Vintage mags from Comptoir de L'image

More from the fabulous Comptoir de L'image... Besides the beat poets I found two brilliant cultural icons from my youth...
A stack of Interview magazines and an equally impressive trove of vintage Vogue.
Interview coloured our lives in my teens - took my friend T and I out of boarding school bounds and into the exotic world of 1980s American art, film, fashion, music, culture - Isabella Rossellini, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Cyndi Lauper - the cover art was always fantastic and so different from the drudgery of Dolly and friends on the shelves at the good ole Wahroonga Franklins...
And then there was Vogue.... there's something about the vintage editions that lifts them to a time so much more glamorous than the current. Maybe it's the original artwork, the timelessness of the models and Hollywood icons of old school cinema, the lack of ads and mass consumer chain store rip offs...
Resisted the temptation to lug them all home but did content myself with a cover print from French Vogue, 1 June 1921... I wonder if, in 90 years' time, someone will hang the Oct 2010 cover on their wall?

The lost muse...

Spent a night in Paris at the Napoleonic era Hotel les Jardins du Trocodero. In trawling through accommodation options on the web, this one had a distinct point of difference... Yes it was located virtually at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and near the great museums of Paris, yes it had a hairdryer (you may mock, but this is a prerequisite when one is off to a wedding), yes it had air-conditioning (it was 40 degrees outside!), and yes it was decorated with period furniture. But the best feature was this: artists from the École des Beaux-Arts have painted murals of the muses throughout the hotel. Yes!
Imagine my dismay then, when after jumping in and out of the lift to see which muse occupied each floor, I found everyone except the best muse of all...Calliope. She, the muse of heroic poetry - the wisest and most assertive of the nine muses - was nowhere to be found. And sadly, the only place in this lovely hotel entirely lacking in charm was at the front desk. When I asked the manager where Calliope was he gave me a dark stare and a brusque 'I don't know!'.
Sigh.....perhaps he was a wannabee writer too? I guess I'm not the only one in this world calling for Calliope.

French letters

Found these gorgeous old postcards from the 1950s in a tiny shop in the medieval town of Eze, perched on the edge of a soaring cliff above Ste-Jean Cap Ferrat on the Cote D'Azur. 
But what do they say?? Do you speak French? Translation please! 

In the meantime, a thousand different possibilities are weaving tales inside my head...

Long live livres anciens

In the footsteps of Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and friends wandering through the muddled streets of Faubourg Saint-Germain-des-Prés on a summer saturday in Paris... bookstores galore and a moveable feast of ancient articles de valeur to admire...

Feast your eyes on this...

The Abbey Bookshop on Rue de la Parcheminerie in Paris, perfect for an afternoon of English-language book perusing. Check out the secret sliding shelves in the last photo. I was in heaven...

Books for a French sojourn...

Have books, will travel.

Packed and ready to go, big decision made: which books to read in France? I love to read novels set in the place I'm adventuring through, it enriches the whole experience. These are the three volumes stashed in my bag:

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Marcel Proust, Un Amour de Swann (English edition - Swann's Way)

Sebastian Faulks, A Week in December

Any other suggestions? What are your favourite travel reads?

Vive la France!

Today. 3.00pm. In the lounge at Sydney Airport being served vintage Veuve Clicquot, sticky date pudding and icecream by a waiter named Will Studd. Talk about serving me up a story on a plate...

I love France already!

Comptoir de l'Image

I can't wait to go to this bookstore in Paris!

Described by Wallpaper* City Guide Paris as an 'ideas vault', the tiny shop - Comptoir de l'Image - is packed with a collection of photography and design books, 'a catholic range of contemporary magazines' (huh?) as well as vintage fashion titles. Très bon!

Flaubert encore

During nightly bouts of insomnia this week I have:
1. Finished reading Madame Bovary by lamplight; and
2. Discovered that my upstairs neighbour takes a 12 minute shower and a bowel movement daily at 3am (thin walls).
Flaubert is a treasure. Which reminds me of the the third thing I did whilst others slumbered: downloaded Freebooks for iPhone and acquired a copy of his 1869 work, Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man. Doubt I can bring myself to read it on a 3"x2" screen though. The soft felt of aged pages that whisper as they're turned is a textural accompaniment essential to the pure pleasure of reading.
So, to firmly fix Flaubert's adulterous bourgeois romp in my imagination, before Madame Bovary is returned to rest in my bookshelf, a few more pieces de resistance...
Emma convincing Charles to conduct an experimental operation on a villager's club foot:
"Bovary might, indeed, be successful; might be an able surgeon, for all Emma knew. And how satisfying for her to have urged him to a step that would bring him fame and fortune! Her one wish was for something more solid than love to lean upon."
Rodolphe wearying of Emma's frequent impassioned declarations of adoration for him:
"Because wanton or mercenary lips had whispered like phrases in his ear, he had but scant belief in the sincerity of these. High-flown language concealing tepid affection must be discounted, thought he: as though the full heart may not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, his thoughts, his sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we strum out tunes to make a bear dance, when we would move the stars to pity."
Rodolphe contemplating a tin full of old love letters written to him by his past conquests:
"What a lot of humbug! Which summed up his opinion. For his pleasures had so trampled over his heart, like schoolboys in a playground, that no green things grew there, and whatever passed that way, being more frivolous than children, left not so much as its name carved on the wall."
And finally, Rodolphe crying poor after the Madame has reignited his desire for her, then archly stubbed it out by asking for cash:
"'I haven't got it, my dear lady'. He was not lying. If he had it he would doubtless have given it to her, distasteful though it usually is to perform such noble deeds: a request for money being of all the icy blasts that blow upon love the coldest and most uprooting."
Poor Emma. Her downfall was tragic and complete. But at least the lady lived and loved - what else was she to do? - whiling away hour upon hour in the endless mire of a marriage to the puny cipher that was her husband, in the dormant village that was her captor?

Loving Flaubert

Dipping into Flaubert in preparation for a sojourn to France ooh la la. Madame Bovary was the novel that scandalised a nation on publication in 1857 and ultimately resulted in Flaubert's prosecution for immorality. Quelle horreur.
I am loving every word, every phrase, every paragraph. One quarter of the way in and here are some passages that sing...
On the sudden death of Charles Bovary's first wife:
"...But the damage had been done. A week later, as she was hanging out the washing in the yard, she had a spasm, and spat blood; and on the following day, as Charles was drawing the curtains, his back to her, she exclaimed: 'Oh God!' heaved a sigh and fell unconscious. She was dead! It was incredible!"
On entering the Les Bertaux farmhouse where he at first failed to notice Emma's presence:
"...the shutters were closed. Through the chinks in the wood the sunshine came streaking across the floor in long slender lines that broke on the corners of the furniture and flickered on the ceiling."
On a green silk cigar case found along the road from La Vaubyessard to Rouen:
"Love had breathed through the meshes of the canvas; every stitch has fastened there a yearning or a memory; and all those interwoven threads of silk were but a projection of that same silent passion."
I'm up to the part where Charles and Emma have just moved to Yonville and Madame Bovary has taken a walk with young Leon, and Leon "didn't know how to proceed, being torn between fear of making a false move, and desire for an intimacy which he accounted well nigh impossible."...
Poor old Flaubert only made a measly 500 francs for the first five years' sales of Madame Bovary. I wonder how many millions of copies have sold since...?

Art gallery's starry starry allnighter...

I love this! In a cultural coup for the land of Oz, the National Gallery of Australia was open for a record 32 hours straight this weekend to allow as many people as possible to catch the final days of the fantastic Masterpieces from Paris exhibition. Meaning people could pull an all nighter at the gallery on Saturday, gazing at the works of Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh et al, champagne in hand with the magical night to imbue their impressions of the post-impressionists... then wake in the morning with Monet and enjoy a little Seurat with their sausages and eggs.
After a season that broke all attendance records (we are indeed a cultured mob) the exhibition closed at 5pm today. Tomorrow the packers will rip out their masking tape and start bundling up the priceless treasures for a trip across the seas to Japan.
Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel Girl With a Pearl Earring was inspired by intrigue. Who was the girl in the famous Dutch artist's painting? Why was Jan Vermeer enchanted by her? How did she come to be there? What happened to her after he immortalised her on canvas?
Looking at the artworks in the Masterpieces exhibition, commonly recognised yet so rarely studied by your average gallery-goer, made me think about the paintings as story stimulators.
Who are the people in the images? Are they happy to be there? What's their relationship to the artist? What are they really thinking behind the poses? What secrets do they hold? How did their lives unfold?
So many questions....so many untold stories...
Test your imagination on these beauties:
Van Gogh's self portrait. Was he repressing a jovial personality behind that intense and penetrating stare?

Was Paul Signac's galleon arriving at Marseille concealing a band of pirates below decks, poised to pillage and plunder the unsuspecting port?

Are Gauguin's womenfolk discussing the poor state of their hands after toiling in the fields all day and cooking up a career move into the as-yet untapped organic moisturiser market that will propel them from peasants to palace-dwellers?

What sumptuous feast will Cezanne's onions flavour? Why did the cook forget to peel them; whose garden were they pilfered from; who is the feared and revered dinner guest; and what life-changing news will she deliver to her host?

Why is Emile Bernard's Madeleine in the woods and of what, or of whom... is she dreaming?

On rivers #4... synchronicity

I'm big on synchronicity. Swimming with the current on my river theme, this week has been sprinkled with synchronistic moments.
First, as I finished reading Bird by Bird, I came across this passage the author found in a prayer book: "The Gulf Stream will flow through a straw provided the straw is aligned to the Gulf Stream, and not at cross purposes to it."

Anne Lamott goes on to say: "I always tell my students about the Gulf Stream: that what it means for us, as writers, is that we need to align ourselves with the river of the story, the river of the unconscious, of memory and sensibility, of our characters' lives, which can then pour through us, the straw."
Second, I'd forgotten how those grand old dudes, the Impressionists, were right into rivers. Drinking in the breathtaking Masterpieces from Paris exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia brought back memories of smocks and raggy paint brushes and the smell of turpentine in high school art class. Garish teenage attempts at reproducing Monet's waterlillies and Gaugin's portly Tahitian women on canvas adorned many a doting parent's hallway after our prolific painterly phase in Year Eight. 
On loan from the Musee d'Orsay, one painting that I literally could not tear my eyes away from was Monet's In the Norweigan (c1807). "Monet's stepdaughters often appear in his paintings, and here Germaine, Suzanne and Blanche Hoschede are fishing and dreaming in a 'Norweigan', a type of wooden rowing boat. The painter omits sky and earth from his composition, as well as any other reference to the world beyond the river."
In this image, and in all the artworks that referenced rivers, the river infused the scene with life and energy. I swear I would have heard the gentle, poignant lap of oar against tide...had the overzealous clucks and aaahs of a tide of tour groupies, looking all Bug's Life in those crazy oversized headsets, not drowned it out.
Third, I was reminded of how quickly famine turns to flood when the road I was driving home along in the dark of night, without warning turned into a river. Out of nowhere a cloud burst flung lashing torrents across my windscreen. The tar turned slick and angry, the roar of the deluge stereophonic as the line of traffic skeetered towards Sydney. It was scary. I nearly cried me a river.

Best books - a French delicacy

My Top Three books of the year are in no particular order but today's choice is a French story that crept up on me and quietly captured my imagination, then held me hostage right through to the unexpected and macabre but hilarious ending.
It's The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. 
Set in a très ooh la la apartment block in Paris, the story is told through the eyes of the humble concierge who witnesses all the comings and goings of the elite residents, while concealing from them a fascinating intellect and a surprising private self.
It's a great character study as well as a quirky story, told as only the French can - with an exterior seriousness but an underlying, kooky humour that cracked me up. 
I love the 12-year-old kid who forges a bond with the concierge, she reminds me of Hank's daughter in the TV series Californication with her premature darkness, insight and deadpan honesty.
This book made me laugh out loud.
For that, for the original voices of its characters, and for its unpredictable plot, it was always going straight to my Top Three.