“My friends, keep your old friends”

Diderot, a French philosopher of the 18th, laments the loss of his old dressing gown, which he wore around the house for casual clothing. He bought an expensive new one, but regrets his old comfortable one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot

He wrote :

“My friends, keep your old friends”

I like it : it’s the contrary of what you’ll read everywhere! The whole world seems to associate success and freedom to speed, goals and ignoring of the old and the past. I like to think the other way.

I love the tools here.

• Starting from scratch is maybe less effective than adding a room to the existing house.
• We sometimes don’t need to “replace” things, but use what we comfortably have.

–

I found the Diderot story in a French Chantal Thomas book, “Café Vivre”, made of two or three pages chronicles.

It’s a good book if you learn French : texts are short, and full of frenchness, I suppose. Curiosity, a way of inventing slow moments to contemplate the world, traveling, culture, It’s a happy book !

She talks about Patti Smith and Roland Barthes, Hokusai, Sade and Saint Patrick, about New York city in spring, old houses on the French seashore, swimming and Canada.

–

What old friends will you keep?

–

Thanks for reading!

Postmodern Short Stories in America?

Hmm Postmodern Short Stories in America? That’s a good title, right?

I always loved short stories of the USA, and in my life I read a lot of these – I remember Faulkner, Salinger, Carver, but also Fitzgerald, William Goyen, Flannery O’Connor, Edith Wharton. I bought and didn’t read K. A. Porter, and in English – which is difficult for me – W. Cather, or more Raymond Carver…

Finishing the David Lodge autobiography, I found these three names : Brautigan, Barthelme and Coover, as postmodernists. Puzzled, because I know Brautigan a bit, I googled and found this subject : Postmodern Short Stories in America.

So, I did a little search and found this (I bolded the bold) : “The history of the short story in mid-twentieth century America continues to be marked by a tension between the twin fictional poles of realism and romance, the story of accurate ‘reportage’ and the story of fantasy and imagination.”

Thus :

“The short story also encourages a reflexive self-consciousness about literary form, a propensity to build into the story a commentary on itself – and a mingling of genres and registers.”

THIS is interesting, right?

Because, what is “postmodernism”, after all, now we’re… after that?

Wikipedia is a messy mess, look what I’ve found :

Skepticism, irony, or rejection of the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.

Let’s dig :

• John Barth is said parodic, “The process of making a novel is the content, more or less.”
• Donald Barthelme, “…experimental, he avoids traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly unrelated detail. Subverting the reader’s expectations.”
• Robert Coover, magic realism, self-referentiality.
• William H. Gass, the stylist : “His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical.”

 

See why I’m intrigued?

Do you know some of them?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Books! Awards! Jump!

Goncourt, Renaudot, Fémina : it’s the literary prizes week in France. Books! Awards!

As soon as the names come up, herds of obedient consumers rush to buy the books – which are sold out, of course.

I wonder why. Do people want the book because they don’t know how to choose a story by themselves? Do they just pavlovically trigger-happy-obey to primary medias impulse? Is it something like mimetic desire (Google it, but it’s the way a kid want “this” red toy-car just because someone wants it)?

I don’t know, but I have a solution.

If you consider that getting awarded means it’s a good book, just move a little back, to last year, or ten years ago, whatever. What if the Pulitzer of 2014 STAYED good?

You’ll find plenty more good infos on the web about each book. You’ll find a pocket book version. You’ll find it cheaper on Craiglist, and you’ll disobey a little to cattle movements. Little pleasure.

Have a nice day with a book!

“I’ll put this one on my SOB (Stack of Books)”

Librarians, booksellers, booklovers : we all know the SOB, the Stack of Books (to read).

In French we call it the PAL (la pile à lire).

You know this, right? You just bought a book, or you’re just being stung by a subject (thus you picked up some books in your shelves).

• It can be a couple of books, but it can be two dozens, or a whole shelf, yeeeesh.
• It can be a real stack, or a stack… in your mind.
• You can read them in order, or begin all of them all – so there!
• While you attack your stack, you’ll probably add more books on it.

Yes, it’s sisyphian.

It leads me to this (if it’s a pattern) : Don’t we all have other “stacks”? Things to do? Things to think about (when I have a little time alone)? Things to talk about when I’m with this person? Clothes (to iron, obviously)? Methods? Recipes? How do we choose into a stack ?

Isn’t a stack a list made real?…

Here’s my current one. I invite you to post yours in the comments 🙂

Have a nice day!

The reader who doesn’t read

I know plenty of book lovers, but this Type is rare…

The reader who doesn’t read.

There’s this man I see in the bookstore twice a week or more. He subscribed to many weekly magazines and wants to buy every book with good reviews. Let’s say : between 5 and 10 books a week.

Little by little, by what he was saying, I figured it out : this guy hasn’t got the time, didn’t take the time to read any of them. None. It is like a compulsive need to get everything’s “good” for critics.

I have a friend who lived for a few years with a man who was the same : he kept buying books and CDs, but she told me he doesn’t love to read, he never reads, he just pile dozens and dozens of them.

So one could wonder. Let’s try :

1. Compulsive buying disorder.
2. A fear to miss something.
3. A way to say “I’ll read these later, when I’m retired”.
4. Imposture (“I want to look like an intellectual”).
5. A vicarious will to look like someone he knows.
6. A way to hide a big “something is missing in my life”.

 

In a way, in each case, I find so much sadness. Like a big rush, a big energy to do something, but unable to really plug it to reality, to brain. Big appetite, but no acumen…

This Type uses a pattern. What would be this pattern in other areas? Fakery, impostureness? What shades do we find, between doing this just on surface, like a cheater, a fake, or doing it with a good will, deeper, a bit like “being lost, in fact, in the emptiness”. Compulsive liars, wrong artistic projects…

A reader who never reads, awwwee poor man!

 

Thanks for… reading!

 

 

 

P. Chamoiseau Quote : “For whom has no questions…

For whom has no questions, books remains sleeping treasures. The breadth of the question one asks to oneself, one applies to the world, nourishes the amplitude of response. If the question exists, everything begins to answer.

“Pour celui qui n’a pas de questions, les livres demeurent des trésors endormis. L’ampleur de la question que l’on se pose à soi, que l’on applique au monde, nourrit les amplitudes de la réponse. Si la question existe, tout se met à répondre”.

Patrick Chamoiseau

 

Photo : Mona Kuhn

Instant Kharma (and books)

This morning I decided to offer a dozen books to the free-books-box of the TGV train station of Lille.

With a little advance on my schedule I went into a second hand bookstore where I found in an awe a great book about one of the most interesting photographer of today : Jeff Wall.

A pearl! Thank you, my good Norwegian Angel!

What I read

Didi-Huberman is a great thinker for images. Aperçues is a great short texts books. Full of ideas and subtleties.

A fabulous, clever book about Miles Davis. Puts me in fields I don’t know well (Jazz). Plenty of great patterns about management, intentions, creativity…

One of the many books written by C. Juliet. Diaries : introvert curious intelligent writer.

Hustvedt has a storytelling talent. Novel writer, she talks about science and psychology, about thinking living watching, mixing her life with science nuggets.

Kundera because you have to go back to him from time to time. Irony. Hair splitting cleverness.

Koolhas because architects have a great way to think about invention and civilization.

A Taschen about impressionism. Cheap and gorgeous.

Contre Culture : a dictionary of exploring ideas in culture : music arts photos…

Julie Manet wrote her diary : a teen within poets ans painters in the 19th. Just adorable.

An old French intellectual wrote a little book about how all is a failure. Obviously I had to read it.

A little book about Kupka a forgotten painter.

A ferocious mess about how the world is crazy.

A “made in Belgium” book make by a great spirit I met. Could be translated like “Fuck it I dare!”. Self help… the French way.

Finishing Manet‘s biography. The first modern painter. An infinity of great ideas and patterns.

A hungry French clever book about everything.

A great (Belgian) portal about the greatest French philosopher of the century.

Thanks for reading!

Books on a Bench : #serveyourself #📚

We have more and more “Boîtes à dons” (donations boxes) and other Books-Boxes in the city, but I prefer give mine on bus benches, or in parks. I let a note : “Free, serve yourself”.

Usually if I have to come back there (after errands for example) I see people exploring the pile or I see… nothing.

Have a good day!

JP

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Two Thinkers Letters & Friendship : #Gide & #Valéry

Some friendships don’t need any oath.

It’s just there.

These days I’m happy because I found the best thinker I could imagine.

Paul Valéry (1871-1945) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Val%C3%A9ry – a French poet, essayist and philosopher.

For me, he’s even stronger than Nietzsche!

In France, he’s known as a poet. That’s all…

Thus, I’m devouring his notebooks, his essays, his poetry : thousands of pages.

This guy is a genius! You can find his notebooks on the web. If you need seeds…

And, well, I read also books from André Gide (1869-1951) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Gide

Hence, I discovered they were friends.

I just ordered and got an almost 1000 pages book of their correspondence.

I was so glad to get it! As I was opening the box tonight, I thought : “Two of the best thinkers of their time!”…

…which I found on the back cover of the book :

“This friendship is a dream come true : two of the most gifted and most clever writers of their generation met at the beginning of their careers”.

A friendship.

Nothing, absolutely nothing (they were very different) could work loose or detach this friendship.

Valéry says it’s not about literature or common or complementary tastes. It was the faculty to follow each other, to instantly adapt, to guess each other with happiness…

In an article of Le Monde, the French newspaper, I found this :

“Leur dialogue de dandys supérieurs porte sur les moyens et la manière, jamais sur les principes et les fins”.

“Their dandy dialog is always about the means and the ways, never on the principles and the ends”.

Most of you will get it, right?

 

Well, that’s all, dear. I just wanted to share!

Thanks for reading!

Jean-Pascal

 

“…and nothing is more certain than an inclination which exist in itself, without any argument, without common feelings or ideas – like with no reason”.

P. Valéry

 

 

 

Thinker’s Diary : Words Snack

What’s near your bed?

• A good novel you’re keenly reading every evening
• A pile of cuddly comforting comics (Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes)
• A magazine in your comfort zone (movies, classical music, food, (or knives and fast cars?))

 

The “Print Disease” is when you HAVE to read what’s around

If like me you have this illness (printed words feed you), you need to have fast light things near your pillow. Like a snack of words, right? Just in case of insomnia, for example…

There are many ways to have “short things”. Very easy novels. Old comics. Archipelago philosophy. Quotes collection. Poetry. Correspondence books…

I have all these, and diaries.

Thinkers, writers, photographers, directors, politics? Many personalities wrote their diary. Sometimes it’s published, even after author’s death.

As a book unearther, I have the tendency to pick up everything diary-ish. It’s a superpower, in a way : you just open the author’s mind and see him/her think.

 

Yesterday I was with Gide (1869-1951), reading some diary pages of 1941. I found this (my translation) :

 

An opinion begins to bother me as soon as I can take advantage of it.

 

I had to stop reading, opened mouth.

“What?!”

That was obvious to me – so why being bothered by? What if he was right, and where, and how, and why? Here you go : you have two hours.

 

The danger of having words snacks near your bed (even Peanuts : Charlie Brown is a pretty good philosopher) is to find interesting things in the middle of the night. Therefore “Hello insomnia I embrace you” : you’ll never go back to sleep. So there!

 

Have a nice week-end!

Jean-Pascal

 

 

Conversation, Essays, Eyes

You’re alone in the quiet, at home. You grab a book.

If it’s a novel, it’s perfect : you get into a dream. You see things…

Tonight I wanted a conversation instead. So I picked a book from Siri Hustvedt (The Shaking Woman) and a glass of Chardonnay.

I opened the book in the middle of random (it’s something I love to do) and read great pages about how a new born baby and his mother stare at each other. This deep each other’s look means so much, so many things happen. A bond is building. An intelligence is blooming…

(I remember I did this, with Lili and Eliette, my daughters)

Hustvedt explains that if a mother talks to a baby and waits a little, the baby answers – in his own… voice.

An essay is like having a part of a conversation. The part where you just listen. Just choose your partner well! It’s OK – even if you miss the partner’s questions, the slow ping-pong of spirits.

And the eyes…

I wrote this. Now I’m back to my chair. Bidou the cat on me knees. Hi Siri!

Conversation.

Thanks for reading!

Drawn up Ping Pong : Slow Motion Conversation

Stand up Blogging : “What begins commands” & Lost Branches

There are many ways to blog. You can write a novel chapter by chapter, or you can “react” to news in the world, or comment fashion, or new trends in food. You’re good.

My article talks about bloggers who needs ideas and inspiration. This is what I try to do, and I like this way, because it puts your brain in alert. You glean…

Gleaning in loop : the “Gathering Seashells” Type

Finder Keeper Sharer, “What is my blog about?”

Blogger’s Words Horniness & consequences

You read a magazine, you talk with a friend, you got and email, you have a walk around the block, you bake, or you take a shower : Bim! (this is the sound of an idea coming to you).

Bim!

(The symbol is a bulb over your head, right?)

You hurry to sit in front of your computer. You click on “Write”, while your brain is already organizing things…

What begins commands. We all have our patterns, and when you start you more or less know where you’re going.

My tool here is :

Dial : Beware of “What begins commands”, because it’s too easy. You follow one path but :

1. you could lose branch points
2. you could ignore good bypasses
3. your steam can hide possibilities.

Lever : Stand up, for blog’s sake! Finish your article if you’re too excited, but at one point, don’t publish. Stand up. I mean for real! Stand up and go away. Open a window. Wash a cup and a fork. Pet a cat. Breathe.

 

 

Flaubert, the French author who wrote Madame Bovary, had “un gueuloir”, a “scream room”. He was walking and yelling his texts in this room. It’s crazy? Not that much. You’ll have to find your own way. Just do something else while you think about your article or your page. Maybe print it and take a pen. You’ll find ideas, “furthers”, new branches, words, style nuggets, inversions, interesting bypasses, etc.

OK, go back writing now, you fool 😅

Thanks for reading!

 

Essays & Acknowledgments (& Types)

I read much more essays than novels, therefore I read introductions, prefaces, and… acknowledgments. I read them, because the list – and the way the author presents the list – tells something.

There are Types :

1. The assistant (who helped to gather or organize informations)
2. The editor (who brought energy and I-believe-in-yous)
3. The colleague (who pointed out problems in the text or provided ideas for chapters)
4. The spouse (for his/her unfailing support)
5. The friend (who helped blossoming with his/her constant questions)
6. The friend (and his/her potential enthusiasm)
7. The influencer
8. The predecessor (“this essay takes over from…”)
9. The ignorant (towards whom (oh crap, is this even English?) the author had to explain, therefore helped to think “readers”)
10. The collaborator (who provided elements or parts of the essay)
11. The spellchecker (can be the friend or the spouse, ha)
12. The leader (who asked the author to write for a bigger project, for example)
13. The muse (just being him/her – radioactive influence)
14. The Obi Wan Kenobi figure (a master who can propel you with a single sentence)

 

Who else?

 

Do you have any of these for your… blog? Would you need one? Why?

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

“We read to know we are not alone”

“We read to know we are not alone”

C. S. Lewis

 

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“Write a book!” & fiddlesticks answers

We all know someone who has new ideas AND who is great in thinking & expressing them. Thus we harass her/him this way : “Write a book!“.

More, these thinkers are exhausting, because along the conversations you have with them, you realize (and they too – pardon my French) that they have not one book but two or three books ready in their stubborn head.

But it’s worse, because life is life, people around are not very supportive, one run out of gas, one is empty, tired, parked or/and forgotten. Therefore no writing and no books – even if you whisper “Fiddlesticks!” to their busy bee ear, bzz bzz…

I just discovered “Fiddlesticks” (I suppose it sounds vintage and probably southern, right?) and I like it so much I’ll put it everywhere in this blog for a few days, sorryyy…

– Fiddlesticks!

 

What is worse indeed?

• The person who really deadly WANTS to write a book and never writes it?
• The person who writes a book, which is published and nobody buys it?
• The person who has success with a published book – which is crap?
• Or a thinker full of ideas and visions, who verbalizes them when you’re present, and writes nothing, and will die with the whole package?

 

Endearing, but “people should come to their own realizations”…

When do you begin?

 

Have a nice day!

“Le Dénicheur” is the Hit Uponer

I work in a bookstore. Yesterday a guy asked me where to find books about dance. I showed him a little shelf under a table.

– Ah ah, he said in a smile, well hidden, right?
– Yes, I answered, but not the way you think it is.

You can show books in a bookstore in many ways.

1. Big news are on front displays
2. New books are on tables
3. The “regularly stocked books” are on shelves
4. What booksellers put on shelves under a table are those books which people come to buy

 

Yes of course, Medieval poetry, or books about dance are not in the top selling lists. But books about wedding or competitive exams training are good sells and they ARE under tables. People don’t come along in a bookstore hit uponing like “Oh, a book about how to become a customs officer, I’m suddenly interested!”. Wedding organization books are all the same : you come in order to find these. Therefore it’s not useful to put it at eye-level height. Voilà.

With this man, we talked about les dénicheurs.

A nest is called in France “un nid”. Thus “un dénicheur” is someone who removes birds (or eggs) from a nest. As it’s pretty rare to have this strange activity, for the verb “dénicher” (it could be : “To denest”), we French all understand “To hit upon”, “To unearth”.

Here we are!

In a store, are you the Mainstream Type, following marketing and medias, buying best sellers and prized titles, overpresented books under spotlights? Or are you the Unearthing Type, called also the Hit Uponer, forgotten corners prone, exploring the deserted alleys of Anthropology, International Situationism or Avant-Garde Jazz?

Probably both, right?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

What I read

What do I read? What am I reading? I don’t know. Not novels in any case. Not anymore. Shortly, I’d say they fall off my hands – because of “I feel the author behind the story” thing – but that’s another story.

 

Nietzsche had a great mustache, right? This dictionary is like an infinite reservoir of ideas. I open it at a random page from time to time. Even if you’re not a scholar, but just a seeds seeker. I don’t need more than five minutes to find a brilliant idea.

This Goya‘s biography is perfect. It’s written by a great Spanish writer. I learn a lot about painting, Spain in 18th Century, Art, cities, history, and… a great personality!… Another universe is good to explore from time to time.

Billeter wrote these three little essays about translations. It’s a field I really always love to dig in. It’s about Chinese-French translations, and it’s full of delightful subtleties… This “Art” requires to activate thin and precise tools of the mind…

Arthur Miller went to China in the eighties to direct of one of his plays (Death of a Salesman). He wrote his diary about all of it. The play is considered one of the best American plays of the XXth Century, and the book is really delicious : intelligence at work. Cultural differences, directing a play, meeting professionals…

The Pléiade of Paul Valéry is exhausting. 1700 pages (and it’s a half of his “Notebooks”!) of good ideas (sorted by topics : eros, poetry, conscience, arts, etc). Brief notes, ideas, concepts, etc. This poet was a huge thinker. He amazes me with his original intelligence. Each paragraph (OK : almost) has the power to drop you in a pool of ideas. He taught me this huge thing : “To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.” (think : labels, photography, poetry, invention, serendipity, refining intelligence… : see?).

Paul Jorion is a Belgian economist, and he has big common sense. This diary is very, very smart. The kind of bulblights which give smiles.

OK I’m fond of Proust, but sometimes you don’t want to plunge into the “too great” In Search of the Lost Time. I just pick up these essays, then. Lighter. Ideas everywhere, like seeds in the wind. This man had many brains. He is exhausting, generous, and you have to run (to try) to follow. This is a great experience though. You’ll know very few humans in your real life capable of that generosity : enlarging–activating your brain.

Koolhaas is a architect-thinker. This should just be enough to make you salivate, right?

Yalom (the psychiatrist) wrote a few novels, but here it’s an essay. NO mercy for anybody : he talks “at his level”. It’s wise, hard, and exhilarating!

I have this little book about Caillebotte, an impressionist painter, for me a genius of light. If you want to study a good example of “what is new” in Art, try Manet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Caillebotte

François Jullien is a French philosopher. Obsessed by China (again?!) he invented concepts based on the fertile differences between occident and this country. I wrote many times about him : The Propensity of Things – for example. He’s a tools provider.

Reading the diary of Gide is like watching a brain at work. He sees, he writes, he travels, he thinks, wonders, doubts. This diary is like… adorable, dense, and always surprising.

Duras was a great French writer, with a real strange gorgeous style. I love her excesses. She’s weird, paradoxical and marvellous. She talks here about her life, her choices.

Deleuze is always not far from my shelves. For me he is the best French philosopher, full of ideas, new concepts and a bit of searchy craziness and virtuosity of the mind.

Charles Juliet is a French writer. He’s dark but quiet, calm, precise, shy, humble. His diaries are like hugging you – with acuteness. He also is a tracker (of himself, of other’s tropisms too).

Edward Said astonished me with this idea of the “Late Style” – what great artists do when they are after maturity. It’s GREAT and the preface ditto (can I say that?).

Bryson borrowed a car, travelled across the USA, wrote this little book about “everything OMG” he saw. It’s hilarious!

Roustang is an hypnotherapist and wrote this whole book about the contrary of every self help book (which all say : move your ass). “Know how to wait”. Hmmm?

 

Thanks for… reading!

Benefits of annotating your books

Wood pencils. 5B is my preferred grading. It’s gorgeous bold.

Annotating. What for?

1. It’s easier to find back interesting ideas after a while, OK.
2. It’s interesting to discover, if you reread the book, that the ideas you underlined before were maybe not “that” interesting now, and that you did not notice some greater ones in the middle. The book didn’t change. You did.
3. Each annotation is like a micro time-capsule which someone (your kids? an unknown person?) will find one day in the future.
4. Annotating shuts off the solemnity, putting instantly the book out of the wrong-way-up idea of collecting perfect objects, making the book just what it should be : a text container, a tank of ideas , and certainly not a “precious thing”. Putting some life into it.
5. Linking some parts of the books with your experience, with other books.
6. Finding the “big picture” – at least linked to your own life.

 

I have my own code. I circle a A, it’s an idea for an article. I slice a square, it means I have to find the book quoted here. Etc.

What about you?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Minimalistic Bookporn : when you read prefaces only

There are 2 types of houses : with books, or empty of.

Imagine you have a couple of days in an apartment full of books.

Of course, you have your own books in your backpack. These are like air, or food, right?

 

One strangeodd way of spending a few hours alone in this place is :

Read prefaces only

 

Pick up books in a random way – be fast and casual, like a little girl with daisies.

Read prefaces only. Mais oui !

– What for, mister Becausewhat?

1. It can bring you a urge desire to read the rest of the book
2. You’ll discover authors you don’t know
3. If a preface is written by another person, your brain will try to understand this link between both
4. It’s knowledge feast & debauchery
5. It’ll provide seeds for your hungry mind
6. You’ll associate this place with exploration and pleasure (and?)
7. It’s a good way to lose yourself (and you need to, right?)
8. Discovery (of fields you ignore)
9. Maps & new ways of thinking, drawing paths
10. Seeds for subsequent conversations with the books owner
11. Inspiration (take notes, silly)
12. Extending your knowledge

 

Voilà! What did you find? How did you choose? Did you ask for indications from your host – for the day after? What happened then?

Thanks for reading! Have a nice week-end!

 

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