PARIS WRITERS' SALON 9

STRANGERS IN PARADISE

Bonjour everyone,

      Samuel Lopez-Barrantes and I are pleased to announce the 9th session of the Paris Writers' Salon, our Zoom book discussion group, commencing July 2.  Details appear below. Registration is Euros 300 or US$300. Payment can be made by PayPal via my website -https://www.johnbaxterparis.com/paris-writers-salon  

PARIS WRITERS' SALON 9. STRANGERS IN PARADISE.

           People move to France for many reasons - romance; curiosity; to make a reputation, or hide from one.

           The three writers featured in Salon No.9 were no different - except that all found a very different society to the one they expected.

           Mary Frances Fisher discovered French cooking as a means of surviving a world-wide economic depression - and, almost by chance, developed a skill at evoking the sensations of eating and drinking that made her one of the world's most distinguished culinary authors.

           Harry Mathews was something of a dilettante when he encountered the literary movement known as Oulipo, which unexpectedly invaded real life when people became convinced that he was a secret agent. His description of what followed launched his literary career.

           John Baxter moved to France for the time honored motive of romance, only to become fascinated by his adoptive home, and in particular the complex attitude of the French to sex. His book examines that relationship in all its contradictory manifestations - emotional, cultural, commercial.

Every Sunday at 1pm EST

July 2 - July 23 2023

Sunday, July 2

Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon (1991)

In 1929, Mary Frances Fisher and her husband arrived in France from California and settled in the central city of Dijon. Sixty years later, Fisher, by then a world-famous culinary writer, looked back to those times and,  in often lyrical prose, evoked the joys and struggles of discovering France, the French but above all their food.

Sunday, July 9

My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 (2005)

The French relish challenging traditional forms in the arts, an inclination New Yorker Harry Mathews gleefully exercised. With fellow expatriates "outed" daily as agents or informers, he encouraged speculation that he too was a spy. His witty account of what followed holds up a cracked mirror to the absurdities of cold-war paranoia, echoing Jean-Luc Godard's ”Je suis Marxiste - tendence Groucho."

Sunday, July 16

We’ll Always Have Paris: Sex & Love in the City of Light (2005)

           In severing the French state's links with the Catholic church, the revolution of 1789 created a society in which, subject to modest restraints, every person was free to explore his or her sexual inclinations. The stage was set for a flourishing brothel culture, an outpouring of erotic literature and art, and the rise of such flamboyant individuals as the Surrealists and Joséphine Baker.  In the light of his own experience marrying into a French family, John Baxter documents the clash between rival concepts of morality that continues in France to this day.

Sunday, July 23

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 to bookend the ninth rendition of the Paris Writers’ Salon

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