Every bookstore is the result of its clientele

One day I saw an interview of a celeb journalist and TV show presenter, a person I like very much, directing good shows and a pretty good interviewer herself. She was asked why TV was so full of trash. I saw her face changing, she was really upset, then answered something very surprising : TV broadcasts were so bad because “It’s what the audience wants!”.

She continued on this mode, telling something like “If people were watching operas, literature documentaries and great movie classics, all trash TV would broadcast in front of nobody, then would disappear for ever, then we would have great TV everywhere!”.

Her anger was noticeable, and that’s why I remembered it clearly. When smart people complain, you listen. Then, you wonder, right?

Because of course this all seems to be too good to be true, and it’s easy to counterattack. People watch trash TV because it’s prepared and broadcasted to them, etc.

 

So, there’s a balance here to find. After counterattack I have to admit that we all have a responsibility here, nonetheless. It’s like when I hear someone complaining about dense traffic… from a car. I have to answer to this person that he is a brick of it.

In some countries, if you are stuck into a traffic jam, you get a ticket! Which, in a way, is fair : you’re a part of it, it’s your fault!

OK, there’s a balance to find…

 

I work in a bookstore, and I’m confronted with this “structure”. The axiom could be :

“Every bookstore is the result of its clientele”.

You can be appalled, but it’s true. For a part, at least.

Yeah, there are other dials to watch. You need to have serious booksellers on board. And you often have to sell tons of “best sellers” on end displays… to be able to present entire tables of great books (your choice) in the store. Etc.

In a serious bookstore, all kind of books are bought then presented on tables and shelves. Employees, then, watch (weekly) closely the sales, then books are reordered. Never sold volumes (for months) are a bit dirty or torn, and therefore sent back to editors, and this is it : little by little, the customers, by the way they act and buy, model and form the store.

You just need a year or so to adjust, understand and change your store to adapt to your clientele. If you have an architecture school a street away, your architecture department will grow, you’ll have rare books, theory books and even anthropology books for the thinkers around. A visitor will pass and will be in a awe : “Oh wow, what a great architecture choice you have!”. Yessss it’s thanks to the bookstore employee, but mainly because he found the clientele, too. It’s a dance, a tango.

There’s a balance to find.

There’s a split of responsibilities in front of trash TV, in traffic jams, in poor supplied bookstores. Suppliers, of course, but audience too.

Do you meet this structure too, in your job, in your life? Don’t hesitate to comment, here.

 

We have an old idiom in France, about couples : “L’homme propose, la femme dispose”. It’s something like “the man proposes doings, the woman makes the choice” – I’m sorry for the translation, it’s almost impossible to do it, but you got me, right? Tango.

 

Thanks for reading!

(Really sorry for my English today. Have a nice day!)

 

La Pléiade are great French books

The “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade” is a French series of books published by Gallimard. As says Wikipedia, the “entry into the Pléiade” is considered a major sign of recognition for an author in France (it’s pretty rare to reach this when you’re alive), though most of the catalog (more than 800 titles) is made of classics, from Jane Austen to William Faulkner, Joyce, Goethe, Kundera or Tanizaki.

La Pléiade offers high quality appearance : leather bound, gold lettering, and a small format which makes them look like small bibles. “The use of bible paper allows the books to contain a high number of pages; it is common for a Pléiade book to contain at least 1500”. I think you have a similar collection in the USA, called Library of America…

Many people collect these books, which, most of the times, are never opened. Each one costs around $70 : they stay on the shelves, sometimes behind a display case…

You can see them like precious untouched books to show you’re wealthy, or you can also choose to consider they are solid pocket practical books. I bought some on eBay for $9.99 : months of bliss! They are a bit torn, but who cares : they are compact, they smell good, they are generous, each book stays open when you let it go of, etc.

I took a few pictures. On the last one you see my pretty cool Ernst Jünger box, a diary written in France during WWII…

Have a nice day!

 

 

Intimacy as “reading a book together” : Chronicle 10

Today I learned an english word : “Suitor“. In French we say “Un prétendant”… isn’t it a bit strange?

Immediately I wondered : is it always masculine? What would be a “female suitor”? A suitress? Nahhh…

Big Love (capitals, please) and Passion, we need to cross this in life, right? But when you become an adult you’re more interested by spending quality time together. You are quieter, you share, you think about this thing which is called : INTIMACY.

Tonight I thought about this, thanks to a New York Times article, a letter from a couple : the husband was explaining that his wife was ill and tired, just out of hospital, so he began to read books to her.

THAT is intimacy, that is love, the love I love.

Maybe I’m too French romantic, but watching an Art Book with the woman I love has been a totally tender and satisfying experience. Weirdly, I would remember these moments more than sex.

You don’t need 142 suitors. Just look for a man who is able to have a ten hours conversation with you (seems like ten minutes, right?). Just look for a girl who will REALLY be interested in watching some Art book you have on your shelves, asking, talking, smiling, turning the pages, initiating conversations, etc, etc, etc.

You know that kind of intimacy, right?

Thanks for reading!

 

Pictures : Poumeyrol

Crime Novels are boring, Mr Whodidit, so what?

Crime Novels are boring, because there’s a murder or many murders (boring), a policeman or an investigator (boring), and at the end, we’re told who did it (boring).

There’s a trick I wrote about : read the end. Now you know Mr Whodidit, then read the book normally, and have fun with all the tricks the author uses to mislead you.

Well, writers have many levers to move, and they do it. Why? To debore the bored reader, right?

• Show who did it at the beginning (Columbo)
• Two investigators or more
• More violence, or comedy
• Change rhythm : get slow, or hysterical
• Weird detective (Twin Peaks)
• More scientific, political, etc (find a field)
• Research in a foreign place or country
• Trick (Silence of the Lambs : a killer helps to find a killer, haha)
• More estheticism, more complexity (Blow Up)
• Disappearance of an element (no body, no murder, no detective, no solution, etc)

Each attempts seems boring to me, but sometimes is works, Okeyyy. That’s the purpose (and the dial of this article) in poetry, advertising, photography, writing, etc :

How do you recover a bored audience?

Thanks for reading!

JP

 

 

#Books #Bag

“You and your books!”, a story of Words & Maps

25 years ago a friend of mine suddenly attacked me with this phrase : “You and your books!” – “Toi et tes livres!”.

It was very clear : I spent too much of my time reading books (instead, probably, of “living my life”, meeting people, thinking by myself, talking to her, who knows?).

I was a bit shocked. I thought about it for a few days then I wrote her a letter (no email, in the eighties). My main idea, in this answer, was that books were not papernothing, but more like a meeting with a person who spent months or even years to elaborate it.

You don’t need to have a Master Degree in Linguistics to know that our link to the world is made of “events, and how we judge them” (past, now or future), and for that purpose, we use… words. At times, I wonder if books were not just a way to draw maps for my life…

Each book can be seen as a possible “conversation” with the author? Or… an inner travel?

Thanks for reading!

Proust & les Hirondelles : Chronicle 4

Absolutely no cunning could prevent a man
from being smashed against his dreams

 

I’m French, I’m sorry : my english is clumsy these days…

Have you ever visited the school you were in as a very little child, now you’re an adult? Among all the memories and the heartbeats you feel, you also find that… everything around is very little, right? You’re taller, now… you’re different. Perspective.

Today is the “braderie” in the city of La Madeleine. We love braderies in the North of France. It’s like your US garage sales, all along some streets : today was about 1.200 exhibitors (or displayers, how to say that?). I took a cool picture of motorbikes toys, you like it?

I’ve been asked one day about my “goals in life“. I have been very disturbed by this question, which is so… all about efficiency. I couldn’t think of a goal, even one. I feel like Cioran, in shock and in anger, after being asked about what he was “preparing”. If a French says he has “goals” in life, he sounds ridiculously Action Man, that’s it. The idea itself is a nightmare – at least when you’re more than 22 years old. I don’t want to be efficient, I just try to live, right? Dreams, maybe… Dreams, OK.

Absolutely no cunning could… etc…

I’m too lazy to find it, but the stupidest quote ever is something like “Give yourself a very high goal, then maybe you’ll reach a lower but good stage”. Of course there’s a more accurate one, saying that while you try to do that, you fail choosing the right path to achievement, you stay blind to feedbacks, etc. Typical Wrong Way Up. Well yes, these are words only, I know.

I have no goal, not one. It could be “to be happy” or “to be creative” or “to be a better human” or “to help others”, but I already failed in all these fields, obviously! And who will feed my cat, while I John Wayne?

If you want some fun, though, Google Image “Goals Quotes”. Plenty of orders in capitals. Like : <<DON’T LET ANYTHING STOP YOU FROM REACHING YOUR GOAL>>. Ohlalalaa, my French eyes are hurt! I need a beer, I think.

So I found a goal : stay zen in front of bullsh*t 🙂

It’s when the weather change (warmer air, higher sun, sudden showers) than you can have a rush of childhood memories. Or teenhood, say. Suddenly it’s HERE, you feel the same feeling you had in your mother’s arms, or at school when you were loving some shy redhead in silence, or when you were gathering interesting rocks under open sky. The idea of memories in Madeleines de Proust come from the food, but also from a smell (freshly cut grass, chocolate cake baking, little pot of white glue in kindergarten) or a sound (of swallows flying hunting between streets, or the familiar engine’s roar of you’re father’s car), but also from the light in the air, the clouds, a coming thunderstorm…

Marguerite Duras says somewhere that she can NOT write if the bed is not made. Strange thing is : I never forgot that, because… that’s true.

I bought a Raymond Carver book, “The American Chekhov”, as they say. I know Carver’s work pretty well, but I never read him in English. Good exercise. I can’t resist to a blurb on a book saying “The (Italian, Canadian, whatever country you choose) Chekhov”…

They have something in common, that’s right : they watch meticulously our little renunciations, our microscopic failures, our rushes never said, our words, spoken and immediately regretted, our love silliness, our boredom. But it’s not “laments”. It’s more like : “This is it, brother human, and it not even THAT dramatic”.

I found a rose, there. Is a rose, is a rose, Mrs Stein. Look where she is (“une rose”) :

In the shades of break-up moods, you have the yellow poison of jealousy, the dark corners of loneliness, the twinge of uncertainty and many more. The invisible bitterness of “having being loved and then not” is sometimes like swimming against the cold current of a long deep river.

In the shades of illness… Oh, another time, OK?

You can read books (or see a therapist, it depends on how you’re made), self help or philosophy : you’ll read everywhere that you have to find your happiness inside you, right? Again? I “have to”? The capitalized ORDER quote is <<BE HAPPY AND SMILE>>. Yes, each time, you want to punch the author in the face! Bim! Paf! Pouf!

Give birth to a dancing star from the chaos you have within

Strange star, but that could be my Nietzsche goal, maybe… Well, see?

Thanks for reading! Merci!

When to NOT pay attention is an Art for decision making

Alain, a French philosopher, says that to pay attention is an noble art, and that to NOT pay attention is a royal art. What does that mean?

All our senses swallow the world around us, continuously. We are besieged! We try to make decisions with an army of thoughts. But the man who slept, says Alain, awakes as a new man, and is ready to decide in a second.

Daniel Kahneman asks himself in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” : How works intuition? What is fast or slow when we have to decide something? Do we have to be rational all the time?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a few books which can enrich that research. Again it’s about decision making. What is luck, and how to use it? How to adapt? What is the “illusion of control”? What if you decide things in half a second, and how could it be the best choice?

This article is just a way of adding a few bricks to this pattern, this “dial” I exposed in this blog : the dance or weaving with opposite forces, the need to consider what could seem illogical (even the “if you hesitate between two things, choose both”), the oblique way of decision making, to use the propensity of things, or to be a more complete person when you use your both sides. Even casually, yes.

The champion golf player, does he analyse and measure things like a computer, or does he simply become empty, ready, and hit? Where is the Royal Art of suddenly not paying attention?

Thanks for reading!

 

Loaf & Book : The Feng Shui of Things

The loaf, on the table, is upside down. Do you turn it up? Yes you do.

The book, on the shelf, is upside down. Do you turn it up? Yes too.

Why?

OK, it’s meant to be on the correct side. And it’s ugly to watch. Or you “feel” the bread and the book despair, you want to save them from uncomfortability.

Feng shui is about “harmonizing everyone with the surrounding environment”. It’s interesting to explore, though I mainly relate to my instinct “does this look right or not?” instead of << rules >>.

Most of the time, the rules of Feng shui corroborate my instinct. For example : when you lie in your bed, ready to sleep, you HAVE to be able to see the door, right? You could say it’s only logical but you know it’s not only logical. You feel it. Like the poor bread loaf, gasping for help like a dying tortoise it is.

• En aparté, from aside, I would like to tell you something :
• In French we do not have a word for a loaf (well, there’s a word, une miche (pronounce mish), but we don’t use it), we say “un pain” (a bread).
• For a slice of bread, we have “une tartine” (say tarteen), but we often say “du pain”.
• So, well, we miss a loaf word, but you miss a tartine word too. Pffff…
• Instead of “spreading something of a slice of bread”, we say the verb : tartiner.

Harmony, balance, l’équilibre. It’s probably an old instinct we have, right? Or is it an Interesting Braid between instinct and logic?

Tool : Bwaaah you got it, right? Where will you apply that? Things and places, but also? What could be a Feng shui of poetry? Of photography?

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : loudesvilles_

 

 

“There’s hope, but not for us” #Kafka

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Marguerite Duras – #quote

“Soudain, tout d’un coup, elle sait, elle sait qu’il ne la comprendra jamais, qu’il lui manque la capacité de comprendre une telle perversité. Et il ne pourra jamais aller assez vite pour l’attraper”.

 

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn’t understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her”.

 

Marguerite Duras

Shup the YOUYOU Horn – main tool of #nonviolentcommunication

You probably heard about Nonviolent Communication. It’s very useful and, if I was the president, I would make a law to teach this at school ! You’ll find dozens of books about this, and you should buy one.

Jacques Salomé is a French author (I recommend “If Only I’d Listen to Myself”, it’s his best book and it’s probably the only one translated in English) who says that when we argue (with colleagues, with your parents, with your wife), you bomb the other with definitions :

• You are so lazy!
• You never loved me!
• You are like your mother!
• You always forget your socks everywhere in the house!
• You are such a liar!
• You You You!

See? In an argument, we say “You”, we define each other. Of course, this is mean, violent, useless and stupid. It’s “sticking words to a person”, so what?

Salomé call it “La Communication Klaxon” (because in French You is Tu, tututuuuu, like a horn). Stop youyouing the other ones. Use this :

Tool :

It’s simple. Say “I” instead of “You”. Talk about your own feelings, and tell why you’re hurt, learn how to argue with elegance, be constructive and helpful. It’s a matter of kindness and benevolence. That’s all. And that’s a good key!

Love. Thanks for reading!

Present Participles and “Stream of Consciousness” – Part I #Faulkner #translation

English language, from France, has a funny way to use present participles. When we study it, we notice the easy and constant use of present participles, the “ings”.

• I saw my friend eating his dinner
• I say nothing, just watching her fixing up her looks

Etc. We also have a “participe présent” in French, and we can use it your way, but we don’t. We would say here “J’ai vu mon ami manger son dîner/I saw my friend eat his dinner”. Using the present participle here would be understandable but a bit weird.

Joyce and Faulkner invented a great “literature tool” in English, which is :

Putting a microphone in a character’s head instead of describing the thoughts.

It’s the “Stream of Consciousness“, an interior monologue, an interesting narrative mode (sometimes with no punctuation), making a river of words – we don’t punctuate when we think, right?).

Put a mic in a head? OK : example with Joyce (Ulysses) :

a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmlock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early

See? Faulkner uses this often in The Sound and the Fury.

French translators used, then, our present participles to build the French text. They could have “fixed it” our way, but they kept it. It is OK to translate my first example with “J’ai vu mon ami mangeant son dîner”. It’s just different.

It’s why I think that reading these translated novels in French provides us un surplus, a gain, a spare of poetry. Interior monologue weaved with present participles, it’s a river of sensations, a transmission (it’s written), a surgespurt of feelings, actions (“ing”) and thoughts.

In part II, I’ll tell how French writers used this idea to invent “another French”, full of marvels and spells…

Spell, in French, is a good word, a fantastic word : Sortilège…

Thanks for reading !

Enregistrer

#books for #seeds

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Shelf for Seeds, a new way to arrange your books

You know that there are entire books about “how to arrange your bookshelves”. Alphabetically, authors’s names, centuries, genres and themes, companies…

I used to casually group things. Books about movies. Pocket books by collection. All books about an author I love (Chekhov, Bernhard, Faulkner or Jünger). Art books. Etc.

As I write this blog, I just had the idea of picking up some books from all these shelves and to regroup them in an empty bookshelf, called : “Books of many Seeds”.

Many books stays out of this, it’s easy : novels, or books digging “one concept”. In fact, only a few books (three shelves by now) are able to live there. They are the “Books of many seeds”. If you need an idea to write an article, just pickchoose one.

Have a nice day !

#eluard

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Don’t think about the color “Blue” for a minute…

ONE

Let’s imagine I dislike George Michael. I hate his music. So here I am building a web page about that : “I hate GM !”. I write daily articles about everything I hate, his nose, his voice, his life, etc.

Until I realize I hate George Michael and I’m thinking about him all day long. I harvest things for my blog. I hunt. I spit words. I am obsessed by someone I don’t want to think about. Smart !

TWO

Don’t think about the color “Blue” for a minute…

Mmmhhh ?…

THREE

As I’m constantly reading slices of books, I one day read something in my sofa, from Nietzsche, and two hours later, in triangles of sun (see picture below), from André Suares (I will find the quotes soon and put it there). Both were talking about people banning sex from their life. They were both noticing that when you do that, you have like a black hole in the center of your brain, thinking about sex constantly.

Work for a Temperance Movement, become an activist : you will be in a position where you talk about… alcohol and sex constantly !

Tool :

If you hate George, just don’t pay attention to him. Breathe. If you want to think about the color blue, think of it, it’s not that dramatic. If you want to have a drink, just relax and have a glass of wine. If you need peace, don’t build a block castle : listen to some Royksopp and dance with what’s around. Dialog. Or not. Solemn drama or dolphin casualness ?

I suggest Coming Home.

The Flight Excites the Hunter

 

 

“I miss something, but… I don’t know what it is…”

“I miss something, but… I don’t know what it is…”

I think you feel something in the deepest of your chest when you read this phrase. Right ? If you don’t, you can go watch your Christmas tree or go to the gym, you’re good.

The Abandonment Syndrome is in almost everyone of us. You don’t have to be an orphan, being abused, or to have alcoholic parents to suffer this pain ! for this incompleteness, It’s a matter of shades, though…

Mistrust, sabotage behaviors, need of control, excessive moods, etc, and this “hole” you have in your heart, sometimes.

“Quelque chose me manque, mais je ne sais pas quoi…”

Yes, it’s a matter of shades (degrees, levels, what should I say ?). It can be a very little feeling of loneliness if you can’t share your enthusiasm after a great (French) movie, to a dangerous nervous breakdown leading you to suicide or hospital.

I realised a bit late in my life that the biggest joy and happiness were brought to me when I found a mate with whom I could SHARE (which is the key of all this, for myself) things, ideas, glee and jubilation.

This became clearly a flaw. I filled my abandonment with sharing, sharing, sharing. So much that I could fall in love with a brain “made of the same wood” (and it became like an orgy of sparkling ideas each time I talked with this person). When this person is away, you feel like a lonely fool, with all your sharing stuff bouncing in your head, cf this Inner Gold article.

Levers :

Growing as an adult, I found out there are two ways to deal with abandonment, incompleteness.

1/ Never surrender. Find your mates. Share. Be happy. Life is short. Cherish them. It can be from a distant Facebook friend you will never meet to the biggest love of your life, the person you would marry. Yes it’s a hunt. Yes it’s a terrific source of bliss !

2/ Surrender. Know the irony of life. Recognize the pain you have in your heart. Know it. Dance with it. You’re alone, you’re alone forever. Play as if you were happy. Be happy. Be alone happy, even if you’re in family. This loneliness can be tamed.

You know how I know that ? I watched older people around me. The intelligent, the sparkling ones. They explore the world and its culture, Art, they dig, deeply, they love it ! They don’t need to share. They are all alone. They like it like that. Some of them told me the secret : the hole and the pain, it’s here. They learned how to not care, and not let things get to them.

Enregistrer

Let’s speak

The River

The river I have under my tongue,
Unimaginable water, my little boat,
And curtains lowered, let’s speak.

Sudden Absurdity Syndrome

We all are the same : we need to be busy !

Some of us work so much, though, that they don’t have to think about it. Some of us just watch anything on TV, très bien, très bien. In France they say “Je me vide la tête” (“I empty my head”), which is probably necessary, right ?

But yeah, passion, it happens. You plunge into a universe and you let you got eaten by it.

Some people can collect anything around a pop group (Beatles, Yes, Dylan ?) or a historic event (from la Révolution Française to Alamo or Gettysburg), a composer (Puccinophilia ?). Good and interesting way to keep you busy !

To build a “things” collection is also a perfect activity. You explore, you read, you collect, you compare, you write in forums,  you watch your collection : coins or stamps, forks/knives/spoons (pick one), old magazines about cactus or guns. Even wine corks collecting works !

I used to collect stamps when I was a kid. It was merely a social thing : some kids around me were doing the same : sharing was cool ! The stamps… well…

One day, I watched my stamps, in three big albums. And in one second, plop, all of it became absurd – I realised what I was doing : collecting colored paper rectangles with teeth shapes on the border, normally used to send letters. Not much.

Every human activity, you’re right, can be reducted to absurdity : just watch what it is in reality. After all, soccer is made of two dozens men in shorts running on grass after a balloon…

Tool/Dial :

Pray to be spared by the feeling of realising what you’re doing. If you manage to keep it out of your brain, you’re safe. You’ll be comforted by people on elegant forums who do the same. Combinations, there, are very cool : “Chairs and Coffee”, or “Knives and Daisies”, whatever. It seems cool, no ? Good !

Beware, because if you really watch the eye of people you meet, you will probably see the absurdity sparkling in it. People are polite, but they laugh inside, and this sarcastic invisible light could really contaminate you :

“Oh you collect spoooons, that’s sooooo greaaaat !” (hahaha – or wine corks, show me all of them).

(of course, this happens because these people don’t really understand WHY collecting this shit is interesting for you : stamps are beautifully engraved, etc). A knife, to cut things. WTF.

The Sudden Absurdity Syndrome is when the bubble explodes. You realise where you are, on this planet, collecting “screwdrivers and lemon juice”; you like to take and share pictures of this, and, even if the screwdrivers are perfectly crafted in Titanium 2.0, it plopped in your head (“WTF am I doing ?”) and you’re done. You’re done. You’re megadone.

The same blindness is in everyone of us for other things, love, job, sports. I watched, a few years ago, a kitesurfing guy, at the beach. He was good ! But later I saw him sitting on the sand, like stunned. He was probably just tired of jumping in the air over the sea like that, but I imagined the Sudden Absurdity Syndrome. “WTF am I doing ?”, etc…

Our Sysiphian condition is infinite.

For myself…

After all, what am I doing here ? Collecting shelves of books I won’t (for the most part) read, and here, blogging ideas as “tools”, in dozens of articles nobody read…