Bonjour à toutes et à tous,
As most of you know, your intrepid reporter decamped for Paris last year and . . . never returned. Bref, the idea for this Substack is quite simple: I will read (and sometimes watch) things in French, and then I’m going to write about them. This weekend, I’ll be publishing a 6,000 (!) word review of Vernon Subutex, Volume One, a magnificent novel published about ten years ago by the wickedly gifted Virginie Despentes. Next week, I plan to institute a weeklyish ‘Movie Night’—for my première séance, I’ll be writing about L.627 (1992), a gritty and hilarious policier directed by Bertrand Tavernier.
You have probably noticed that neither of these works are particularly recent, and that is by design. Generally speaking, I’ll be writing about the French literary world, but this won’t primarily be a place to cover ‘literary news’, whatever the hell that is. Par exemple, while I am extremely interested in the horse trading that goes on behind the scenes at the Academie Goncourt, which awards France’s highest literary prize, there are plenty of people who cover that sort of thing, and do so much better than I can.
Instead, I hope to provide a highly biased and passionate guide to things in French that I think are worth reading, with particular attention to what makes the French itself worth reading in the original. While I know I won’t make converts of you all, learning to read in another language has been one of the greatest joys of my adult life, and I hope Paris, City of Lit will also serve as an inspiration for those who want to make the plunge. To that end, I’ll be publishing a quick niveau de français (level of French) at the beginning of each review, and I will endeavor to review works and provide suggestions for those just starting out. (If you want more ideas or tips, please reach out to me here or at pariscityoflit@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you! In either English or French, bien sûr.)
FWIW, when learning to read in French, I did not start with Le Petit Prince, and I don’t think you need to, either. While it is a lot of work, I think it’s best to begin with adult works because we’re all, you know . . . adults. The first novel I read in French was Hemingway’s Paris est une fête, which does make me a cliché, but as a book to get you started, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Although I will prioritize, especially at the outset, French works with easily accessible English translations—you’ll find links to both the French and English editions at the beginning of each review—I will occasionally write about works, especially new ones, which have not yet been translated. In the near future, for instance, I plan to write about Emmanuel Carrèrre’s V13, a profound and devastating work of non-fiction about the year-long trial of the men responsible for the November 2015 terrorist attack.
For the most part, I’ll be reviewing things in French, but occasionally I will review works in other languages if they seem relevant. I’m really looking forward, for instance, to reading This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, which unearths the riveting story of her family of pieds-noirs, the French colonists who lived in Algeria until independence. (History nerds will note that while Algeria was a French colony, many pieds-noirs moved to Algeria from other European countries, including Italy and Spain, to which I say . . . bien joué.)
Long term, I do have certain overambitious ideas about what this could become, but suffice to say that the point of this publication is to build a community of cool people who like books and history and, yes, Paris. Despite the triumph of globalization, I read an article recently that pointed out that intellectual life has never been more siloed by language—here in the capital, what I’ve noticed is that while there are plenty of French people who read works in English and pay attention to the Anglophone literary world, the reverse is less often the case.
Eventually, I do hope to publish material in French, including interviews with French writers, journalists, historians, and critics. (When I first starting reading French newspapers, I often went straight to the interviews, because the syntax and vocabulary is usually a bit easier.) If I’m lucky, perhaps I’ll even be able to occasionally host other writers—Substackers ou pas—who will cover books and films from a perspective undoubtedly more erudite than my own.
Which leads me to my last point: I’m still a beginner in French, and in France. While this Substack is not really going to be a diary of my daily life, I do hope it will serve as a kind of intellectual and cultural record of my journey here. Like any good beginner, I will inevitably make beaucoup d’erreurs, and so of course I welcome corrections (very good ones may merit publication), but above all I hope that you’ll engage with the work here, and with me. This thing will be a better thing if you make it your thing. Thanks so much for reading, and bienvenue à Paris, City of Lit!