MetaFilter posts tagged with france and books

A Century of Proust

Rustic Etruscan — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:47:48 -0800

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann's Way, the New York Times is publishing a series of blog posts on In Search of Lost Time. (via) Centenary exhibition of Proust's notebooks at the Morgan Library NYT review of same Video showing the gallery proofs in the collection of France's National Library Previously: Proust's first poem The huge Pléiade edition of In Search of Lost Time

The Spy Novelist Who Knows Too Much

Rustic Etruscan — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:33:51 -0800

"De Villiers has spent most of his life cultivating spies and diplomats, who seem to enjoy seeing themselves and their secrets transfigured into pop fiction (with their own names carefully disguised), and his books regularly contain information about terror plots, espionage and wars that has never appeared elsewhere. Other pop novelists, like John le Carré and Tom Clancy, may flavor their work with a few real-world scenarios and some spy lingo, but de Villiers’s books are ahead of the news and sometimes even ahead of events themselves." (SLNYT)

Terrifying French Children's books

rongorongo — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 02:13:06 -0800

There are some frightening looking children's books titles in English but, it seems nobody manages to bring them out like the French.

French language ephemera and visual miscellany blog

Rumple — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:53:37 -0800

Agence Eureka is a French language image-blog with hundreds or even thousands of scanned illustrations, mostly from mid-20th century French schoolbooks, educational material, magazines, and ephemera. The current front page is slightly NSFW. Some of the categories include anatomy 1 & 2 (mildly NSFW); chocolate wrappers/trading cards; bricolage; decoupage (cut-outs); math education; playing cards; books and magazines; cars; cinema; orientalisme; sport; mild pin-ups; and many others (scroll all the way down the right to see the tags). In most cases the above links are to only one set of images within many of that category - there are about 10 pages of decoupages, for example. A number of the same illustrations are available in alternate organization here and in their flickr sets. Also, their blog of French hats is fun.

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail

huskerdont — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:11:41 -0800

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail. Best known as the drummer for 1970s punk band The Damned, Rat Scabies grew up with a father interested in the mysteries of the French town of Rennes-le-Château, which may or may not contain the Holy Grail and in the enigmatic priest Berenger Sauniere. Conspiracy theories surrounding the town first popped up in the 1970s book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and gained a certain amount of infamy in recent years from The DaVinci Code. Upon striking up a friendship with his neighbor, journalist Christopher Dawes, Scabies discovered common interests in conspiracy theories and all things paranormal and a shared hatred of the DaVinci Code. Now the pair wrote a book about their alcohol-sodden quest for the Holy Grail that asks the question: What happens when an ex-punk rocker goes looking for the Holy Grail?

Flaubert on Structural Unity

matteo — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 19:56:23 -0800

Flaubert on Structural Unity. "I’ve just read 'Pickwick' by Dickens. Do you know it? Some bits are magnificent; but what a defective structure! All English writers are like that. Walter Scott apart, they lack composition. This is intolerable for us Latins". Extracts from the letters of Flaubert (via the very awesome book coolie)

Fantomas

vacapinta — Sat, 14 Sep 2002 12:13:14 -0800

Fantomas Lives!
Fantômas is the Lord of Terror, the Genius of Evil, the arch-criminal anti-hero of a series of 32 pre-WWI French thrillers written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. He carries out the most appalling crimes: substituting sulfuric acid in the perfume dispensers at a Parisian department store, releasing plague-infested rats on an ocean liner, or forcing a victim to witness his own execution by placing him face-up in a guillotine.
In 1912, Apollinaire founded the Societe des Amis de Fantomas which included prominent artists and writers. Magritte considered Fantomas to be a major influence in many of his paintings. Fantomas was not only a comic book but also spawned films, tv and radio shows and plays. (There is, of course, a modern band as well)(I read the Mexican comic book as a child)