MetaFilter posts tagged with france and memoir

"Crossroads possess a certain dangerous potency."

the man of twists and turns — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 03:23:45 -0800

How Things Fell Apart, By Chinua Achebe - 'In an excerpt from his long-awaited memoir, the inventor of the post-colonial African novel in English discusses his origins as a writer and the seeds of revolt against the British Empire.'

I can say that my whole artistic career was probably sparked by this tension between the Christian religion of my parents, which we followed in our home, and the retreating, older religion of my ancestors, which fortunately for me was still active outside my home. I still had access to a number of relatives who had not converted to Christianity and were called heathens by the new converts. When my parents were not watching I would often sneak off in the evenings to visit some of these relatives.

There Was A Country: 'A Personal History Of Biafra' is Chinua Achebe's newest book and memoir, covering from his childhood through the Nigerian Civil War / Biafran War. Achebe wrote in The Guardian: The genocidal Biafran war still haunts Nigeria

Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people – mothers, children, babies, civilians – lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria. As a writer I believe that it is fundamentally important, indeed essential to our humanity, to ask the hard questions, in order to better understand ourselves and our neighbours. Where there is justification for further investigation, justice should be served.

One of the most anticipated books of the year, it has been reviewed in The Washington Post, The London Review Of Books, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, Counterpunch, and The Financial Times. Ike Anya, author of People Don't Get Depressed In Nigeria (previously), writes a review for African Arguments. It has also been reviewed positively and negatively by Vanguard Nigeria, reviewed in Modern Ghana, in Africa Is A Country, and Vibe Ghana. The New Inquiry covers the some of the differences between Western and African reviews (without reading the book): There Will Be a Memoir: Chinua Achebe and Biafra

I bring all this up because if you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ike Anya or Chika Unigwe or Noo Saro-Wiwa or Uzodinma Iweala—all Nigerians reviewing the book in prominent American or British newspapers, for what it’s worth—you will find almost none of the personalities, dirty laundry, and petty score-settling. Why is that? Is it that Americans and Britons can’t be bothered to learn about that stuff, so it got edited out or was never written?

The Millions, in The Defeated Write History: Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country addresses the question: 'But why the long delay? Why did it take Achebe so long to write such a book?'

In a collection of his essays, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987, Achebe writes of his distance from the traditional Igbo religions, being the son of Christian converts, and how that distance helped him gain a deep understanding of them. What he writes appears to also justify the decades he’s taken to tackle the Biafran cause. “The distance becomes not a separation but a bringing together like the necessary backward step which a judicious viewer may take in order to see a canvas steadily and fully.”

Claude Lanzmann

Trurl — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:28:34 -0800

Those Americans who are familiar with the name Claude Lanzmann most likely know him as the director of “Shoah,” his monumental 1985 documentary about the extermination of the European Jews in the Nazi gas chambers. As it turns out, though, the story of Lanzmann’s eventful life would have been well worth telling even if he had never come to direct “Shoah.” In addition to film director, Lanzmann’s roles have included those of journalist, editor, public intellectual, member of the French Resistance, long-term lover of Simone de Beauvoir and close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, world traveler, political activist, ghostwriter for Jacques Cousteau — I could go on, but it’s a good deal more entertaining to hear Lanzmann himself go on, and thanks to the publication in English of his memoir, “The Patagonian Hare,” we now have the opportunity to do so. (previously)

A G.I.'s WWII Memoir

zarq — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:16:33 -0800

Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online: "Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards. From "Side Effects of the Story" "In the year 2007, I was approached by DWNY Productions, Inc. who was working on a movie called "Revolutionary Road" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, two of the leading movie stars of the day. The studio was interested in using pictures from my story taken in Paris during my trip to Nice, France in 1945 - see Chapter 27, Rest and Relaxation. We arranged a financial agreement and although I sold them ten pictures they used only one. In it, they transposed my face with that of Leonardo DiCaprio."

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.

My Life in France

grapefruitmoon — Sat, 27 May 2006 15:43:26 -0800

My Life in France by Julia Child (discussed here, and here) has been published posthumously with the assistance of Alex Prud'homme.