebook shares, which fell nearly 7% on Monday, are down a further 5% Tuesday 

 

@Newsweek Facebook whistle-blower says majority of users have been data-mined http://bit.ly/2FUEGpy 

@NPR Facebook: Firm Working With Trump Campaign Stole 50 Million Users' Data

@Scout: The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine This remarkable analysis was written last year. 

WIRED - which it should be mentioned did NOT break this story - is doing a good job playing catch up, with interesting insights and explanations. 

 "Facebook has burned its fingers on issues of data privacy frequently in its 14 year history. But this time it was different. The data leakage hadn’t helped Unilever sell mayonnaise. It appeared to have helped Donald Trump sell a political vision of division and antipathy. The news made it look as if Facebook’s data controls were lax and that its executives were indifferent." - WIRED

...

"The story of how Kogan ended up with data on 50 million American Facebook users sounds like it should involve secret handshakes and black hats. But Kogan actually got his Facebook data by just walking in Facebook’s front door and asking for it." - WIRED

...

"Kogan had created the most anodyne of tools for electoral manipulation: an app based on personality quizzes. Users signed up and answered a series of questions. Then the app would take those answers, mush them together with that person’s Facebook likes and declared interests, and spit out a profile that was supposed to know the test-taker better than he knew himself.  About 270,000 Americans participated. However what they didn’t know was that by agreeing to take the quiz and giving Facebook access to their data, they also granted access to many of their Facebook friends’ likes and interests as well." - WIRED

 

Who are France's top selling authors for 2017?

 

And the winner is.... Guillaume Musso.

According to GFK-LE FIGARO,  the ten bestselling novelists in France are:

1. 
   

   France's top novelists by sales 2017
   Guillaume Musso
2.  Raphaëlle Giordano
3. Michel Bussi
4. Marc Levy
5. Aurélie Valognes
6. Fred Vargas
7. Françoise Bourdin
8. Gilles Legardinier
9. Agnès Martin-Lugan
10. Franck Thilliez

 

The list, based on real sales and including paperback and pocket editions, signal tumultuous times, says Le Figaro. Overall sales are down and the list is topsy turvy, with newcomer Raphaëlle Giordano catapulted to second place for her Ta deuxième vie commence quand tu comprends que tu n'en as qu'une which sold over a million copies - a phenomenal number in France.

How many of the books by  these novelists are known to English-language readers?

In general French authors tend to be undertranslated and underdistributed abroad. Enterprising publishers take note....

 

 

 

 

Upcoming deadlines to submit to Paris writing workshops

Writers in Paris will have the opportunity to register for workshops with outstanding authors this winter. 

Highly recommended are the workshops with Nicola Keegan, author of the acclaimed Swimming, at Berkeley Books, and the workshop on longform magazine writing with American Library Fellow James Verini, at the American Library in Paris.  For both workshops writers must submit texts. The deadline for submitting your work to the Verini workshop is December 15.  

more information to follow...

French War Brides: a talk with author Hilary Kaiser

 

Hilary Kaiser and Mary Duncan

After years of research and interviews, Paris writer Hilary Kaiser wrote several notable books on the history of French women who married American soldiers after World War II.  French War Brides, originally published in hardback, has now been reissued in new ebook and paperback editions. 

Mary Duncan talks with Hilary Kaiser about writing history, and the stories of French women and American soldiers in the Second World War.

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a Paris Writers News interview

Paris literary events September 26 to October 3

 

 TUES 26 September, 6;30-8pm Masterclass with Amélie Nothomb moderated by Mathilde Serrell at  the BnF | François-Mitterrand – Petit auditorium Quai François-Mauriac - Paris 13e. Entry is free and open to the public within the limit of available space (in French)

Writing in Paris: Exciting New Classes from WICE

Make Your « Re-entry » a Creative One in Paris!

What's on in Paris this fall? The WICE Creative Writing Program is offering a full roster of classes this fall with many new courses and several old favorites!

For those wishing to mine their personal experience for personal expression and publication, Lise Funderberg, creative writing instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and the Rugers MFA program, is presenting an intensive creative nonfiction workshop in October.

Paris Culture Round-up: What's on at the BNF this September

 

France's National Library BNF

Paris literary and cultural events tend to pause in August, gearing up for the rentrée in September.

At the BNF, however, classes on how to use the catalog and on (the very great) Gallica continue, every Thursday at 14h30 and 16h30. Classes are in French, free, and well worth the effort, as the BNF has quietly assembled world class resources for the benefit or scholars and students everywhere.

Monsanto caught ghostwriting safety evaluations of its pesticides

The source is Bloomberg. Three investigative reporters, Peter Waldman, Tiffany Stecker and Joel Rosenblatt, filed an explosive report on August 9, 2017 entitled "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". The article, posted on the Bloomberg site, is well worth reading. It presents information from internal Monsanto emails released by plaintiff's lawyers suing the chemical giant. According to the Bloomberg article, these emails show that the scientific journal "Critical Reviews in Toxicology" published "a purported 'independent' review of Roundup’s health effects that appears to be anything but".

July in Paris Selected Literary events

Paris teems with exciting literary and cultural events. Here, to get July off to a great start, are some special author evenings.

with Sam Chang, Nicola Keegan, Elliot Holt, Hari Kunzru, Jonathan Moody, Naniso Tswai, Edwidge Danticat, Marie Darrieussecq, John Freeman, Jessa Crispin, Ishion Hutchinson, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Zinzi Clemmons, Tom Jeffreys,  André Naffis-Sahely and Sam Jordison

July 4: Sam Chang, Director of the Iowa Writers Workshop at AUP 6:30 pm (reservations necessary)

News: Hilary Kaiser to speak at Patricia Laplante's Paris Soirées

 
The cost, which includes dinner in a lovely apartment in the Marais, is 25 euros. To reserve, please email [email protected] with your phone number.

Linked Data Queries With Sparql

Linked Data seems to hold such promise. But linking data just for the sake of linking data doesn't really make sense. Not unless one can access the data that various institutions and individuals have been, each in their own little corners, linking. 

How can one query Linked Data? Search it, retrieve it, use it?

That's where Sparql comes in.  

Unfortunately, learning Sparql can be a little daunting for non-programmers like myself.  So it's nice to find both MOOCs like INRIA's thorough "Introduction to Linked Data" as well as excellent Youtube videos like the one below.

 

 

Where can one find this Linked Data? One way is through what's called Sparql Endpoints. Sometimes these work. Sometimes they don't. Below are a couple of very very big ones that do (or mostly do).

•  DBPEDIA Sparql Endpoint
•  British Museum Sparql Endpoint
•  Europeana Sparql Endpoint
•  Getty Vocabularies Sparql Endpoint
• BNF Sparql Endpoint
•  Yale Center for British Art Sparql Endpoint
• SPARQL endpoints for the authority files of the German National Library 
• More Sparql Endpoints from W3C

There is real power here, but it is not easy to access. User friendly Sparql is not. But the possibility of searching across multiple data bases and through all kinds of layers and types of data is a tantalizing one and one, I hope, that will prove worth the effort.

I am extremely grateful to INRIA for their information-packed Mooc "Introduction to a Web of Linked Data", which took some of the fear away and make it possible to get started. There is much to learn...

Paris beauty in colorful garden flowers

Sci-Fi Dystopian Vision Embraced By Swedes?

Minority Report Ended Well Didn't It?

Microchips implanted under the skin? The Swedes are doing it!

Impossible, right? What person in their right mind would want to be tracked 24/7? What about thieves? (Ouch) Surely my friend was joking, or misinformed?

In two seconds she had whipped out her (trackable) iphone and Googled (also trackable) several sites (Cookies).  If Telegraph, Guardian, Business Insider, LA Times, and Washington Post are to be believed, some Swedish employees are getting microchipped "to open doors, operate printers or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand". Yes, the effort of swiping a card was too much work (the rummaging, the lifting, the swiping, the putting away again). Better, apparently, to be a cyborg. 

While across Europe political thinkers worry about the threat of populism and authoritarian movements, Sweden is leading the way into the kind of techology that sci-fi writers have only nightmared about.

“Of course, putting things into your body is quite a big step to do, and it was even for me at first,” LA Times quoted an initially hesitant employee as saying. “On the other hand, I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your heart,” he said. “That's a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices.”

About 150 people at a company called Epicenter have agreed to have the technology which LA Times compared to that of contactless credit cards, implanted. About the size of a grain of rice. And hackable, of course. 

Oh brave new world that has such cyborgs in it!

sources:

Companies start implanting microchips into workers' bodies - LA Times

Paris Fringe Theatre Festival: International, thought-provoking, and fun

The author chatting after the show with El Diablo of the Cards and (from left to right) Paris-based actresses Chloé Jamin, Victoria Cyr and Sarah Tullamore.

By Madeleine Kirchhoff

The 2017 Paris Fringe international theatre festival kicked off on May 17 with an opening ceremony providing a glimpse of this year's main line-up of 18 shows featuring performers from Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Singapore, South Africa, the UK, and the United States.

The festival organizers provided a warm ambiance at the opening festivities with a brass band welcoming the guests and a festival line-up showcasing high energy and generous spirit. 

There's something for everyone at Paris Fringe – children oriented shows with mimes and clowns, musical theatre, drama, dance and comedy. 

On the comedic side, the troupe Pelican’s delightfully unexpected and hilariously absurd sketches had the audience in stitches, and the amazing El Diablo of the Cards performed magic tricks with a twist of humor which kept me smiling for days.

New: Science wowed the crowd by improvising a musical on the spot with themes given by the audience– it’s spontaneous, impeccable timing and lots of fun to watch.  The one-man variety act Plan C featuring Caspar Schjelbred got a lot of chuckles for his absurd comic performance combined with clowning and mime.

The Big Funk Company showed snippets of creative scenarios, and  their spoof on a grown-up Little Orphan Annie was a laugh riot perfectly played by the troupe members.

On the dramatic side, the one-man show Hervé explores identity and race through the true story of an adopted child of French African descent by an unconventional Belgian couple. The solo piece No Breaks retraces a research experience on the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan, theatricalizing the questions at the center of political engagement.  Elizabeth Wautlet’s one-woman tragicomic show Jubilee is a funny and freaky fugue about a daughter, a father and debt.

The festival is entertaining and filled with powerful stories leading to discovery and engaging post-show discussion. For both the audience members and the performers, the festival creates a sense of global community and understanding though the common language of theatrical storytelling.

Paris Fringe is organized by a team of international theatre makers based in France, and is curated by artistic directors Dom Douglas and Reka Polonyi. “Paris Fringe is about bringing people together,” notes Polonyi, “with performing artists coming from around the world, it is an occasion for a diverse group of theatre makers to learn from each other and share new ways of working.”

The festival runs through May 28, 2017. Visit the Paris Fringe website for the full program.

Madeleine Kirchhoff

About the author

Madeleine Kirchhoff is a sociology student at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with interests in education and culture. She is spending the summer exploring Europe.

 

 

Paris joins Manchester in Grief and Rage

Heartbreaking. 

Another terrorist attack in the heart of Europe. The target this time: young girls. It is beyond heartbreaking. In solidarity with the grieving people of Manchester and the world, the Eiffel tower goes dark. We cannot help but be reminded of the Berlin Christmas Market attack, the Nice Attacks, the Paris Attacks to name only three among dozen of Islamist attacks in the months since the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

France continues to be in an official State of Emergency (more than a year now) and the US State Department continues to issue travel warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks in Europe. And Islamists "known to intelligence services" and even convicted of crimes, jailed and released, continue to travel freely into and throughout Europe, as the sheer numbers of people on watchlists overwhelm European security forces. There is no positive message here. How can there be a positive message when a girl of eight is murdered for attending a concert with her mother and sister? Europe is failing to protect itself and children are paying the price.

 

_______

See also the Guardian's "Manchester Arena attack: Libyans in UK 'warned about Manchester radicalisation for years'. Members of Britain’s Libyan community say they told authorities that terrorist recruiters are operating openly in the city"

Paris Theatre Events in May: Paris Fringe Starts May 18

Daring, inventive, hilarious, moving! Thirty shows, nine venues in Paris.

Crowd laughing at hilarious "El Diablo of The Cards" preview at launch last night (show: Tue/Mar 23 May 20:00 & Wed/Mec 24 May 20:00 Le Kibélé)

Talents from around the world 

 

 Come discover theatre that is both innovative and entertaining at http://parisfringe.org: May 18-28 in Paris

 

 

 

 

 

 

xx

A talk with Simon Goodman, author of The Orpheus Clock

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The Orpheus Clock  is both a fascinating read and an extremely valuable addition to the literature of  the Nazi era. It details two interlinked histories:  the story of the Gutmanns, a Dutch family of Jewish origin who was robbed and murdered under the Nazis, and the story of their descendants, the British Goodmans who have for decades struggled to uncover the truth and reclaim their heritage despite well-financed opposition by the indirect beneficiaries of Hitler's policies. 

Against intense opposition, the Goodman brothers fought an epic court battle to force the powerful Chicago billionaire Daniel Searle to admit the truth about the provenance of  a painting, a Degas, that had belonged to Goodman's grandparents, Friedrich and Louise Gutmann. In 1943, the Gutmanns were deported to Theresienstadt: Friedrich was beaten to death and Louise murdered in Auschwitz. 

What I discovered in Simon Goodman's outstanding book, The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis, was that the immense Chicago battle was only the first of many, many battles that were to come,  each one demanding incredible reserves of time, money, effort, patience and courage, not only to recover the Gutmann/Goodman family's lost legacy of art treasures, but, equally important, to reestablish its history, which had been deliberately obliterated.

 

 Simon Goodman, author of The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis

a Paris Writers News interview

 

Paris Writers News Selected Author Interviews Nbr. 1

______________________________________________________________________________

THE ART OF FICTION NO. 1

Nicola Keegan (2009)

On the care and feeding of poets, snow, and Michael Jackson's body

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THE ART OF NON-FICTION NO.12

Anne Marie O'Connor (2014)

On Maria Altmann's efforts to recover Klimt's portrait of her aunt: "In those days people never got back stolen art."

 

______________________________________________________________________________

THE ART OF FICTION NO. 34

Steven Sampson (2013)

On writing in French, Philip Roth and Satire

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 THE ART OF THEATRE NO. 5

Miranda Crispin (2013)

On English language musical comedy in France

 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

  

THE ART OF TRAVEL WRITING  NO. 45

Gary Lee Kraut  (2011)

On revisiting Paris as a writer and an editor

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 THE ART OF MEMOIR NO.31

Matthew Fraser (2013)

On faith, hope and the meaning of home,  in Paris' Poodleland, favored by James Joyce.

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diane Johnson talks with Rosalia Gitau about Writing Paris

Authors interview Authors:

   Diane Johnson shares with Rosalia Gitau for Paris Writers News

 Diane Johnson is a pretty big deal as far as writers go. She’s the type of writer with multi-book contracts and movie deals, the type of writer whose work you likely own without perhaps knowing it. This is because Diane Johnson is a writer- that’s it, she writes. Writers who have reached her status are often celebrities in their own right- the kind of people you recognize sipping champagne with Lindsay Lohan in some very hip New York nightclub, shakily straddling their obligations of the pen with publicity. But Diane Johnson seems to shun that attention. She is a true academic parsing our profundity in life’s seemingly mundane social rituals. As she explains, she lives the life of a writer and not an artist. Her coterie of work, rather than a reflection of her life, stands alone and speaks all for itself.

 I met Diane Johnson at Les Editeurs cafe, an old haunt of the Saint-Germain writers’ scene. She’s just finishing a Proust lesson with her tutor, in French of course.

 

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *     

  

RG : What made you want to read Proust in French?

DJ : Everyone wants to read Proust, I think. You know, it’s very amusing. It’s such a wonderful view of 19^th century France and since I’m interested in 19^th century literature, generally, it’s just kind of an addition to my life.

 

RG : What is your background? I heard you went to UCLA- is living in LA what got involved in screen-writing?

DJ : I went to a woman’s college in the mid-West, Stephens College, and then I went to UCLA for grad school. I haven’t written many screenplays…only one that was made into a movie. It was Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

 

 RG : How did you get involved with that project?  

DJ : Stanley Kubrick was thinking of making this horror film of my novel the The Shadow Knows, and so we got acquainted while we were thinking that over, and then he decided to do the Stephen King [book] but he just asked me if I would [write the screenplay].

 

RG : Were you always a writer? 

DJ : I started as a child.

 

 

RG : You have obviously published a lot-  how did that whole process come about?

DJ : I was publishing already by the time I went to [graduate] school. I had married quite young and had little children. I was 19 [when I married] which was sort of the fashion in those days. So I had these four little children and I needed a reason to get out of the house. I took classes at UCLA, and if you take enough classes you get your PhD.

 

RG : And did you teach?

DJ : Yes, I taught at Davis for a bunch of years. I published a couple of novels [whilst there].

 

RG : And how old were you when you published your first piece?

DJ : I was about 28, I was maybe 28 when I wrote it… I can’t remember when it was published. So I was continuing my creative writing at the same time that I was in graduate school.

 

 RG : A lot of life has to do with chance. I hadn’t pursued writing for a long time because I feared risking everything on chance. Do you think pursuing and succeeding at writing is a luck of the draw?

DJ : There is luck involved. In my case one of my professors at UCLA was a novelist so he knew an editor, and so on. For me, it was not a difficult process.

 

RG : Did you just get to work then?

DJ : Yes, it was more like that. I did have the good luck of having a professor who knew an editor he thought highly of and he just kind of sent this novel to this editor. So that was a ‘big break’. But after that, it was cumulative, just doing the work.

 

RG : After you published your first book, was there a lull until your next publication?

DJ : No, I was just writing the novels and having a literally life. Doing your work and publishing. I write for the New York Review of Books so that’s a sort of the critical side that I quite like.

 

RG : What have you critiqued lately?

DJ : I have two assignments at the moment- one of them is about [three] books about marriage. Elizabeth Gilbert is one of them- it’s her second book, I guess- and the other is Lori Gottlieb, and [the last] is about a sociologist or statistician of some kind with statistics on American marriage.

 

RG : I have to say, I’m not surprised that you were chosen to critique a handful of books about marriage. In you ‘trilogy’ [Le Divorce, Le Marriage, and L’Affaire] you paint a very complex picture of marriage. I found this interesting because you have been married for so long.

DJ : I would not have said that my books were about marriage at all- even when it is called Le Mariage… I think that one observes. The story in Le Divorce was a story I heard over and over again from other people about American girls who come to Paris, marry the Frenchman and either get dumped or break up for whatever reason and then they stay. And so that was kind of a universal story. But the things I write about I think about more as political: Americans abroad and what some of their assumptions are.

 

RG : Are we, as American women who move to Paris and fall in love with a Frenchman, doomed to repeat the same mistake?

DJ : I don’t think so. Sometimes it works out…my daughter however is still married to her French husband. They came here [to Paris] they lived together and they had kids and it seems pretty stable, I hope so. It’s lasted 20 years.

 

RG : So these books you’re critiquing…

DJ : So, I wanted to actually ask you about something: what really has surprised me about them is the huge change of sensibility since I was getting married and settling down. In, let us say, the ‘world–as-described-by- Betty-Friedan’, where women were expected to stay home and if they worked, they would just work until they got married, or that they would have some career but not really after they had children. It was more what we think of as ‘traditional’. And then with the sort of ‘empowerment of women’, women now expect to work…and not only to work, but they expect to have children [and] to have careers. But Lori Gottlieb presumes that women are now very fussy because they come from a position of strength, they have an agenda and if the guy doesn’t quite measure up to this they will move on.

 

 RG : Are you referring to  the Atlantic Article [by Lori Gottlieb] about settling?

DJ : It is. It created a stir. [However] what she is saying is nothing revolutionary: it’s ‘look around at the guy you have always liked that you’ve been coffee with for ten years. Yes, he’s losing his hair but why not look again?’

 

RG : The reason it caused such a stir, I think, is because she wasn’t just saying settle for whatever is around but rather look at the expectations you [as women today] have created. It’s not them, it’s us…

DJ : That’s Lori Gottlieb’s [idea], this idea of entitlement, but also self-regard. People have been taught to think well of themselves and to not sell themselves short, there’s a buzz-phrase which is escaping me. It’s not self-regard, it’s self-esteem, that’s it, that has gone too far and [consequently] people have unrealistic self-esteem. In fact they’re not seeing their own position…and then they’re 30 and their biological clocks are ticking and then they’re 40 and panicked and it has all these consequences that people haven’t thought through because they have unrealistic expectations.

 

RG : I’m curious where these expectations come from.

DJ : Well, me too because it is a great change in sensibility among women since my time in college.

 

 DJ : Where do you think that these women get these criteria?

RG : Sex and the City. They buy into the four single girls living in the city looking for love.

 

DJ : And having great clothes.

RG : If you ask young women today who is the male character on the show whom they prefer, they will almost always say Mr. Big. For me, he was the worst of the lot. If I met a guy like that on the streets, I would run.

DJ : What I’ve got to do is rent some DVDs of Sex And The City.

 

RG : I think you’ll better understand what these women want. They run after these aloof men in the hopes that one day, he will turn around and say…

DJ : It is you I always loved.

 

RG : Funnily enough, that’s actually how the series ended. When Mr. Big finally tells the protagonist Carrie: ‘you’re the one’.

DJ : That is so interesting.

 

RG : Unlike the tidy ending of Sex and the City episode, in your books, you do a really good job of laying out a story with seemingly disparate elements that always seem to come together in a unique way at the end. As a writer, do you start off with a plan?

DJ : I think as a writer it helps to have as much of a plan [as possible] so you start out with clarity. It’s going to change and you’re gong to make discoveries along the way and there will be a whole lot of changes… but to get yourself started and to know the basic thing, like the narrative, is important because otherwise you’ve got an infinity to work with in terms of subject. You should know your characters, where it’s set and you should know basically what its about, and then maybe there’s something else you want it to be about too, so… set up another kind of plot that’s going to elaborate about some other issue- some related issue.

 

RG : Do you draw this out?

DJ : I do because I like diagramming, so I try to make a little plan.

 

RG : Do you know all your characters ahead of time?

DJ : Yeah, pretty much. It helps to get them in place.

 

RG : You use a lot of recurring characters- do you have a favorite?

DJ : No…I usually like [all of] them. I bond with them and I don’t like to give them up- even the villains.

   

RG : Just to tie up some loose ends: may I ask what happened at the end of L’Affaire- why did Amy Hawkins (the book’s protagonist) suddenly disappear? She wasn’t done with her studies yet.

DJ : No, she wasn’t done with her studies yet, though she probably had to go back to her ‘real life’ and Paris had just been a fantasy. She’s got this on-going boyfriend that she’ll see, I think it does say they will meet over the years. I didn’t think that she should get married.

 

RG : So is this [Paris] a fantasy?

DJ : Being a dot com millionaireness is (smiling).

 

RG : One of the things I really like about L’Affaire is your discussion of French women and their toiletry rituals. Do you do perform ‘toiletry’ as described in the book.

DJ : I suppose the more I’m in France, the more I’m in French life. I don’t think I have any perfume with me [right now] but yes, it becomes the ambience of the zeitgeist.

 

I think, you get comfortable with your Americaness and you realize you’re not going to be French. But then you find a good balance of taking the best of both.

 

RG : Do you have French girlfriends?

 DJ : Yes.

 

RG : What do you find different about your friendships with French women and other women.

DJ : They are a little more guarded. And that may be just because they’re more used to competition between women rather than sisterhood.

 

RG : Why do you think they’re competing?

DJ : For male attention. I have this theory but I don’t know if it’s true because I don’t really know the details… but it’s true in both England and France that the divorce laws and basic protections for women are rather inferior to America. And so, still a great part of their [French women] security is related to their relationship to men. They pretty much have to get married or live together in some sort of [arrangement]. They don’t have security that we [American women] have, they don’t have jobs as high-ranking. [Ffor example] there are hardly any French female executives. They just don’t have as secure a place. I think that’s one of the things sort of in a transition now.

 

RG : And is that one of the reasons why the French women in your book seem as though they are settling- you often refer to them practical.

DJ : Yeah, I think so. See what you think as you get to know more French women.

 

RG : What are you working on now?

DJ : I’m working on a kind of a memoir collection; it’s stuff I’ve already written and someone said ‘you should really put that together’. So I started to put that together and I thought ‘well, this is really interesting to do’.

It’s a collection of short pieces that might be about different things like a Morgan car that I once had or a particular uncle or my mother’s hometown and I’m trying to make them fit together in a sort of way that will say something about the mid-West- which is where I grew up- and about the insularity of Americans.

 

RG : What do you mean by ‘insularity’?

 

DJ : Just the fact that most Americans- if you look at political movements in America, like the Tea Partyists- they are [comprised] generally [of] people who have never left America, who have no perspective of the world or how other societies might do things better. Trains, for example, that’s my example, in something I have written [about]. They are just very very ‘deleted’ and this is some of the [stuff behind the election of] George Bush- and that was a disaster for the country. So, without sticking to that point specifically, I’m trying to comment on the country.

 

RG : Do you see yourself as a writer more than an artist?

DJ : I’m a writer. If I understand the distinction, I consider what I do art, because I consider writing an art. I consider myself a professional writer… but it’s about the work. It’s not about living the life of an artist. And I agree that there are people who really want to live an artistic life maybe without doing the work.  My concern is not with the artistic life.

 

RG : I keep hearing people critique my writing saying that there is a restraint. I wonder if I stopped living such a restrained life, would it be reflected in my work?

DJ : If [no restraint] means taking a lot of opium and having opium dreams, that is not good- it’s going to have the opposite effect on your writing. Losing restraint in your writing is something you will have to learn.

 

I consider for example that there is something restrained in my writing. But I could

say much more in my writing that I could say in person or in a social setting. In other words, you can learn to be self-revealing, or frank, or expressive in writing.

 

RG : How did you learn that?

DJ : You just get comfortable. First, there are these social restraints, and then you learn to be less inhibited and more expressive just by doing it and bearing it in mind as a goal. So I don’t think you have to wear bohemian clothes.

 

If you feel like doing that some times, good. But I don’t think its necessary. But if it is necessary then you’ll probably do it. But if it’s not you- you’re not going to pull it off anyway. If you really feel all that inside and you’ve been keeping it back, then you have to learn.

 

RG : Is that where your stories come from- a kind of internal bubbling that comes to the surface?

DJ : I don’t know where the impulse to write comes from, it comes from somewhere and writers all have it. People all have some urge for self-expression.

 

RG : So what’s next?

DJ : I’m going to write another novel, after I’m done with the [collection]…I think it’s going to be about an American going back to America, who has lived abroad for a long time and she goes back and finds that there are ‘girls with lists’ [there now].

 

 

A Few Books About The Holocaust in France

Anna Polonyi, author of Wayword, on pilgrimages, poetry and time

 

With a backpack, a journalist's keen eye for telling detail and a poet's love of language, Paris writer Anna Polonyi set off on the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.

Wayword, her stunning new book of poetry, is the result. 

A talk with Anna Polonyi, author of Wayword.

A Paris Writers News interview.

Brushstroke! The story Alice Goldfarb Marquis switched to fiction to tell

Alice Goldfarb Marquis was a fearless master of non-fiction whose books about the art world made headlines, notably Alfred H. Barr Jr: Missionary to the Modern, her revealing biography of the director of the Museum of Modern Art. Unbeknownst to the general public, Goldfarb also wrote a novel about the art world - from all apparences a roman à clef - which she was never able to get published during her lifetime.  It fell to her friend, Larry Jarvik, to bring the novel out, years after her death. 

A talk with Larry Jarvik, publisher of Brushstroke! the only story Alice Goldfarb Marquis turned to fiction to write.

Elizabeth Rynecki on Chasing Portraits of pre-Holocaust Jewish Poland

Moshe Rynecki's paintings depicting Jewish life in Poland were scattered and presumed lost after he and most of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.

Today, three quarters of a century later, his great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Rynecki, has undertaken a quest to reconstruct his life's work and to reconnect with her family's past. Chasing Portraits is her moving first person account of her search for the artistic legacy that her great-grandfather hid in an attempt to save it before the Nazis came.

 A Talk with Elizabeth Rynecki on Chasing Portraits, a memoir at the intersection of art, history, family legacy and the Holocaust.

UPCOMING RELEASE: The Beginner's Cow: Memories of a Volga German from Kansas

 

American Midwest history told with humor and grace

Loren Schmidtberger waited three quarters of a century to tell his stories of rural life in Kansas during the Dust Bowl years.

Now, at the age of 88, Schmidtberger is making his literary debut. Hailed for its "wry humor and gentle grace," his The Beginner's Cow: Memories of a Volga German from Kansas will be published by Truman State University Press in December.

How to write about the past, in particular a now mythical event such as the Dust Bowl? What are the challenges to launching a book project in one's eighties? What is the role of a book group? (And what in the world is a "beginner's cow"?)

A talk with Loren Schmidtberger, Professor Emeritus of English at Saint Peter's University, on leaving a record, humor, grief, American history, and the importance of book groups.

 

Niles Reddick on Writing the Voices of the South

Drifting Too Far From The Shore will be released on September 15

My first encounter with Niles Reddick had me laughing out loud - and a little afraid.

It was in a short story he had written about a shopper who insists that a cheating grocery store honor the discount it had advertised on grapefruits, which, of course, the grocery store does not want to do.  The confrontation is hilarious, frightening and absurdly admirable all at the same time. Boy, I thought wiping my eyes. I never want to tangle with that guy.  Yet I couldn't resist the urge to read more of his writing. Amid stacks of submissions, his was the one I kept picking up and reading for pleasure. Now, nearly two years later, I am delighted to announce the publication of his wonderfully kind and amusing novel, Drifting Too Far From The Shore. It's the story of a southern woman in her late seventies who, like all of us, is attempting to confront the injustices of this life with decency, compassion and a sense of humor. How a writer decades younger and a different gender from his protagonist managed to get her voice pitch perfect is one of those mysteries that makes discovering a new writer such a pleasure.  

 

A talk with Niles Reddick, author of Drifting Too Far From The Shore

Best Literary Event Ever! It's Festival America time!

Paris delights with its outstanding offer of literary events in English and in French.But one of the stand out books events, held every two years in Vincennes, is Festival America.

This is the place. Terrific authors. Wonderful venue (if you don't know Vincennes already, it is time to discover this jewel poised on the eastern edge of Paris). Amazing organization. An army of competent, smiling volunteers. Teams of translators.  Treasures of new books and classics, in both French and English. This brainchild of Vincennes independent bookstore Millepages and the enlightened municipal leadership of Vincennes is an absolute must see, must do.

If past events are anything to go by, you won't regret it!

Festival America September 8-11.

Download program here.