NEEDLING

Non-stop for two days. Not a second to write whatever, anything down. Yesterday, we fell out of bed after ten or so, had some coffee, and visited Claire’s favorite bookstore, la librairie Tschann on boulevard Montparnasse, where I bought several books.

For lack of anything interesting to say, here’s a list:

“Le Roman de Monsieur Molière,” by Mikhaïl Boulgakow;
“Je Suis Né,” by George Perec;
“Les Armoires Chinoises,” & “Mon Voyage en Amérique,” by Blaise Cendrars—one of my favorite authors—and finally;
The first tome of the complete works of Panaït Istrati, Claire’s favorite author, a Romanian who wrote in French—not such an uncommon thing: Eugene Ionesco and Tristan Tzara for example, are two other such Romanian authors who wrote in French, and whom I’ve really enjoyed at one of several points in my little life.

That should give me a few things to do upon my return to Austin.

Later on in the day, after a couple of beers at Les Deux Folies in Belleville, we went by one of my favorite bookstores next to the hospital St. Louis in the 10th arrondissement, la librairie l’Introuvable. I’ve actually rarely been inside this particular bookstore, because his hours of operations are difficult to understand, and he’s rarely ever open, or at least almost never whenever I walked by there, which was often since I lived just a few blocks away. However, when he is open, he has one of the best selection of Polar novels I’ve ever seen. And not only that, he seems to know every single volume on his book shelves, and is always ready to answer any question, make as many suggestions as you want, or discuss such and such authors with you.

François, Claire, and myself were on our way to Anne-Marie’s place of employment on rue Paradis on the other side of Gare de l’Est. She teaches linguistics at the university. François works on another campus at the Arab Department library. There’s strike going on right now, which I’m not going go into because it doesn’t really concern me, and it’s political anyway, and I’m not actually sure I understand what it’s about, but François is taking part in it, and so are lots and lots of students and teachers and other university workers. Matter fact, school at the university level has been drastically interrupted in the last few days throughout the Parisian region. So François asked Anne-Marie if he could come over and make a little speech to her students, so that he could explain to them why they should take part in the strike. Blablabla, we were on our way from Belleville walking towards la rue de la Grange aux Belles, and I wanted to walk by l’Introuvable bookstore, knowing full well that it would be closed anyway. Miracle … fate thus had me walking into the store to purchase some more books.

I said to the owner of the bookstore, after showing a book by Chester Himes to François, “Excuse me, could you make a couple of suggestions. I’m looking for some Polar written by French authors. For example, I like Jean-Patrick Manchette, but I’ve read everything by him … I also like Jean-Bernard Pouy ...”
He went into thinking mode, started looking at his bookshelves all the while asking me if I’d read such and such author, and so on. He picked out three authors I haven’t read: Daniel Picouly, Pierre Siniac, and Dominique Manotti.

At one point, he did pick out a French translation of an American book.

“I heard you talking about Chester Himes, here’s another Black-American author, Walter Mosley …”
“Yeah, I know him … but actually I live in Austin, Texas, so I’m not really looking for American books. Preferably, I like books which take place in Paris, this way when I’m in Austin, I can feel as if I’m walking through the streets of Paris.”
“Of course, you don’t want translations of American books.”
“No.”

If you’re ever in that neighborhood, and that you like that genre of books … I like the French words better: Polar, or Noir, because they don’t limit the genre to one specific kind of story … Detective Novels, the English version I guess of what the genre is, doesn’t give proper credit to the potential of where such stories can go. Like Film Noir, there needs not be a detective story, which personally if not one of the classics gets on my nerves, but there needs to be a large grey cloud of evil and nastiness over the whole story. Shadows covering dark alleys … Hard Boil pulp fiction is a better term of what I’m a fan of, though not quite exactly it. The French Polar writers were inspired almost entirely by American post-war pop culture, and the American films of the 40’s and 50’s, but then they took the genre and ran off with it, made it their own, made it very French. Manchette was one of the best.