moving on

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Thank you and see you on the flip side!

thanksgiving dialectic

As I was just telling my friend Julie, you know you're getting dark and twisty (and living in France too long, and possibly watching too much "Grey's Anatomy") when you're rolling your eyes at the voice messages left on your phone by Americans wishing you a happy gobble gobble day.

My first year in France, I flew home for Thanksgiving. Last year I felt like an ambassador, mildly festive, mildly observant.

This year I'm going to see Borat with Julie and trying not to write any more blog posts comparing breaking up with getting run over by a bicyclist.

To those of you who are celebrating Thanksgiving today: enjoy your turkey and your day at the mall tomorrow. I am thankful for all that I have, and I'm thankful for it every day, I don't need a holiday which bears the faint whiff of genocide to remind me.

I do miss my family, and the comforting sound of (American) football on television, with a fire going in the living room. So I give thanks that they're there, even if it is without me, and I give thanks that I'll be on a plane in three weeks to be with them for Christmas.

Gobble gobble indeed.

On bikes and boys

Well, people, I think it's safe to say that Stella is getting her groove back.

It has been the strangest month. I've been pressed up against heartache and it's been hell. It felt like everything went to pot, my mind, my health, my heart, my job. I'd start to climb out of my pit a little bit and I'd tumble back down. A few weeks ago I tried to lift my spirits by going to the launch of a friend's literary magazine; on my way there I almost got knocked over by a guy on a bike. I had no idea I was walking in a bike lane near the Jacques Bonsargeant metro station; it looked like a sidewalk to me. I wasn't wearing my iPod so my hearing was fine. And from out of nowhere a guy on a bike clocked me so hard I nearly fell down.

"Goddamn piece of motherf***ing sh** wh*re co**s*cker!!" I hurled all of my fury on the guy, and turned down another street, fuming. And though he may not speak the Queen's English, apparently this guy understood gutter English perfectly. He turned onto the same street as me and bawled me out for walking in a bike lane. "Next time I'll knock you over!" he threatened me, waving his fist in fury.

Outraged, I stood up for myself. "You piece of sh**, you almost did knock me over, and you could have driven around me, or rung your stupid little bike bell! How the f*** was I supposed to know it was a bike lane, it's in the middle of the sidewalk!"

"I had the right of way! I had the right of way!" he insisted. "Didn't I have the right of way? Look at the sign!" he was up in my face. And all of a sudden it was too much, the man on the bike and Nicolas was all of a sudden the same person, the same guy going full-speed ahead without caring if I was in his way and I started to cry uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see the bike lane, why did you have to drive into me," I managed to squeeze out in between sobs. The guy kind of awkwardly patted my shoulder. I imagined him going home to his girlfriend that night to tell her what a weird run-in he'd had on his way home. He gave me a final admonishment to be careful next time, and drove away. I was left a sobbing, indignant mess. Who the hell was he to tell me to be careful where I walk? I thought. He should be careful where he drives! Even sidewalks are unsafe, it would seem.

It's the same thing in a relationship, I realized that night, on the metro ride home. I can be doing my best to be careful where I walk. But sometimes you don't know you're walking in a danger zone, and the guy needs to ring his bell or otherwise indicate that he's about to run over you, if he can't avoid hitting you altogether. He needs to let you know to get out of the way.

But now, a few weeks into it, I'm much better, I'm watching where I'm going, and I'm hopeful for the future. I would not go so far as to say I'm over him. I still want us to work it out. But I can accept more responsability for where I walk, I can look at the road signs, if he can learn to drive a little more carefully.

The Ballad of McFucked-Up

Some girls have their McDreamys; some girls have their McFucked-ups. On learning to tell the difference, the hard way.


The sadder but wiser girl am I
A sadder but wiser girl
I met a boy and thought my luck up
I couldn't guess just how he’d fuck up
The otherwise lovely McFucked-up.

He was dashing and strong, and virile
And said that he loved me so deeply
It wasn’t too long
Before it went wrong
And soon I was feeling a muck up
From the otherwise lovely McFucked-up.

Still, he came back all devoted
He swore he’d be faithful and true
He’d just one condition
Of his own volition
He'd ne’er flatter, nor fawn, nor suck up
My otherwise lovely McFucked-up.

But twisted he was, and mad
Yet I only could see the good
I love you, he’d cry
I love you, he’d sigh
Oh you silly lover I’d cluck
Up into the ear of my gallant McFucked-up.

The sadder but wiser girl am I
A sadder but wiser girl
He’s done it before, he did it again
I can’t hang around, and watch it upend
I’ve got to move on, he’s got a new friend
New boys at the door, there’s no time to spend
On missing and loving and nodding and pining
On frowning and crying, the sun is still shining!
On hoping and praying and plotting and plying
The persistently distant McFucked-up.

And what, you may ask, is the moral of my story?
Don’t give your heart for less than sheer glory.
I know he seems charming
I know he's disarming
But if you meet my McFucked-up
Disregard his pluck:
Up and Run.

terms, coming to

I was in full throttle, in that relationship. I was not prepared for it to end when it did, like it did. So I can be forgiven for having some difficulty slamming on the brakes.

It hurts to let go of him, but it hurts almost as badly to let go of the idea that I had of him. I thought he was a better man than this. But the breakup, the fact that he can let me go like this, seriously calls the last ten months into question, ten months when I've been happier and more in love than I've ever been with anyone. It sends me over and over the relationship, playing it all back in slow motion, examining every frame in excrutiating detail, looking for the evidence that he was, all the while, someone who was capable of betraying me the way he did, at my birthday party of all places. I knew he had a self-destructive streak, but I thought he trusted me, and my judgment, and he assured me that he loved me so much that he would never do anything to hurt me. I took it for granted, after he came back in May, that he was around for the long haul, that any issues that came up we would deal with together, and above all, I took it on faith that I could trust him.

It hurts so bad, to think back through everything we did together with this new idea of him. It makes me no longer understand who he was, and what we had. When the one person you think you can trust in your life betrays you, who are you supposed to rely on? Clearly I can't rely on myself, since my judgment was clouded enough to let me get so involved with this person. There are my family and friends at home, of course, but they aren't here for the day-to-day. I have friends here, but no one who knew me before I moved here, and the two good friends I made here have since returned to New York. There are friendships currently under construction, but some are with people passing through Paris, which makes me reticent to get emotionally invested.

Who am I supposed to trust? What am I meant to have faith in, after this?

It doesn't matter, I suppose. I just have to get through the everyday. I move through the week, through the familiar spaces, the turnstiles, the stairwells. I see familiar faces, students, colleagues. I sleep a lot. I read a little. And I write. I pour myself into the creative process. That's the only thing that will always be there for me.

And somewhere above my head, the neighbors play "Don't You Forget About Me" on their stereo.

in which I pretend to know something about American politics

Good news from home!

Clinton and Democrats Sweep Races in New York (NYT)

The Dems also took the House, and results of the Senatorial elections are still being counted (you don't say).

The Kindly Frères Goncourt

Yesterday, the gods of the Goncourt looked down from their lofty perch and awarded their annual literary prize, the jewel of the saison des prix, to a most unlikely benecificiary.

An American.

And a New Yorker, at that.

Surprisingly, the reactions in the press have not been sour grapes at all; Jonathan Littell did write his massive tome in French, which makes him a Francophone writer as much as the next recipient (last year's went to the Belgian writer François Weyergans; in 1995 it went to the Russian writer Andreï Makine; in 1993 to the Lebanese-born Amin Maalouf, and so on).

The book [full admission: I have yet to read it], which purports to be the autobiography of an SS officer who reconstructs a quiet post-war life as a lacemaker in the north of France, has received mostly glowing reviews. But not entirely. Libération quotes Colette Kerber, the otherwise charming owner of the Marais bookshop Les Cahiers de Colette, "It's cut-and-paste docufiction, badly written [écrit avec les pieds]. To think they're comparing him to Grossman or Tolstoy!"

Still, although there are plenty of complaints about the way literary prizes are handed out, and the "vampirization of the rentrée," no one seems to mind that the new French literary golden boy is American. They're even having fun with his name: the best headline I've seen so far has to be Libération: "Littell assez grand pour le Goncourt".

Everyone knew Littell would win, anyway; for the last few months his book has generated a the kind of buzz that crops up when everyone is congratulating themselves on finishing a book rife with historical documentation that clocks in at 903 pages. Les Bienveillantes, or "The Kindly Ones," (which has already sold 250,000 copies) is being called an "unlikely bestseller" by people who don't understand that the book-buying public loves a challenge, especially one they can boast about to their friends.

And besides, Littell moved to France with his family in the 1970s and lived here pretty much without interruption (except to go to Yale) until his recent move to Barcelona. So he's like an honorary Frenchman, right?

Although the prize itself consists only of a symbolic 10 Euros (not to mention an unparalleled level of publicity), Littell should have no trouble finding his next meal: US rights were acquired by HarperCollins at Frankfurt for a reputed seven-figure sum.

ripped off by the Globe and Mail

This is why freelancing sucks, and why I rarely do it.

On November 1st, I pitched this article to the features editor of the Globe and Mail:

Dear XXXX,

I am writing to suggest a feature/Q&A on Canadian author Nancy Huston, who yesterday won a prestigious French literary prize, the Prix Femina, for her latest novel, Lignes de Faille.

Born in Calgary, Alberta, Huston has lived in Paris for over twenty years, and maintains an "aller-retour" writing technique since 1993, which consists of writing two versions of each of her books—one in French and one in English.

The twist is, although the book is an enormous success in France, where it has also been nominated for the Prix Goncourt, it will not be published in North America anytime soon. Huston's Canadian publisher, MacArthur, deemed the subject matter of the first chapter too risqué, too potentially anti-American, to publish without serious changes—i.e. deleting most of the first quarter—and Huston refused. It has been turned down by several American publishers as well, and to my knowledge the book does not have a publisher in English at all. I haven't seen any articles on this in the press (Anglophone or French) so this could be quite a scoop.

Lignes de faille chronicles the story of an average American family over four generations, in reverse chronological order, each chapter narrated by a child of six: Sol, Sol's father Randall, Randall's mother Sadie, and Sadie's mother Kristina. Each of the four chapters is set against a larger political context—the Iraq war, the Sabra and Chatila massacre, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Second World War—and the tension between what a child hears and what a child understands is a key source of resonance in the text. It is the first chaper, and Sol's obsession with the Iraq War, George W. Bush, and the Abu Ghraib photographs, that MacArthur considers so scandalous.

[edited out: the place where I pitch myself as the journalist]

Thank you for your consideration; I look forward to hearing from you.

XXXX

On November 2nd, they ran this story:


English edition of Prix Femina winner delayed

JAMES ADAMS

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

A French-language novel by Calgary-born Nancy Huston that was awarded France's prestigious Prix Femina this week was expected to be published in English first -- but the novelist's Canadian publisher and New York agent held off doing that this year because they wanted Huston to change portions of her text to avoid offending U.S. readers.

Talks are reportedly under way to have McArthur & Co. issue Lignes de faille in English next spring.

But Huston, who has called Paris home for more than 30 years, was close-mouthed about the matter when contacted this week by e-mail. "I'd rather not make any public comments on these sensitive issues just now, until some sort of decision has been reached," she said.

At issue, it seems, is the extent of the changes her North American representatives want. Kim McArthur, who published Huston's previous two novels in English, said yesterday that the author "has promised us some slight revisions; it's very tiny . . . maybe four sentences" to permit Lignes de faille to be published in 2007 in Canada and, possibly, the United States with a new English title, Birth Marks. However, no contract has been signed as yet, and "it's all just sort of very dicey," McArthur acknowledged at the same time as she praised Lignes as "fantastic . . . It's just riveting . . . She's just so famous in France."

In an interview in September in Paris with Montreal's La Presse, Huston, 53, said that "they want me to remove [enlève] half the pages concerning Sol, all of the material that revolves around Jesus, the war in Iraq, George Bush, the pornography, etc." The French version of the novel has been a bestseller in Quebec.

In that same interview, Huston said she believes that "contemporary America is reproducing the worst traits of Nazi Germany. I believe we are in a pretotalitarian state."

Lignes de faille -- nominated this year to the long list for France's most famous literary award, the Prix Goncourt -- is a four-part, 500-page novel, each part of which moves backward in time, from 2004 to 1982 to 1962 and, finally, to 1944-45. In each instance, Huston uses the viewpoint of a six-year-old child to tell the history of a Jewish family, starting in present-day California and working "toward" Holocaust-era Europe.

It's the first part, named after the young narrator, Sol, that prompted McArthur's concern and that of her North American agent, Rosalie Siegel. Sol, as described in La Presse, is a precocious, haughtily nasty American boy who, over the course of 128 pages, "gets turned on [carbure] by Internet pornography and images of the tortures at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison."

At one point, Sol declares: "I love to click on [images of] the dead bodies of Iraqi soldiers in the sand; it's a total slide-show." In another passage he says: "God gave this body and this spirit . . . I know that He has great plans for me, which is why he saw to it that I was born in the richest state in the richest country in the world . . . Happily, God and President Bush are good friends. I think of Heaven as being like a big state of Texas in the sky, with God wandering around his ranch in a Stetson and cowboy boots . . ."

"There's a bit of a schism between the war in Iraq [as seen in France] . . . versus the point of view from America," McArthur says. "You may remember 'freedom fries.' " Given that Huston has lived more than half her life in France, her "view is completely credible there," but "we [McArthur and Siegel] were taking the long view."

Fluently bilingual, Huston has published at least eight novels in the past 25 years and has become famous -- and controversial -- for self-translating them, usually from French into English. This was the case for her 1999 novel The Mark of the Angel, which was nominated for the Giller Prize for excellence in English-language fiction after being published a year earlier in French as L'Empreinte de l'ange. In the early nineties, she reversed the practice -- self-translating her fourth novel, Plainsong, from English to French (Cantiques des plaines), for which she won the Governor-General's Award for French fiction.

I got the story directly from Huston herself at a reading. Given that Huston didn't even want to talk to the journalist, I find it hard to believe that she would have alerted the press. And since no other news source has picked this up, with the exception of the Montreal paper, the only source I can imagine they would have for it is my pitch. And the information about her writing and her translating is just too similar for my comfort.

For crying out loud. I emailed my agent to find out if there's anything that I can do; I don't suppose there is, though. Good lord, how I hate freelancing.

I have been cast in an amateur production of "Fame."

This has been a weird couple of weeks.

First rehearsal is tomorrow. Am undecided if I will stick with it. How much do I really want to know about the world of community theatre in Paris...

Then again, I suppose it's more productive than crying for hours or watching American television on iTunes.