Articles tagged "French Literature"
The Red Loaf
Pluto Jedediah, dandy of the Caledonian Market, tells this tale: May dogs grow horns, I thought, waking on a bed in a seedy hotel, if I recall the creature for the sake of whose foot I found myself once…...
The Explosion of the Radiator Hose by Jean Rolin
The connection that a reader forges with a first-person narrator varies tremendously from book to book, depending on the degree of intimacy or detachment elicited, on how convincing or charming or grating…...
from “Daewoo”
Daewoo in Lorraine: Landmarks The blue building was empty, the name of the factory had been changed, and tough shit for the men and women who had been tossed out—"report to the occupational reclassification…...
Delphine’s Illness
I don’t go often. Don’t stay long. Each time I tell myself it’s the last. I was heading toward the gate, when a large tombstone caught my eye. It was a recent one, from this year: Delphine…...
My Father’s Antenna
The rumor started to spread in the beginning of autumn, just after the first rains. Soon it became a certainty: the Belbal family had acquired a television set. To tell the truth, the villagers didn’t…...
The Penalty
5:13 PM Everyone around him was screaming. Terrified, he wondered what the uproar was about. The expression on his face must have been so alarmed that someone was moved to pat his arm out of pity. “Hey…...
from “Diary”
The following article contains scenes depicting nudity and sexual situations. Reader discretion is advised.
News from the Paris Book Fair
The Paris Book Fair (March 26-31, 2010) celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year. The organizers invited 90 writers for the occasion, (60 of them from France and 30 from all over the world) to discuss…...
Prague
Let’s not talk about Prague. We spent a lover’s weekend there, Madeleine and I, around Easter, in an almost windowless attic room which gave the impression of being in some tawdry flophouse,…...
Work and Play: A Conversation with Warren Motte
Warren Motte is among the most vibrant and resourceful critics of French contemporary fiction in the world today. Professor of French and Italian at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he received his…...
The fun of de Nerval’s The Salt Smugglers
"This is not a novel," wrote Diderot repeatedly, in his Quixotic, polyphonic Jacques the Fatalist and his Master. You could say he was ripping off Sterne, who ripped off Rabelais in the grand tradition…...
The Front
"The Front" is taken from Not-Quite-Botched Dispatches (But a Hard Sell for the Nightly News), a series of fictional reportages; as satire, they take for their target the trumpery and fabrication inevitable…...
From “The Burning of the Chiado”
It goes quickly. Lisbon burns. The Frenchman has followed the fire's progress since morning. He was sleeping in his pension, Rua do Ouro. A roar outside, he pulled the curtains back. It should've…...
Paradise . . . Kind of
The Total corporation—jewel in the crown of the French economy—maintains a presence in many countries across the globe, wherever there are fossil fuels to exploit. To do so, it hires locals,…...
The Black Marne
When she hugged me from behind and put her cold hands on my chest, my own hand holding the razor twitched. I'd thought she was at her parents', but in her haste to see me she had bolted out to…...
A Witness Disappears
The more she spoke, the darker it became. She plunged into the forest everywhere and she saw the sea. Busy holding on to my thoughts, I can't think, nor can I prevent the images. —Oyster disgorger.…...
from As You Were Saying
The collection As You Were Saying: American Writers Respond to Their French Counterparts presents stories begun by French writers and then responded to by their American opposite numbers. Here Marie Darrieussecq…...
My Mother’s Garage Sale
Every spring my mother decides to organize a garage sale. But every spring she wonders whether she should do it. "I really don't know if I should, Christophe. It's so much work." "You're right,…...
from Framed
Thirty-five paintings, practically all the same: indescribable black scribblings on a black background. Obsessive, sick. The day they arrived at the gallery I unpacked them one by one, going faster and…...
The Sorrow of Columbkill
Adomnan writes that Saint Columba of Iona, still known as Columbkill, Columbkill the Wolf, of the tribe of the O'Neill of the North through his grandfather, Niall of the Nine Hostages, was a brutal…...
The Madness of Suibhne
In the Annals of the Four Masters it is told how Suibhne, king of Kildare, had a taste for the things of this world. He was a simple man. His happiness and pleasures were simple. He was heavy and coarse,…...
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