Thursday, December 10, 2015

I've asked the reading group members what they think about me mentioning them here; while I wait to hear from them, I'm going to write about a trip we took this fall, which was brimful of books and food. 

The trip's purpose was twofold; first, of course, fun and adventure -- Carl had never been to Paris; I studied there as a college student. There was much I wanted to share with him, and many other things I hadn't done that I wanted us to experience together. The other purpose was to do research for my own book, which is (possibly over-ambitiously) set in Iron Age Scotland (43 C.E. - more on that later)


Over the year before the trip, before we even imagined we would go, I developed a hunger for books about Paris. It was almost like the kind of cravings you get when you're pregnant; you can't quite explain why you suddenly have an unquenchable thirst for cranberry juice, or craving for crunchy peanut butter; you just do. In this case, my hunger was far-ranging: fiction, nonfiction, set in present day, historical, food books, memoirs, I read them all. 

Because there were so many, this will be the first of several posts.

Literary Paris: A Guide by Jessica Powell is an absolute delight. Arranged chronologically, beginning in the 17th century with Moliere, it covers all of the usual suspects; Victor Hugo, Marcel Proust, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Powell also includes American expatriates who found refuge or inspiration or both, in Paris over the last six centuries. Some will elicit an "of course," when flipping through: Gertrude Stein, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, all of whom were immortalized in Hemingway's Paris memoir A Moveable Feast. Others are not as well known for their French connections: Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin and Richard Wright.  

But Powell's book is much more than a list of literary luminaries: it offers portraits of each, rich with anecdotes and details about their personality quirks, culinary preferences and sex lives. On top of all this, it is generously illustrated with etchings, paintings, and photographs. 

Each entry also includes sites where they ate, drank, shopped, slept and sought inspiration; and a map to help plan your pilgrimage.  Some can be visited - you can order un expresso or un chocolat chaud at Cafe de  Flore, a favorite of Stein and Camus. Others, like Stein's            
former residence on the Rue de Fleurus, are still standing but can only be seen from outside.          

Even if you're not planning a trip to Paris, this book will take you there.

No comments:

Post a Comment