there are some very beautiful places, like Nakameguro, where we almost took an apartment overlooking the canal and the cherry trees, but didn’t;
lunch comes in pretty little boxes;
the laundry is returned tied up with a little bow;
and they let dogs behind the wheel of a car.
My sister the amateur sociologist is testing a pyramid scheme that promises a free MacBook Air at the end of it. If you feel like participating in the experiment, and maybe getting a Free MacBook Air yourself, go to this website. From what I can tell you just enter in your email and refer all your friends. She’s in it for a free laptop herself, and, if she wins this thing, she’s promising to give it away to a needy law school student who just might happen to be herself. And, as must be the case with all good pyramid schemes, she claims to know someone who actually received a free MacBook Air.
I bear no responsibility for any of this. I’m just the middleman.
OK friends, I’m stuck in a massive brain rut, the kind where I can’t find anything interesting about André Gide’s Paludes (which I’ve been meaning to talk about here), the kind that makes me write a half-assed essay-zygote on Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader (which I’ve also been meaning to talk about here). I spent yesterday out of commission with a migraine, from which I usually emerge feeling clear-eyed and refreshed, but this time such is not the case.
I feel very blocked, like there’s something I’m holding on to that I need to let go of. Yesterday, lying in bed, I dreamt over and over that I had killed two people and needed to cover it up– which, crime genius that I am, I did by throwing their cellphones out the window.
So, in order to clear my head and get talking to some interesting people, I’m going to do Neil’s Great Interview Experiment. (I hope I haven’t totally alienated the guy who’s currently reading my blog and attempting to draw up questions.)
With that, I refer you to James Wood and his definition of character, and to this bit of good news from Venice (I still think they should institute a test to keep the daytrippers out).
I also recommend, for those of you in Paris, that you go tonight to the American Library to hear the brilliant Thirva Vallois read from her latest book, Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia.
Of her inspiration to write on the Aveyron, Thirza says, "’It all began with a riot of wisteria’… round the corner from Notre Dame. This led to my chance meeting with Georges and Odette, and to my journey into the last corner of undiscovered France, where La France Profonde and modernity are harmoniously one. Join me on a captivating journey to a once destitute corner of France, now singled out, by the French themselves, for its unbeatable, idyllic quality of life."
American Library, Wednesday, January 30, 2008, 7:30pm
10, rue du Général Camou, 75007 Paris
Métro: Ecole Militaire, Alma-Marceau
RER: Pont d’Alma
I’d give anything to be in Paris or the Aveyron right now. But instead I’m going to go have lunch with N on campus. Ta.
Far Out
–Philip Larkin
Beyond the dark cartoons
Are darker spaces where
Small cloudy nests of stars
Seem to float on air.
These have no proper names:
Men out alone at night
Never look up at them
For guidance or delight,
For such evasive dust
Can make so little clear:
Much less is known than not,
More far than near.
I just did this over at Gridskipper: Occult Paris. (I wanted to call it Paris ésotérique but that would have been too esoteric.)
I love what’s going on at this blog– we share a similar fin-de-siècle sensibility. (I bet she’d have more decadence on her orals list. In fact her list would probably be on decadence, not modernism. Ah well.) In fact, now that I think about it, there is no indicator that this blog is even written by a woman. Illusory Confections, you are so mysterious!
There’s something new going on in the banner section of this blog, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t know, what do you think? I wanted a tag line, other blogs have tag lines, but is this one too cheesy? I feel like if I had a professional web designer he could make it work and not look cheesy, but it’s just me and my Free Online Image Editor. Tant pis.
I’m also very interested in the proposed reforms to the French university system, but I don’t completely understand what the "Loi Pécresse" calls for. And I don’t have time to try to decipher the actual law, or to weed through the protestors’ propaganda clotting up the web on the topic. All I find when I do a search for it is descriptions of why it’s bad, and on why it won’t turn French universities into Harvard. But having been through both the American and the French systems as both a grad student and a professor, there are a lot of administrative problems with the French system. So if this Valérie Pécresse wants to change that, and make them less dependent on the state, I’m all for it– I just don’t understand what exactly she is proposing. And I don’t want to hear, in response, a lot of "Sarko-facho-éliminant des postes et des soutiens pour la recherche." There’s gotta be an upside. What is it?
The Wall Street Journal reports more and more universities are offering a freshman year abroad as part of their curriculum. This just has "bad idea" written all over it, if you ask me. I’m all for study abroad– junior year, when the students have had some time to adjust to being on their own, and have some maturity and drinking experience under their belt. I’m also in favor of high school exchange programs that place students with families in the host country. But freshmen? Icksnay. Via World Hum.
By the way, if you’re not familiar with World Hum, check it out post haste. Where else can you find travel tips from Sir Francis Bacon?
… when all she seems capable of producing is treacly banalities.
Take her recent review of The Book of Other People, ed. Zadie Smith (Penguin), in the New York Times January 9th:
"[T]hese stories force us to re-evaluate that old chestnut “Character is
destiny.” They remind us that an individual’s life is itself a
narrative with a beginning, a middle and at least the intimations of an
end."
First of all, the only one making anyone revisit that old chestnut is Kakutani. Second of all, an individual’s life is not a narrative. A character’s life can be a narrative, but our own lives are loose baggy monsters, to borrow a phrase from Henry James. They are random and hectic and do not follow a coherent narrative. The beginning is fuzzy, and we are not aware of it. There is no middle: the middle is everywhere and nowhere. The end is abrupt, always. We live in medias res.
Rien de plus con que l’issue de la plume de Kakutani.
[NDLR: Just so this isn't a purely negative post, this is what I call quality reviewing: William Logan on Geoffrey Hill in this Sunday's NYT Book Review]
Alright, you asked for it. Herewith, a description of The Orals: a ritual every doctoral student must undergo at some point in his or her graduate career.
Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. It’s a test. And it’s a big one, although there are plenty of hotshot grad students who will shrug and tell you it’s no big deal, they barely studied, yawn, who wants to go out for a smoke? I hate those people.
The Oral Examination, at the fine institution from which I expect to receive my PhD sometime in the next decade, is described in the handbook thusly:
Students [...] demonstrate their powers of discernment, analysis,
and eloquence on the Second Examination, commonly referred to as
"Orals." This is a two-hour examination in three fields, administered
by a committee of three professors.In planning for the Second Examination, students should [...][d]ecide upon three fields of inquiry. A field list may be
organized around a genre, a historical period, a major author or set of
authors, or a theoretical approach. Fields should be broad enough to
constitute the framework for an undergraduate course, and focused
enough to provide a basis for advanced scholarly research. Make lists
of primary and secondary sources that seem appropriate to each field.
In order to ensure scholarly and professional range, the student should
avoid overlap among the lists.
I’m pretty much set on my lists and am about to start on my readings and re-readings. Apart from that, all that’s left is to figure out how to develop powers of discernment, analysis, and eloquence by May. No sweat.
I’m sharing this here because I see it as a kind of pact, an agreement that I will read and discuss the various items on the following reading list on this blog between now and May, as a means of assuring both that I read it all and that I am capable of discussing these works in public in an acceptable and compelling (if not discerning and eloquent) manner. And since I’ll only be doing my French list with you (my other two lists I’ll keep to myself), it sort of works for this blog. So without further ado, list number one. Class is now in session.
French "modernism," 1890-1950 (still subject to modification).
œuvres primaires
Louis Aragon
–Le Paysan de Paris (1919)
André Breton
–Nadja (1928)
–L’amour fou (1937)
— Manifestes du surréalisme (1924-1953)
— Entretiens (1913-1952)
Guillaume Apollinaire
–Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917)
–Alcools (1913)
–Caligrammes (1918)
Georges Bataille
–Histoire de l’oeil (1928)
Claude Cahun
–Héroïnes (1925)
–Aveux non Avenus (1928)
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
–Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932)
Colette
–Claudine (1900-1903)
–La Vagabonde (1910)
–Chéri (1920)
–Le pur et l’impur (1932)
René Crevel
–Mon corps et moi (1925)
Robert Desnos
–The Night of Loveless Nights (1926)
–Un cadavre (1929)
–Rrose Sélavy (1922-1923)
–Langage cuit (1923)
–Deuil pour deuil (1924)
–La Liberté ou l’Amour (1927)
–Les Ténèbres (1927)
–Corps et biens (1930)
Paul Éluard
–Capital de la douleur (1926)
André Gide
–Paludes (1895)
–Les faux-monnayeurs (1925)
Alfred Jarry
–Ubu Roi (1896)
Laure
–Collected Writings (coll. 1995)
Stéphane Mallarmé
–Crise de vers (1896)
André Malraux
–La condition humaine (1933)
Adrienne Monnier
–Les gazettes d’Adrienne Monnier (1938)
Charles Péguy
–Le Porche du Mystère de la deuxième vertu (1912)
Marcel Proust
–À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927)
–Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908)
Marcel Schwob
–Coeur Double (1891)
–Le Livre de Monelle (1894)
Tristan Tzara
–Manifeste Dada (1918)
–Manifeste sur l’amour faible et l’amour amer (1920)
Renée Vivien
–Une femme m’est apparue (1904)
Marguerite Yourcenar
–Feux (1936)
To be added–?
Henri Michaux, René Char, Maeterlinck, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Remy de Gourmont, Reverdy, Claudel, Valéry, Montherlant (Les jeunes filles?)
Hello, I am still jetlagged and have a nasty cold, but it’s a sunny day here in Tokyo and I took some cold medicine N found at the drugstore which I think was cold medicine even though we couldn’t read the writing on the box. It did have a drawing of a person with an esophagus and a pair of lungs so I’m content to think it was cold medicine.
And Paris bloggers are getting knocked up left and right (Mazel tov, ladies, you know who you are!). I am really very happy for them but am taking extra care with my contraceptives. No Tokyo babies for us, please.
And yesterday I saw a melon that cost $60.
And I am going to miss my dear friend Tatiana de Rosnay reading from her wonderful book Sarah’s Key at the Village Voice on February 7th at 7 pm (6, rue Princesse, 75006) not only because I loved the book and adore its author but because for once I actually really know the person reading at the Voice and don’t just-kind-of-know-them-but-go-up-to-them-anyway-and-make-awkward-small-talk know them. But you should definitely go, and listen to her read, or if you can’t make it either, buy the book.
And is anyone interested in hearing about my orals lists? I’m about to start studying and wrote a whole post about my impending oral examination and then decided not to post it because it’s so incredibly dorky. But maybe you guys are into dorky. Thoughts?
And I have a new article up on Gridskipper on Secondhand Boutiques in Paris. Writing it reeeeally made me want to spend all of my paycheck on secondhand Hermès, but a girl’s got to pay the rent and all. Thanks to Carol of ParisBreakfasts for permission to use her photographs of Au petit bonheur la chance and Cuisinophilie, as I didn’t have time to shoot them myself. And hey, while we’re thanking people, thanks, Coquette, for the Chez Mamie quote and thanks Emilie for braving the place with me!
And "Weeds" is a really good show!
Last minute addendum: N would be very upset if I did not mention the MacBook Air!!
feature in Marie Claire Italy (March 2009)
mention in Le Parisien
interviewed by National Book Critics Circle
interviewed by Paname Ensemble: Blog of the week
interviewed by Momondo
interviewed by Expat interviews
…blurbs…
“Excellent” (Maud Newton)
“Exquisite” (Nigel Beale)
“…the height of class” (Startling Moniker)
“Great blog on literature and culture… elegant writing and intriguing content…” (StumbleUpon)
“[Maitresse] vaut le détour” (Tatiana de Rosnay)
“Carrie Bradshaw with an M.Phil” (anonymous commenter)
“… the very charming Lauren Elkin, the Paris/Tokyo-based and fantastically rainbooted brilliant mind behind Maitresse, where she ruminates on “Paris’s best make-out bars,” and contemporary literature with equal elan.” (Lauren Cerand, LuxLotus)
“Lauren Elkin, who blogs as Maitresse, is the sort of person who can use the word ‘Hegelian’ in casual conversation and is as witty and clever as her blog.” (Joanna Walsh, Badaude)
Regarding On Books as Sweaters: “This post made me sweat until I bled.” (Edward Champion, Edrants)