MetaFilter posts tagged with france and literature

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

Never fear quarrels, but seek adventures. Julie d’Aubigny or d'Artagnan?

ersatz — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:25:56 -0800

Shortly thereafter, one of the nuns died. La Maupin disinterred the body of the deceased nun and, placing it in the bed of her beloved, set the room afire so that the two could flee in the ensuing confusion. Julie d’Aubigny a.k.a. La Maupin or Mademoiselle Maupin was a 17th century fencer and opera singer of the Paris Opera. In detail. This angered La Maupin. She rebuffed him and reached for her sword. The young bravo responded in kind and soon the challenge was given and accepted and La Maupin found herself facing three of the squires over cold steel. They withdrew to the tavern's courtyard where she fought all three at once and won. The match ended when she ran the fellow who had offended her clean through the shoulder. Pinned by her blade, her foe twisted around until he could see her sword's point, red with his blood, emerging from his back. She sheathed her blade, turned her back upon the fallen man and withdrew to her room. *M. d'Artagnan the elder's advice to his son was "Never fear quarrels, but seek adventures." (Ne craignez pas les occasions et cherchez les aventures). Unfortunately, when Théophile Gautier was tapped to write a novel on her life, he turned the plot of the book into a love triangle.

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)

James Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime"

Egg Shen — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:04:33 -0800

James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime is one of those very rare novels that seems not so much to have been written as discovered. At its heart is a love story, an encounter, that transforms its relatively ordinary protagonists into beings around whom the entire cosmos shapes itself. The love story is delicate and ephemeral, put together out of bits and pieces, like a bird's nest. The vulnerable lovers tremble, in the most mundane circumstances, on the edge of catastrophe. Simply the way one of them moves across the room to meet the other seems miraculous and hazardous. Were they to become aware of themselves everything would be lost. But there is no danger of that. Oblivious, they tiptoe on a precipice. They do not and cannot know that their innocence cloaks them in a kind of divinity and infallibility. Actions and attitudes we expect to bring them down don't. They do things that seem so perfect, so poignant, without knowing they are doing anything at all. They arc beautifully across our path, and then vanish. - Michael Doliner (previously) "Somewhere," James Salter once wrote, "the ancient clerks, amid stacks of faint interest to them, are sorting literary reputations. The work goes on endlessly and without haste. There are names passed over and names revered, names of heroes and of those long thought to be, names of every sort and level of importance." Salter was writing about his friend Irwin Shaw, whose name, once renowned, has slipped quietly from the first rank. Where will the tireless, indifferent clerks file the name James Salter? His readers, few in number but adamant in their conviction that he is a great writer, are confident that the author of "A Sport and a Pastime" and "Dusk: And Other Stories," the collection that won him the 1988 PEN/Faulkner Award (perhaps this country's most prestigious literary prize), will eventually take his place in the canon of American literature. - The New York Times

I prefer a ruin to a monument.

spanishbombs — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 18:52:06 -0800

A liquor store in Amsterdam. A veteran in Bagdad. A family in Rome. A WWII veterans memorial in Berlin. A house in Oxford. Edouard Levé photographed towns in the United States that shared names with famous cities. He photographed fully-clothed actors reenacting scenes from rugby and pornography [nsfw]. He also wrote some novels, influenced by Oulipo. Autoportrait, describes his life in 120 pages of unordered vignettes and brief, declarative sentences—"The girl whom I loved the most left me. [...] I am uneasy in rooms with small windows." and so on. His fourth novel, Suicide, is a one-sided conversation between an anonymous narrator ("I") and his friend ("you"), who committed suicide twenty years ago. It's a painfully intimate meditation on the act and its fallout on its own merits—"Your life was hypothesis. Those who die old are made of the past. Thinking of them, one thinks of what they have done. Thinking of you, one thinks of what you could have become. You were, and you will remain, made up of possibilities."—but few will read Suicide unburdened with the knowledge that Edouard Levé killed himself several days after completing it, at the age of 47. Further reading: The first two paragraphs of Suicide, on the Dalkey Archive Press' website A long excerpt of lines from Autoportrait (from n+1, included above, recommended.) Photography portfolio / biography [large pdf] More from his series Amérique The Millions' review of Suicide, which explores some of the issues around the novel.

Michel Houellebecq is missing.

Kitty Stardust — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:23:14 -0800

Novelist and H.P. Lovecraft biographer Michel Houellebecq is missing. Houellebecq was due to give a reading from his new work Le Carte et le Territoire, in the Netherlands on September 12th. Houellebecq has appeared on the blue before: here, here, here and here.

Casanova's "Histoire de ma vie"

Joe Beese — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:10:49 -0800

Remembering the pleasures I enjoyed, I renew them, and I laugh at the pains which I have endured and which I no longer feel. Of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt ‘s Histoire de ma vie, Kenneth Rexroth wrote: Purity, simplicity, definition, impact — these qualities of Homer are those of Casanova too. … He has equals but no superiors in the art of direct factual narrative. ... Time and its ruining passage color all the book. His sense of his own imminent death lurks in the dark background of every brilliantly lit lusty and bawdy tableau. After an unusually colorful history, the manuscript has been donated to France's National Library. The now-superannuated Arthur Machen translation can be read in its entirety here.

Literary Political Protest, French Style

lucia__is__dada — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:06:20 -0800

The sales of a book by Madame de Lafayette, "La Princesse de Clèves", are up in France and there have been public readings of it in theatres and universities. The reason? Sarkozy hates it. As Sarkozy's popularity plummets, the "17th century tale of thwarted love" gets unexpected attention beyond the classroom. Badges inscribed with "I am reading The Princess of Clèves" were the most popular item at the opening of the Paris book fair this week. Mr Sarkozy, a man often ridiculed in France for preferring fitness to literature, has frequently expressed his disdain for "La Princesse de Cleves" (The Princess of Cleves), a novel by Madame de La Fayette which was published in 1678 and is taught in most French classrooms. from the Telegraph. Also, full text of "La Princesse de Clèves" at Gutenberg.

Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1922 - 2008.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:16:53 -0800

Alain Robbe-Grillet, French author, member of the Académie française and subject of this recent Mefi post, has passed away at age 85.

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)

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly

soyjoy — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 14:24:14 -0800

'Little Prince' author's plane found at last - "In France, the discovery is akin to solving the mystery of where Amelia Earhart's plane went down."

Salman Rushdie defends fellow writer Michel Houellebecq,

semmi — Fri, 04 Oct 2002 23:42:04 -0800

Salman Rushdie defends fellow writer Michel Houellebecq, the autonomy of the literary text and its right to be considered on its own terms with characters of every sort.