Maitresse

Save St Mark's Bookshop

[UPDATE: They worked out an agreement. Hooray!]

This just in, from the Cooper Square Committee, who are fighting to save St Mark's Bookshop:

A Board committee is meeting on Monday to decide if they will reduce St Mark's Bookshop's $20,000/month rent by $5,000.  Thousands of emails or calls will influence the decision.  

Tell the President to reduce the bookshop rent to $15,000 a month until the economy improves. 

Every little bit helps! Here is the email I just sent off; feel free to copy or modify it:

from	lauren elkin xxx.com
to		President@cooper.edu
date		Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 3:37 PM
subject		Please reduce St Mark's Bookshop's rent to $15,000...

...at least until the economy improves!

I'm a native New Yorker who moved to Paris at a time when very few American bookshops were managing to survive the onslaught of the big chains and the homogenization of reading habits (when people still read at all). It means a lot to me to know that there are still a few shops left in New York for whom books are not a product like any other, but the repository of what we know about the world and ourselves. Books that are written, published, and sold with the idea of exploring the human condition, not promoting someone's bottom line, need to be supported.

Here in France, a fixed-price book law was implemented in 1981 that prevents bookstores from underselling one another, competing for the lowest price. In 2007, the French government implemented subsidies to help independent bookstores which met certain criteria.

In the US, we have no fixed-price book law, and the idea of the government subsidizing bookstores is laughable. It's up to local businesses and landowners to do the subsidizing. Please do your part.

Thank you,
LE

And here's the piece I published in Five Dials on bookselling in France, and how those subsidies I mentioned actually work.

A hidden bookstore in New York?

Top of the to-do list.

 

Via The New Inquiry.

vendredi, poésie

I was re-reading Joseph Mitchell's article "Up at the Old Hotel" the other day, about a restaurant on Fulton Street, in a building that used to be a hotel right behind the ferryhouse of the Fulton Ferry, the primary ferry moving between Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. "On account of the Ferry, Fulton Street was like a funnel; damned near everything headed for Brooklyn went through it."

Ferries to Brooklyn of course made me think of Whitman.

So here's Whitman (another native Long Islander), "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (1856)

FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.	5
2 The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme—myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:
The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river;
The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;	10
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them;
The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;	15
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high;
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
3 It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;	20
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;	25
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river, the sun half an hour high;
I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls—I saw them high in the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong shadow,	30
I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south.
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light around the shape of my head in the sun-lit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward,	35
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the arriving ships,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops—saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars,	40
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening,	45
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite store-houses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on each side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
4 These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;	50
I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.
I loved well those cities;
I loved well the stately and rapid river;
The men and women I saw were all near to me;
Others the same—others who look back on me, because I look’d forward to them;	55
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)
5 What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.
6 I too lived —Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;	60
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it;
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution;	65
I too had receiv’d identity by my Body;
That I was, I knew was of my body—and what I should be, I knew I should be of my body.
7 It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw patches down upon me also;
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious;	70
My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me?
It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;
I am he who knew what it was to be evil;
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,	75
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant;
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.	80
8 But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!
I was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,	85
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
9 Closer yet I approach you;
What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;	90
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
It is not you alone, nor I alone;	95
Not a few races, nor a few generations, nor a few centuries;
It is that each came, or comes, or shall come, from its due emission,
From the general centre of all, and forming a part of all:
Everything indicates—the smallest does, and the largest does;
A necessary film envelopes all, and envelopes the Soul for a proper time.	100
10 Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and admirable to me than my mast-hemm’d Manhattan,
My river and sun-set, and my scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide,
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter;
Curious what Gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach;
Curious what is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face,	105
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you.
We understand, then, do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish, is accomplish’d, is it not?
What the push of reading could not start, is started by me personally, is it not?	110
11 Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me;
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!—stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!	115
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!	120
Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water! and faithfully hold it, till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you;	125
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one’s head, in the sun-lit water;
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset;
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses;
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are;	130
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul;
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas;
Thrive, cities! bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers;
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual;
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.	135
12 We descend upon you and all things—we arrest you all;
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality;
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you novices!	140
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward;
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us;
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us;
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also;
You furnish your parts toward eternity;	145
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

vendredi, poésie

...the return of Friday poetry!

Steps
FRANK O’HARA

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

playing at trains

Emily Gould posted a video with the view from the subway train as it goes over the Manhattan Bridge and it made me all nostalgic for New York:

Almost every day I get to look out the window at the water and the sky and the advancing skyline from the window of the Q or B train as it crosses the Manhattan bridge.  I have heard more than one person say that “The moment I stop noticing this view is the moment I know I should just leave New York,” and when they’ve said this I have fervently nodded my agreement.  But of course I don’t always look up and have a magical transformative moment or even a tranquil reflective moment every day.*

So I thought I'd reply in kind. This is the view from the 6 train as it crosses the Seine from Passy to Bir Hakeim, which I used to take when I taught at Nanterre, and which I will take now that I'm teaching at NYU. (Except I go in the other direction, Left Bank to Right.)

 

(I love the dour-looking woman sitting in the strapontin who's like "mais qu'est-ce que vous foutez avec ce caméra, putain")

*Emily doesn't mention what used to anchor the city at its base, that is now missing from that video, but she posted on September 10th, so I think the connection is clear, if unconscious.

Happy trails, Happy Ending

As I mentioned, while I was in New York I went to some interesting readings-- readings that were radically different from any kind of readings I usually go to in Paris (though that is changing).  On one of my last nights in New York, however, I went to the Happy Ending Reading & Music Series at Joe's Pub, and wow. 

I can't find the link right now, but I remember reading something not so long ago written by a writer on his book tour wondering why on earth we take part in the strange ritual that is a bookstore reading.  Why force writers to schlep from bookstore to bookstore to read the same passages over and over to an audience of maybe 5 people, none of whom will buy the book? But the Happy Ending readings take readings to another level. It's reading as entertainment, is what it is. 

 Started by the writer and performer Amanda Stern in 2003 out of the Happy Ending bar in Chinatown, since January of this year it's been held the first Wednesday of every month at Joe's Pub. Every installment features three writers and a musician; each is asked to take a public risk of some sort, to put themselves on the line doing something they've either never done, never done in public, or are reticent to do again.  Past evenings have seen Felicia Sullivan demonstrating a complicated yoga pose; Rick Moody singing a cappella; Audrey Niffengger reading a stranger's tarot cards; and Ben Greenman reading aloud his pin codes and credit card numbers.  As for the musicians, their risk is to get the audience to sing along to the cover song of their choice.  Stern, meanwhile, acts as MC, while the audience downs drinks and hamburgers in between moments of rapt attention.

This past month's installment--themed "Confessions & Jealousy" brought the musician Elvis Perkins (a lovely combination of Johnny Cash, Jeff Buckley, and I don't know what)  together with Nick Laird, Kevin Canty, and Binnie Kirshenbaum-- who dared, in an act of personal liberation from a lifetime of acquiescence, to refuse the risk, thus risking our dislike! but we did not feel dislike, only disappointment at not getting to see another offbeat trick. Nick Laird, on the other hand, took an adorable risk: Mr. Zadie Smith brought along their pug , Maud, to whom he read a pair of sonnets he had written about her.  Maud begged for treats, occasionally barking and interrupting Laird.  It went a little like this: "When you're overexcited you tend to get hiccups/But your weapon of choice is the sneeze." Punctuated, periodically with commands: "Sit, Maudie, sit! Down, Maudie!" Afterwards, he read from his new novel, the name of which he forgot to tell us (but which Zadie herself shouted from backstage: "Glover's Mistake!").  [The Village Voice has a fuller write-up of Laird, Maud, and the new novel, here.]

Kevin Canty read a staccato text from his short story collection Where the Money Went. And for his risk, he read it backwards. (The last paragraph, that is.) Binnie Kirshenbaum, when not subverting the Sterntriarchy and refusing her risk, read from her new novel, The Scenic Route (which sounds wonderful, judging from the excerpt).  

And then Elvis Perkins came back around to carry out his risk of the evening. After warming up the audience's vocal chords with a test run, he asked us to contribute some gospel-style ooohs and ahhhs while he sang a cover of Alan Lomax's "Sweet Roseanna." "Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye," he sang. "Ooooohh, ooohh, ooohh," about five of us replied.  It was a perfectly mellow, perfectly harmonious finish  (though nothing like a happy ending)  to an evening rife with confessions and crackling with jealousy.  At least on my part, that I no longer live in New York and can no longer spend one Wednesday a month with Amanda and her motley crew of storytellers and risktakers.

Working

Yesterday afternoon, out of curiosity and disbelief, I stopped by Bryant Park to witness James Wood play the bongos with John Jeremiah Sullivan's band Fayaway. It was a sight to see! But no one else in the audience seemed to find it as incongruous as I did. Wood acquitted himself well, with much concentration and the occasional tympanic flourish. He has quite the ear for a triplet, something you can't say about just anyone, which made me appreciate his criticism all the more. [Update: via Mark Sarvas, I learn that Wood suffered a tambourine-inflicted wound during one song. Let it be said that the injury did not in any perceptible way affect his performance.]

After the set, Peter Terzian took the mic and led a panel of writers (Joshua Ferris, Stacey D'Erasmo, Clifford Chase, Asali Solomon) in a set of readings from the new collection he's edited, Heavy Rotation-- in which these and other writers (Wood, Sullivan, Benjamin Kunkel, Kate Christensen, etc.) discuss the albums which had the greatest formational impact on their lives.  The collection sounds great-- you can read more about it here.  Caleb Crain has some photos up on his blog, here.  (I did see some people filming in the front row-- I wonder if there's video available anywhere?)

Speaking of Caleb Crain, I came across his face-off with Alain de Botton today. Though I'm usually a fan of ADB (his Proust book and his architecture book to be more precise), this one-- on the pleasures and sorrows of work-- sounds deadly boring. In case you missed it, here's what happened: Crain reviewed ADB in the New York Times. ADB freaked out on Crain's blog, writing “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude." People took note and wondered how ADB could make such a blunder in the same week as Alice Hoffman.  (Ed Champion did an interview with ADB in which he claims to have been unaware of L'Affaire Hoffman.) Then, ADB revealed that he intended his comments to be for Crain's eyes only, which begs the question of why he would leave a private message on a website, where-- I know this is tough to comprehend but stay with me-- other people can see it.

This hullabaloo over Alain de Botton’s comments is more interesting than the book, which seems to will itself to be a lyrical-philosophical-britannical updating of Studs Terkel. If you want to read about work, I recommend instead Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To the End, which I picked up yesterday after hearing him read at Bryant Park. It’s so good--  a pitch perfect of the way we (i.e. contemporary, everyday, Joe Schmoe Americans) tell stories, tell jokes, and misunderstand each other.  Ferris captures the sense of quiet desperation in the work environment of a group of people working for a Chicago advertising firm-- but he doesn’t condescend or push the pathos envelope.  He achieves this through the use of a choral narrator, a loose narrative structure, and a relentless determination to find the humor in absolutely everything, which is occasionally cruel, until you realize they’re laughing for their lives.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work.

around the internet on a tuesday: New York edition

"Paris is so analog," I whispered to Lauren Cerand last night as we watched Todd Zuniga (of Opium Magazine) live-Twitter on his iPhone while Ben Greenman sat on stage with his MacBook at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble attempting to break a record for the Universal Record Database. Then everybody blogged about it. Todd and Ben's interview included a five minute lightning round of questions and a segment where Todd presented Rorschach blots and Ben saw donkeys. Oh, and Ben read from his new book, Please Step Back.  The evening was so fabulous it made me wish I spent more time in NYC (and that is no small feat). Also, I made a new friend.

*
Speaking of Opium Magazine, they're doing a cool thing.

*

Tomorrow in Bryant Park: James Wood finger-drumming live! Read more.

*
Flavorpill gets the real story behind Philip Roth's Jewish Shouting Mix 3.

*
This sounds so good. I think I'll pick up a copy when I'm in Tokyo in two weeks, even if I can't read it! Interview here, via Conversational Reading via Literary Saloon.

*
To follow up on yesterday's post on Mavis Gallant's opposition to writing workshops, Louis Menand wonders in the New Yorker whether writing should be taught.

the Woolves take Manhattan

I'm mildly amused at all the coverage the 2009 Woolf conference is getting.  It must be because it's taking place in New York, but I think as well the rise of Twitter and the proliferation of culture blogs has created a real kind of buzz for a conference which has not traditionally attracted much media attention. 

I am chagrined that it is taking place in my hometown and I can't make it (I can't make it to New York until late June, when I'm going for a cousin's wedding); I was going to be on a panel with some colleagues from the Graduate Center but at the last minute decided not to submit my paper.

Nevertheless Anne has done a brilliant job organizing and I wish everyone a happy and productive conference!

Meanwhile I leave you with my notes from the 2006 Woolf conference in Birmingham (i.e. the last time I thought a Woolf conference would be of any interest to my readers!)

New French Writing

Generally, as someone who's interested in French literature and culture, I'm pretty happy to live in Paris.  But today I wish very much to be back in New York, for today begins the Festival of New French Writing at NYU.  Over the next three days, New Yorkers will be able to attend a series of panels which match up French writers with American writers in conversation about their craft, moderated by an impressive group of French and American critics and writers. 

People talk about how French literature has stalled over the last decade or so, and it is said (by François Busnel, editor-in-chief of Lire magazine, among other people, citing the recent Goncourt prizes awarded to Jonathan Littell and Atiq Rahimi) that its best hope lies in the blending of the French language with the experiences of other cultures, with writers from other contexts than metropolitan France.  It would seem, then, that contemporary French literature can only benefit from such conversations, although the main practitioners of the two plagues of the present literary scene in France-- naval-gazing and nihilism-- are absent from this list. (Feel free to get catty in the comments about who I might be referring to...)

Colette does New York

The hipper-than-thou Paris fashion emporium is taking a vacation to New York this fall, reports WWD*-- brought to you by none other than the Gap!

The San Francisco-based retailer has commissioned the renowned Paris boutique to create a one-month installation in its rotating Gap concept store adjacent to its Fifth Avenue flagship at 54th Street. Dubbed "Colette x Gap," the shop, Colette's first store in the U.S., will be open from September 6 through October 5.
(...)
Exclusive products that will be available at the temporary shop will include Colette's signature candles, room fragrance, musk oil, CDs and artist edition products. Limited edition Colette collaborations include partnerships with Oakley sunglasses, Starter jackets, Uslu Airlines nail polish, Le Labo fragrance Vanilla 44, Domestic vinyl stickers, Hello Kitty watch and Asics Tiger sneakers. Gap will also issue limited edition tees with prints by both Paris and New York-based artists.

It's as if the coolest, most fashion-forward girl in your high school class were taking the very boring (but very nice) preppy guy to the prom: New Yorkers will have access to all that originality. Colette gets a space in midtown. The Gap looks cool by association. Everyone wins.

The only downside I foresee is that this will probably attract the kind of crowds last seen mobbing Topshop to buy a little piece of Kate Moss's sartorial whimsy-- which will involve standing in line for hours, trying on clothes on the spot, and getting into a catfights over a t-shirt. Something tells me the average New Yorker  will throw up her hands in exasperation and leave without buying anything. (But I look forward to being proved wrong when I swing through town in early September.)

*Thanks to my dear friend Wendy for the link!

Close Reading: Carine Roitfeld in NY Magazine

Photo: Hedi Slimane

C'est la guerre! An article on Carine Roitfeld in this week's New York Magazine, called "The Anti-Anna," really highlights some of the pressure points of Franco-American conflict-- chez les filles, that is.

American women love to effuse over how innately stylish French women are; entire forests have been levelled for books telling them how not to get fat, how to tie their scarf correctly, how to infuse their life with savoir faire, savoir vivre, joie de vivre, French flair, etc.  Tell us how we can be stylish like the French! they cry. So pragmatic, such dedicated students. As if style is something one can learn from a book.

But underneath this clichéd worship there is a certain undercurrent-- of what? resentment? dislike? impatience?-- which is far more compelling, that I wasn't aware of until I read Amy Larocca's article this morning.  You're left at the end of the article pretty much expecting a war to break out, even though everyone is all smiles and styles.

It all seems encapsulated in this one quote:

“The American editors are very, how you say, slick,” Roitfeld says. “Very perfect. Hair is perfect, they have a manicure. They are very clean, they follow fashion. I don’t think they take many risks. They do the total look of Prada. Me, I wear a lot of Japanese piece mixed with a bit of classic Hermès and Prada. Even though jeans suit me, I never wear jeans.”

Judging from the tone of the article, Roitfeld's veiled insult doesn't sit well, somehow, with Larocca. She is not provincial enough to get defensive about it,  but once the reader is attuned to the discord, all the details of the profile fall into place, and the deep ambivalence with which Americans regard the French becomes very clear.

Throughout the article, Larocca repeats verbatim what Roitfeld said to her in their interview, and any Anglophone who's lived in France long enough will instantly recognize the cadences of a French person speaking English:

On why she is staying at the Carlyle Hotel in NY instead of someplace trendier, like the Mercer:

“For me, it is best to be the youngest in hotel,” she explains, “and I was not having this feeling at the Mercer.” (...) “It makes me happy because there is vewy gweat lighting,” she says about the restaurant. “Vewy flatter.” (Roitfeld has reached a compromise with the hard American r by converting them all to ws.)

On her entry into the fashion world:

“Some editors, they have that, they know all the designer from the beginning of the nineteenth century. They know this is triple cashmere, this is simple cashmere. Maybe they went to fashion school. Me, I don’t. I just get a feeling about what is exciting. It is all just from feeling. So I don’t know”—she pulls her lips into a pout and gives one of those poufy little French exhales—“I think maybe I have a talent.”

Or her disdain for sneakers and those furry Australian Eskimo boots: "She has outlawed (...) what she calls "Hugg boots" in her office because "they are hugly.'"

Or her work at Missoni: “I like not to shock,” she says, “but there must be a bit of provocation. The girl can never be with bruise or violence, but there must be sex.

Do all New York Magazine interviews with foreigners reproduce their grammatical mistakes so faithfully?I don't know, and I don't have the time to check. But somehow, Larocca's constant inclusion of Roitfeld's accent smacks of passive-aggressiveness.

The putdowns keep coming, and always in response to a criticism Roitfeld has made about America.  "She still finds the idea of an office with a door where she’s expected every day (at least by telephone) somewhat troubling. All she ever wanted was to be surrounded by very attractive people and very expensive clothes." This segues into a passage where Roitfeld confesses to being no good at business, and then saying that being good at business is very American.

Larocca points out that Roitfeld "clogs" the back part of the magazine with photos of herself and her daughter, then "claims" not to like the attention and calls Anna Wintour "so iconic that she becomes a puppet." She calls Roitfeld "Rizzo to America’s Sandy," which anyone who grew up in America in the late seventies and eighties will immediately recognize as a diss.

To an American reader, it's hard to ignore the meanness behind some of Roitfeld's comments. Like this one on her recent trip to Thailand:

“You think this will be so glamorous,” she sighs. “You have the idea in your mind and then you get there and the people in the hotel …” She grimaces and gestures hugely in the hip area. “There were lots of people who were so fat and like that.”

It's sad, but she sounds just like my (French) boyfriend. Maybe someone should write a follow-up book called French Woman Don't Get Fat, and Laugh at Women Who Do. Roitfeld says she only hires skinny models and skinny girls to work for her with an attitude that could only come from a skinny woman (and Larocca reminds us of how skinny Roitfeld is several times). 

It's repugnant in any language (and pottery has been thrown when said boyfriend has uttered such inanities), but fashion does not exist in an ethical realm (just ask PETA). Which is what makes the American fashion industry, who promise that you too can look like a model, if you buy this dress or try this diet, that much more complicit than the French, who simply say "you'll never be this cool or this thin." At least they're honest about it.

Larocca's respect for French Vogue and for Roitfeld's personal style (if not her person) comes through-- but at the end of the article we are left with a feeling of strong ambivalence, one which is echoed in the comments left by readers, which range from "I love her" to "What a ridiculous, self-absorbed git."

When it comes to someone as creative, infamous, and successful as Roitfeld, the point is not that you love her or think she's a git. She doesn't care so much what you think, because so many of the right people find her impossibly stylish, and want to "be sitting and looking like her." And this insouciance is, in fact, quite French. That's the thing American audiences respond to (thus the popularity of self-help books), and the thing that drives them crazy.

Sophie Calle, Double Game (I)

Review of Sophie Calle, Double Game, with the Participation of Paul Auster, Violette Editions/DAP, $39.95

On September 1st, Violette Editions/DAP rereleased Double Game, the art book created by Calle in response to Paul Auster's 1992 novel Leviathan, in which Calle appears as the artist Maria Turner. (This edition of Double Game is timed to coincide with the 2007 Venice Biennale, where Calle recently represented France). With the release of Double Game, the hermeneutic circle is complete.  Calle enacts in her art book the projects Auster invented in a novel which fictionalizes Calle’s actual work.

Are you keeping up?

Calle has built a career out of games, and so it is not surprising that she would have responded to Leviathan in this way.  Whether she is following a stranger from Paris to Venice (“Suite Vénitienne,” 1980), inviting perfect strangers to sleep in her bed while she photographs them (“The Sleepers,” 1980) or enlisting the advice of 107 of the most talented women in France to help her interpret a break-up email from her lover (“Take Care of Yourself,” 2007), Sophie Calle has gone further than almost anyone towards destabilizing the relationship between the artist and her art. Just as Roland Barthes announced the death of the author, Calle has shown us the death of the artist.  But in the void left by the traditional authoritative artist figure Calle replaces a spirit of chance and play, of dialogue and interaction, that opens up more than ever the range and depth of what we consider to be art.

In the front matter of his novel, Paul Auster thanks Sophie Calle “for permission to mix fact with fiction.” Double Game opens, appropriately, with a note of thanks to Paul Auster, printed in exactly the same language on exactly the same spot on the copyright page. The double game is underway, and it is impossible to tell who began it or who is winning.

Originally published in 1999 (it sold out immediately and has since been out of print), Double Game is organized into three parts. Part I recreates in photographs a series of scenes from Auster's novel which she did not previously enact in real life. Maria sets herself certain thematic constraints which require her to organize her days or weeks by color or letter; some weeks, Auster writes, Maria “would indulge in what she called ‘the chromatic diet,’ restricting herself to foods of any single color on any given day. Monday orange: carrots, cantaloupe, boiled shrimp. Tuesday red: tomatoes, persimmons, steak tartare.” And so on. This gives way to “similar divisions based on the letters of the alphabet. Whole days would be spent under the spell of b, or c, or w.”

Calle delightedly enacts these games, photographing and eating modified versions of Maria’s chromatic diet, adopting her own alphabet-themed days. The cover of Double Game depicts Calle enacting Maria Turner’s b day: “To be like Maria Turner I spent the day of Tuesday, March 10, 1998, under the sign of B for Big-Time Blonde Bimbo.” The accompanying photograph depicts Calle dressed as a blonde 1960s pinup girl, perched on a bed, looking coyly into the camera, surrounded by a menagerie of animals, over the caption “B for Beauty and the Bestiary, for Bat, Bantam, Boar, Bull, for Bug, Badger, Bray, Bellow, Bleat, Bark, for Beastly Birdbrain, for BB.” The photograph, we learn, is meant to mock a 1989 photograph of Brigitte Bardot, who “in recent years has taken her preference for the cause of animals over that of humans to the point of caricature.”

Calle’s adaptations are remarkable for their spirit of play, of jouissance, of the joy of throwing together disparate references under the heading of an organizing principle chosen at random.  In this respect, Calle and Auster seem likely candidates for the Oulipians, who themselves are rooted in the Surrealist tradition enamored of le hasard objectif, or “necessary chance.” Indeed, “W” does feature a work by George Perec--a noted Oulipian and author of Life: a User’s Manual—W ou le souvenir d’enfance sits on a table in a Wagonlit piled with Whitman, works by photographers Weegee and Wegman, and a Walkman.

Part II features the real-life Calle projects which Auster borrowed for Maria:“The Wardrobe,” in which Calle sends a complete stranger with inferior style an article of clothing every year for Christmas, “The Striptease,” where Calle wanders onto the stage of a Pigalle stripclub and takes off all her clothing, and “The Address Book,” in which Calle discovers an address book in the street in Paris and sets about reconstructing the identity of its owner through interviews with the contacts inside, all of which were published in the newspaper Libération.  This project takes on particular importance in Leviathan, and provides the key chance meeting which sets in motion the last third of the book.

In Part III, Calle writes that she asked Auster “to invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble.” Auster responded with “Gotham Handbook”: a guide to making New York a better place. Part of Auster’s instructions to Calle are to find a spot in New York, any spot, and beautify it.  She selects a phone booth on the corner of Greenwich and Harrison Streets, and decorates it with, she tells us, “Glass Plus window cleaner, Brasso metal polish, Krylon ‘clover green’ spray paint, six writing pads, six pencils, one mirror, Devcon epoxy glue, two twelve foot chains, two padlocks, one ashtray, two folding chairs, and the current issue of Glamour magazine.”

Leviathan is not the only time Calle’s games have made their way into literature—Grégoire Bouillier’s 2004 novella L’invité mystère (recently published in English) recounts the author’s invitation to be the “mystery guest” at Calle’s birthday party, and although the book’s focus is on the narrator’s relationship with his ex, Calle’s gimmick provides the occasion for a meditation on relationships, interconnectivity, and coincidence.  (The Birthday project makes it into Leviathan as well.)

Calle (b. Paris, 1953) became an artist almost by accident; she dropped out of university to travel for seven years, and when when came back to France she had no idea what she wanted to do. With no friends and no job, she began to follow people in the street, “just to see what people do […] So I started to choose one person a day, and just go wherever that person went. And I understood very quickly that the fact of not having to decide anything but just letting those people decide for my as a motor for my movement, was very—at least, it was a rest,” she said at a conference in 2004.

This following of random people gave way to the project that would become “Suite Vénitienne.” One morning Calle followed a man around Paris, and that evening he turned up at a party she attended. Calle decided it was a sign that she was meant to stay with this man, and to continue to follow him. She did, right into Venice, where she stayed and documented his movements for three weeks.  The photographs and notes taken during this time became her first book, published in 1980, which included a text by Baudrillard entitled “Please Follow Me.” The project immediately succeeding “Suite Vénitienne” was called “The Sleepers,” in which Calle invited perfect strangers to sleep in her bed during eight-hour shifts for a week. She took a photograph every hour of the sleeping subject. When one subject’s husband turned out to be an art critic, Calle found herself being invited to show these photographs at an exhibit of young artists in Paris. “So that’s how I became an artist,” Calle says. “With that decision.”

[more to follow]

around the internet on a Tuesday

Hello from the former colonial outpost known as the US, where everything is fat-free but the people, and everyone talks? like they're asking? a question? Here are your Tuesday links!

As an undergraduate at Barnard I had to write two senior theses, one per semester. The first semester I had a dragon lady for a professor and I wrote the thesis on Jean Rhys's Quartet and the crisis of femininity after the First World War. The crisis? Too much alcohol and not enough mans to go around. Like "Sex and the City" but there's a man shortage not because they're all married or won't commit but because they all died in the war.  The dragon lady professor, a hardened New Critic, gave me a C or something because she didn't like my New Historicist reading, thereby f*cking up my GPA and making grad school applications really fun (sample interview question: "so if you want to do modernism, how do you explain this C on your first senior thesis?").  And look at that: Virginia Nicholson, author of "Among the Bohemians," daughter of Quentin Bell and grand-niece of Virginia Woolf, has written a book on precisely the same topic. It's called "Singled Out" and the Guardian's review is here.  Meanwhile the dragon lady retired soon after I graduated-- not soon enough for my GPA's liking.   I did appeal the grade, by the way, but final authority was given to the professor, and she stuck to her dogmatic guns.  B*tch.  (But I'm over it.)

Speaking of Barnard, the New York Times informed readers yesterday that there is a "fracas" about the recent decision to give tenure to Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist and assistant professor at Barnard since 2002.  Professor El-Haj is of Palestinian descent, and apparently in her book provides a "they're just misunderstood and colonialized, poor things" explanation for the "ransacking by thousands of Palestinians" of Joseph's Tomb back in 2000.  I can't believe Barnard denied Lynn Chancer tenure but gave it to this one.

Ok enough politics and enough Barnard. Pierre Assouline weighs in on the plagiarism dispute between Marie Darrieussecq and Camille Laurens.  And this piece on Pascal Quignard is great as well (in French).

Just in time for Rosh Hashanah (for which we here in Jew York get 2 days off from school-- now that's one thing NY has over gentile France!), Lars von Trier tells Ha'aretz he wishes he were Jewish.

Finally, on this Tuesday in New York six years after another fateful Tuesday in New York, it would be appropriate to take a non-nationalistic, non-partisan moment to remember.

Histoire d'une dernière semaine à Paris

[NDLR: Dedicated to Alice, the best reader a writer could wish for, on her birthday]

Ok, it's not that as dramatic as all that. So I leave for New York on Friday.  Big deal. I'll be back for 10 days or so in October and back for good on December 28th. Still, for the past few years I've been saying I would spend Fall 2007 in NY, and now here it is, and it feels strange for time to have caught up with my PhD schedule.  Next thing you know I'll be defending my dissertation (roughly scheduled for Fall 2011)!

Crazy how time flies when you're expatriating. Back in November 2004, when Dubya was elected to a second term, not long after I had arrived in Paris to stay for a nine-month research project, I sat in a café and told my friend Kaitlin that I was thinking of staying in Paris for the remainder of his second term.  "I could do my PhD in cotutelle," I told her in a voice my own and not my own, "and just live here for awhile." She shrugged her shoulders and said she thought I was being over-dramatic, but it's my life, etc.

Three years later, I've just about done it: I've been here long enough to hear talk begin about the '08 elections.  But in the intervening time I've managed to construct enough of a life here that I can legitimately say that Paris is my home, and not a place I'm killing time in til I go back to the States.  There are some plans in the works that may take N and I to California at some point, but for the moment, Paris is it.

And here we are.  The apartment is sublet, the ticket is bought, and all that remains is to tie up some loose ends, pack my things, and get on a plane.  I've watched Coquette go back and forth to Chicago a few times now, which helps me feel less like I'm giving something up that I've fought very hard to earn, and more that I'm fulfilling a professional obligation and it isn't really a big deal and the time will fly by.  Plus, it's New York I'm going home to-- it could be worse.

So how does the condemned spend her last week in Paris?

• I velibbed! N and I took the bikes to a quiet area in the 5th and he helped me get my bearings.  Soon I felt confident enough to set out toward Odéon, which necessitated taking Blvd St Michel, Blvd St Germain, and even, at one point, biking around the traffic circle at Luxembourg!  I biked on big roads with cars and buses and scooters and other bikes and pedestrians! It was very gratifying and I feel like much less of a gimp now.  We spent part of the afternoon in the Apple Store, two geeks loving it up among the iMacs.

• Went to the Musée d'Orsay to see the Vollard exhibit (which was excellent).

• Watched "Hors de Prix" and "Shortbus" with N and loved both.

• Have had lunch, dinner, coffee, or drinks with just about every friend I've made here in the last 3 years.

• I made Green Curry Chicken using the fancy spices I bought at the Galeries Lafayette Gourmet shop, but it didn't taste quite right. Needed more cumin or something.

• And then we went somewhere that put my cooking to shame: yes, after hearing half the blogosphere going on about it (Matthew Rose, Clothilde, Meg)  N and I scored a reservation at Hidden Kitchen (thanks to Meg, who proves herself once again to be the superconnector of the blogosphere).  I don't need to add my voice to the gushing choir but I can confirm that all the great things you've heard are true.  Each course was more creative and delicious than the next, culminating in espresso-encrusted porkloin served with roast peach and homemade habanera jam.  Incredible.  And I'm now looking forward to checking out the underground restaurant scene in NYC, which the HK people assure me is thriving!
  

Between now and Friday I'm packing my bags, getting the apartment ready for its new inhabitant, taking some old clothes to Emmaus, hugging N a lot, and basically just wandering around town trying to register it all on my mental hard drive.   [NB: There was a certain synchronicity electrifying the Paris air before I left: while dining at La Coupole on my last night, purely by chance we ran into Julie and a certain suitor of hers about whom I've been hearing for months and have been dying to meet...] There are a few places in Paris that really just get me every time I see them (many of these are in the Marais), and while I'm away I'll think about them from time to time to feel less homesick: rue des Barres; the rue Vielle-du-Temple as it snakes northward, viewed from the rue de Rivoli; the houses on the rue St Antoine viewed as you walk down rue de Turenne; and my own neighborhood, looking up the rue Mouffetard as it slopes gently uphill, the tops of the houses rising up one after the other til the road curves away; the light filtered through the trees in the Luxembourg; the Haussmannian buildings lining the rue Gay Lussac, whose features and curlicues I've memorized from so many trips up and down that street on the 21 or the 27 bus.

So the next time I blog I'll be Stateside. And off we go...

family tree

I met Carolyn Goodman for the first time at a family get-together in Manhattan, when I was 19 and studying at Barnard, and I remember being impressed that someone so sophisticated, well-spoken, and politically engaged should be lurking in this family I barely knew I had.  When I was growing up we didn't speak with that side of the family (my great-grandmother having sown the seeds of conflict between the different branches of the family tree). But it worked out alright, because when I met Carolyn I was old enough to appreciate her. 

The Goodmans are quite an interesting lot (one of them, Marian, a cousin by marriage I believe, has a gallery here in Paris, though I've never met her), full of eccentrics and geniuses (and often both in the same body). Back in the 90s, Carolyn's son David undertook an immense genealogical study that traced our family back to a pair of shtetls in Latvia and Lithuania.  On the basis of what he uncovered, he invited us all to this family reunion in which a genealogical diagram stretched across several walls of the room.  I was simultaneously discovering my affinities for Judaism, and getting back in touch with the Jewish side of my family helped solidify my wavering sense of identity.  There on the walls was the proof.  That I had been raised Catholic was an accident of fate; my father not feeling much affinity himself for a religion to which his Italian mother had converted to marry his soon-to-be absent father.  Some religion was better than no religion, my parents thought, or better than one to which my father's claim was tenuous at best, and so although they were married by cantor in a Jewish ceremony, they baptized my sister and I.  I was frustrated for a long time that Judaism travels through the mother and not either the mother or the father. I looked into converting but every rabbi I met wanted me to take a year's worth of conversion classes, which would have been redundant given that I read Hebrew and had observed the Jewish calendar for years at that point.  But living in France has brought me to an equilibrium when it comes to religious identity, and I can now tolerate the ambiguity of being neither wholly one thing nor the other. 

But back then I has not yet been to France, and had no idea where I was going, having given up theatre, and was hesitating between majoring in art history and English, trying to decide if I would rather spend the next few years writing about paintings or novels.  Carolyn took me seriously, which I appreciated very much at that age, talked with me about my classes and future plans, and left me in a state of awe at everything she'd been through and everything she was. I watched her intently, a if I could discern in her movements or in her speech the trace of her tragic, heroic son, my father's second cousin, Andrew. Of course I could not.  She was wholly herself and lived on in spite of what she had lost, and worked tirelessly for civil rights before and after Andy's death.  She was a most impressive individual, and I am honored to have known her.

The New Victorians?

It has been said that 30 is the new twenty, and 40 is the new 30, and so on (which is what I try to tell N as he approaches his 30th). But why stay young when you can be old before your time? What is happening in New York to the generation at the intersection of GenX and GenY shows beyond a doubt that for many,  28 is the new 48.

This is a pretty interesting and well-written article on a phenomenon I've kept my eye on for some time now, since I narrowly escaped getting sucked into it back in New York. The New York Observer calls them the "New Victorians," which strikes me as somewhat brilliant. I was calling them the "'let's get married now' crowd" and another good friend of mine (who fled to LA from NY) thinks they're in a crashing hurry to turn into their parents, but "New Victorians" is much catchier.

According to this article, everyone my age back in New York has gone Victorian: in a race to settle down and achieve their definition of "successful," they are getting married, having kids that they name Eustace and Gertrude, buying row houses, wearing diaphanous blouses and having elaborate dinner parties where strict morals and sound investments are the topics at hand, and having an affair has you branded a slut and shunned by proper society. I can see them now: the  society matrons cutting the loose women they pass on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, pushing their Maclaren strollers with their noses in the air. 

I left New York because I wanted more for myself than a life by default: a moderately interesting but well-off husband, a fancy car, a pack of kids and a house on Long Island. I wanted to approach my future with an open mind.  If I end up with a house, a husband and a bunch of kids,  it will be because it's what I want, not because it's what all my friends are doing.  I have friends here in Paris who are married and have children and they just seem to be doing it so authentically, so differently than what I see when I check in on the other side of the Atlantic. They aren't doing settling down out of smugness, they're doing it because it's what feels right.  So I skimmed through the beginning of this article feeling, truthfully, a bit superior to have seen through it all and escaped while I could.

But as I read on, I felt more and more uncomfortable. If I sound defensive, it's because I am:  I see too much of my own habits in this article-- feeling older than I should, unable to stay out past midnight, I feel impatient with partying, have a strong case of the monogamies, and an all-encompassing desire to buy an apartment, a car, a country house. I garden in my window-box. I have a Maltese and he has a red raincoat. My boyfriend is an investment banker, for crying out loud.  But no one who knows me would ever accuse me of being conventional. Bourgeois, for sure; I prefer Passy to Belleville. Et alors?

But in case you're interested, here is where I draw the line between bourgeois and bonkers: 

"One of the biggest things I talk about with my friends is home improvements, how best to invest your money, and family planning," said Jerilyn Dressler, a 28-year-old native New Yorker and account manager for Ernst and Young who recently moved to Philadelphia [...] Before getting off the phone with The Observer, she announced that her next call was going to be to her lawyer for the purpose of finalizing her will, power of attorney, and health care proxy.

Wow. And-- give me a break. Both at the same time.  Honey: you're 28 years old.  I don't care what kind of assets you have-- and judging from your middle class anxiety I'd say not much-- you shouldn't be worrying about power of attorney until you're so old your kids are starting to fight about who inherits the brownstone.  These people are on the fast track to middle age.

The article tries to come up with some reasons for this trend and cites a reaction against the edginess or immaturity of GenX, a desire to mimic the success of one's parents immediately after graduation and the financial pressures of student loans.  But I tend to agree with Penny Arcade, who sees the phenomenon as cultural rather than economic:

New York used to be filled with people who, if you got all of their collective report cards, [they’d] say, ‘Suzy or Johnny is working below their level.’ That’s who used to come to New York, because they didn’t fit into the status quo,” she said. “Now it’s only the people who fit in.”

"New York," here, should be understood to function as a synecdoche for "most of Manhattan" and "parts of Brooklyn," because of course there are entire expanses of Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and upper Manhattan where people are working to the best of their ability, having kids and buying real estate but still wouldn't fit under a description as WASP-y as New Victorian. 

But whereas ten years ago everyone I knew was sleeping on 42nd Street to get student rush tickets for Rent, now they're working in the skyscrapers on 42nd Street.  They were fantasizing about squatting in Alphabet City, and now they're buying the co-ops that went up where the shantytowns were torn down.

I know most people grow out of their bohemian stages, but this seems like mass amnesia.  Or were these the people who, like my ex, bought the $65 orchestra seats and left the theatre saying "I just don't understand why those people wouldn't just pay their rent"?

Take me back to Manhattan!

Safely arrived in New York, after one of the bumpiest flights of my life; I wouldn't have minded too badly but for the stench of the other passengers' sick and the worrying knot in my stomach about Baxter being knocked around in his kennel in the hold. (Usually he flies with me in a small bag at my feet, but American Airlines does not permit dogs in the cabin.  They are the only airline to forbid this, by the way.).

No big plans while we're on Long Island, but things will get more interesting when we get to Manhattan Thursday morning: I've a hair appointment, lunch with my agent, tickets to the second installment of The Coast of Utopia, and-- this is where you come in-- I'm having a little gathering on Friday night.  If you're in New York and you'd like to come by, email me and I'll send you the details. Venez nombreux!

time, part I

I've been in New York for almost a week now, and I have to say, one of the most remarkable aspects of visiting the place I called home for twenty-five years is the way time has become fluid, taking on different forms depending on the container. I'm feeling it differently than on previous visits.  But then, the longer I'm away, the more happens, as is entirely natural, and the more that happens in everyone's lives, the further away we feel from each other, and my relationships are forced to comprehend the time apart as an emotional as well as a physical distance.  Or not, depending on the kind of relationship in question.

For my three year-old Maltese, who has spent the last six months living with my parents, time seems at once weighty and meaningless.  Dogs have no sense of time, I'm told, and for Baxter this appears to be true.  After an initial frenzied greeting, he soon settled into a calm recognition of the role I play in his life-- despite the fact that I was out of it for a sixth of it.  But that first greeting was shot through with, or at least it seemed to me, a very powerful and insistent sense of a long separation.

With my friend from adolescence, who moved to LA not long before I moved to Paris, time was utterly elastic.  A year had elapsed since we'd seen each other last, and so much had happened since, but all that living fit comfortably into our relationship.  We live so far apart, and when I see her even after a year it doesn't feel like she's been far away.

Of course the same is true with my immediate family, but there is a stronger sense of distance when in the time since I last saw her my sister has fallen in love and is now five months deep in a not-so-new relationship with a boy from work. I met him for drinks the other night and he's perfect for her.

As for my vie intime... as I mentioned casually in my last posting, N and I are back together.  And while before the breakup, I couldn't bear to be away from him for more than a week, now that I've contemplated the rest of my life without him, somehow eleven days seems much more feasible.  I'll be back in Paris next Friday, and I can certainly be patient until then.

But this new experience of time... is worth thinking about.  Stay tuned for part II, in which Maitresse realizes she's two three years behind [ok, she never really got it to begin with] in her understanding of American politics and pop culture, and
that life is too short to read Erica Jong.

reverse culture shock

you know you've been living in France too long when, upon arriving in the States, you:

1. Are no longer capable of waiting in an orderly line, or of even finding where the line is supposed to begin or end. Seriously.  This happened to me twice yesterday-- once at Banana Republic, and once at Blockbuster.  Both times, there was no discernable waiting line, so I just kind of hovered near the register.  My backpack (containing laptop, thank you), newly shorn haircut, cuffed jeans and Chuck Taylors must have made me look like some truant high schooler, because I was eyed warily and treated like I couldn't possibly know any better: "She's not in the line, but take her anyway, Tameeka!" I fumed, inwardly and outwardly.  "Tameeka, there really was no line," I explained.  And if we were in France no one would care anyway, I wanted to add.

2. Prefer using the handheld apparatus in the shower, because it can be manoeuvered into the crevices that the overhead spout just can't reach. Plus you can be sure to get all the conditioner out of your hair.

3. No longer know how to respond when people hit on you in your own language.  It just seems so... direct.  I stammered and blushed, feeling extremely violated, when the pizza man was trying to chat me up, without the buffer of a foreign language.

4. Are regularly almost knocked over in the streets by people trying to get where they're going-- when normally you're the one mowing down anyone who gets in your way. 

5.  Are confused when you overhear two women discussing the merits of the Pisarro-Cezanne show.  You're not sure where you are or where you're supposed to be, since it's currently on at the Musée d'Orsay.  Then one of them mentions MoMA and everything is illuminated. Except you feel like time and space have just compressed around your cranium.

That's all I've got for now.  Mostly I'm enjoying New York-- the air conditioning, the pace, the smells, the driving everywhere on Long Island, the pizza and bagels. But I heard it just got sunny in Paris, and I have to say... I'm starting to feel homesick.