Things that Lurk in the Shadows

I’ve got something of a fetish for stories about the fantastic and non-existent creatures of the night like werewolves and ghosts and vampires. Especially vampires. In fact, my vampire fascination stretches as far back as to when I was about 8 (and that is quite a long time ago now) and I used to dream about being a vampire. Then, it wasn’t so much the blood-sucking business that appealed to me, but more the supernatural powers like super-human strength and the ability to fly and see in the dark. Nowadays it’s more what the seductive and shadowy vampires of literature represent that interests me (although I still wouldn‘t say no to supernatural powers). It’s the expression of uncontrollable and therefore terrifying sexuality and the awfully alluring call to glut oneself on the “dark” things of this world that the vampire represents which I love.

So you can imagine my glee when, one rainy afternoon in a dingy Parisian bookstore, I stumbled across an unassuming little tome entitled Histoires de Vampires which boasted Baudelaire, Dumas and Maupassant (amongst others) as authors. I snatched it up and discovered, upon reading the introduction twenty minutes later on the metro, that these stories were important contemporaries and precursors to later more well-known vampire novels such as Dracula (please let's not mention the Twilight saga here. Oops. I just did).

I’m not going to go into an in-depth account of each of the stories (even though I would like to) but I will tell you about my favourite amongst them: “Le Horla” (1887) by Guy de Maupassant. One of Maupassant’s first stories dealing with the fantastic and also one of the first stories marking his descent into madness, “Le Horla” is the unfinished diary of a man who is gradually overtaken by an invisible but overpowering presence he names the “Horla” (a vampiric entity in the sense that it feeds off the life-force of humans). The story documents the protagonist’s transition from happy-go-lucky and independent young man to the smothered, terrified and oppressed object of the invisible but irrefutably more powerful “Horla”. The complete domination of the protagonist plays out that old human fear that there is someone or something more powerful than us, someone or something that will come to take over the world and make of us their livestock.

To use the protagonist's own words (in my very rough translation) upon realising his plight: “Now, I know, I’ve figured it out. The rein of humanity is finished. He is come, He whom the very first fears of primitive people dreaded, He who was exorcised by disquieted priests, He who was evoked by witches in the dark of the night, and to whom, without yet seeing Him appear, the presentiments of the wary travellers of this world gave the forms of gnomes, ghosts, genies, fairies, pixies”.

“Le Horla” is an unsettling tale that sweeps you up in its gradual approach towards an all-consuming terror of that which we can’t see and the absolute loss of hope when faced with a foe more powerful and intelligent than we could ever be. So probably not a story to read if you’re prone to nightmares …

Caca Boudin!

It says a lot about my time living in France that this is one of the books that really stuck with me. Yes, it's a children's book and yes, the humour is accordingly puerile but I love it! I only regret that there is not an English version (yet anyway) to share with everyone at home but I'll do my best to explain ... because I loved it too much to keep it to myself.

Basically, it's the story of a cheeky little rabbit who replies only and always to anyone and everything "caca boudin!" (a common thing for French kids to say which kind of equates to saying "poopoo sausage!"). One day, the big bad and green wolf crosses the little rabbit's path and eats him. The greedy green wolf is struck by a strange affliction - a sore tummy and the inability to say anything besides (you guessed it) "caca boudin!". Which of course gives the game away. The little rabbit's father discovers that the wolf has eaten his little rabbit and quickly extracts him from the beast's belly, hailing his child with an affectionate "there you are, my little Caca Boudin!" to which the slightly offended little rabbit replies "why are you calling me that, Dad? You know perfectly well my name is Simon". However, upon returning to the house and being told to eat his spinach, the little rabbit embraces a new word ... "prout!" (fart).

I read this book over and over and over with one of the little girls that I looked after, both of us yelling at the top of our voices "caca boudin!" each time the book demanded (I'm not actually sure who enjoyed it more, her or me). The unfortunate side-effect of this though was that, come dinnertime and spinach, she would invariably tell me "I'm not eating that, it's caca boudin!" (or "green eggs and ham" but that's another, more self-explanatory story). And all authority would go out the window because I could never stop myself from laughing.

I have also since discovered that Stéphanie Blake does currently have one book in English: I Don't Want to Go to School featuring yet again the cheeky little rabbit. Clearly in the same vein ...

Now this is my kind of Cause ...

Seriously. Every word lover's dream.

http://www.savethewords.org/

The Gone Away World

This summer my bottom clocked up a not inconsiderable number of hours sitting on various European trains. I love travelling on trains - you get a chance to recline your seat and stare out the big windows beside you at the changing scenery. You can have a little doze if you want (I’m an expert at this) and, unlike on a bus, you can read without feeling nauseous (depending on what you’re reading, of course).

Between Italy and Croatia, I was lucky enough to have Nick Harkaway’s first novel The Gone Away World as travelling companion. This ambitious and action-packed tale of a post-apocalyptic world pushed all my buttons - you’ve got action, you’ve got love, you’ve got betrayal, you’ve got ninjas and mimes and pirate monks. You’ve got that unchartered territory where anything can happen that is the completely obliterated version of the world-as-we-know-it. A world with which Harkaway, to the limits of his creative licence as author, has not hesitated to play.

The book is not a light read, neither metaphorically nor literally (the fact that I lugged all two hundred thousand words of it around with me for a week while backpacking is testament to how much I enjoyed it) but Harkaway’s writing style which is, to use The Independent on Sunday's description, "by turns hilarious, outrageous, devastating, hip and profound" keeps you reading. In fact, it was Harkaway’s writing style that I think I enjoyed most about The Gone Away World - it bounces along almost flippantly but there’s a profundity to it at the same time that reminds you of the substance of the novel as a reflection on our modern society and how we behave within it.

And after reading a little bit into why and how he wrote the book, I now understand why Harkaway decided to use this often lightly humorous tone to deal with very serious and current issues. As he says, the novel is "a comedy, of course, because serious things are funny". But as he also says, it’s pretty much impossible to categorise or to exactly explain the book: you have to read it for yourself to get it.

Of course, I will admit that The Gone Away World is not for everyone - it actually came to me via two people who, for one reason or another, had failed to finish it. But then what book pleases everybody? If you’re not into things like ninjas and pirates and if imagining a topsy-turvy future doesn’t tickle you, don’t bother. I, however love these things and loved The Gone Away World because it managed to incorporate each of them (and so much more) at the same time as being a well-written and thought-provoking work.

Sources:
Book Review by Doug Johnstone, The Independent on Sunday, 8th June 2008
http://www.nickharkaway.com/books/

Anna Gavalda: My Latest Literary Crush

Since moving to Paris and discovering the joys of reading in French, I’ve become somewhat a fan of Anna Gavalda. The thing that really gets me about her writing is her ability to beautifully capture everyday predicaments and weave them into a captivating storyline without making them gaudy or clichéd.

Hunting and Gathering

The first of her books to cross my path was Hunting and Gathering and was loaned to me by a friend (who clearly knew my reading tastes well and as a result is still my friend). As you’ll gather by the title I read it in English (in French it's Ensemble, C'est Tout which has rien à voir with hunting or gathering, but there you go) because at that stage my French was barely at ordering baguette level and just the thought of reading whole French sentences one after another was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat. Nonetheless - and I risk making it sound like a Dan Brown here which is not at all my intention - I could not make myself put Hunting and Gathering down and spent two weeks walking through the Paris metro and along the Champs Elysées on my way to French classes with my nose firmly stuck between the pages.

It’s the story of four very different people - a self-isolatingly independent young woman, a socially inept intello, a boorish workaholic chef and his progressively senile granny - who, by various circumstances, find themselves living under the same roof. What I found wonderful about the communion of these four characters was that, as different as they all may seem at the outset, you eventually come to discover how similar they all are. They all have one very important trait in common: they’d like to make out that they can manage just fine on their own, thank you very much, but really what they need is the support and love of other people. Gradually each of them lets down the barricades with which they have fortified themselves and the four of them come to form an unexpected kind of family.

Je L’Aimais

After having finished Hunting and Gathering I was keen for more and happened to stumble across Je L’Aimais (titled in English Someone I Loved) while at work one afternoon - I am lucky enough to work for a woman who is possibly even more obsessed with books than I am so stumbling across a book I want to read is more of a work hazard than a rare coincidence. By that time I had begun to brave the pages of books in French and I thought to myself, why not give it a go? It’s not a very big book and only looked minorly daunting. Well, much the same as with Hunting and Gathering, I ended up choosing the pages of this book over my daily views of Parisian monuments for a week or two (I am so spoilt, I know).

Je L’Aimais proved excellent for me on two levels. The first and completely uninteresting for anyone other than myself was that I learnt a lot of useful French vocab.

The second was the simplicity of the storyline which focuses upon two primary characters, their current life situations and their reflections on the past. It’s basically the story of a young mother who has just been told by her husband that he has fallen in love with someone else and is leaving her. So she goes to the country to spend the weekend with … her father-in-law. Probably not you're most obvious choice in the given situation, especially if your father-in-law is anything like her’s (read: uptight middle-aged man who dislikes talking about anything remotely emotional. Oh yeah, and the father of the guy who just ditched you for another woman). But it’s the unlikeliness of their pairing that is the beauty of Je L’Aimais.

After copious amounts of French red wine - there really is nothing like getting sloshed for breaking the ice, after all - they have a good go at each other on the subject of love (I mean the couple kind not the family-or-friends kind). Her fury and heartbreak at having been left for another woman meets head-on his nostalgic regret for a true love he never followed through with when he was younger. These contrasting points of view challenge you to reconsider what you think of as right or wrong when it comes to love and illustrate beautifully that old conundrum that “love is never easy or simple or straightforward”. In fact, as Gavalda’s two characters show, it will often demand more of you than you are willing to give and then break you in half and leave you high and dry and all alone.

Anyway, I don’t want to give away more than that because it really is worth reading even if just to get you thinking. And if you’re too lazy to read it, they made a film of it earlier this year which I haven’t seen but have heard was pretty good (but, you know me, I’d always recommend the book before the film).

Je Voudrais que Quelqu’un M’Attende Quelque Part

I have already read this collection of short stories twice and intend upon re-reading it many more times to come (I’ve actually got it pegged to keep me company on my impending twenty-two hour plane trip back to New Zealand). Gavalda has managed to create in each of these stories characters which are recognisable by their “everyday-ness” - these are the stories of the people we cross on the street, people who have small hopes and dreams and worries just like all the rest of us. In fact, I really can’t think of a better way to phrase it than the dust-cover so I‘m going to give you my (very rough) translation:

The characters of these twelve short stories are either full of futile hope or deep despair. They're not looking to change the world. Whatever happens to them, they've got nothing to prove. They're not heroes. They're simply human.

The story in this collection that really stuck with me was “I.I.G.” which follows the pregnancy of a young mother who invests her day-to-day hopes in the little life growing in her womb. What’s striking about this character is her solitariness - you have the impression that she holds her pregnancy close to her, almost like a possession, keeping it to herself for as long as possible so that she can savour each moment. It is tragic and touching all at the same time and while I will not give away the end I will say that it broke my heart.

There was also one passage in particular in “The Opel Touch” which I adored because I have a thing for hands. I’ve always felt that you can see a part of a person’s spirit in their hands, you can see the marks that life has left on them, and you can often get a clue to their inner emotional state. Anyway, in this particular short story, a young girl takes multiple photos of a musician’s hands because she, apparently, is of the same mindset as me. And the passage which describes these photos of his hands describes at the same time his life:

Mes mains sur les cordes des guitares, mes mains autour du micro, mes mains le long de mon corps, mes mains qui caressent la foule, mes mains qui serrent d’autres mains dans les coulisses, mes mains qui tiennent une cigarette, mes mains qui touchent mon visage, mes mains qui signent des autographes, mes mains fiévreuses, mes mains qui supplient, mes mains qui lancent des baisers et mes mains qui se piquent aussi. Des mains grandes et maigres avec des veines comme des petites rivières. (52, Édition J’ai Lu)

Je Voudrais Que Quelqu’un M’Attende Quelque Part has, like the other books by Gavalda that I’ve mentioned, been translated into English under the title I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere and is a glimpse into the lives of those we wait in line with at the bank or sit next to on the bus that I would recommend.

Channeling the Writer's Spirit ...

Last weekend I made the trek out to Fontainebleau - about a forty minute train ride from Paris - to visit the final resting place of my much-adored Katherine Mansfield (I'd like to glorify this little trip with the title "pilgrimage" but I think that's stretching things a little too far).

After walking around apparently aimlessly for about an hour in the tiny town of Avon(I have accustomed myself to the fact that maps and signs for guidance are a rare phenomen here in France, and when they do appear they are generally badly oriented or point down two streets at a time ... yes, it is possible) I finally found her. Her grave is tucked away in a tiny little cemetery on the far edges of the town.

I have to admit that it was a surprisingly emotional experience for me to see this little headstone marked "born in Wellington, died in Avon" tucked in amongst the graves of French families and war victims. Lonely is what I felt. All the way over here, on the other side of the world from New Zealand, and all alone. And, yes, I am talking about me as well as Katherine, because standing there in front of her headstone, I couldn't help but feel a kind of affinity with her experience. I indulged myself in what I like to call an "Amélie Poulain Moment" - you know, those moments where you like to imagine yourself much worse-off and challenged and saintly than you really probably are? They're quite delicious.

Anyway, it was a nice experience and I did feel some sense of achievement in doing it. Here's hoping Katherine saw me and will send me a bit of that writerly inspiration.

A Moveable Feast

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast”.
Ernest Hemingway to a friend in 1950

Well, I am not technically a young man. But I have been lucky enough to live in Paris as a young person (to be more politically correct than Hemingway) and also lucky enough to read A Moveable Feast while there. And I do believe that reading this book while in Paris myself meant that everything Hemingway recounts in it resonated a lot deeper with me than it would have done otherwise.

Sitting on the banks of the Seine, book in hand and the sound of Paris life hustling and bustling all around me I could easily imagine Hemingway tucked inside a quintessentially Parisien café writing away. OK, so I might be going a little far with the romanticised view of Paris but that really was what this book made me think of and, it has to be admitted, Hemingway certainly maximises upon building the “poor writer in Paris” persona. And I really do not think that Paris has changed all that much ... for me, it really is like that.

As with other work of Hemingway’s that I have read, the thing that really impressed me in A Moveable Feast was his command of the language he uses - he seems to know just how much description is enough and never includes an ounce more. I’d say his writing is “sparse” but I’m not sure that this is quite the right word. Maybe “economical” works better if we forget the “boring” connotations. It’s been said a million times before, but I’m going to say it again, Hemingway includes just enough information to tell the story without making it ugly or over-descriptive. And that’s what it is that really gets me about his writing.

One, well actually two, more things I’d like to mention. Firstly, I got quite excited about the mention of Katherine Mansfield. Sure Hemingway does not describe her in the most glowing terms, comparing her writing to “near-beer” but he does mention having heard of her as “a good, even a great short-story writer” - that fact that she even registers on his Who’s Who List impressed me, especially considering she is a woman writer who is not Gertrude Stein! And as Hemingway himself writes:

There is not much future in men being friends with great women although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is usually even less future with truly ambitious women writers.

My patriotic spirit shining through …

And finally, on the topic of Miss Stein. After having read An Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (which frankly drove me up the wall with Stein’s pretentious tone and literary cubism), I couldn’t help but chuckle over Hemingway’s descriptions of her as someone who “talked all the time and at first it was about people and places” and thought that “all I [Hemingway] had to be cured of … was youth and loving my wife”. I think Hemingway summed her up perfectly (in true Hemingway fashion) with the simple sentence “Gertrude is nice, anyway … but she does talk a lot of rot sometimes”.