John J. Gaynard's Blog

In yesterday's Le Monde literary supplement there was a provocative interview with linguist, philosopher and writer Jean-Claude Milner. Below is an excerpt. The person asking the question was Jean Birnbaum.




You belong to the generation which was twenty years old in the 1960s, the last one that believed, like Sartre, that French was a universal language. What are the consequences of that on your relationship with the French novel?




I pay a lot of attention to the adventure of French. In my eyes, it is in the process of becoming a dead language. At least, the French  that interests me and that has an effect on me when I read. But I'm not complaining. On the contrary, I would say that this is payback time.




Let me make a comparison. The German language still hasn't recovered from being the language of the Third Reich. The strength of German writers, among themselves, stems from their fights against this, in the same way as they fought each other about the ruptures of the Red Army Faction, and against those of division and reunification.  The French language remembers nothing. No historical rupture, except, perhaps, for that of the French Revolution has had an influence on it, and that was thanks to Chateaubriand.  Even that is not sure. Who writes today as if Chateaubriand had ever existed? The beautiful French language was invented by Richeliu so that Catholics and Protestants, nobles and the middle class, men and women, wise men and the uneducated could use it in the same way. That political effort, with the addition of style, with the addition of public education continued until the 1960s, making the necessary adaptations. That constituted the grandeur of French. And we are paying for it today.




So that the French language could exist, we had to pretend that it wasn't the language of butchery in 1914, or the language of the collapse of 1940 or the colonial wars. But the list of what is forgotten is not important. It can be resumed as follows: "Nothing happened". The French language today is designed to say nothing about nothing. On top of that, it is understood less and less, so if a person did happen to say something in it, nobody would know.




This is a deadweight on the French novel. If it wants to continue to honor the French language, it has a tendency to recount nothing, other than a nothing which never happened. If it wants to show its hate of a language which no longer says anything, it tends to lock itself into pure anathema (imprécation). When we go to the end of the night, we know what we risk finding there. Writers can, of course, take on and destroy this dilemma. They are the only ones who can do it, but we have to say that today exceptions are rare. And scarcity can lead to a wasting away.

This is the Patsy Burke cover that got away,
detail from the statue of Jesus,
 at the entrance to La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona



Patricia Blomeley-Maddigan has had the kindness to give an honest review to my novel The Imitation of Patsy Burke, on her blog The Joy of the Written Word. The first sentence of her last paragraph, "Where is the Joy in the Written Word of this novel?" really got me thinking, as did her invitation to say where I see the joy of the written word in The Imitation of Patsy Burke.




The paragraphs below explain the sort of thinking an author can put in the back of a character's mind as s/he writes a novel, while knowing that if s/he makes the thinking too evident it may load down the novel and turn it into a piece of philosophy, unreadable as a work of fiction.




As I wrote The Imitation of Patsy Burke, and after I'd finished it, I knew that it could be a harrowing read. But at the same time, I didn't want to tone it down. I wanted to be honest: there are many lives which don't have happy endings, or even clear endings. A successful life can turn to disaster in a matter of minutes or hours. One of the people I had in mind as I wrote the novel was John Galliano, the fashion designer, who fell from grace a while back. Another  person was a close friend who, in spite of, or maybe because of, his genius as an artist, succumbed to his demons  few years ago.




My daily contact with that close friend showed me how behind the brilliant facade could lie a desperate, sordid reality as he tried to make sense of life, a reality which his admirers could never have dreamed existed. When John Galliano was overtaken by his demons, I could imagine, from the experience with my friend, nearly exactly what had happened. Although Galliano genuinely regretted what he had said, under the influence of drink, a bunch of politically correct thinkers who had never made an attempt of their own to improve the world, turned on him. As with many celebrities who falter (another one I can think of is Mel Gibson) there is never a lack of former sycophants willing to give them an extra kick on the way down. Former heroes are not usually allowed to fade away, the press and many of their erstwhile admirers turn them into scapegoats, load them down with their own sins and rejoice to see them in hell.




Although I don't want to draw exaggerated parallels between Patsy Burke and other works, the way in which Mel Gibson depicted The Passion of the Christ in the final twelve hours of his life, comes to mind. Jesus, whom every one had wanted to see as the son of God was reduced to a scapegoat, a whipping boy, deserted and denied by his disciples, who protested vehemently when it was suggested they had once followed the man. The final parts of the Gospels do not contain joy, but torture. The crucifixion, to my mind is not very well understood by 20th century Christians. Joy can be found in the words at the beginning of each Gospel, such as those in the Sermon on the Mount, but the final part of each of the four main books is a tale of agony and extremely painful death.




The joy comes from the realization, after the fact, of what has happened. For the first time in human existence an innocent man had been put to death and had come back to tell the tale. Christianity, the religion built on the premise that it is wrong to scapegoat and kill innocent people, came into being. Nearly every other religion still eats sacrificed meat, but because of that one sacrifice of an innocent man the early Christians refused to touch "burnt offerings" and neither sacrifice nor scapegoating is accepted in mainstream Christianity today.




The present day Church has done a very good job of airbrushing out of existence the fact that the first person to realize Jesus had come back to life was Mary Magdalene, the former prostitute, and not--as the priests would have us believe--Peter. But the New Testament contains too many hard facts for the truth to be completely hidden. It was when Mary discovered the empty tomb that the disciples who had run away began to believe and hope again. Because they opened their eyes to see, they saw again. Before that, for thousands of years, many innocent men had been deemed guilty and put to death--there are examples in nearly every civilization or religion. After their deaths, they were often transformed into idols, statues, Gods of Stone. Patsy Burke has many rude awakenings, and one of them is when he realizes that making statues out of Jesus, whatever his good intentions, may run counter to his beliefs and play into the hands of Jesus's enemies.




As Patricia pointed out in her review, as an author I remain neutral. But the paragraphs above contain a good description of Patsy Burke's thoughts, when he was thinking rationally. The real joy in the novel and the hope that life may change, comes from the meeting with the two prostitutes. Patsy, the pale imitation of the man he loves, goes over the top, but perhaps he will gain control again, thanks to those two women.




I was pleasantly surprised at the Kirkus Review which didn't concentrate on the alcohol, the violence and Patsy Burke's multiple betrayals, but saw the book as a "A rich, darkly comic send-up of the art world and the megalomaniacal souls that populate it," but I knew that many readers would not see it in that light. So, I thank Patricia for giving me this opportunity to show where hope and, perhaps joy, can be found for Patsy Burke and the reader.




Below is Patricia's review, which you can find at her blog: The Joy of Reading

One of the classic lines in “The Imitation of Patsy Burke” must be: “What came first? Was it the overdrinking or was it the voices?”(page 10). If the reader has not figured it out by this early point in the novel, this quote ensures a better understanding of the narration. The “voices”, the “friends”, exist within the very compelling mind of the main character, Patsy Burke; in actual fact, the only true character in the novel. The other characters exist, but they exist within Patsy’s very complicated mind. It is from this perspective that John J. Gaynard spins this tale of emotion, action, and vivid description. The tone is raw, irreverent, racy, provocative, and infrequently loving.  

When I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author, it was in exchange for an impartial review. At that time, I thought I was about to read an action packed thriller, with a psychological bent. That was not how it turned out! But the writer’s style caught my attention after only a couple of pages. Then the plotline caught my eye, and I was hooked. 

Due to the use of offensive language, there were times when completion of the novel seemed out of reach. Throw in some graphic violence, and it is not my pick for summer afternoon reading. However, the author still held my attention. You see, each of the voices in Patsy Burke’s mind, made up an aspect of Patsy’s personality. The skill of the author is in holding the reader’s attention to see how all the voices fit together, and how the author can actually create quite a storyline, all from the voices in the lead character’s mind. Are you intrigued yet??

As a word of caution, I would suggest that the reader keep in mind that this is a work of fiction – even though at times it reads like history. I choose not to expand on that comment, as I try to avoid ‘spoilers’ in my book reviews. 

One skill of Gaynard’s is the ability to remain neutral throughout this book. By that I mean, the reader is left guessing about Gaynard’s own history and personal beliefs. And I think in a book of this nature that is key to the plotline and readability of the book itself. Keep your mind open, and your wits sharp, and this book may be just what you are looking for! 

Where is the Joy in the Written Word of this novel? While not a ‘joy-less’ story, the word ‘Joy’ does not come to my mind in this instance. If you have read, or do read, this novel, I invite you to leave me a comment on where you do, or do not see Joy. And in all humility, John Gaynard, if you read this post, I truly welcome your thoughts on “The Imitation of Patsy Burke” and on where you see the Joy of the Written Word.

A paper or electronic versions of The Imitation of Patsy Burke can be bought by following the appropriate link below:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.fr

Smashwords

At the beginning of January I wrote an article on this blog about how Patsy Burke's remorseful kidnapper had just published a book. The subject was the time the now infamous Irish sculptor had spent in captivity. When I mentioned the book in the cafes I frequent in Paris, the nearly unanimous reaction was that, once again, a hardened criminal was being allowed to make money out of his crime and the French authorities should put a stop to it. None of the people with whom I habitually drink could understand why Patsy accepted to meet Roger Allain, his kidnapper, at the time of the book launch. I explained back in January why Patsy's psychiatric minders wouldn't allow him into a crowded bookshop, but did allow him to meet with his kidnapper in a five-star hotel near the Place de la Concorde in Paris. 




After that meeting in January, Patsy accepted an invitation to appear on television with his kidnapper, in the new set of monthly programs, "How They Turned Their Lives Around". The series is hosted by one of Patsy's former mistresses, the beautiful, curly-haired pop psychologist, Aline Chaudeurge. The program finally appeared on French television yesterday evening, in prime time on one of the main channels and got greater viewing figures than the recent French Presidential debate between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. Patsy accepted the invitation to appear on television for two reasons. The first was his wish to get out of the mental hospital for another evening. The second was his desire to help Aline Chaudeurge improve her viewing figures. The new series had gotten off to a stuttering start and she needed to feature a genuine celebrity to improve its ratings and save her job. 




Below you will find a few reflections Patsy Burke shared with me after the program. 




Why did you accept to meet your kidnapper, Roger Allain, in such a public way so many years after the kidnapping?




Aline was the muse for my Chaudeurge period of sculptures (more commonly known in Britart circles as the "Hotass" pieces). She's not that good as a psychologist, so she badly needs the television job. She came to the hospital to make love to me to make sure her series wouldn't come to a stop halfway through its intended run. A meeting between myself and Roger Allain seemed a sure audience winner. I won't deny I hesitated about meeting the guy on television. But, I couldn't forget that, at the time of the trial, I'd generously forgiven the kidnappers for what they'd done to me. I regretted that promise often, when I began to realize the long term consequences of the way they treated me--it's not easy for a sculptor to work without a little finger--but I would never renege on a promise.  Years later, when I could see the man was genuine about wishing to turn over a new leaf, it wouldn't have been honest of me to turn him down.   




What were your impressions of this second face-to-face meeting with Roger Allain?




As you know, I'd already met Monsieur Allain in January. Before his book was published, he'd sent me his final draft for comments, but my only contribution to the finished piece of work was the correction of a few French typos. Before yesterday evening's program, I didn't have the feeling I was running the same risks as at the time of the kidnapping. But I'm still haunted by what I lived through. Being kept in the dark,  underground, tied up and in close contact with death every second of your existence is very disagreeable. This meeting with Roger Allain was also, for me, a way of turning over a new leaf.




What's your opinion now of the man who headed up the gang that kidnapped you?




We're quits. He behaved badly and, through all those years he spent in prison, he paid a heavy price for what he did. When he got out, he showed what I took to be remorse... I don't have the right to exact more vengeance, society's already done it for me. I suffered during those 63 days, but not one of those days was as bad as what I lived through after my release. My then wife, the lawyer of the gallery I co-owned and my co-owner did their best to rob me of all I had. They destroyed my reputation in the press and on television and, contrary to Monsieur Allain, none of them has never shown the slightest remorse.  Before I was kidnapped, French politicians and other artists couldn't do enough for me, but afterwards I was snubbed by everybody, except for the Irish Ambassador to France, who lost his job when he came to my help and it was discovered he'd had a few drinks too many.




The establishment made no bones about reminding me of my Irish knacker origins. For the men and women in positions of power, the kidnapping and the "Jesus Statue" I made were a Godsend. With the help of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, they managed to rid themselves of a troublesome genius who wouldn't accept their pedophilia and who reminded them daily of their mediocrity and servile devotion to false artists. The beauty of my work had for a long time put me beyond criticism, but the revelations about my sex life fed to the press during my captivity allowed them to dispossess me. For all that, my kidnappers were in no way responsible.




What are your hopes now?  




Everything is going as well as it can do in the circumstances. I'm back in contact with my children, the woman I love, Khadija, is still as adorable to me as she was at the time you wrote The Imitation of Patsy Burke. I miss being able to sculpt, because it was like a drug for me. When you're driven, as I was, for so many years by the desire to create great works of art, it's difficult to slough that off and act as if it never happened. But I am now in the autumn of my life, and I think I'm finally beginning to calm down. All I hope for now is a quiet life, a normal life, to be as normal as the new President of France, François Hollande. 

  

With grateful acknowledgement to Carine Didier's article in Le Parisien newspaper dated May 14th, 2012.






Paper or Electronic versions of The Imitation of Patsy Burke can be bought at:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.fr

Smashwords

Bruno Fuligni is the author of a book called "La Police des écrivains--The Writers' Police", that was first published in 2006. A second edition came out in 2011. I came across it only a few days ago and I have been reading up about it. Below is part of a conversation between Jérôme Dupuis and Bruno Fuligni that was published in a September 2006 edition of the French weekly magazine L'Express.






JD: It can't be denied that a few of the police officers had some literary merit in their own right... 







BF: Lombard, the police officer, who monitored the actions of Verlaine during the Paris Commune, was both brisk and to the point in his analysis of Rimbaud. "With regard to both talent and morals, Raimbaud (sic), aged somewhere between 15 and 16, was and still is a monstrosity. His capacity to produce verse is second to none, but his poems are not only absolutely unintelligible but also repulsive." A little further on, he reported that Verlaine had screamed out in the streets, "We love each other like tigers!" Lombard also wrote a long note about the famous pistol shots in Brussels. Once Rimbaud left for other horizons, the pathetic descent of Verlaine into alcoholism was only of periodic interest to the police.






JD: By the use of some strange methods, the Prefect of Police learnt that Willy, Colette's husband, used ghost writers... 







B.F. The file on Willy and Colette is a tasty blend of something between an epistolary novel and a piece of vaudeville. It starts with detailed accounts of the couple's adventures in brothels. "We have learnt that the novelist Willy, the author of Claudine in Paris, who has lived at 93, rue de Courcelles for the past five years, rented for the afternoon of April 29th a small fourth-floor apartment in a quiet house in the rue Pasquier for himself, two lesbians, his legitimate wife (Colette) and a thirty-year old woman whom we think is the Countess de Noailles, etc."




In his investigations into the source material for Willy's novel, "Jeux de princes--Games for Princes", a policeman wrote, "When writing his novels, his main collaborator is his wife, better known under the name of Colette". The couple's tumultuous separation needed the intervention of the Prefect of Police. One day, he received a  «pneumatique» (an urgent letter carried over the pneumatic tube network that existed in Paris at that time) from a high society lady indicating that Colette was going to reveal the lady's affair with Willy. Colette had a series of compromising letters in her possession. At a time when adultery was against the law and crimes of passion were frequent, the Prefect did everything in his power to defuse the scandal. He summoned Willy and Colette to a meeting. Colette was asked to hand back the letters to the lady and Willy had to promise that he would stop slandering his ex-wife in the newspapers. The agreement was sealed by a series of handwritten notes. The Prefect had had to act as a marriage counselor...  






JD: Are men and women of letters still being spied on?




B.F. Records after 1945 are not freely accessible, because of the laws that protect archives. But I am convinced that the practice continued. Why would it end? 




Below are some excerpts from the book, given in the L'Express interview: 

Report of December 23, 1937. "[...] May 29, 1926, [Breton] in the company of the writers Louis Aragon [...] and Philippe Ernest Soupault [...], stormed into the offices of the newspaper Les Nouvelles Littéraires (a literary review), hit the Director, Martin du Gard, broke a lamp, a telephone and numerous mirrors."

Report of September 5, 1879. "It is said that Victor Hugo is being preyed on by a girl whom he made his mistress. For a long time, she did not realize that he was the famous poet. She is now blackmailing him. This girl, who may be living near the Ivry Station, is rumored to have a child [...] She told Victor Hugo that the child is his and he feels greatly flattered."

Here is another excerpt from the book I found on the site of the online newspaper, Médiapart, which was published on the occasion of the 2011 revised edition:

"Emile Zola continues his visits to the brothel kept by Louise Bremond, at 4 Rue Breda, not to have relations with her prostitutes, but to collect (perhaps for a book) their impressions and memories," wrote a conscientious police officer on July 5, 1891. That was the time the novelist was doing research for his novel, "Nana".

How to Buy my Novels Another Life and The Imitation of Patsy Burke

To his surprise, Patrick received a text message from Catherine. She
was his best friend Sammy’s girlfriend, and the last person he thought would
contact him. Patrick used to share a flat with Sammy in Courbevoie,
a suburb of Paris.

‘Sammy’s in hospital,’ said the text message. ‘He tried to commit
suicide because of you. He wants you to visit him.’

The last time Patrick had tried to reason with Sammy, the
conversation had turned violent because Patrick had criticized Catherine.

‘I knew her before you did. She’s got a nice pair of tits, but she’s
not the right woman for you.’

Sammy should have kept Patrick’s advice to himself, but, instead of
that, he’d shared it straightaway with Catherine.

When Catherine next saw Patrick, near the Saint-Lazare railway station, she’d shouted at
him, ‘You’re just jealous because I dropped you after a one-night stand.’

‘Me, jealous?’ said Patrick. ‘You’re
not his style. When I saw you worming your way into Sammy’s mind, what was I
supposed to do? Just sit back and twiddle my thumbs and let my best friend get
hurt?’

Catherine said, ‘I’m going to make sure that Sammy never talks to
you again.’



Patrick called Sammy straight after the argument with Catherine. ‘Why did you repeat to Catherine my advice about her?’

‘We were just talking in bed. She had this feeling you thought she wasn’t the right woman for me and she asked me what you’d said about her. It’s when I told her you thought she had a nice pair of tits that she got angry. She wanted to know what else you’d said about her body. She wouldn’t believe me when I said you’d only mentioned her tits.’

‘We’ve known each other since junior school, Sammy. We said to each other that we’d never let a woman hurt our friendship. You were my best friend.’

‘She wasn’t hurting our friendship.’

‘I feel betrayed,’ said Patrick. ‘I gave you a piece of confidential advice and you repeated it to her.’

‘Don’t use words like “betrayed”. How was I supposed to know she was going to take what you said so seriously?’

‘She was really aggressive when we bumped into each other near Saint-Lazare.’

‘She thinks you’re jealous.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Usually you’re the one who ends up with the best looking woman and this time it was me.’

‘I told you you could have her, didn’t I?  That it was all over between the two of us.’

‘You weren’t the one who decided who could have her. She was the one who decided.’

‘That’s it,’ said Patrick.  ‘How can I stay best friends with a man who repeats to a girl what I say to him confidentially?

Patrick didn’t want to call Catherine to find out which hospital Sammy
was in. He called her anyway and she told him that Sammy was in the Maison Blanche
psychiatric hospital.



Patrick worried whether Sammy was still feeling suicidal. He decided
not to call him. It might only make things worse.

Sammy sent a text message to Patrick a few days later. ‘Patrick, are
you avoiding me because they’ve put me in this hospital for nutcases?’

That was two weeks ago. Patrick received another text message from
Sammy’s girlfriend. ‘Sammy’s getting worse. Please go and visit him.’

Patrick texted Catherine back a couple of hours later. She wanted to
put warmth into her voice, but he decided to stay cold. He said he'd go and visit
Sammy at the Maison Blanche hospital.

When he arrived, he was searched by a couple of sickly-looking armed guards. Then a
third guard led him into a large white painted room with a high ceiling. The walls
were lined with chintz armchairs. The
armchairs were mostly full of what seemed like really old Neanderthals. It looked as if they’d collapsed in on themselves. A few younger people sat on hard backed
chairs around a table and looked completely out of it. Only a couple of the young or old people could sit
upright.

Patrick looked for Sammy and was shocked when he recognized him. His old friend had aged by ten years.

‘How are you, Sammy?’

Sammy looked up at him through red-rimmed eyes. Saliva drooled from
the corner of his mouth. It was a struggle for him to get a couple of words
out.

‘Try to make it look as if I’m not making much sense,’ said Sammy. ‘They’re
trying to drug me out of my mind.’

‘Why’re they doing that?’


Photo by Gregory F. Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com



‘To stop me from trying to escape. They think I took the pills this
morning but Catherine told me last night that you’d be coming, so I spit the fucking
things into my hand and I threw them into the toilet when they let me go for a
piss.’

‘Why did you try to kill yourself?’

‘You shouldn’t have said I’d betrayed you.’

‘We’ve always told each other the truth, even in primary school, so why should I start lying
to you just because you started going out with a woman who’s not suitable for
you?’

‘She’s not just a woman. She’s the best one I’ve ever had. I want to
make her my wife and I want you to be my best man. The day after you accused
me of betraying you, I went out of my mind. I was so mad that I got into an
argument with the concierge of my apartment block. I dropped my trousers and showed her my arse. She called the police and I had to run away.’

‘Why’d you do that to the concierge?’

‘To show her what I thought of her. I ran across the bridge to Levallois and then I took the metro. I was going to come and have it out with you. I
managed to sit down in the carriage, and then a bastard behind me, who’d been sitting on
one of those folding seats, stood up and let the fucking thing slam into the
back of where I was sitting. I hate that noise you get when people just let
those folding seats slam and the thump in the back you get. So, I hit him and he hit me back. Next
thing I knew I’d gone back to my apartment and I’d tried to kill myself and I was
in here.’

‘You know that I’ll do whatever I can to help you.’

‘I want you to apologize to Catherine.’

‘Whatever I can, except that,’ replied Patrick. ‘I told you she wasn’t the right girl for you
and if you needed proof, now you’ve got it. Look at the trouble she’s caused between us.’

‘I love her and you’re my best friend. I want you to like each
other.’

‘Look, said Patrick.  ‘If
it’ll make you feel better, I’ll sit down and talk to her.’

‘I don’t want you to just sit down and talk to her to make me feel
better. I want you to be genuine. This is a matter of principle. I want you to
be friends.’

‘Well,’ said Patrick. ‘If it’s a matter of principle, I have my own principles. I’m definitely not going to have a conversation with a woman
who’s destroyed our friendship.’

Patrick’s old friend Sammy began to cry. He patted him on the
shoulder and walked out of the room.






©2012, John J. Gaynard






How to Buy my Novels Another Life and The Imitation of Patsy Burke

      

       

There's an apocryphal saying that the Eskimos have more than one hundred words for snow, while English has only a few. In the same way, the French have more than one hundred words for what most English speakers call simply "fucking" or "making love". Add to that another one hundred words for what the English describe as getting a hard-on, and you can understand why young Frenchmen, especially if they have only rudimentary English, find themselves severely constrained when chatting up women in Dublin, London or New York and have to revert to obscene hand gestures.




This was brought home to me by a review of Paul Léataud's Private Diary for 1935 in last week's Le Journal du Dimanche: Léataud, misanthrope érotomane.  The title of the diary is Journal Particulier (1935). This is a companion to Léautaud's private diary for 1933(*), in which he described all his sexual activity from that year. The object of his lovemaking in 1935 was  Marie Dormoy, the fiftyish librarian who typed up his manuscripts and who, whenever he saw her in the nude, Léautaud described as a "real Renoir". When Marie Dormoy was in the mood she was insatiable, but there were also times when she refused herself to Léataud and preferred to see other men. This sort of behavior understandably made him jealous.




The book review was by Bernard Pivot. Pivot is the Frenchman's Frenchman. Without coming across as an  airy-fairy intellectual, he used to host a literary program on television that sold more books than any other program in French history. He is an expert on wine, a knowledgeable football supporter, and a champion of French spelling. Every year he sponsors the now famous Dictée de Bernard Pivot--The Bernard Pivot Spelling Test. People in France of all ages and walks of life participate. The goal is to listen to a fiendishly difficult piece of writing as it is dictated, write it down while making as few mistakes as possible and then congregate in the nearest café to have a glass of pre-lunch Sancerre or Chablis.




Taking my inspiration from Pivot's spelling test, I would suggest that questions based on his review of Léautaud's erotic journal from 1935 be used as a French to English translation test. It should be given to all English or Irish people looking for a job at the European Commission in Brussels. Such a Léautud/Pivot translation test would sort out the word-by-word translator, possessed only of a puritan vocabulary, from the real interpreter, who became a master of his or her craft by putting in the hours with a native speaker between the sheets. 




First Question: How would you translate: "Paul Léautaud a 64 ans et il bande comme un bouc."? Please find three suggestions below, none of which is good enough.



Paul Léautaud is 64 years old and he gets it up like a goat?
At the age of 64, Paul Léautaud could still get a hard on a goat would have been proud of.
Paul Léautaud's cock, at the age of 64, was still as stiff as a ram's?


Second Question: "Marie Dormoy n'est pas d'humeur à la bagatelle, et elle aime de moins en moins ça."? Once again, you will find three suggestions below, to guide your thinking. Full marks will be given to any examinee who coins a new word for "bagatelle".


"Marie Dormoy is not in the mood to trifle and she likes that less and less"? (the official Google translation)
"Marie Dormoy doesn't feel like fucking, and her appetite for it is diminishing."?
"Marie Dormoy is more and more rarely in the mood for love."?


Third Question. Léautaud was a great cat lover, and often took all his cats with him on the train to see his mistress. Translate the following sentence: "Si, Léautaud--c'est bien le moins pour le bon Samaritain des matous--appelle un chat un chat, le mot qui revient le plus souvent dans son Journal Particulier est "soupçon". Three suggestions which are not quite good enough are given below.



If Léautaud calls a cat a cat--the least that can be expected from the kittie's Good Samaritan, the word that comes back the most in the Secret Diary is "un soupçon". 
If Léautaud, as a man who was known as the Good Samaritan of Cats, is not afraid to call a pussy a pussy, the word he uses most often in his sex diary is "a little bit".
Living up to his reputation as the Cat's Good Samaritan, was never one to avoid pussy, but the word he used most often in his private diary was "suspicion".



If you would like to have a go at translating the whole of Pivot's review, or just reading it, it can be found at:
http://www.lejdd.fr/Chroniques/Bernard-Pivot/Bernard-Pivot-504747/



(*) The book cover at the top of post is of Léataud's 1993 diary.

Before I start my review of Guillaume Thouroude's book, "Voyage au pays des travellers (Irlande, début du XXIème Siècle)" which came out a few weeks ago, I have to confess that my novel The Imitation of Patsy Burke (*) does nothing, on the face of it, to enhance the reputation of Irish travelers.




Guillaume Thouroude is a fascinating person in his own right. In some of the French comments on his book there is as much about his own history as about what he has written. His first job was as a chimney sweep and he has recently been working on his doctoral thesis at Queen's University Belfast, the subject being a generic approach to French-language travel writing. His popular blog, aptly titled "The Wise Man's Precarity" can be found at: http://laprecaritedusage.blog.lemonde.fr/. I read in one of his latest posts that he handed in his thesis a few days ago.




I am not a wide reader of travel writing, apart from the work of V.S. Naipaul, the odd book by Paul Theroux or Tobias Smollett's Travels Through France and Italy, so I don't know if the way Guillaume Thouroude places himself inside the story is original. However, I did find it refreshing, even when he describes the problems of digesting a very full Irish breakfast, while wondering whether the Traveller pub in which he had eaten it had chosen to poison him to stop him from asking more questions.



The title of Guillaume Thouroude's book can be interpreted in more ways than one. The voyage is one to the land of the Travelers, but to a land which the travelers can no longer call their own, where bona fide Irish nomads hide from "civilization" as if they were native peoples going deeper into the Amazon rain forest to avoid contact with the settled people, their opinion of whom hasn't changed much since Patricia McCarthy, a social worker with the Dublin Committee of the Traveling People, said (***) that settled people were viewed as "...cold and hard-hearted, (people who) murder their wives and enemies with impunity, have an inordinate amount of wealth and barely conceal homicidal tendencies towards Travelers".




The book is organised as a piece of "Candide-style" research, with field trips to places like Smithfield Market or Dunsink Lane in Dublin, to well-off Travelers who have converted to Protestantism in the North and to Rathkeale, a village in County Limerick that has a large Irish Traveler population. Wherever he went, Thouroude documents his attempts to talk to the travellers and the disappointing outcomes: the polite, but eery, silence or paranoia he encountered. Today's Irish travelers are so traumatized by the way they're  depicted every week of the year in Ireland's local newspapers, the Sun newspaper in England, or on television programs such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in the UK, that they now refuse to have contact with any person remotely similar to a journalist or who is carrying a camera.



Thouroude describes Traveler reactions to Eamon Dillon's 2006 book, "The Outsiders--Exposing the Secretive World of Ireland's Travelers', which was overtly hostile to them and went into sensational detail only about the very criminal element among them. Dillon's book is described as an extension of the hatchet he regularly takes to the Travelers in that fine example of the Irish gutter press, The Sunday World. Thouroude mentions that even the Irish Times's comments about the Traveler's are nearly always biased.



Thouroude sets his quest to encounter and understand the travellers in the whole academic domain of travel writing. His insightful comments on nomadism in other parts of the world, and how it has been studied, show both why people cling to the travelling way of life, that settled people find crazy or  criminal, and how little has been done in Ireland by way of academic study of its own peoples.



Thouroude starts, as any good travel writer would, by seeking out the academic literature. He found very little of it. Studies of the Travelers in the South of the island are done differently to studies of Travelers in the North, which respect English ethnographic practice.  Probably the most complete academic resource for study of the Traveling People in Ireland is The Irish Travelling People Collection at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. While expressing thanks for being able to use it, Thouroude points out that since Aileen L'Amie retired from the University of Ulster in 1998, very little has been done to organise recent material received into subject categories or to mine the material for what it is really worth.





By sharing with the reader his doubts and fears, and the prejudices of his university educated Irish friends against the Travelers, Thouroude probably tells us as much about the troubles of the travellers as if he had been able to talk to core travelers, not just the people at the edges of the community, who have sometimes dipped their toes into the way of life of the settled community before deciding on a half-way house sort of life paid for by the State. Some of the people who make a living from the Irish government by running centres that are supposed to help travellers, Thouroude also found to be very reticent about sharing information that would help an outsider to understand them better. Many times in the book, you see him wondering if he has been given an important piece of knowledge about the Travellers or it is just another example of obfuscation.



We see Thouroude's reactions to the lack of even the most basic knowledge about the travellers. Where do they come from? Why have idle suppositions about the languages and dialects they speak not been challenged? Are Gammon and Cant really two different languages, or two dialects of the same language, and is it true that travellers who speak Gammon and Cant live at opposite ends of a halting site, when they have to camp together, and totally refuse intermarriage? My feeling when I closed the book was, "OK, Thouroude has done a fine and attaching piece of work, now there is another book waiting to be written, based on the pointers he has given."



Thouroude hides none of his misgivings about his capacity as an outsider to get inside the world of the Travelers, or even to understand the significance of anything happening under his nose. He doesn't hide the fear he often felt as he observed or tried to approach people in Dunsink Lane, in Dublin, where they set up camp as a result of being ousted from places where they traditionally congregated in Dublin, before the time of the Celtic Tiger, in the Docks area of Dublin or when he found some very hostile reactions to his questions in Rathkeale.


Ireland is not alone in Northern Europe in having indigenous nomads, distinct from the Gypsies or the Roms who have settled in Hungary, Romania or in the Czech Republic. As Sharon Gmelch pointed out (**), Sweden has its Resande people, the Norwegians have the Taters, the Dutch the Woonwagenbewoners and the Scottish also have their Travellers.  





As I read Thouroude's books, the words of Nan, the Irish traveling woman(**) who was spurned by her daughter came back to me, 'Our Lord traveled before we ever travelled, and He wasn't ashamed of his mother.'



When Nan traveled the roads in the 60s and the 70s, some of her worst moments were in Galway, where a gang of stone throwing youths killed one of her children and brain-damaged another. But she also found many kind people in the West, a great percentage of them even poorer than the travelers themselves. In those days traveling, getting odd jobs, selling pots and pans from door to door, made more economic sense than slaving on the land and not being able to feed your children. Nan told of times when travelers took pity on poor day laborers tied to a farm or farmer, and gave them fish they had caught or other food they had begged. Nan also describes how, when Travelers turned up in a village, some cute settled people decided it was the right time to rob the wealthier farmers who looked down on them. It was the Travelers who got blamed for ripping more weight of carrots or potatoes out of fields than they'd ever have been able to carry, never mind eat.



Nan's and Guillaume Thouroude's stories show that the Kingdom of the Traveling People in Ireland has many rooms. While some of them are part of the core group, nomads who have been indigenous to Ireland for probably at least a couple of thousand years, there are others, who don't speak Gammon or Cant and who probably took to the roads after Cromwell's destruction in the late 1640s and the Great Famine between 1845 and 1852. 




As Ireland got richer, many types of traveler flocked to the cities and towns, in a way similar to how former nomads today flock to the slums of Nairobi, Lagos or New Delhi. When their traditional livelihoods disappeared, they found it was possible to make a living there out of recycling the stuff that richer people threw away. 




In 1981, in the Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies(***), Maev-Ann Wrench wrote, in a an article titled, "The Travelling People--Racialism in Ireland", 'When Irish society was predominantly rural the travellers, while they might have been viewed with suspicion, had a definite and useful role. As itinerant tinsmiths, chimney sweeps, horse dealers and casual laborers they were an accepted part of rural Ireland. At the end of WWII, there were fewer than fifteen travelling families in the Dublin area. Now, there are hundreds.'



Those hundreds have now become thousands and, as Guillaume Thouroude shows in his excellent book,  they are still no better tolerated, understood or respected.




(*) The Imitation of Patsy Burke tells the story of the violent recent years of a sculptor whose Irish traveler parents moved to England and settled down. Through that combined miracle of the English educational system known as the 11-plus and the Grammar School cum boarding school, Burke acquired a veneer of civilization that allowed him to "pass" as a well-educated Englishman. He went to art school in London and met a young Jewish woman, who had been at the same school, but who had never come out as Jewish. Burke falls in love with her, goes to art school, becomes an up and coming member of the Britart movement, and then, when he is spurned by the woman he loves, he goes to live in Paris where he quickly becomes successful.




In Paris, Patsy Burke move too far away from the basic traveller philosophy: never get into a fight based on ideology or ideals or any other thing that’s not solid enough to help you get a square meal for yourself and your children. As a protest agains the way the Catholic Church protected the paedophiles in its breast, Burke sculpts an obscene Jesus Statue, that quickly becomes infamous. But the way the statue is used by paedophile priests in the Catholic Church rebounds on him and the deeply religious, even mystic ideals he'd imbibed as a member of the traveling community.




Irish travelers are made up of some of the most interesting and nicest people you'll ever meet, but Patsy Burke reverts to the ways of the worst knackers Ireland has ever seen: drinking, fighting, capable of killing a man for the slightest affront. As a famous artist, the French establishment indulges him too far. Eventually Burke’s drinking to excess, womanising and intemperate outbursts whenever he is drunk, and his tendency to turn himself into a raging, bare knuckle-fighting bull in the most dangerous bars in Paris and consort with the worst type of prostitute tries the patience of all the good people who try to save him from himself. He finds himself all but alone to struggle with his demons and he gets involved in a murder. 




(**) See Sharon Gmelch's "Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman"

(***) The article was published as part of The Crane Bag, volume 5, no. 1, 1981 and collected in "The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies," (1982), Dublin, Blackwater press. Patricia McCarthy's comment was included in that article.

Pierre Assouline is a monument of French literature. I could also have written that, "Pierre Assouline is a monument TO French Literature". He runs one of France's best literary blogs, La République des livres. He writes novels in his own right. He is an expert on subjects as wide apart as the travails of French writers who collaborated with the Germans during WWII, or the legendary photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. And he is, with no doubt in my mind, the world's foremost expert on the father of Maigret, Georges Simenon. His definitive biography of Simenon was translated into English as Simenon: A Biography
back in 1997.




There has been a revival of interest in Simenon over the past year. The Le Monde newspaper brought out a 30-volume (three novels per volume) edition of his Maigret novels, edited and with forewords by Assouline. Now, an Omnibus Edition of "Simenon's Romans durs - Simenon's "hard novels" (often known in English as his "psychological novels") is being produced, in six volumes*, with about one thousand pages per flexible volume. I am a sucker for anything to to with Simenon. I read through the French original of Assouline's one-thousand page biography during a rainy weekend in Normandy, many years ago. I will probably buy all six volumes of the "romans durs" and add them to Le Monde's editions of the Maigret novels, there to join in my shelves all the other Simenon collections I've acquired down the years.




In this morning's edition of Le Journal du Dimanche, Marie-Laure Delorme has an excellent interview with Pierre Assouline, to coincide with the publication of the "romans durs", in which Assouline says, "Simenon never talked of himself as a writer, only as a novelist because, like Beckett, that's all he was any good for (bon qu'à ça). I admire in Simenon the fact that he knew his limits. He knew the point to which he could go beyond his limits. He never tried to do what he couldn't do. That's what he called "excavating his furrow" (creuser son sillon)."




If anybody can think of a better English translation of "creuser son sillon", in this context, I'll be glad to hear from you.




Here are some more excerpts:




Marie-Laure Delorme (MLD): Have the Maigret novels eclipsed the rest of Simenon's oeuvre?




Pierre Assouline (PA): The Maigret novels still eclipse the rest of his work, but not as much as they used to. For many people, Simenon is only an author of police procedurals. He wrote four hundred books. 70 of them are Maigret novels, but while some of them contain a murder investigation, in others there is very little police work. Simenon didn't have a lot of respect for his Maigret novels. He referred to the time he spent writing them as a way of getting his breath back (note from John Gaynard: between the writing of his more serious novels) . But Simenon liked reading crime novels. He read Hammett, Chandler and McBain.




MLD: What is meant by the term "hard novels"?




PA: What are known as "the hard novels" or "novels of fate", are all the non-Maigret novels. Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Jules Romains' Men Of Good Will are all high peaks of fiction (montagnes romanesques). The "hard novels" of Simenon could be sold under the label "The Human Comedy". To recommend one of Simenon's hard novels to a person, you have to know that person well. Everything can be found in Simenon. It is black (noir) from beginning to end. Simenon's oeuvre is one of tragedy, where redemption is difficult to find. He had a special place in his heart for The Little Saint, because it was the only optimistic book he ever wrote...










MLD: What is it that made Simenon a great writer?




PA: A literary masterpiece (chef d'oeuvre) explains what is happening to you better than you can do yourself. Simenon's genius is that he can talk to you without ever calling you into question. He helps you to accede immediately to what is universal. You can find that in Proust, but with him it's more difficult: you need to go beyond what many readers interpret as snobbery. There's no fat in Simenon. You're immediately gnawing at the bone. What does he write about? Love, hate, envy, jealousy, shame... His novels are all structured in the same way, like a Greek tragedy. In my opinion, you can find everything in the Bible. We've invented nothing new. What you can't find in the Bible you can find in Shakespeare's plays. Anything else is a bonus, and the "anything else" is Simenon. I love Proust and Virginia Woolf with a passion. But, with the Bible, Shakespeare and Simenon you have access to the whole palette of human feelings.




* There may be some confusion in my understanding of the number of volumes eventually published. The Friends of Georges Simenon website, Les amis de Georges Simenon, mentions eight volumes,  

Oh, to be in Dublin, now that April's here!





I just received the most recent edition of Courant d'Eire, the electronic newsletter associated with the Paris-based Irish Eyes Magazine. I saw some news in there that will bring joy to the heart of any and every person interested in French and Irish literature: the above mentioned festival. I followed the link from Courant d'Eire to the Alliance Française site in Ireland and I excerpted from it (including the heavy use of bold type) all you'll need to know to attend the festival. Here it is:

Now a significant date in Dublin’s annual literary calendar, The Franco-Irish Literary Festival is ready for its 13th edition, enriching the tradition that led to Dublin’s nomination as a UNESCO City of Literature. Who could have predicted such longevity for the original modest gathering of authors from two different cultures but sharing the same love of literature? 

The event will take place in the Coach House in Dublin Castle on the 20th and 21st and in the   Alliance Française on 22nd of April 2012. 

The festival’s round-table discussions have in the past proved to be interesting and engaging events where, in an informal setting, writers from different cultures with different languages can exchange experiences and ideas. Public interviews of individual writers and cafés littérairesalso help us to become more familiar with the invited writers. There are also readings to complete the experience. The popular Literary Brunch will take place once again in the Alliance Française on Sunday morning to close the festival. 

On this occasion, we will host Irish and French writers and also one each from Canada (Québec) and Germany. Authors include Salim Bachi (France), Kevin Barry (Ireland), Marie-Claire Blais (Québec), Pat Boran (Ireland), René de Ceccatty (France), Colette Fellous (France), Cécile Guilbert (France), Seamus Heaney (Ireland), Jennifer Johnston (Ireland), Claire Keegan (Ireland), Michael Kleeberg (Germany), Mathieu Lindon (France), Siobhán Mannion (Ireland), Thomas McCarthy (Ireland), Belinda McKeon (Ireland), Darach Ó Scolaí (Ireland), Chantal Thomas (France), Sabine Wespieser (France). 

The Strange Michael Folmer Affair opens in 2003 in the sordid back streets and poor pubs around London's infamous King's Cross railway station, and with the murder of a prostitute who was down on her luck even before she met the man who would kill her. Her body is found in the same street as Jack the Ripper’s first murder victim back in 1888. The autopsy shows that the woman was murdered and defiled in a way nearly identical to the way the Ripper treated his first victim. The killing of this prostitute is followed by a mocking letter to the London police force. Eight fingerprints are found on the letter and they all correspond to the prints of a man who had been hanged in 1958, for committing at least one copycat Jack the Ripper slaying, and possibly more.



After a second grisly murder, which takes place on the same day of the calendar year as the original Jack the Ripper’s second crime, the team of detectives under Detective Chief Inspector Michael Gregory finds itself faced with a race against time. They know that the new Ripper will kill on the same days as the man he is copying, and leave the bodies in the same London streets, but in spite of the way they manage to lock down London on the dates in question they can’t stop the 2003 Ripper from dropping the bodies wherever he wishes. While investigating three threads to the dilemma--the original Ripper murders, the alias and previous form of the man who killed between the end of WWII and his execution in 1958, and the murders that are happening nearly in front of their eye--they have to deal with a rumor-mongering press that could stymie the investigation. Two of their biggest challenges are to overcome their own skepticism about repeat crimes and the foolproofness of scientific evidence.



The author of The Strange Michael Folmer Affair is John Rigbey, a retired London CID officer. This novel was first published in 2008. The area around King’s Cross and Saint Pancras railway stations has now been redeveloped and bears no resemblance to what it was in 2003, but as soon as I began to read Rigbey’s book I found the sights and smells of King’s Cross as I first saw the broken-down area in the 1970s. Rigbey does the same job of description for London in 1888, where the pubs, the drunken prostitutes, the destitute working men and their cheap lodging houses nearly jump out of the pages at you.




Some of Rigbey’s descriptions of London in the late 19th century reminded me of Patrick Suskind’s rendering of medieval Paris in his 1985 novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, where you are torn between how well the odors of poverty in the City are described and your own revulsion at what is being described. The plotting of the novel is never less than sure-footed and the storytelling is powerful. Rigbey’s experience as a London policeman is evident throughout, both in his description of the policemen and women caught up in the investigation, while trying to exercise a modicum of control over their own lives, and his sympathy for the hapless people who are both the victims and perpetrators of crime. There were still a few typos in the Kindle version I read, but don’t let them put you off this masterful novel.