Inspector Maigret Takes a Case

Georges Simenon
creator of Inspector Jules Maigret

I have now returned three mysteries unread to the library that take place in Paris. All three were duds. I have written my thoughts on the first two and will not waste any more time writing about the third.

I don't know what I was thinking. What I needed to do was to spend time with pipe-smoking Inspector Maigret of Paris. Classic! I stopped by a used book store hoping to find one or two of Georges Simenon's creations. Zéro.

So I headed to the main library and found two shelves full of Maigret mysteries. What to choose? After careful consideration I picked Maigret and the Millionaires and Maigret on the Riviera. In the first, Maigret solves a murder that happened at the luxurious Hotel George V. In the second, no surprise here, he is on a case on the Côte d'Azur.

I am sure I won't be disappointed.

On another note, I finished reading Paris Was Ours: Thirty-two writers reflect on the City of Light. Well, actually, I finished reading all the ones written by women of which there were 21. I will save the experiences of les hommes for another day.

Here are stories of women at all stages in life: single, divorced, married, mothers, students, young, mature, and émigrés all trying to find their way. Some had easier times than others. Some had connections when they arrived in Paris to ease their way with French customs; others had no one. The different views are what put the zing in these tales of Paris. No matter what memory or illusion one might have of how Paris is or could be, there is always someone who will come along to offer a totally different view.

Remember Hemingway's quote from yesterday?

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.

The stories from Paris Was Ours prove that to be true.

L'Amour

In her short essay, Love Without Reason, Carolyn Weber writes of her time living in Paris after graduating Harvard with an undergraduate degree in French literature.  At the time, she admits she was not even sure she liked French men because, based on generalities, she is tall, they are short; she is well-toned, they have flaccid muscles; her teeth are perfect, theirs are stained yellow from smoking too many Gauloises.

But she tosses those prejudices aside and embarks on a whirlwind romp through the city taking many French lovers. A friend calls her "a one-woman band of seduction." The only problem, as she eventually discovers, is she keeps changing herself based on what she thinks the current lover wants her to be: an intellectual or one who is up on current events or in an attempt to be tres chic, buying Chanel and Hermes at second-hand designer clothing shops.

I had molded myself, time and again, into the woman I thought they wanted, and then was shocked to discover they had no interest in the woman I was.

Well, ladies, one doesn't have to go to Paris to learn that lesson, n'est-ce pas?

Fireworks and the French

In honor of the Fourth of July, our national holiday celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, I read such document and was amazed at the list of grievances - I thought it was mostly about taxation without representation.

But no, Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of this historic document, uses phrases as "opposing with manly firmness his (the King's) invasions on the rights of the people"; "exposed (us) to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions from within" and accuses the King of Great Britain of  "repeated injuries and usurpations."

And this:
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

Jefferson was really, really mad. As were the representatives of the Thirteen Colonies who approved the measure unanimously.

On another note, I read two essays in Paris Was Ours. (After all the French did help us win the Revolutionary War.)

The first, by Veronique Vienne,  L'argent Is No Object, is her tale of moving back to Paris from America after her divorce. She is confused to discover that the French don't want to talk about money, in fact refuse to discuss it, unlike Americans who can think and talk of nothing else.

But, she asks, if the French don't talk about money, what do they talk about over those long, lingering dinners and lunches?

The asparagus season, the Tour de France, Japanese art, the films of Jean-Luc Godard, photojournalism, Yoko Ono, how to silence creaky floorboards, women's sports, the wonders of foot surgery, Cartier-Bresson, revisionist history, great radio programs, the latest Grand Palais contemporary art exhibition, and, last but not least, best recipes for beef bourguignon.

Just in case you were wondering.

In the second essay Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce and Le Mariage, takes a look at Learning French Ways. She discovers that French hostesses have been known to buy pre-prepared food from Marks and Spencer and make use of frozen dinners and the microwave. That everyone in Paris wears a scarf (we knew that) and that French women buy two or three very good pieces and put them on to go to the store.

She wakes up one morning and realizes that women in Paris were all carrying the sort of handbag she had never thought of having in her wardrobe.

She writes: Last week I noticed that every French woman was carrying a big, brown leather, rather rustic-looking handbag with wide straps and lots of buckles and studs.  The ultimate version is from Bottega Veneta and costs two thousand euros.

But of course no French woman would ever discuss the price of such a prize.

Mais, non!

The Swerve and a bit of Paris

My trip to Paris has been delayed because I am caught up in reading The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It is a fascinating book about one poem written 2000 years ago, lost, then found in the 1400s and how the ideas and philosphies of the poem helped usher in the Renaissance.

The main guy, an Italian named Poggio Bracciolini, was a book-hunter and was on the quest to find Greek and Roman books that were rotting away in monastery libraries. The poem he found was On the Nature of Things written by Lucretius, based on the philosphy of Epicurus.

There is much talk of the books of antiquity: how they were made, who had them, who read them, and how they were lost.

Here is a warning tale: As the Roman empire crumbled...

..the whole Roman system of elementary and higher education fell apart. What began as downsizing went on to wholesale abandonment. Schools closed, libraries and academies shut their doors, professional grammarians and teachers of rhetoric found themselves out of work. There were more important things to worry about than the fate of books.

Those 'more important things' included decaying cities, declining trade, and barbarians at the gate.

Why does this sound like something out of today's newpapers?

Anyway, on to Paris. One of the books on my list is Paris Was Ours which I bought in March and read a story here  and here. I have read quite a few books this year that regale the wonders of Paris and if you have not read The Greater Journey by David McCullough I highly recommend it. It will have you swooning.

Shakespeare and Company

An added weekend bonus: my order from Amazon arrived yesterday. I dove into the copy of Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands.

I read "My Bookstore High" by Jeremy Mercer a 10-page excerpt from his book Time Was Soft There about living in Paris. This being about a bookshop in Paris I figured it would be about Shakespeare and Company. It is, but it is about a little more than a visit or two to the famous Left Bank bookshop. Mercer lived at S&Co. while down and out in Paris. George Whitman, who owned the store, let young writers live and work there. Whitman died in 2011 at the age of 98 and his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman runs the store now.

Of course, the daughter was named after the Sylvia Beach who first opened the bookstore known as Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1919 and attracted many writers of the time including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. It closed in 1940 during the German occupation of France and never reopened.

In 1951 Whitman, like Beach, also an American, opened Le Mistral, an English-language bookstore in Paris, and in 1954 changed its name to Shakespeare and Company as tribute to the original.

So Mercer tells a part of the tale of coming to live at the bookstore and how he learned to eat cheap in Paris by going to art openings and munching on the treats served there. In this excerpt, he and three new friends who live at the store go to a student cafeteria and get a fine meal of salad, lamb, roasted potatoes, green beans and yogurt for about two dollars. During the meal, one of them jumps up occasionally and snatches bread and cheese left by other diners to take back to the store for late-night snacks.

Of course this is all leading up to telling you that I have visited Shakespeare and Company on both of my trips to Paris. It is quite an experience and the narrow aisles are always crowded. When you buy a book there, they will stamp the title page with the seal: Shakespeare and Company * Kilometer  Zero  Paris.

The book I purchased on my last trip is a collection of essays by Czeslaw Milosz titled Proud to Be a Mammal. An odd selection I admit. The title page warns that these are essays on war, faith and memory by the Polish author and poet who died in 2004.  Odder still is that Mr. Milosz is mentioned by Frances Mayes in Under the Tuscan Sun which reminded me that I had this book. She met him at her university and had to introduce him to an audience sternly reminding herself not to call him 'Coleslaw' which is what she called him in her head before learning how to correctly pronounce his name.

I have no idea how his name is pronounced, so Coleslaw it will be from now on.