Monthly Archives: November 2009

Drawing on the Walls at Shakespeare & Company

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Badaude is the bomb.  But you knew that; she's the one who designed the wonderful new banner for my blog this summer.  And apparently that task was quite inspiring to her, for when she met Sylvia Whitman in September at the Five Dials party (recounted here and here and here and documented here– this one caught me and Badaude sitting on a bench, front and center!) she suggested doing the same thing to Sylvia's wall that she did to my blog! And the result is so fantastic I can't even tell you! Look:

Shakes photo

But I'm not the only one who thinks Badaude's the bomb. BOMB thinks she is too! So Paul Morris interviewed her and you can read it here. An excerpt:

Paul Morris: Your illustrations are an interesting
fusion of image and text. How does your experience as an artist inform
your appreciation for literature in general—and for literary figures in
particular?

Joanna Walsh: [...] My drawing always relates to
writing, whether because I’m responding to a text or mixing my own
writing and pictures. Writers are also “commercial” artists—books have
to sell to a certain number of people in order to be published. This
doesn’t mean that I think “blockbusters” are better than “literary
fiction” because they sell more, but I am interested in the knife-edge
balancing act whereby writers write what they have to in such a way
that enough readers will want to go out and buy a copy.

In drawing the Shakespeare & Company writers—looking at the way
they presented themselves in the reference photos I used-I became
interested in how the image of being, and the story of becoming, a
published writer in Paris was so central to the myth their lives; a
myth so hugely attractive it frequently became their subject matter (Quartet, A Moveable Feast, Tropic of Cancer). This is why I chose the quote from Ulysses
(full excerpt at bottom), hidden in the wallpaper design of the mural,
in which Stephen Dedalus remembers his “Latin Quarter hat,” “puce
gloves,” and other “Paris fads” with which he—and no doubt his
hipster-goatee’d creator—furnished his Paris persona.

Here, on her own blog, she explains what it was like to draw on the walls of a 17th century building. (I made myself useful by erasing her pencil marks, handing her pens, and shelving books in the children's section with Sylvia and Gemma. Hey, if I'm only ever a handmaiden to genius, that's enough for me.)

And here is the text of the wonderful quote from Ulysses that snakes its way through the William Morris-inspired "wallpaper":

“My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want
puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the other
devil’s name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et
naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of
Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone:
when I was in Paris, boul’ Mich’, I used to. Yes, used to carry punched
tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere.
Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner
was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie,
overcoat, nose. Lui, c’est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.”

The eBook and the French reader

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I know. You don't have to say it. I'm sorry. But I'm here now, aren't I? 

So I've been teaching. And working on my dissertation. And trying to keep myself sane in an apartment gone haywire. And last week I flew to Montreal to participate in a panel on Thirties Modernism and a seminar on Woolf and modernism. (I write to you now from my parents' kitchen on Long Island; back to Paris on Saturday.) So things have been busy. But I know, it's no excuse. 

One thing I did do a couple of weeks ago was attend a panel at the Centre national du Livre on digitalization. I was there because the panel was part of the study trip a couple of friends had made to Paris to learn about the way French publishing works. Here's how it works, for those of you who were not on the trip: protect, protect, query nervously, protect. 

That policy of protectionism is mostly a good thing. (For more on that, see my article in issue 8 of Five Dials magazine, downloadable here). It's occasionally seen as a bad thing (cf Donald Morrison and Antoine Compagnon's Que reste-t-il de la culture française) because it encourages a kind of stasis in French letters; it could be said to perpetuate a dominant tone of mediocrity amongst the writers, publishers, and readers' expectations. But hey, it's better than the dominant tone of trash you find in the US and UK. 

For years now, the French have been  talking about the digitalization of the book, and what that might look like. No one could have imagined at the beginning of the '00s that people would actually want to read a book on a screen, much less on a cellphone; and so for years now, the conversation has remained hypothetical. But with the success of the Kindle and other e-readers in the US, the French are starting to get a little nervous, and a little excited, like a seven year-old standing at the edge of the high diving board, about to jump for the first time, but terrified of how very far down there is to fall.  

French readers, however, are no more ready than the publishers are to take the plunge.  A poll currently being conducted by Le Figaro asks "Are you ready to read a novel on a screen?" A resounding 75% percent is saying Non! "[An e-book is] not a book!" declares one commenter, who compares the e-book to margarine and decaf coffee (with whom I happen to agree). "Right or wrong, I want my books on paper," says another. Only a very few readers are able to identify this as a false dichotomy, pointing out that the advent of one does not necessarily imply the decline of the other. 

But I'm only scratching the surface of what was discussed at that panel. For a more in-depth view of the Great Franco-American Publishing Exchange, do read Chad Post's write-up of what the American editors learned on their trip.  And to be continued, when the French come to New York early next year…