Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Paris Writers News February 2012 : spotlight on the American Library in Paris

This month, we begin with literary events at the American Library of Paris which is featuring authors Fernanda Eberstadt, Monique Wells, Donald Morrison, Robert Camuto, Noella Marcellino, Denyse Beaulieu, Philip Caputo, Pamela Druckerman, John Morris, Fred Weissler, Elyse Michaels-Berger, Sallie Chaballier and the 2012 Young Authors Fiction Festival (deadline for submission April 1) . New books and events at other venues will be added throughout the month....The fabulous Geneva Writers' Conference takes place this weekend with, as usual, a strong Paris contingent. More about this later...

 

February Focus on The American Library in Paris 

Wed 01 February 2012 19h30  Fernanda Eberstadt presents her latest novel Rat, which touches on children parenting parents, modern terror, and the ragtag legacy of the 60’s.

 

 

 

 

Tue 07 February 2012 19h30  Following the Flavors of the African Diaspora with Monique Wells

 

 

 

 

 

Wed 08 February 2012 19h30  Donald Morrison, author of Comment Obama a perdu l’Amérique, assesses Barack Obama’s presidency and the stakes in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

 

 

 

 

Thu 09 February 2012 19h30 AAWE @ The Library: Understanding French Higher Education with the AAWE authors of  Beyond the Bac – Higher Education in France and Abroad. Speakers : Fred Weissler, professor of mathematics at Université Paris 13; Elyse Michaels- Berger, former Academic Director of the HEC MBA Program; and Sallie Chaballier, co-chair of the FAWCO education task force and AAWE coordinator of Paris College Day.

 

 

 

 

Wed 15 February 2012 19h30  Passion Panel about Wine, Cheese, and Perfume with Robert Camuto, author of Corkscrewed and Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey, Noella Marcellino, Benedictine nun,a Fulbright Scholar and  the subject of a PBS documentary called The Cheese Nun. and  Denyse Beaulieu, editor for Citizen K and author of The Perfume Lover to be released in March.

 

 

 

Thu 16 February 2012 19h30 Philip Caputo will present Crossers, a blistering new novel about the brutality and beauty of life on the Arizona-Mexico border and about the unyielding power of the past to shape our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

Wed 22 February 2012 19h30 Journalist Pamela Druckerman explores the secret behind France's astonishingly well-behaved children in Bringing Up Bébé. RESCHEDULED CHECK WITH LIBRARY TO CONFIRM TIMES

 

 

 

 

 

Wed 29 February 2012 19h30  John Morris, who has been called "the world's most influential photography editor," will talk about his legendary career.

 

 SUBMISSIONS  -- attention parents!!

2012 Young Authors Fiction Festival - The Fiction Festival is open to all students ages 5 to 18 in the greater Paris area who write in English. It offers a wonderful opportunity for educators to encourage creative writing among their students. Deadline for submissions is midnight 1 April 2012. For more information see site.

 

 

Paris Writers News: literary events, readings, workshops in January 2012

Paris Writers News is back online in 2012 and eager to report new publications and events in the English-language writing community in Paris! This month, news from the Geneva Writers Conference, Kartik Singh, Florence Valero, Kristin Espinasse, Samantha Dunn, Jennifer L. Scott, Vahram Muratyam, Charles Wood, Thomas Huber, Jean Claude Gautrand, John Baxter, Sarah Meade, Jeffrey Greene, Barry Kirwan, Sheila Kohler, Best Paris Stories, Charles Glass, Margo Berdeshevsky,  Jim Bitterman, Jean Lesieur, the American Library in Paris, Shakespeare and Co, Village Voice, WH Smith, NYU Paris, WICE, Lionel Shriver, Eugève Nicole, The American Club, Beth Epstein, Cherie Burns, Dimitri Bechacq and more,

If you have a new book or event in Paris you'd like to announce, let me know. 

NEWS:

George Whitman of Shakespeare and Company, photo Simon Nofolk

Tributes poured in from all over the world for George Whitman, founder of the iconic Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company and extraordinary contributor to literary life far beyond the Left Bank. Sor an idea of the man and his world see articles in The Economist, NYT, Guardian, Le Figaro, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and many, many more.

All of us in Paris are very fortunate that George's remarkable daughter Sylvia continues Shakespeare and Company's outstanding tradition of dynamic and generous contribution to the literary arts.

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Geneva Writers Conference February 3-5, 2012 Program now posted with registration form

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BEST PARIS STORIES to celebrate the launch of the anthology May 29, 2012 at The American Library in Paris

 

EVENTS

Thu 5 January : Charles Glass will speak about his book Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under the Nazi Occupation 1940-1944 at American Club of Paris (entry fee : 50 euros for non-members)  read Paris Writers News interview

January 7-8 USED BOOK SALE at the American Library in Paris. See their site for how to contribute and/or make purchases. (By the way, if anyone has a car, I have a lot of books I’d like to donate…)

Sunday, January 8th, play reading VISITES by Florence Valero (in French) at Carr's Restaurant and Pub with Moving Parts, 7:30 pm 1 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris

January 10  Jim Bitterman and Jean Lesieur on the impact of the upcoming elections in France and the USA at the American Library in Paris

January 10 : LIONEL SHRIVER, SO MUCH FOR THAT SHAKESPEARE And Company  6 pm  Orange Prize–winner We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Post-Birthday World, A Perfectly Good Family, Game Control, Double Fault, The Female of the Species, Checker and the Derailleurs, and Ordinary Decent Criminals

Wed 11 January, 2012 – PARIS - NYU Paris - « They write in english, they write in french. They write from the borders » Lecture with the author, Eugène Nicole  at Bibliothèque François Mitterand 6:30 pm 

Wed 11 January, 2012 Lionel Shriver best known for her novel, We Need to Talk about Kevin,   at the American Library of Paris 7:30 pm  

Thursday, January 12th at 7pm Village Voice Alba Arikha discusses Major/Minor A Memoir

Wed 18 January, 2012 – Beth Epstein presents her book Collective Terms: Race, Culture, and Community in a State-Planned City in France. at The American Library in Paris: 7:30 pm

January 19 Cherie Burns on her book Searching for Beauty--The Life of Millicent Rogers, the first comprehensive biography of the Standard Oil heiress and fashion icon. at the American Library Iin Paris 7:30 pm

January 22, Play reading of "Public School" by Kartik Singh at Carr's Restaurant and Pub with Moving Parts, 7:30 pm 1 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris

January 24 Arthur Phillips presents The Tragedy of Arthur. At the American Library of Paris 7:30 pm

January 25 Sophie Hardach presents her debut novel The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages, a novel about identity, immigration, love and marriage.  At the American Library of Paris 7:30 pm

January 26, 7-8 pm WH Smith, Sheila Kohler presents and signs Becoming Jane Eyre  interview 

Thu 26 January, 2012 – PARIS - NYU Paris - «The Francophone Americas: Perspectives on Haiti» Lecture on Voodoo with Dimitri Bechacq   7:00 pm, New York University in Paris 7.30 pm 

Friday, 27 January 5:30 - 6:30 pm David Lodge will sign his new book A Man of Parts, followed by reading and Q&A 7-8 pm AT WH SMith Paris

 Tue 31 January, 2012 – WICE @ The Library - Writers on Writing with Jeffrey Greene  7:30 pm, American Library in Paris

NEW BOOKS -- 

Blossoming in Provence by Kristin Espinasse, author of the delightful French Word a Day blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Failing Paris by Samantha Dunn, a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Fiction Award

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons for Madame Chic: the Top 20 Things I learned While Living in Paris by Jennifer L. Scott

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Between Soul & Stone by Margo Berdeshevsky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paris : Portrait of a City by Jean-Claude Gautrand 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Paris Versus New York: a Tally of Two Cities by Vahram Muratyam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Chronicles of Old Paris: Exploring the Historic City of Light by John Baxter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 A Chateau in Provence by Charles Wood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   An American Provence by Thomas P. Huber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gourmet Paris on a Shoestring by Kristin Dorman, Nina Louchard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waking up in France by Sarah Meade

 

 

Obama taps young French talent to compose official 2012 campaign song What's More

 

Who's got talent? French guys!!

According to Le Figaro, United States President Barak Obama has chosen two French composers from Bordeaux (yes, France!) to write his campaign theme song. The ditty, entitled What's More, was written by Tony Jazz and Mathieu Billon, who, in addition to being young, very young, are immensely talented and energetic.

Raised in the infamous 9-3, Jazz at 26 had already racked up credits at Universal and Sony and founded his own communications company specializing in musical design. Billon, also ridiculously young, is a case study in finding one's talents. After a DUT he entered a work-study (alternance) program at INSEEC Bordeaux with the hope of founding a restaurant. An internship in marketing at Kaizen Marketing Group opened up a whole new world for him, an "American vision of entrepreneurship" with bosses barely older than himself.

One thing led to another and the two young French entrepreneurs met. In January last year Jazz and Billon created "On Air Agency". 

How did these two Frenchmen with no connections seduce the president of the United States?

"Talent," says le Figaro, "Simplement du talent".

A clip (see above) that Jazz made in honor of Obama's 2008 election caught the eye of Obama's campaign, which led to a meeting with Charles Rifkin, the US ambassador to France. 

And the rest was history.

A stunning acknowledgement of young French talent!  

 

Veolia poised to extend shuttle monopoly lobbied for by mayor's lover after council disqualifies rivals

Veolia Transportation and Phoenix City Council get along well

France rarely makes headlines in Phoenix, Arizona. So I was delighted to see a well-known French company Veolia on the first page of the Arizona Republic business section.

Then, I read the article.

The Phoenix City Council again has rejected a startup business' bid to provide shuttle-van service for passengers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The decision could enable Veolia Transportation's SuperShuttle to continue a 23 year monopoly over shuttle service at Sky Harbor Airport.

Bo-ring, right?

Well, it would be except for the sex.

Veolia Transportation's dealings with the city are under investigation by the Federal Transit Administration because Veolia's lobbyist, Elissa Mullany happened to be in a "romantic relationship" with then-Mayor Phil Gordon during the hot summer when the council awarded to Veolia a five-year, $385 million contract for managing most of the city's bus routes.

The muckraking Phoenix New Times summoned Phil Gordon and Elissa Mullany to explain their complicated intermingling of interests in 2009 when its reporter Sarah Fenske discovered Gordon's multiple payments to his girlfriend Mullany as well as trips and favors.

Mullany worked for Gordon's campaign and maintained a romantic relationship with the mayor while working as a paid lobbyist for numerous businesses dealing with the city Gordon ran.

The Federal Transit Authority is investigating how Veolia Transportation Services was awarded a $385 million, five-year contract to run 33 out of 99 Phoenix bus routes.

Says the New Times:

Mayor Phil Gordon first professed support for Veolia Transportation to win the city's huge bus contract at a June 2009 City Council meeting. The mayor's endorsement came even before competing business proposals were on the table and during a time when his relationship with Elissa Mullany was the stuff of City Hall rumors.

Causing concern, after the mayor said he wanted the contract to go to Veolia, was that the company had hired Mullany, his then-alleged love interest, as a consultant in 2007 and still was cutting her checks as it competed for the city's business. 

Veolia was just one of many businesses that Mullany lobbied for as the mayor's (well paid) girlfriend.

Phil Gordon's term as Phoenix Mayor ended this month, leaving a legacy which includes a light rail system, new university campuses and serious questions about mixing personal with business affairs.  (See the Tucson Citizen.)

Veolia Transportation is a division of Veolia Transport Worldwide, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement, the world leader in environmental services which was originally founded as the French water company, Compagne GEnErale des Eaux. CGE changed its name to Vivendi in 1998. Veolia Environnement was spun off as a separate company in 2000.

Fortunately, no one in Arizona knows it's French... 

 

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/03/11/20110311phoenix-bus-contract-federal-investigation.html#ixzz1juunsoo6

Ecologist Presidential Candidate Wants to Add Holidays for L'Aid El Kebir and Yom Kippour

Secular = holidays for everyone, says Eva Joly

 

As a long time ecologist, I'm confused.

The Greens nominated an intrepid former judge who despite her many astonishing virtues has no track record whatsoever in ecology. Her main selling point: she's honest. And that's not nothing.

But when Le Point columnist Patrick Besson poked a little fun at her accent "(Zalut la Vranze ! Auchourt'hui est un krand chour : fous m'afez élue brézidente te la République vranzaise.") our lady of integrity went ballistic.

Now, many of us non-native speakers are sensitive about our accents (especially when our own children mock us) but the truth is we do sound a little funny, and that's part of expat living and even imigration. But an enraged Eva Joly called the joking a  “a racist attack, a form of ostracism” “symptomatic of the French state” and devoted an entire page in Le Point to denouncing Besson.

Patrick Besson, columnist for Le Point. Not Eric Besson, ministre de l'Industrie, de l'Energie et de l'Economie numérique, and as such, arch defender of nuclear power.

Such an opportunity lost!

And now, in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression with Greece and Italy under massive threat, interbank money markets seizing up, the euro on the brink of falling into the abyss and shattering and France clinging with two fingers to its AAA rating, the Green candidate Eva Joly proposes, wait for it, TWO additional holidays. One for Muslims, and one, to be fair, for Jews.

Oh, Eva, Eva, Eva, it's nice to not work. And it's lovely to want to be generous. But WHAT ?

In other countries ecologists often actually focus on ecology. Not, however, in France.

Abuse of pesticides, reliance on nuclear energy, agricultural subsidies for intensive agriculture, polluted rivers and lakes, energy conservation, GM crops--these questions always seem to take second place to the weirdness of the day.

It's inexplicable. Ecologists in France count a number of heavy hitters: former ministers Corrine Lepage,  Dominique Voynet, the up and coming Cecile Duflot, as well as talented but mercurial figures such as Daniel Cohen Bendit and Nicola Hulot.  

And we find ourselves talking about foreign accents and holidays for everyone.

There is a real and important discussion to be had about ecology in France. But this, sadly, is not it.

 

 

 

Former head of scandal-ridden French drug agency named to top Education post

The French drug agency (Afssaps) failed to protect women from Mediator and defective PIP breast implants. But no one is responsible...

In the French meritocracy, competence is supposed to be rewarded.  

So when the Mediator scandal broke last year (500 deaths estimated, years of warnings ignored, whistle-blowers hounded, massive cover up...) it was not surprising that the Afssaps, the astonishingly ineffective French version of the FDA*, decided to change Directors.

Less obvious is how they went about it.

The General Director, Jean Marimbert, who had run the agency since 2004, was not arrested, put in jail, questioned or even reprimanded, even though it was on his watch that a French company, Servier, had managed to peddle Mediator, a dangerous and potentially lethal drug originally meant for diabetics, to women whose only crime was to want to lose a little weight.  And on his watch (and despite warnings) that the French company PIP managed to inundate the world market* with cheap French silicon implants.

No, no hint of disciplinary action.

Monsieur Marimbert (HEC, Sciences Po, ENA) was simply placed in a new position: Secrétaire général de l'Education Nationale.  

So what? you might say. After all, no one leaving Afssaps had trouble finding work.

Well, I've been following French Education for several years now, and have always hoped that reform was possible. (I couldn't have written Sorbonne Confidential if I hadn't believed in the possibility of change.) But this is just too much.

France's Education Nationale needs the best, most committed and competent people. 

And here our Mammouth is being used--abused--as a refuge not just for failed administrators, but ones whose professional disasters have led to entirely avoidable deaths by innocents.

It is too much.

Messieurs Xavier Betrand, Luc Chatel, Nicola Sarkozy: why did you do this?

(And teachers, don't you care that your leaders use France's proud education bureaucracy as a dumping grounds for failed functionaries?)

American readers might remember "Brownie", the joker President Bush appointed to run FEMA before Katrina, and whose incompetence left the disaster agency entirely unprepared to do its job when the crisis hit. It was a telling moment. The American president cared so little about the people he served that he named incompetents to key positions.

I had hoped France was better than that.

But, according to Le Point, it's not.  

This week's Le Point features excerpts from a new book entitled "L'Oligarchie des Incapables" by Sophie Coignard and Roman Guber. The article "Les Secrets Inavouables de la Caste" may be the single most depressing item about France that I have ever read. 

Many of us love and appreciate France in all its glorious contradictions. But the rot is deep. Much deeper, unfortunately, than many of us can imagine. All who serve France are not corrupt, of course. But the system is clearly in need of profound, far-reaching reform. For it is not just corrupt but corrupting.

Elections approach. 

As good a time as any to start.

 

 

 

*The FDA outlawed both Mediator and PIP type silicon implants years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/health/scandal-widens-over-french-weight-loss-drug-mediator.html?pagewanted=all

http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2011/09/21/16060-mediator-ex-cadres-lafssaps-rebondissent

 http://www.afssaps.fr/var/afssaps_site/storage/original/application/378999314804f90c94f51787bf91ad9b.pdf

 http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2012/01/05/16754-dangerosite-protheses-pip-lafssaps-alertee-2008

http://www.actu-environnement.com/ae/news/defaillance-systeme-vigilance-11767.php4

http://www.lepoint.fr/economie/les-secrets-inavouables-de-la-caste-06-01-2012-1415989_28.php

 

French diet guru suggests awarding thin students extra points on school leaving exam

 

Millionnaire French best-selling diet book guru Pierre Dukan has a new best idea!

Give thin kids extra points on the French bac--like for Latin or special sports skills!

Dukan, famous for his anti-carb weight loss diet (Régime Dukan) will apparently stop at nothing to sell his books. Who was it that said there's no such thing as bad publicity? Well, the man responsible for François Hollande's new slim look has embraced that maxim with passion.

His idea? An option "poid équilibre (which I guess means "the right weight") on the French school leaving exam. Extra points would be awarded to students who gain no weight in their last two years of lycée.

Think of it! The official weigh-in for our daughters at the sturdy age of 16; then again at 18, presumably in the middle of the bac, which as all French parents know is a time of no stress whatsoever.

You gotta admire the greedy scribbler's chutzpah! What better way then to get free media than to float a lethal idea as a public health service! (book he's floggin: Lettre ouverte au futur président de la République )

 Read more on L'Express Education blog Mammouth Mon Amour.

A note to authors: no matter what book marketing gurus tell you, there is a limit. 

 

Could the French Carte Vitale save American Medicare billions?

Could this piece of plastic save the US billions each year?

Administration accounts for roughly 14 percent of what the United States spends on health care, or about $360 billion per year. About half of all administrative costs — $163 billion in 2009 — are borne by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies.

FLASH IT WAS FAKE Paris RER B - gold discovered in abandoned suitcase

Missing something?

Boy, oh boy, someone's in trouble for sure! 

December 30, the bomb squad was called to the Massy Palaiseau station for an abandoned suitcase.

Inside: veritable treasure trove. Twenty gold bars!

Investigators searching for the owner told Le Parisien somewhat mysteriously that they were checking to see whether the gold might be linked to a "recent affair."

Can the voyageurs who found it can make a claim? 

And what is the "recent affair"? I don't recall reading about gold bars going missing in Paris. Do you?

photos from Le Parisien and Le Monde

 Just this in: the gold is fake!!! According to experts the as yet unidentified metal was covered with a thin golden layer. For what purpose? Fraud perhaps?

Our hearts go out to the subway driver and the RATP which had dreamed of splitting the treasure. 

Expat Christmas prayer: Please don't nail Santa to a cross !

It was bound to happen. The ultimate cultural misunderstanding. With all the reindeer and snow and ipads  descending on Bethlehem from Northern Europe, the Fat Man was bound to have an accident somewhere. Rumors (unsubstantiated and ultimately false as all self-respecting rumors should be) placed the scene of the tragedy in Japan, where :

 

"a Japanese department store that tried too hard to symbolize the Christmas spirit, and to show itself accessible to Western visitors, by mounting a display of a Santa Claus figure nailed to a cross."

 

While not true in the least, the above is a direct quote from a Wall Street Journal article by the great Christopher Hitchens who, in his defense, was dead. (Though still more amusing than most technically alive people, sadly).

From beyond the grave, Christopher Hitchens warns against the dangers of trying to stuff the Christ back in Christmas festivities, which he claims, had been "banned outright" under Oliver Cromwell in England.

"The original Puritan Protestants regarded the whole enterprise as blasphemous... The same was true in some of the early Pilgrim settlements in North America."

Christmas, he reminds us, was always winter solstice party time! 

"In their already discrepant accounts of the miraculous birth," Hitchen's writes, "the four gospels give us no clue as to what time of year—or even what year—it is supposed to have taken place.

As a result,

"...the iconography of Christmas is ridiculously mixed in with reindeer, holly, snow scenes and other phenomena peculiar to northern European myth."

 

So what's wrong with that? You want rocks and desert dust?

Hitch, no doubt in a grumpy mood when he wrote the piece, attempts to elevate Ebenezer Scrooge," the only character in the story who has any personality to him" to the status of resistance fighter against the horrid "compulsory love" which he claims obliges us to gift each other with awful ties we'll never wear.

He even recites a poem:

Christmas time is here by golly: disapproval would be folly. 
Deck the halls with hunks of holly, fill the cup and don't say when. 

Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, mix the punch, drag out the Dickens. 
Even though the prospect sickens—brother, here we go again.

 

(Well, ok, I laughed.)

But still, purists and naysayers notwithstanding, I LIKE Christmas.

Getting a tree and decorating it with the children, selecting presents and wrapping them, preparing a good meal and sitting down together to eat it--it's nice. I confess that I will miss it when it is gone. And if we must endure awful music (Hitch enters Jingle Bell Rock as exhibit A), well I don't care. I'll just wear the great Bose silencer noise cancelling earphones that Santa brought me last year!

Happy Holidays!

 

 (Extracts reprinted with links and all possible credit to the Wall Street Journal Forced Merriment: The True Spirit of Christmas:Christopher Hitchens on why the Puritans found the holiday suspect—and we should, too)