Reading Life Review July 2015, A Look Back at Paris in July # 6, A Look Ahead at 2015

I offer my great thanks to Max u for providing me with Amazon Cards

July 2015 was a very good reading month for me.  My activity was dominated by my participation in one of my very favorite international book blog events, Paris in July.  

Paris in July # 6. 

Works I read for the event:

Paris in July # 6. , hosted by Tamarra of Thyme for Tea, a blog I have followed for years,is one of my favorite book blog events.  It covers much more than literature and there are lots of wonderful participant posts online.

Paris in July # 6. motivated me to read some very interesting works.

1.  "Baum, Gabriel, 1935" by Mavis Gilbert - A wonderful set in Paris short story

2.  "Two Friends" by Guy de Maupassant- Paris in July # 6. Requires reading de Maupassant!

3.  "Mildred Larson" by George Moore- What Paris Meant to the Irish

4.  "The Parisian Stage" by Henry James - an illuminating essay

5.  "The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls" by Marcel Aymé- a new to me writer I will return to

6.   Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 by Francine Prose - interesting 

7.  Shocking Paris Soutine, Chagall and the Outlaw Art of Montaparrne by Stanley Meisler-a 

     Well done account of Yiddish emigre artists in Paris

8.  Short Stories about Cats by Three Classic French authors 

9.  Suite Francaise by Iréne Némirovsky- a true masterwork. Paris under the Germans

10.  The End of Evil Ways by Honoré de Balzac

11.  Mademoiselle Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick- brilliant bio.

12.  The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, translated by Sandra Smith

13.  "A Peice of Bread" by Francois Coppee - A Franco Prussian War Story

14.   "Night Crimes" by Emmanuel Bove. The Poet of the Paris Skid Row

15.  Pynchon and Paris- Paris Refrences in Gravity's Rainbow

16.  The Wine of Solitude by Iréne Némirovsky (her most autobiographical work)

17.  "The Ball" by Iréne Némirovsky-very funny story about a girl's revenge on her mother.

18.  David Golder by Iréne Némirovsky- White Russians in Paris- White Russians are one of my interests.

19.  "The Other Wife" by Colette-  

During Paris in July # 6 I fell in love with the work of Iréne Némirovsky, renewed my passion for Colette and developed a grudging admiration for Coco Chanel.  Balzac, the Emperor of Paris writers, took me on a tour of a prison, Emmanuel Bove, a protege of Colette walked me through a Christmas Eve night in the roughest slums of Paris, Colette invited me to an elegant restaurant.  Francois Coppee and Guy de Maupassant took us back to Paris during the era of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870 to 1871.  I learned about Yiddish artists in Paris.  Henry James lectured us on Parisian Theater.  George Moore helped me see what Paris meant to the Irish.  I read three cat stories by classic French writers that I enjoyed a lot.  I also took a look just for myself at refrences to Paris in Gravity's Rainbow.  We spent a few nights we won't talk about The Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932.

I loved reading the many posts on French food, looking at the beautiful pictures taken on trips and all the other interesting participant posts.

I offer my great thanks to Tamara for hosting Paris in July # 6 and hope so much I can participate next year in Paris in July # 7.

I discovered a number of new blogs through the event to which I have entered subscriptions.

Review of The Reading Life July 2015

Since inception I have had 3,546,663 page views.  I have 4075 Twitter followers

For the first time in the history of The Reading Life there has been a change in the country with the most visitors top rank.  The Philippines edged out The U.S.A for the first time ever in six year.

1.  The Philippines 

2.  USA

3.  India 

4.  Russia

5. Germany

The top city of residence for a visitor is Metro Manila, no contest at all.  

I predict as the Internet becomes more widely available in India, readership from the Subcontinent will rise rapidly.  Once China opens up the net, I hope some new readers will find their way to my blog.

Other than short stories of the Philippines, the most viewed writers on my blog are Katherine Mansfield and R. K. Narayan.  Almost all of my posts on older short stories by Subcontinent authors draw continuous readership.  

The top most viewed seven posts for July 2015 were all on short stories by authors from the Philippines.

I continued reading on and about Clarice Lispector and I started a project on the short stories of Maeve Brennan..

I read Primo Levi's very powerful memoir of Aushwitz, If This is a Man.  I was very kindly given the complete works of Primo Levi by the Publisher, 3008 pages, and will endeavor to read more of his work.  I greatly enjoyed reading  a book by Linda Lappin, based on her creative writing workshops. 

I read a very strange novel by Flaubert, Salammbô. 

Going Forward in 2015

Basic plan is more of the same.  I am doing a read through of Honore de Balzac's The Human Comedy and have so far read 70 of the 91 components.  In November I hope to read a lot of German language works, in Translation.  I have added Iréne Némirovsky to my read all I can list.  I will continue deeper into Indian and Japanese literature and will read more short stories from the Philippines.   The more I read the more things converge together for me.  I am quite interested in Yiddish literature and works on the Holocaust.  I will read more of Irish literature.  I have a passion for works written in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Short stories are one of my passions.  I like to read biographies of authors and am now reading two of them, one on George Orwell and one on Colette.  I also read history, sort of at random.  

I am open to joint projects, guest posts and will be doing more Q and A sessions.  If anything is of lasting value on my blog, it is the 100 Q and A sessions, mostly with Irish writers but not all.

I love to discover new to me writers and am receptive to offers of books for review of all sorts.  I look at everything I am sent.  Pretty much i only accept E Books for review purposes.  

I offer my great thanks to those who have taken the trouble to leave comments.  

If you are a published online author and want to be featured on my blog, please contact me.

I thank Ambrosia Boussweau, European Correspondent of The Reading Life, for her sage advice and for sharing her vast erudition with me.

To my fellow book bloggers, keep blogging, don't quit the holy game of book blogging. I hope one day bloggers can look back on their fifty year old book blogs and see a  life time of reading.  

Mel u

 

"Night Crimes" by Emmanuel Bove (From the collection Henry Duchemin and his Shadow) For Paris in July # 6

We have been Colette's guest at an elegant Parisian restaurant, we partied with Coco Chanel at The Ritz, and we spent some time with White Russian Aristocrats, guided by Iréne Némirovsky.  Today Emmanuel Bove (1898 to 1942, born and died in Paris)! will escort us through the very poorest sections of Paris, in places even Balzac left out of the Human Comedy.  Some have called Bove "The Poet of the Parisian Skid Row".

A Very Good Article on Emmanuel Bove- includes information on the role of Colette in his life

Paris in July # 6. , hosted by Tamarra of Thyme for Tea, a blog I have followed for years,is one of my favorite book blog events.  It covers much more than literature and there are lots of wonderful participant posts online.

Paris in July # 6. has motivated me to read some very interesting works.

1.  "Baum, Gabriel, 1935" by Mavis Gilbert - A wonderful set in Paris short story

2.  "Two Friends" by Guy de Maupassant- Paris in July # 6. Requires reading de Maupassant!

3.  "Mildred Larson" by George Moore- What Paris Meant to the Irish

4.  "The Parisian Stage" by Henry James - an illuminating essay

5.  "The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls" by Marcel Aymé- a new to me writer I will return to

6.   Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 by Francine Prose - interesting 

7.  Shocking Paris Soutine, Chagall and the Outlaw Art of Montaparrne by Stanley Meisler-a 

     Well done account of Yiddish emigre artists in Paris

8.  Short Stories about Cats by Three Classic French authors 

9.  Suite Francaise by Iréne Némirovsky- a true masterwork. Paris under the Germans

10.  The End of Evil Ways by Honoré de Balzac

11.  Mademoiselle Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick- brilliant bio.

12.  The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, translated by Sandra Smith

13.  "A Piece of Bread" by Francois Coppee 

14.  The Wine of Solitude by Iréne Némirovsky- White Russians move to Paris 

15.  Pynchon and Paris - 

I was very 

kindly recently given by The New York Review of Books a review copy of a collection of five short stories by Emmanuel Bove.  Bove's father was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant.  Bove was a critic, novelist, and a short story writer.  Colette, I was delighted to learn, help him get noticed.  He was born and he died in Paris.

The lead story, "Night Crimes" is set on Christmas Eve.  We don't know the year but the main character is a veteran of World War One.  He lives alone, from a small pension, in a very low end rooming house in a very poor part of Paris.  He has no woman, children, and he does not like his only "friend".  He decides to walk the streets of his neighborhood.  Needless to say it is filled with people that would be pushed away from one of Coco's boutiques by the guards and who would have totally terrified residents of Gueramantes Way.  He turns down the cheapest of street walkers, not from scruples but from lack of money.  He strikes up a conversation with a man who tells him if he kills someone for him. he will become rich.   Of course he is skeptical but he thinks what do I really have to lose?

The close of the story I loved.  It caught me totally off guard.  

For sure I will read the remaining stories in the collection.

Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who arranged for the publication of his first novel, My Friends, Bove enjoyed a busy literary career, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, Bove’s novels and stories were admired by Rainer Maria Rilke, the surrealists, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett, who said of him that “more than anyone else he has an instinct for the essential detail.”  From the webpage of The New York Review of Books

"The Other Wife" by Colette (1932). - A Post for Paris in July # 6

If Paris is the City of Love, then Colette is the High Priestess 

      

                                                                          1873 to 1954

"For her, as for Epicurus, hedonism was something much more purposeful and, one could say, more ethical than a greed for sensation. It was the expression of an active faith—a credo without a god, a devil, or an afterlife, but with the power of all true faith to inspire ecstasy, and reverence for creation, and to console."  Judith Thurman

You can read this story in English here

Paris in July # 6. , hosted by Tamarra of Thyme for Tea, a blog I have followed for years,is one of my favorite book blog events.  It covers much more than literature and there are lots of wonderful participant posts online.

Paris in July # 6. has motivated me to read some very interesting works.

1.  "Baum, Gabriel, 1935" by Mavis Gilbert - A wonderful set in Paris short story

2.  "Two Friends" by Guy de Maupassant- Paris in July # 6. Requires reading de Maupassant!

3.  "Mildred Larson" by George Moore- What Paris Meant to the Irish

4.  "The Parisian Stage" by Henry James - an illuminating essay

5.  "The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls" by Marcel Aymé- a new to me writer I will return to

6.   Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 by Francine Prose - interesting 

7.  Shocking Paris Soutine, Chagall and the Outlaw Art of Montaparrne by Stanley Meisler-a 

     Well done account of Yiddish emigre artists in Paris

8.  Short Stories about Cats by Three Classic French authors 

9.  Suite Francaise by Iréne Némirovsky- a true masterwork. Paris under the Germans

10.  The End of Evil Ways by Honoré de Balzac

11.  Mademoiselle Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick- brilliant bio.

12.  The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, translated by Sandra Smith

13.  "A Piece of Bread" by Francois Coppee 

14.  The Wine of Solitude by Iréne Némirovsky- White Russians move to Paris 

15.  Pynchon and Paris - 

If Paris is the city of love, then Colette is the High Priestess.  Many draw their image or fantasy of Paris from the movie based on her most famous work, Gigi.  I did not want Paris in July # 6 end without paying homage to Colette.  She was a tremendous cat lover, among many other things. I love her short stories.

"The Other Wife" is a small gem of a story.  A man and woman are dining at an elegant restaurant.  The man sees his prior wife, who his current wife has never seen, at the next table. Of course a small drama ensues. The story is a miniature masterwork of acute observation and just a lot of fun to read.  

In the long ago, Clifton Fadiman helped steer me to the reading life.  I was delighted to find he loved Colette.  

       "The day Colette (1873-1954) died, the worst thunderstorm in sixty-seven years hit Paris. Her last conscious act was to gesture toward the lightning and cry out, “Look! Look!” The words suggest the essence of her genius. 
       At eighty-one Colette was a legendary figure. A Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, president of the Goncourt Academy, she would, to crown her career, receive a state funeral—unexampled honors for a French woman. A veteran of three marriages (the last a happy one), music hall performer, journalist, autobiographer, novelist, short story writer, deeply versed in the natural world of plants, flowers and animals, a connoisseur of more than a single variety of love, in the best sense a woman of the world, she ranked as one of the most vivid personalities of her time. During the final years of a long, crowded life, unable to stir from her Palais-Royal apartment, she reigned, surrounded by her beloved cats, as an object of wonder and pilgrimage. 
       Few have treated more revealingly at least one great theme, that of sexual love. She was most comfortable with the novella (Chéri, La Fin de Chéri, Gigi, Mitsou), but she excelled also in a kind of post-Maupassant short story, tender, sensual, witty, completely French, completely feminine. 
       “The Other Wife” is a deft, wry trifle, a small triumph of observation (“Look! Look!”). As with an O. Henry story, everything erupts in the last few words, indeed in the very last word. But her sensibility works on a plane quite different from his."

       —Clifton Fadiman

Mel u

Paris and Pynchon - A Look at the Paris References in Gravity's Rainbow - A Post for Paris in July # 6

Paris in July # 6. , hosted by Tamarra of Thyme for Tea, a blog I have followed for years,is one of my favorite book blog events.  It covers much more than literature and there are lots of wonderful participant posts online.

Paris in July # 6. has motivated me to read some very interesting works.

1.  "Baum, Gabriel, 1935" by Mavis Gilbert - A wonderful set in Paris short story

2.  "Two Friends" by Guy de Maupassant- Paris in July # 6. Requires reading de Maupassant!

3.  "Mildred Larson" by George Moore- What Paris Meant to the Irish

4.  "The Parisian Stage" by Henry James - an illuminating essay

5.  "The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls" by Marcel Aymé- a new to me writer I will return to

6.   Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 by Francine Prose - interesting 

7.  Shocking Paris Soutine, Chagall and the Outlaw Art of Montaparrne by Stanley Meisler-a 

     Well done account of Yiddish emigre artists in Paris

8.  Short Stories about Cats by Three Classic French authors 

9.  Suite Francaise by Iréne Némirovsky- a true masterwork. Paris under the Germans

10.  The End of Evil Ways by Honoré de Balzac

11.  Mademoiselle Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick- brilliant bio.

12.  The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, translated by Sandra Smith

13.  "A Piece of Bread" by Francois Coppee 

14.  The Wine of Solitude by Iréne Némirovsky- White Russians move to Paris 

Yesterday something drove me to search for refrences to Paris in Gravity's Rainbow (1973, by Thomas Pynchon).  I first read it only a few weeks after it was published.  I was completely mesmerized  by it and I think I read it ten times through on first encounter.  This is, of course, as much a comment about my state of mind in 1973 than the book.  Since then I have read it through maybe ten times more.  It is to me the great American novel.  I put it in my list of ten greatest novels of all time.  Sometimes now I just read it at random as a saner person might a holy text.  

Set in post World War Two Europe late 1945, I wanted to see how the narrative treats Paris.  The central character Slothrop is an American but their are important English, Russian, and German characters also.  One thing I was delighted to find was a clear Coco Chanel allusion I never picked up on before.  I will not try to draw any big conclusions in this post, just present maybe for myself alone, what I found.  Some of the material I will quote is  X rated.

Page 74

The first reference to Paris is innocuous.  It refers to something that happened at a psychological warfare station in England on the cliffs looking out toward France.

"Then at the fall of Paris, a radio transmitting station was set up on the cliff, antennas aimed at the Continent, themselves heavily guarded and their landlines back mysteriously over the downs to the house patrolled night and day by dogs specially betrayed, belted, starved into reflex leaps to kill, at any human approach. Had one of the Very High gone higher—that is, dotty? Was Our Side seeking to demoralize the German Beast by broadcasting to him random thoughts of the mad, naming for him, also in the tradition of Constable Stuggles that famous day, the deep, the scarcely seen? The answer is yes, all of the above, and more."

The fall of Paris seems to indicate at least the fall of the European tradition of high culture.  Germans in Paris were mad men, beasts.    Paris is depicted as the very epicenter of European culture.

As readers of GR know as you go on the book gets stranger, the narrative more dense and it begins to  lend it self to be read as a Kabalistic text.

Page 178.

This section is a reverie of Jeremy.  He and Roger were rivals for the beautiful Jessica.  It is set in England.  Roger was the lover Jessica could accept during the war, Jeremy is meant to be her post war husband.  Jeremy embodies her with a reference to Paris.

"They are insane. Jeremy will take her like the Angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and Roger will be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace. She will take her husband’s orders, she will become a domestic bureaucrat, a junior partner, and remember Roger, if at all, as a mistake thank God she didn’t make. . . . Oh, he feels a raving fit coming on—how the bloody hell can he survive without her? She is the British warm that protects his stooping shoulders, and the wintering sparrow he holds inside his hands. She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes weregiven a separate name to warn that they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskin to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love."

Jeremy reduces Paris to a fantasy city of perfume and luxury clothes and seems to regard it as a childlike city of Joy in comparison to the mature world of sanity and good sense of England.  London the father, Paris the child, but a child one can possess sexualiy. 

Paris clearly has a sexual connotation to most male characters. Paris needs to be protected from those who would despoil it.

Page 246

I take this short reference to suggest Parisians are incompetent at the work of war, best left to English speakers.  (ETO means European Theater of Operations)

"Caserne Martier in Paris, the worst stockade in the ETO."

Page 287

"Marvel hitched a lift on a P-47 out of Paris, far as Kessel"

Major Marvey was the director of an American intelligence unit, now head quartered in Paris.  Paris is the hub from which Europe will be recivilized..

Page 289

I take this as a reference to cafe culture, a romantic view of Paris as seen by the American central character, Slothrop

"Slothrop hears a girl singing. Accompanying herself on a balalaika. One of those sad little Parisian-sounding tunes in 3/4: Love never goes away, Never completely dies, Always some souvenir Takes us by sad surprise.

Page 361

The Schwarzkommandos were a troop of African pigmies the Germans imported to fight the allies and as possible suicide pilots for a new rocket.  They took up little weight and spaced so the Germans saw them as useful.  I see this passage as another Anglo/American slight at the cognitive limitations of the French who now that the war is over have returned to Cartesian logic.

"

Schwarzkommando struggle knee-deep in mud, engaged entirely with the salvage, with the moment. The A4 they’re about to uncover was used in the last desperate battle for Berlin—an abortive firing, a warhead that didn’t explode. Around its grave they’re driving in planks for shoring, sending back mud in buckets and wood casks along a human chain to be dumped on shore, near where their rifles and kits are stacked. “So Marvy was right. They didn’t disarm you guys.” “They didn’t know where to find us. We were a surprise. There are even now powerful factions in Paris who don’t believe we exist."

Page 393 - A Coco Chanel refrences!! - she invented the little black dress.  To me Coco would be a perfect character for GR.

"A woman in a black Parisian frock, with a purple-and-yellow iris at her breast. Even damped by the velvet, Slothrop can feel the shaking of her hand. He stares into eyes rimmed soft as black ash, separate grains of powder on her face clear as pores the powder missed or was taken from by tears. This is how he comes to meet Margherita Erdmann, his lightless summer hearth, his safe-passage into memories of the Inflationszeit stained with dread—his child and his helpless Lisaura."

This is how Coco entrapped hyper wealthy men in her younger days, decadence, exquisite beauty combined with a mask of a woman in need of male protection who will offer sex in gratitude or payment but a woman you know you will one day lose to a richer man.

Paris is then seen as a very sophisticated expensive woman (I almost typed another expression) who can make us think she is leading us back to post war days but is really only taking us deeper into the war.  I am reaching on this but for sure this is a Coco reference.

Page 467 - extreme sexual references in the quote 

This depicts an orgy aboard the ship Anubis (a book of the dead reference). It embarked from Paris.  My a further Coco coincident, she help keep the Russian Imperial Ballet (the source of many mistresses of the rich and powerful) going with her sponsership.

"a major of the Yugoslav artillery in dress uniform, who kneels with nose and tongue well between the bruised buttocks of a long-legged ballerina from Paris, holding up her silk skirt for him with docile fingertips while her companion, a tall Swiss divorcée in tight-laced leather corselette and black Russian boots, undoes the top of her friend’s gown and skillfully begins to lash at her bared breasts with the stems of half a dozen roses, red as the beads of blood which spring up and soon are shaking off the ends of her stiff nipples to splash into the eager mouth of another Wend who’s being jerked off by a retired Dutch banker sitting on the deck, shoes and socks just removed by two adorable schoolgirls, twin sisters in fact, in identical dresses of flowered voile, with each of the banker’s big toes inserted now into a downy little furrow as they lie forward along his legs their anal openings the cocks of the two waiters who have but lately been, if you recall, eating that juicy blonde in that velvet dress back down the Oder River a ways. . . ."

I take the school girl's reference as also a Paris allusion to catholic school girls.  The velvet dress was black, Coco often made velvet black dresses.  

Paris is seen as a place of great sexual possibilities.  Anything goes.  

Page 469 - more extreme sexual refrences and I see another Coco allusion 

"Bianca’s little feet shifting in a nervous dance and scarlet nails digging sharp as needles underneath her stocking tops and into her legs as he goes planting hickeys, red nebulae across her sensitive spaces. She smells like soap, flowers, sweat, cunt. Her long hair falls to the level of Slothrop’s eyes, fine and black, the split ends whispering across the small of her white back in and out of invisibility, like rain . . . she has turned, and sinks to her knees to undo his pleated trousers. Leaning, brushing hair back behind her ears, the little girl takes the head of Slothrop’s cock into her rouged mouth. Her eyes glitter through fern lashes, baby rodent hands race his body unbuttoning, caressing. Such a slender child: her throat swallowing, strummed to a moan as he grabs her hair, twists it . . .

away and stand up, high-heeled Parisian slippers planted to either side of him, swaying, hair softly waving forward to frame her face, repeated by the corset darkly framing her pubic mound and belly. Raising bare arms, little Bianca lifts her long hair, tosses her little head to let the mane shiver down her back, needle-tipped fingers drifting then down slowly, making him wait, down over the satin, all the shiny hooks and laces, to her thighs. Then her face, round with baby-fat, enormous night-shadowed eyes comes swooping in as she kneels, guides his penis into her and settles slow, excruciating till he fills her, stuffs her full. . . ."

This is Gigi, from Colette, gone very bad dressed by Coco (they were in fact close)..  Bianca is a changing character, of course she evokes Dante, she maybe a quite young girl or an intelligence operative dressed to look like one and play on the fantasies of men.  

Page 570.  This is the last Paris reference in GR.  

"Materializing from their own weird office silence, the coppers show up now, two black ’n’ white charabancs full of bluegreen uniforms, white armbands, little bucket hats with starburst insignia, truncheons already unsheathed, black dildos in nervous hands, wobbling, ready for action. The eddies in the crowd break up fast, jewelry ringing to the pavement, cigarettes scattered and squashed under the feet of stampeding civilians, among the instant litter of watches, war medals, silkstuffs, rolls of bills, pinkskinned potatoes all their eyes staring in alarm, elbow-length kid gloves twisted up fingers clutching at sky, smashed light bulbs, Parisian slippers."

A charabanc is a, in French, open top kind  of bus.   This is the second reference  to Parisian slippers in GR.   This has to also be viewed  as a Coco influenced scene.

There are four other refrences to Paris in GR but they are just in passing references. 

What do we then see Paris as representing in the world of Gravity's Rainbow?  it is not a flattering portrait but I will leave any interested parties to draw their own conclusions.

Mel u