Saturday 10 March 2007
Bookstores ..../.... Shakespeare & Other Companies
By David Pitt, Saturday 10 March 2007 - 20:51 :: Best
The profusion is impressive, the breadth and depth lovely. The French honor and respect the written word. In Larousse (basically their encyclopedia) there are more authors illustrated than any other profession – the top 5 in order: 1) author, 164; 2) artist, 142;
3) politician, 138; 4) royalty, 71; 5) musician, 59. Sometimes it seems there is a bookstore on every corner – they call them librairie here. FNAC is the big one, the equivalent of Borders or Barnes & Noble, but there are literally thousands of independents of every stripe imaginable. Even quite a few English only bookstores, Shakespeare & Co comes to mind but there are more. To me, a former bookstore owner, it is heaven.
Original appearance June 13, 2005, © 2005 / CIP 025, OO 24, RD 10, YP 30/12-10
Cowgirls will love it. Chi-chi shopping – Rodeo Drive or Bond Street, London as only the French can do it. Designer ware, legendary labels and luxury fashion all on the real golden side of the golden triangle: the Champs-Elysées, the Seine and Avenue Montaigne. Bring a lot of gold because it is expensive by design. Haute couture as high as the nose can go. To C & B seen is it’s raison d’être. There is the Hotel Plaza Athénée for that. And the names: Louis Vuitton, Dior, Caron, Celine, Prada, Chanel – they go on and on, a litany of luxury. Good thing this street changed it’s name in the early 18th century. Back then it was called Allée des Veuves’ (Widow’s Lane). Not quite so chi-chi.
It was another century. The left back then was in its infancy. Jean Jaures was one of its early Socialist leaders, and considerably less revolutionary than most of his colleagues. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies 6 times between 1885 and 1914, though he also lost a couple of times during the same period. While he was out of office he wrote history books and, in 1904 with a couple of his friends, established the left-wing paper L’Humanité. He was a strong supporter of Dreyfus and early in the period he was a champion of a Franco-German alliance. Later he favored international arbitration to deal with German militarism, but was a committed pacifist in any case. Just days before the outbreak of WWI, while eating in the Café du Croissant with a couple of fellow editors from L’Humanite, he was assassinated by one rather aptly named Raoul Villain. As a historical note: Villain was jailed for the duration, tried, and controversially acquitted in 1919 – and assassinated in 1936 by Spanish Civil War Republicans. I am not sure who is the villain of the piece or where humanity stood.
He stood up to the General. The situation was spiraling out of control. For six years he had been President de Gaulle’s lackey as Prime Minister, through 5 consecutive sets of ministries (1962-1968). Nothing spectacular but competent. Then came the Student Riots of 1968 and everything was degenerating into chaos. Mass arrests, barricades in the streets, gigantic protest marches, 10 million people on strike (that is the actual count, not a wild estimate) – chaos and the end of the Fifth Republic looked imminent. The whole government was hyper hard line. Within the ruling class one man alone stood up to the General. Prime Minister Georges Pompidou was credited with the peaceful conclusion of the riots and averting a full blown civil war. For his efforts he was dismissed as Prime Minister by a jealous De Gaulle. A few months later he had his revenge. He declared for the Presidency infuriating De Gaulle who then lost a referendum and resigned. Against the successor Georges Pompidou was elected President and served quite competently from 1969-1974. He actually died in office from a rare disease.
Charles de Gaulle gave to France what it most desperately needed in its darkest hour. He gave it back it’s pride. France was mortally wounded at Waterloo and died at Verdun. It disintegrated in the early stages of WWII, though De Gaulle fought well. It was reborn in the persona of a General without an army who stood ramrod straight and declared victory. He substituted talk for action, but it was glorious talk, and the French believed. France was reborn not as a state, but as a state of mind. Talking everything to death was infinitely better than dying. Image trumped substance. There was a little of the Napoleonic Complex Redux there, but, when you have nothing, it is best to grab at straws. Sometimes pride cometh after the fall. And on this pride France rebuilt gloriously*.
There is a place in the netherworld beyond even the far left and beyond the far right. In the 20th century it spawned equally Hitler and Stalin, Mussolini and Mao, Lenin and a host of lesser tyrants. It was born in the reasonableness of Rousseau and was perverted and became incarnate in Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety. This committee was anything but safe in the French Revolution. This place was beyond good and evil, for this Jacobin leader who opposed the Girondists, was incontrovertibly incorruptible – the pure essence of good, and also the pure essence of evil. In a tiny time frame he said and proved that “tyrants are substantially alike and only differ by trifling shades of perfidy and cruelty.” His was a place where opposites aren’t. The perfect storm of blood, indeed where blood flowed like water. This place was created by the guillotine and died by the guillotine, almost to a man, including Robespierre. It is the place within a circle that is the furthest far from reason and moderation. It is, even today, where the reign of terror lurks, in the extreme center between the intense right and the severe left; between competing gods and the void.
We’ve floated a long way from Paris today. Take a log, throw it in the Seine, climb on and when you get to the sea, in the tidal estuary, you will find Honfleur. If you paddle straight, you’ll get to England. Perhaps the Normans set of from here in 1066. The first written record of Honfleur dates to 1027. Champlain did in fact set off from here to found Quebec. Charming and picturesque don’t do it justice though I suppose that is why most people go there today, certainly the flocks of artists. That particular trend may trace back to Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) who hails from these parts and even has his own museum. I loved the place but I may be a little prejudiced. Norman Gervase de la Puette, born in this Normandy province in 1160 is said to be the progenitor of the whole Pitt clan in England. And even before I was an American Cowboy I was an English Pitt, so I guess I am French.
It is the lack of it and the use of it that is so fascinating. France is a small country. There are no wide open spaces. Perhaps that is why every corner and crevice is utilized. Of course part of it is due to the architecture and street layout. Triangles abound. Round is in. Roofs slant. Dormers are done. Space is at a premium. Every inch of it, of course they call them centimeters, or at least 0.39 inches of it, they call a centimeter. Anyway it’s tight and they make use of it all, usually attractively. A marriage of measurement and mass. The end result is nearly always beautiful.