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The War of Law and Words

Image: Bibliothèque publique d'information

Text: Emily Ruck Keene

Of all of the reasons for which France is known, it is her vibrant contribution to the world of literature that has given her the title of one of the most culturally relevant cities in the world. The French are passionately proud of their nation's active role in cultural history and it seems more pertinent than ever, with the exploding presence of media giving us the ability to learn about history and current events, to take a look back at the crucial moments that have marked the path that literature in this country has taken.

The Pompidou Centre is currently holding an exhibition on the relationship between the editor and the law in France from 1945 onwards. Whilst there are plenty of important events that took place before, this date seems a natural choice: with the end of German occupation, fresh dialogue was able to emerge within the disciplines of economics, politics and ethics amongst others. It is these fields to which the exhibition Editeurs, les lois du métier hopes to opens the floor in an era within which freedom of expression has never been such an international question.

Despite France’s post-war liberation, freedom of the press saw itself threatened by a law in 1949 intended to protect young readers from supposedly dangerous publications. The role and responsibility of the editor as well as the writer was brought into the spotlight as they fought with and against censorship. The exhibition contains examples of legal cases involving the State and publishing houses, often resolved internally due to the importance of reputation for any editor.

The Book Club celebrates A Tale of Three Cities

Image: taleofthree.com

Text: Emily Ruck Keene

This weekend Paris officially inaugurates A Tale of Three Cities, an exciting arts journal linking the creative minds of Londoners, Parisians and Berliners, at cocktail bar/lounge Le Carmen in the 9th arrondissement, Paris, this Friday evening (28th October). For those unable to come in the evening, Shakespeare & Co. is hosting a tea party on Saturday. If the event itself wasn’t enticing enough, cucumber sandwiches and artisanal cupcakes have been mentioned...

Since the hugely successful Book Club parties first started at Le Carmen - a classy round-up of the biggest bookworms in Paris held on the last Wednesday of every month - literary enthusiasts in Paris have been eagerly anticipating the launch of A Tale of Three Cities (“Europe’s golden triangle”) for which The Book Club has been drumming up publicity. And a nice little job of promotion it did too, as well as probably doing a lot to boost European relations.

A Tale of Three Cities promises to offer a refreshing and inspiring selection of both upcoming and established writers. It is hard to publish independent arts journals, especially in Paris - a city on whose pavements are embedded the footsteps of the greatest flaneurs and academiciens in literary history - where contemporary voices are not easily picked out. Any attempt to do this deserves celebrating in style with cocktails and obligatory bookworm-chic rimmed glasses.

Poésie et Prose

Text: Emily Ruck-Keene

The Irish cultural centre in the 5^th arrondissment is known for a consistently high-quality events programme, celebrating a wealth of Irish culture in all art forms. This month, from October 20-22, it is putting on a packed weekend of free poetry and prose, where readings include works from both contemporary Irish and English language writers. Friday evening will have a memoir theme, Saturday afternoon has been organised to appeal to a younger audience, and Saturday evening will examine the detective novel, or polar (slang for roman policier).

Even before Dublin being crowned the fourth UNESCO City of Literature earlier this year, Ireland has never needed to prove her literary credentials. Amongst other writers, the event will feature familiar faces such as Jennifer Johnston (former Whitbread Book Award winner) and Keith Ridgway (whose next novel Hawthorn & Child is to be published in 2012). Poets will be represented by Enda Wyley and Michael O’Loughlin, whose Widow’s Prayers feels like the brilliant and coarse result of letting Stephen Dedalus wander around The Waste Land while reading Proust. As the publicity for the event proudly states, “his poetry has a marked visual quality”.

For me, it is the soirée polar which presents the biggest attraction during the event. It will be especially fascinating to hear Declan Hughes on the subject, whose novels add a contemporary twist to the hard-boiled American novel. Ireland has so much to contribute to this genre with its history of violent secrets: from the religious to the political, lower to upper class. It is appropriate that this evening should take place in France, where the polar developed a dark and political shade with writers like Didier Daeninckx using crime fiction as a vehicle for crime truths.

Interview: Rosa Rankin-Gee

Image: Amaury Choay
Text: Haxie Meyers-Belkin

Rosa Rankin-Gee is the recent winner of Shakespeare & Company's 2011 Paris Literary Prize, proud co-founder of The Book Club at Le Carmen (think gorgeous people swapping books in sumptuous surroundings – an en masse flirtation opportunity masquerading as literary night out) and general international woman of merriment. Here, she gallantly answers some questions about life as a young writer and the ever-elusive perfect Parisian coffee.

When did you first start writing?
It’s terribly soundbite-y, but I think as soon as I could write, I started writing stories. That should be “stories” - they’d normally be about foxes or my father, and would simultaneously be very short and make no sense. My mum still has one on the wall, above her desk. The spelling almost looks Norse.

Have you got any particular writing routine – lucky trolls and such like?
Yes, I have a writing balaclava. No, no funny clothes or lucky eggs. I like to have a window to look out of, people to look at, coffee and not to be hungry. Can’t do anything if I’m hungry.

Where do you draw inspiration from?
What I see, what I hear. My friends, and things that happen to us. I think I should grow up and start reading the papers.

Viewing The Strauss-Kahn Scandal Through A Historical Lens

Image: AFP / Getty Images
Text: Corrie Goldman

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in The Human Experience.

On May 14, 2011, just before takeoff for a flight from New York City to Paris, police arrested French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a leading candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections. Strauss-Kahn was charged with allegedly sexually assaulting a housekeeper at the hotel where he had been staying in New York. The resulting scandal, which has most recently seen Strauss-Kahn released from prison on parole, has revealed distinct differences between American and French perspectives on gender roles, riling the media and the public in both nations.

Cécile Alduy, an associate professor of French at Stanford University, has been following the case with great interest. Her research centres on the history of the body and of sexuality in literature, and she sees the furious debate that has erupted in the aftermath of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal as a story with roots that trace back to Renaissance-era France.

 Alduy’s study of French poetry and literature, from the 16th century to today, has allowed her to examine the cultural history of France through a number of scholarly lenses. Her specific emphasis on the history of the representation of the female body in texts and art has broadened the scope of her literary expertise to include feminist and gender studies.

Close to 60% of respondents to a poll taken in France on May 16, 2011, shortly after Strauss-Kahn was indicted, believed he was more likely framed by a political competitor than guilty of the charges. In an opinion column published in the French newspaper Le Monde on May 26, 2011, Professor Alduy indicated that this first, massive wave of support for Strauss-Kahn and the little attention paid to the alleged victim in the first few days after the news are evidence of the way that issues of sexual harassment, sexual aggression, or sexism are routinely downplayed and under scrutinised in a society that on the surface appears to support gender equality.

Oliver Burkeman And The Happiness Industry

Image: Oliver Burkeman / Canongate Books
Text: Aidan Mac Guill

Five years ago the journalist Oliver Burkeman embarked on a mission, a mission that might sound about as enticing to some of us as a bout of gastroenteritis, but a mission nonetheless. He decided, through his weekly column in the Guardian newspaper, to explore the world of self-help books; taking a rational, reasonable, journalistic approach to an area not always synonymous with rationality or reason (or indeed reality).

“I think everyone on some level would like to be a bit more happy, or efficient, or achieve their goals,” he explains in a phone interview from New York, where he lives. “I very much doubt that most of these books are going to contain the answer to that, but there's a tiny little part of you that thinks: it would be fantastic if they did.”

“That was the idea, to sort the wheat from the chaff, knowing that there would be a very large amount of chaff,” he says.

What has emerged from the project is a book, Help! (modestly subtitled 'How To Become Slightly Happier And Get A Bit More Done'; modesty being another quality often foreign to the world of self-help). It is an insightful, remarkable account of what could slightly pretentiously be termed the modern condition; how the technological and societal changes of recent times have impacted on our psychology, and our age-old search for happiness. Also it's very funny.

20 Questions

Dylan Harris is a poet and photgrapher. His collections include antwerp (wurm press) and the smoke (Knives Forks and Spoons Press). He runs Poets Live, an informal poetry night for visiting poets and locals.

1. What initially inspired you to move here or visit?
Gentlemen with open wallets.

2. Earliest Paris memory?
A visit, decades ago, the Eiffel tower, discovering a camera between eye & horrid down switches off my fear of height.

3. Best neighbourhood you've ever lived in?
The 18th: it reminds me of Blackheath, for some reason.

4. What's the best meal you've eaten in Paris?
Bread from a great boulangerie, cheese to mug a mouse.

5. Sexiest moment you've had in Paris?
I’m about ready to seek them out again.

6. What do you hate most about living in Paris?
There's not enough green. I want trees! Trees! Every street should bathe in green!

20 Questions

Thirza Vallois is the author of Around and About Paris, Romantic Paris and Aveyron, a Bridge to French Australia.

1. What initially inspired you to move here or visit?
My studies.

2. Earliest Paris memory?
Arriving at Gare du Nord as a very young person and literally being shocked at seeing corpulent and what seemed to me elderly working-class women dragging their weary slippered feet in front of the station. I was expecting everyone to look like slender models out of Vogue magazine in Dior "new look" garb and endless hats.

3. Best neighbourhood you've ever lived in?
My own for the last nearly 40 years - the 14th arrondissement. It's next-door to the Latin Quarter but more leafy. It has real neighbourhoods (ask film director Agnès Varda - she'll agree). Lots of artists and intellectuals live here, but discreetly, without the "noise" and the "buzz". It is genuine and unpretentious, low-key, not hyped by the media, not touristy, just the way I like places to be.

Literature And Art Create New Landscapes At Galeries Iconoclastes

Text: Susie Kahlich
Image: Mia Funk / Her Royal Majesty

Literature is art. Art is art. But, Barbara Kruger notwithstanding, where exactly do the lines of literature and art meet?

On Thursday 24 March at 19h, they’ll be meeting at Galeries Iconoclastes when quarterly literary and arts review Her Royal Majesty launches its 10th issue with a vernissage and exhibition of original artwork featured in the issue. 

The editors at Her Royal Majesty are devoted to exploring the symbiotic relationship between text and image. They've partnered with Galeries Iconoclastes to inaugurate a new experiment in the co-active nature of literature and art that combines literary reading with art exhibition.

Peter Carey At Shakespeare & Co

Text: Aidan Mac Guill
Image: Random House

This Thursday March 3 Australian novelist Peter Carey will be dropping by the Shakespeare & Co bookshop on the rue de la Bûcherie. Carey will be reading from his latest novel Parrot and Olivier in America, an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville.

While pursuing a successful career in advertising Carey wrote fiction in his free time, and had four novels rejected before his short story collection, The Fat Man In History, was published in 1974. This was followed in 1981, when Carey was 38, by Bliss, a novel about an advertising executive who is prompted to change his life after dying and being brought back to life. It won the Miles Franklin award for best Australian book that year.