PARIS WRITERS' SALON 8

A CITY OF DARK AND LIGHT.

Bonjour Everyone,

           Samuél Lopez Barrantes and I are happy to announce the eighth season of the Paris Writers’ Salon.

           As usual, this series of 4 weekly Zoom Sessions, chaired by Samuél and myself, takes place in my apartment, high above the sixth arrondissement, in the building where Sylvia Beach lived when she ran the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore.

           18 rue de l’Odéon has welcomed the greatest names in modern literature: James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin and Henry Miller, all of whom left their mark on the street, as it left its mark on them.

Salon No. 8: A City of Dark & Light

       For this Salon, we take a promenade through a Paris that the tourists of the belle époque and années folles never saw, the seedy underside which writers of the time labeled les bas fonds - the lower depths.

           Gangsters, drug dealers and illegal doctors operated only a few doors from where Josephine Baker danced, and the idyllic Paris of the Impressionists disguised prostitution, alcoholism, and exploitation of the poor and helpless.

           Paradoxically, however, it was this other Paris that inspired some of the finest literature of the time, three examples of which we examine in this Salon. In two of them, powerful females dominate, foreshadowing characters played closer to our time by Joan Crawford, Joan Collins and Sharon Stone, and prefiguring generations of sisters who are now doing it for themselves.

Sunday, April 23

Down & Out in Paris & London by George Orwell (1933)

       Before Animal Farm and 1984 made Orwell famous, he penned this memoir of a world the middle and upper classes of those two cities never saw.  In Paris, he worked as a plongeur (literally a "diver") washing dishes in the luxury hotels of the right bank but living close to starvation in bug-infested Montparnasse, while in London he systematically explored the life of the homeless and destitute, experiencing at first hand the existence of those living "rough" on the streets or in sordid hostels. Its cold dispassion and dismissal of all illusion have made Down and Out in Paris and London a modern classic.

Sunday, April 30

Nana by Emile Zola (1880)

One of the greatest writers of realist fiction, Zola was fearless in exposing life behind the glamorous façade of the belle epoque.  Nana Coupeau is among the most memorable of literary anti-heroines. The daughter of a washerwoman, she graduates from street prostitute to become one of the luxury courtesans known as grandes horizontales, burning her way through a succession of "protectors" whom she leaves bankrupt, broken-hearted and, in some cases, suicidal. Her life ends, significantly, just as Napoleon III embarks on a war that will destroy both his reign and the Second Empire. Zola's unflinching realism inspired scores of young writers from around the world to seek inspiration in Paris, laying the foundation of the Lost Generation.

Sunday, May 7

Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau (1900)

       As a schoolboy, Mirbeau was molested by the Jesuits supposed to educate him. He grew up irascible, embittered, and a victim of clinical depression. A fortune made as investor, journalist, novelist, and dramatist allowed him to champion underdogs and renegades, including financing his friend Emile Zola in his campaign to free the wrongly imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus.

           He wrote The Diary of a Chambermaid to expose the plight of French domestic servants, preyed on by employment agencies and brutalized by employers. Its heroine, Célestine, declines, however, to be a victim.  In each new household, she spreads chaos. Her cheeky manner and voluptuous body reduce bourgeoises and aristocrats to stammering idiocy. Their wives invite her into their boudoirs, supposedly to help them dress but actually to make lesbian overtures, and their sons beg her to initiate them into the joys of sex.  As she acquiesces to some and refuses others, fellow domestics watch from the shadows, sniggering at the stupidity of their "betters".

       (In 2010, I did a new translation of this book for Harper Perennial. I recommend that you read this version, which restores all the material censored from earlier editions, and includes a new introduction.)

Sunday, May 14

Open Forum Salon

       As usual, the last session opens up to thoughts and suggestions. If earlier salons are any guide, the conversation will range far and wide and provide a lively discussion.

           Sessions take place on four consecutive Sundays at 1pm EST. 

           The 4-week program costs $/€300.

           This price includes access to all lectures (as well as recordings) and recommendations to help guests on their 4-week virtual journey to the City of Light. 

           Payment can be made via PayPal at this link

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/johnbaxterparis

Best, and a bientot,

John