Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

What a fool (Dummkopf) I was - Fritz Thyssen, businessman and major contributor to Nazi party

...from William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

"...the businessmen, who had welcomed Hitler's regime so enthusiastically because they expected it to destroy organized labor and allow an entrepreneur to practice untrammeled free enterprise, became greatly disillusioned. One of them was Fritz Thyssen, one of the earliest and biggest contributors to the party. Fleeing Germany at the outbreak of the war, he recognized that the 'Nazi regime has ruined German industry.' And to all he met abroad he proclaimed, ' What a fool [Dummkopf] I was!"

 

Steven Sampson, on writing books in French, Philip Roth, and Jewish satire

I first heard Steven Sampson speak at a seminar on the America of Philip Roth, organized by La Règle du Jeu in Paris. His knowledge, insight, wit - and incredible mastery of French - blew me away. Who was this Philip Roth scholar who navigated the deep waters of literary Paris with such ease?

Emily Zuckerberg's Guide to Social Media Etiquette Tip Number 1 : Mocking Spammers

Lately, Typepad spammers have pulled out all the stops, assailing blog posts with comments designed to look vaguely like the real thing but linking back to objectionable sites.

Every day I've been dutifully 1) marking them as spam, 2) deleting them and 3) adding significant key words to the block list.

Yet they keep coming!

What's on in literary Paris this September: Paris Writers News

This month news from Ann Mah, Timothy Jay Smith, Sarah Churchwell, Thomas Gatus, Marina Warner, the Bilingual Actors Workshop, Poets Live, Shakespeare and Company's Sylvia Whitman, the American Library in Paris, Cathy Altman Nocquet, WICE,  Jennifer K. Dick, The International Fine Art Photography Award, Ivy Writers, Jamie Cat Callan, the Festival des Ecrivains du Monde, Mille-Feuilles, Clotilde Dudoulier, Aliette de Bodard, Kilian Tep,  Mary Duncan, and more. Update ongoing....

Paris Writers Festival Sep 20 to 22 to feature Richard Ford, Kiran Desai and more!

Mark your calendars! Terrific bilingual literary event in Paris this September:

Festival des Ecrivains du Monde: September 20-22, 2013

The truth about the tourism industry in France

France top tourism destination!  France breaks travel record with 83 million visitors! France number "UN"!

Not according to Jean-Pierre Nadir, CEO of the travel site Easyvoyage.

Aliette de Bodard, author of Immersion, on writer boot camp, languages and breaking through in sci-fi

As part of Paris Writers News' series on women science fiction writers, Barry Kirwan, author of The Eden Paradox Novels, sat down to talk with Aliette de Bodard, author of award winning speculative fiction and novels, including 'Immersion' (Nebula and Locus awards),  'The Shipmaker' (British Science Fiction Award) and 'The Jaguar House, In Shadow' (nominated for both Hugo and Nebula).  Born in the USA but raised in France, Aliette writes in English.  Here is Barry's report.

Is France's FNAC doomed? A short internet history

1. 

   Europe's top destination for cultural goods

 

Created in 1954  by  French leftists André Essel and Max Théret, FNAC has become Europe's leading distributor of books, films and music - and, until recently, a great hang-out for readers of every genre. But changing technology, challenges from new competitors and evolution in the way people buy cultural goods have hit this once great retailer hard.  As bookstore chains disappear across the globe, will France's FNAC be able to resist? Recent internet headlines suggest the magnitude of the challenge...

Writing Classes at WICE this fall in Paris

2013 Registration is now open for writing classes (in English) at WICE in Paris.   Check them out!  Many fine writers got there start here.

Douglas Trevor, author of Girls I Know, on the power of dark poetry in 21st century America

Douglas Trevor

Douglas Trevor is the author of the novel Girls I Know (Sixoneseven Books, 2013), and the short story collection The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space (University of Iowa Press, 2005) which  won the 2005 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award for First Fiction.  A professor of Renaissance literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan, his writing has appeared in numerous publications.