Five Nights in Paris After Dark in The City of Light by John Baxter (2015)

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

French Literature and History on The Reading Life

My Posts for Paris in July 2016 hosted by Thyme for Tea

1.  The Dogs and the Wolves by Iréne Nemirovsky.  About a Jewish family that moves from the Ukraine to Paris.

2.  Mavis Gallant.  Two Parisian Works, a short story and a Paris Note book segment

John Baxter, a prolific writer of works about the glories of Paris and a well known walking tour guide, has something in common with Iréne Nemirovsky and Mavis Gallant.  Like them he was not born in France, he is an Australian , but has made Paris by choice his permanent home.  

Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter is presented as suggestions for the night time activities of tourists visting Paris for the first time on a quick five day visit.  The premiss of the book is that visitors during the day will be doing the standard tourist activities and will need guidance for night time activities.   Of course tourists want something to do at night so Baxter began to offer night walking tours.  Five Nights in Paris arose  out of his tours.  

Baxter, as one would as tour guide, makes use of a lot of antedotes about the foibles of famous deceased Parisians.  There is a bit of a mocking tone at times when Baxter talks about clients with no real knowledge of Parisian based culture.

One of the things nights in Paris brings to mind is the glory of French food.  Baxter gives us a good look at a meal in one of the most expensive of restaurants of the city, where lunch is at a minimum $200.00.  I really like it more when he talked about the pleasure of inexpensive French eating.  

Baxter goes into a good bit of detail about the sex trade in Paris, past and present.  

Baxter gives us a few literary stories about expat writers in Paris. 

I was kindly given a review copy of this book.  As I read on in the book I wondered who I would suggest buy it.  It is not a guide book, the literary material is surface stuff meant for people who can acknowledge having heard of Victor Hugo with a knowing nod so it is not literary history.  The material on food is interesting but there are dedicated food books.  

I enjoyed reading this book but I cannot really endorse this book for buyers I do not know.  Those very into French culture will already know what Baxter talks upon.  Much of the book is taken up with Baxter's personal life.  

Mel u

Reflections on Seven Years of The Reading Life

When I began The Reading Life on July 7, 2009 I never dreamed it would become such a big factor in my life, never did I think I would still be posting for it seven years later.  My blog has helped me get through dark times, connected me to amazing lovers of the reading life all over the world.  

There are as of today 2922 posts on the blog.

The Reading Life has had 4,096,592 page views.

The five most viewed posts in the last seven years are all on older short stories by authors from the Philippines.  

The top countries of residence are USA, the Philippines, India, UK, and Germany.  The top visitor home city is the greater Manila area.  California is home to the most American visitors.  

To those who take the time and trouble to leave a comment, I offer my great thanks.  I am always happy to see a comment.  Comments help keep bloggers going.  To my guest posts authors and q and a participants, you bring a much needed break from my endless blathering.  I am also proud of the original short stories first published here by authors from all over the world.

My special thanks to Max u for his support of The Reading Life.   

Of course I hope I will keep blogging for many more years.  I have asked Ambrosia Boussweau to return as European director to signify a deep commitment to multiculturalism.  To the world's greatest readers, the members of the international book blog community, keep blogging.  To the spammers of the world, contact me to collect your Exxon Grants. 

Mel u

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

The Golden Notebook is considered the master work of Doris Lessing (1919 to 2013, received Nobel Prize in 2007).  At the time of publication in 1962 it was considered a pioneering work on the daily lives of women in England and English women in African colonies.  The persons in the novel were mostly members or former members of the Communist Party of England.  There is a bit of ideological conversations about the nature of communism and what it took to be a good party member.  

 

The novel has an interesting  structure.  (If you are seeking to avoid reading the novel, Wikepedia has a good article on the plot, characters, and structure). The main character is a famous novelist and is in the process of writing another novel.  She keeps different aspects of her thoughts in different colored note books.  There is a lot of fascinating conversations about great European writers.  

This is a serious book that needs to be approached slowly and with respect.  Sometimes it felt a bit dated.  I am very glad I have read The Golden Notebook.  

Mel u

Dreaming of France. -- A Wonderful Meme about all things French - Hosted on an Accidental Blog

 

Dreaming of France

Every week An Accidental Blog, hosts a meme devoted to any and all things French.  You can post on anything from a wonderful French recipe, a work of art, literature or your trip to France.  Happily I just became aware of this meme as I began my participation in Paris in July 2016 (Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016). 

So far this  month I have  posted on two wonderful writers, Iréne Nemirovsky and Mavis Gallant who are very much thought of as focused on Paris.  In common they have that neither was French by birth. Iréne Nemirovsky came as a teenager with her parents, fleeing harsh anti-Semetic pograms in the Ukraine.  Tragically and shamefully the French government was complicit in sending Nemirovsky at age 41 to die at Aucshwitz. Mavis Gallant moved to Paris from Canada by herself at age 28, fell in love with Paris, and spent the remainder of her life living in exhile.  Both women depended on their writings for a living, at least in part.  Both were very into the reading life.  I was very moved to learn that The Note Book of Katherine Mansfield was the last thing Nemirovsky read.  Nemirovsky wrote about a book a year so If she had lived as long as Gallant, the world would well have been blessed with forty more novels and countless short stories.

  

Mel u

"The Arrangement" - An American Election Year Short Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (2016, on Webpage of New York Times Book Review)

"The Arrangement" -   An American Election Year Short Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

From The New York Times Book Review, June 16, 2016

My main purpose in this post is to make sure my readers know they can read for free a short story by the great  Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche inspired by Mrs Donald Trump.  

This brief fiction is told from the point of view of Melania Trump, wife of the republican standard bearer, Donald Trump.  In just a few pages Adiche captures the full horror of Donald Trump, the cultural emptiness of the America he represents.  Melania's  relationship with Trump is depicted as that of a vacuous, self-centered woman who submits to and plays on the fragile ego of her man child  

Husband in the exchange for a life of pampered luxury.  Most of her time is spent on time filling activities  designed to keep her attractive to her husband.

As I read this story, especially when I heard the advise Melania's mother gave her on how to get as much as she can from Trump was I reminded  very much of Henry Fielding's classic novella, Shamela in which a scheming mother teaches her far from pure daughter how to sham innocence to entrap a rich man.  

Melania is having  a fiftieth anniversary dinner for her parents.  The butler has arranged it all.  The story takes place on that day.

This is a very good perceptive story, a pure joy to read.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year; and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Her latest novel Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and being named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year.

A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.  From the author's webpage 

Mel u

Mavis Gallant - Two set in Paris works first published in The NewYorker in the 1960s- A Paris Note book segment and a Short Story

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

French Literature and History on The Reading Life

Mavis Gallant on The Reading Life

My first post for Paris in July 2016 was on a novel by the great Iréne Nemirovsky.  Neither Gallant or Iréne   Nemirosky were born in France but both found their true home there.  One came as a child with her parents to escape anti-Semticism in the Ukraine, one as a young adult came alone to Paris, fell in love with the city and lived there the remaining fifty two years of her life.  

"The Events in May- A Paris Note Book" published in The New Yorker, May 14, 1968

In mid-May 1968 the Sorbonne and other major French universities announced a large increase in the student fees.  Led by the French  Communist Party, students began a series of  increasingly disruptive demonstrations throughout the city.  The issue became a matter of social class when the French national guard, with a largely working class membership, was called to subdue the mostly upperclass college students.  Gallant does a wonderful job bringing  this episode in Paris  to life. 

"The Hunter's Waking Thoughts" - a short story, first published in The New Yorker, September 29, 1962

"The Hunter's Waking Thoughts" is a brief fiction set on a country estate where Parisians come to hunt. The owner periodically rents out hunting rights to earn extra income.  Our central character was invited to the hunt by a married woman with whom he is madly in love with.  He thought she was as inviting him so they could have sex.  She forgot to inform him that her husband was coming also.  Like all of her work I have read, this is an elegant perceptive work of art.

I wish to note that both of these stories are included in a very interesting forthcoming anthology of work  centering on the 1960s first published in The New Yorker.  I was kindly given a review copy.

For fans of Marvis Gallant, a 1000 page collection  of  her short stories will be available as a Kindle edition August 14.  

Mel u

The Dogs and the Wolves by Iréne Nemirovsky (1940, translated by Sandra Smith, 2009)

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

French Literature and History on The Reading Life

My Posts on Iréne Nemirovsky 

Suite Francaise is the acknowledged master work of Iréne Nemirovsky.  I first read this book during Paris in July in 2015.  I loved that book so much that I added her to my read all I can list.  Since then I have read and posted on eleven of her novels and four short stories.  

Iréne Nemirovsky was born in Kiev, Russia February 11, 1903 into a wealthy Jewish family, her father was a banker for the Czar, and she died in Auschwitz Concentration Camp on August 17, 1942.  She wrote thirteen exquisite novels, her most famous work is Suite Francaise, and published thirty short stories. Her family moved to Paris after the Russian Revolution where her father restored his fortune. I have read eleven of her novels and ten of her short stories.  After  her first novel, David Golder, published in 1926 she wrote almost a novel a year.  With her murder the Nazis, the French were far from blameless concerning the fate of their Jews, deprived the world of upwards of thirty novels.  To me the literary impact of the Holocaust is personified in Iréne Nemirovsky.  

The Dogs and the Wolves is one of her very best works,  the opening segments in which we learn of Jewish society divisions  in the Ukraine are totally brilliant.  I think too many read only Suite Francaise, I do suggest you start Nemirosky there, and fail to see the aspects of her work dealing with her roots in Jewish Russia and the Ukraine.   The open section of The Dogs and The Wolves in which tne different social classes among Jews in a  Ukrainian city are portrayed are simply magnificent.  Her account of a pogram by Cossacks is as powerful as anything by the classic Yiddish writer, Lamed Shapiro.  After the pogram they move to Paris.  In one chilling conversation a rich Jew tells his family they have nothing to worry about.  I don't know if Nemirovsky foresaw what was to happen to the Jews of the Ukraine or not but it seemed prophetic. 

Much of the drama of the story is taken up by two related Jewish families  one poor at the start, and one quite rich, both living in Paris.   Though a happy bit of serendipity brought on when the poor man's children apply for help at the house of their rich relatives, the poor family eventually rises to a comfortable level of affluence.  Romantic drama begins between the children of the two Jewish families plays a big part in the plot. It is very emotional.   There is a lot to be learned about French Jewish life in this novel.  The quality is uneven, sections are just totally wonderful and others are period romance/marriage story norms, though very well executed.

Please share your experience with Iréne Nemirovsky with us.

Mel u