The Best Christmas Gift

How odd it was on Thursday to hear that everyone we know in the U.S.A. was celebrating Thanksgiving, while here in Paris we heard nary a mention of turkey or pumpkin pie.

But we celebrated in our own way with our usual daily gratitude for our work, family, friends, and our lives together in Paris.

Moving on to Christmas: what is your favorite Christmas gift? I mean besides love, money and creativity—something that can be wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree.

For me, it’s always been books. Even as a child, getting a new book was bliss.

Last week, Richard and I and our nephew, Jonathan Edwards, went to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore one night to hear the American novelist, Percival Everett, read an excerpt from his novel. We’d heard him before at Antioch University in Los Angeles. But here in the bookstore, I could immediately buy one of his books.

After the reading I asked him to recommend where to begin. He suggested his comic novel, “I am Not Sidney Poitier.” Both Jonathan and I bought it, and I had the sad experience a few days ago of finishing it. Sad because the world Everett creates in this novel is so rich, so real, I didn’t want it to end. It is about the journey of a young black man, Not Sidney (yes, that is his name) from his childhood with a smart, unsentimental single mother who, through her investments, makes her son staggeringly rich. After a period of living with Ted Turner (and glimpses of Jane Fonda), Not Sidney embarks on a farcical stint at Morehouse College and a terrifying journey through the South where—okay, can’t give that away, can I?

The book is full of absurdity, from a Morehouse professor named Percival Everett who teaches the Philosophy of Nonsense to his earnest students, to Not Sidney's way of handling the cruelty of frat house hazing, which made me laugh so loud I had to run into the kitchen so I wouldn’t awaken Richard.

But wait—it’s more than his humor that makes this novel so brilliant. It’s the mild temperament and voice of the narrator. While people around him are behaving savagely or absurdly, he simply observes. (Think Candide.) And slowly it dawns on the reader that this is the most eloquent telling of how it might feel to be black in the U.S.A., at least in the redneck states, of anything I’ve read. (I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read James Baldwin’s work, but I’m going to get Giovanni’s Room next.)

Street art by Nice Art

But wait—it’s even greater than this. No one has put into words better than Marcel Proust the deepest purpose of reading. Here is what he wrote in a letter:

“It is one of the great and wonderful characteristics of good books…that for the author they may be called “conclusions” but for the reader “incitements”…That is the value of reading and also its inadequacy. To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.” As Alain de Botton writes in his book, How Proust Can Save Your Life, “Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.”

There was something about the surreal sensibility of this book that incited the first pages of a new long story (novella? novel? not sure). Inspiration: the greatest gift any book can give us. 

And with that, I want to recommend a few of the most inspiring books I’ve read in the past year. Who knows, one or two of these might inspire you, or someone for whom you're looking for a gift.

Fiction

• The Certificate by Isaac Bashevis Singer (This novel was written in Singer’s sixties and is closely autobiographical, the story of a young Jewish man who arrives in Warsaw from his small Polish village in 1922. He has romantic adventures with three young women while waiting to get his certificate to go to Palestine. This is brilliant writing, the kind of voice that’s so vivid you can’t stop reading. It’s out of print, so you may have to track it down through some online used book store like Abe Books.)

• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis. (I can’t improve on Virginia Woolf’s words in a letter to Roger Fry in which she wrote, “My great adventure is really Proust. Well—what remains to be written after that? …How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp.”)

• The Blue Fox by Sjon (Such a strange and mysterious story told by the Icelandic writer Sjon. It takes place in Iceland and links the destinies of a hunter/priest, a blue fox, a naturalist and a girl with Down syndrome in a tale about compassion. It is a book that seems carved out of ice; it’s minimalist, poetic, and told in a distinctively Scandinavian voice that reminded me of my Norwegian-American maternal grandfather, Julius Heimark’s way of telling a story, colloquial and as simple and straightforward as The Eddas.)

• Self-Portraits: Fictions by Frederic Tuten (Imagine a series of short stories that combine the sensibility of Luis Bunuel's films with Andre Breton's writing, and you'll be half-way to the flavor of this writer's work. The stories seem to be telling an autobiographical dream narrative, sometimes erotic, sometimes hilarious (laugh out loud), and always as close to poetry as fiction gets.)

• N-W by Zadie Smith (stream of consciousness narrative of four characters, Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan, in present-day London. It made me think of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This is one of those books that in the first few pages is slow to get going, then you are truly inside the characters in the most satisfying way, living their life minute by minute, including some surprises that you don't see coming.)

• This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz  (Interlinked stories about various women in the life of Yunior, a young Dominican-American man whose Don Juan ways end up breaking his own heart. Diaz’s genius is high voltage voice! You can’t put the book down.)

Street art by Miss-Tic

Poetry

• The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō (Seventeenth-century travel writing that chronicles the great Japanese haiku poet's journeys through Japan, interwoven with his poems and his Zen Buddhist vision of eternity in the sensory world around him.)
  

• The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (A free-verse epic poem that approaches the Massachusetts fishing town of Gloucester through its characters, its history, its ecosystem, and the poet’s inspired personal and mythical vision as well. It marked a new freer direction in American poetry. And strangely, it seemed to bring my own paternal ancestral history to life in me, though I haven’t lived in Massachusetts since I was three years old.) 

• The Iliad by Homer, both Robert Fagles' and Stephen Mitchell's translations  (The greatest epic poem ever written on war. My favorite part is always the way the gods and goddesses are characters as real as the humans.) 

Non-fiction

• The Goncourt Journals (1851-1870) (Two brothers, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, wrote down everything that happened in their literary and social circles during mid-nineteenth century life in Paris. Casual mention of conversations with Flaubert and Turgenieff spice it up. I loved reading in George Painter’s biography about Proust’s self-pity after he read these journals. Why didn’t he know that many interesting people? And then it dawned on him that he did. Proust spent the rest of his life writing about them.)    

• Robert Duncan, The H. D. Book (This is a strange, visionary book, part apprenticeship to his beloved poet idol, Hilda Doolittle, part visionary and poetic musing as befits a book about this great visionary poet.)

• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (The best writing I know about religious fundamentalism and its intrinsic domination of women, carried right to its ultimate end in the murder of the most clear-thinking, "disobedient" woman, the brother of these two Mormon brothers, and her baby.)

• Eels by James Prosek (An elegant book about the biology and mythology of this strange fish, from New Zealand to the Sargasso Sea, illustrated with beautiful etchings by the author. Most fascinating are the Maori legends about eels as guardians and monster-seducers.)

Street art by Fred Le Chevalier

Biography & Autobiography

• Marcel Proust A Biography by George D. Painter (A bookseller at Village Voice Bookshop (sob) lent me his copy. I marked it up with so many colored flags that I had to order a copy for myself, and transfer all the markers in order to have all these treasured facts close at hand.)

• The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon (One of the greatest works of Japanese literature, Shōnagon weaves short tales, longer ones, lists, and poems about her life as a gentlewoman in the 10th century Court of Empress Teishi in Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto). Fascinating for the way poetry, wit and okashi (that which delights) are a part of every aspect of life, and for the exquisite attention to sensory beauty, especially the clothes of both women and men.)

Your Answers for Marcel Proust

Kaaren honoring Proust with stargazers (our flower shop was out of cattleya)

Last Saturday we asked you to answer a Proust questionnaire. Here are the responses from those brave enough to play. We're delighted by your eloquence. As you'll recall, the questions were:

1. The main feature of my character

2. The quality that I desire in a man

3. The quality that I desire in a woman

4. What I appreciate most about my friends

5. My main fault

6. My preferred occupation

7. My dream of happiness

8. What would be my greatest misfortune

9. What I would like to be

10. The country in which I would like to live

11. The color I prefer

12. The flower I like

13. The bird which I prefer

14. My favorite authors in prose

15. My favorite poets

16. My favorite heroes in fiction

17. My favorite composers

18. My favorite painters

19. My heroes in real life

20. My heroines in history

21. My favorite names

22. What I hate most of all

23. Characters that I most despise

24. The military act that I value most

25. The reform that I admire most

26. The gift of nature that I would like to have

27. How I would like to die

28. My present state of mind

29. Faults that inspire the most indulgence in me

30. My motto

Street art by Tristan des Limbes

Walter Calahan

My answer:  Proust had to answer too many questions.

Susan Griffin

1. If I knew I would tell you. (which might indicate, openness, I suppose).  2. emotional insight.  3. emotional insight.  4. Their presence in every sense of the word.  5. Being late.  6. Writing.  7. Warm weather in good company or serene solitude.  8. I’m too superstitious to say it out loud.  9. I am what I’d like to be now. In another life, perhaps an actor.  10. Either where I am now, Berkeley, California, a country in its own right, or France.  11. Deep blue in the sky, turquoise in water, green around me outdoors, ochre on the walls inside, black or shades of purple to wear, skin and eyes in every available shade.  12. Cherry blossoms.  13. Hummingbirds (and sparrows and ravens).  14. Among so many, these come to mind:  Tolstoy, M. Proust, V. Woolf, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, John Berger, Michael Ondaatje, Joan Didion.  15. Again among so many, Sappho, Dickinson, Whitman,  Mallarmé, HD, WC Williams, Theodore Roethke, Rilke, Nelly Sachs, Adrienne Rich, Aime Cesaire,  Jacque Prévert, Paul Celan, Cavafy, Lucille Clifton, B.H. Fairchild.  16. Well, of course, Valjean in Les Miserables, and the narrator of In Search of Lost Time, Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse, Lady Dedlock in Bleak House.  17. Bach, Mozart, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Jelly Roll Morton, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald riffing on standards, Bob Marley,  Arvo Part.  18. Helen Frankenthaler, Claudia Bernardi, Basquiat, Morton Dimondstein (my adoptive father), Frida Kahlo, Rothko, Morris Graves, Lucian Freud, Eve Hesse, Alice Neel, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Titian, Cezanne, Suzanne Valadon,  Sonia Delaunay, Charlotte Salomon, unnamed Haitian”folk” painters.  19. Aung san Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Helen Caldicott, Rosa Parks, Barbara Lee, my friend, Jodie Evans.  20. Ninon de Lenclos, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells,  Eleanor Roosevelt, MLK, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rachel Carson.  21. Pilar, Pascal, Rachel, Dante.  22. Arrogance mixed with stupidity and cruelty (the first often leading to the latter).  23. Edward Cassaubon in Middlemarch,  though it’s harder to find absolute villains in good fiction than in real life; one can even sympathize with the ruthless Inspector Javert.  24. Liberating the concentration camps in WW II.  25. Universal Health Care.  26. Good health.  27. In my own bed surrounded by family and friends.  28. Anxious and happy alternating from moment to moment.  29. Being late.  30. The truth will set you free.

John Lennon by Jef Aerosol

John J. Heimark

1. The main feature of my character:  My character.  2. The quality that I desire in a man:  Honesty.  3. The quality that I desire in a woman:  Honesty.  4. What I appreciate most about my friends:  Sense of humor.  5. My main fault:  I am cheap.  6. My preferred occupation:  Masterbuilder.  7. My dream of happiness:  World peace.  8. What would be my greatest misfortune:  To lose a friend.  9. What I would like to be:  Loved.  10. The country in which I would like to live:  Brazil.  11. The color I prefer:  Navy blue.  12. The flower I like:  Bird of Paradise.  13. The bird which I prefer:  Peregrine Falcon.  14. My favorite authors in prose:  Prose is dull and tedious.  15. My favorite poets:  Kaaren Kitchell, Carl Sandburg….  16. My favorite heroes in fiction:  T.S.Garp.  17. My favorite composers:  Bach, John Lennon, Joe Ely…. 18. My favorite painters:  Michaelangelo, van Gogh, Terry Allen….  19. My heroes in real life:  My father, fire fighters, police officers….  20. My heroines in history:  Betsy Ross, Sue Heimark Dufern, Sandra Day O'Connor…. 21. My favorite names:  Allison, Veronica, Brice.  22. What I hate most of all:  Losing family.  23. Characters that I most despise:  Politicians….  24. The military act that I value most:  Desert Storm, 1991.  25. The reform that I admire most:  Cigarette smoking restrictions.  26. The gift of nature that I would like to have:  Public speaking, like my father has.  27. How I would like to die:  In my sleep when I am over 100 years of age.  28. My present state of mind:  Bliss.  29. Faults that inspire the most indulgence in me:  Good food.  30. My motto  "Attitude is everything." 

Dream or fortune, I will touch the moon 

Daniel Moore

Dear Paris Play:  I’m really sorry, I started out kind of Pataphysical, and ended up kind of metaphysical.

1. The main feature of my character: eyes that eye, nose that noses, mind that minds, heart that… harkens, and hopeful invisibility.  2. The quality that I desire in a man: If asleep, a dream bubble in 3D, if awake compassion and wisdom (or the same in both states).  3. The quality that I desire in a woman: Heartfelt enthusiasm and a laugh like falling water, light in the eyes that lights up other eyes.  4. What I appreciate most about my friends: Eyes that light up, lips that sing, limbs that generously extend & swing.  5. My main fault: Never quite there, however close, never too far, however far, AND an inability to take these exercises seriously, and yet, and yet….  6. My preferred occupation: There’s no limit in listening, opening up and the word horde flowing.  7. My dream of happiness: Everyone on fields of light, choirs in the clouds, lively spectrums from good minds.  8. What would be my greatest misfortune: To not think and know these things or be bereft of faith.  9. What I would like to be: A saint who flies through the air and lands where needed.  10. The country in which I would like to live: A country of flying saints and soft landings.  11. The color I prefer: I admit a great fondness for turquoise, especially when matched with silver.  12. The flower I like: One in the shape of a piano played with trilling runs and deep chords.  13. The bird that I prefer: The hoopoe, leader of the birds to the Great Simurgh, and of course the Simurgh itself (see The Conference of the Birds).  14. My favorite authors in prose: Francis Ponge, but that’s poetry, or Irving Rosenthal, Sheeper… or is that also poetry?  15. My favorite poets: The ones to come… to whom, like music, we aspire.  (And then there’s Mevlana Rumi, in authentic translation, Rene Char, Tomaz Salamun, etc. etc. etc.).  16. My favorite heroes in fiction: All the Kafka ones, then back to Gulliver and Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe, and of course Hayy ibn Yaqthan by Ibn Tufayl.  17. My favorite composers: Olivier Messiaen, Terry Riley, John Adams, etc. etc. etc. (I’m getting serious now).  18. My favorite painters: Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Jess, etc. etc. etc.  19. My heroes in real life: All saints, living in real life, and dead in even more real life.  20. My heroines in history: Rabia Adawiyya, and Shaykha Baji and my wife Malika, whose histories are gloriously still in progress.  21. My favorite names: Ah… Muhammad, Hafez, Gululapeg, Sandoz the Magnificent, Gerard de Nerval, Otto.  22. What I hate most of all: Hatred.  23. Characters that I most despise: Despisers.  24. The military act that I value most: The Laying down of arms.  25. The reform that I admire most: That once all striving is made to change and better things, we know somehow that everything by Divine Decree is, oddly, perfect just as it is (illuminatingly).  26. The gift of nature that I would like to have: Ever cool most inward aplomb on an epic scale.  27. How I would like to die: Reciting Qur’an, sitting up or laying back, no problem, remembering God in all gracefulness and sweet relief, with a farewell poem snatched from the angels.  28. My present state of mind: Less easy than it should be, sharper than it has been, as circular as ever, with a few sparklers.  29. Faults that inspire the most indulgence in me: Sadly, my own.  30. My motto: La ilaha il Allah Muhammad rasulullah (and may it be the last on my lips and in my heart.

Anna Waterhouse

1. Faithfulness.  2.  Faithfulness.  3. A nurturing instinct.  4.  Faithfulness…and a nurturing instinct.  5.  I’m too generous. (Kidding.) I’m too sensitive. (Also kidding.) I’m sarcastic.  6.  I’d love to be Bonnie Raitt. To have spent my life playing the guitar like that, and singing with those people....wow.  7.  Writing. Singing. Without worrying about money.  8.  The death of my child.  9.  Four inches taller.  10.  Italy.  11.  I have no favorite colors, though there are a few I dislike. Puce comes to mind, if only for the name.  12.  It’s a tie. Roses for their scent and beauty, and the fact that they protect themselves and need a ridiculous amount of care; and orchids because they have no odor, are ridiculously fragile, and vant to be left alone.  13.  Easy. A hawk. Our neighborhood hawk can come scoop up our adorable wild bunny, if he wants, though I hope he doesn’t. In other words, if it’s almost anything versus a hawk, I’m rooting for the hawk.  14.  Oooh, way too big a question. All the famous ones, at some time or the other, or in some mood or another. And I also dislike them all at some time or the other, or in some mood or another.  15.  See #14. (Though Neruda often rises to the top.)  16.  Not sure what “heroes in fiction” means. Fictitious characters I like or admire or want to emulate?  See #14.  17.  Composers? Really?  I mean, everyone from Verdi to Philip Glass to Kurt Cobain. Or maybe I don’t understand the question.  18.  Lucien Freud. My uncle Romano. Miro’. See #14.  19.  Jesus.  20.  None come to mind, though I’ll surely kick myself when they do.  21.  Carbon de Castille Jaloux, or just about any French name except Gabi.  22.  A sense of entitlement.  23.  Child molesters. Predators in general. (Unless you're a hawk, I guess.)  24.  The salute.  25.  The repeal of slavery. 26.  I don’t understand the question. Unless you mean that I’d like to be able to take root and live several hundred years, and when someone cuts off my limbs they grow back…  27.  A long, long, long time from now. And I'd kind of like to be translated. Sucked up into the sky. A chariot of fire could be good.  28.  Calm.  29.  My yelling at bad drivers. (Meaning “other” drivers.) I just think I’m so cute when I do it.

Patricia Duthion

As I don't know how to answer the questionnaire, I asked my dog. She had no spiritual 
ideas, but Raga said:
 
Le principal trait de mon caractère? La volonté, la désobéissance, l'entêtement. Mais aussi, 
je suis très pacifique, je déteste l'agressivité. 

La qualité que je préfère chez un homme? Qu'il soit joueur, et bon joueur si possible. 

Et chez une femme? La douceur et la patience, ça me rassure.  

Le bonheur parfait? Faire quelques longueurs dans la piscine, m'ébrouer dans l'herbe, 
manger, manger, encore manger, puis m'allonger contre ma maîtresse pour un bon somme.

Mes films cultes? Les 101 dalmatiens, Belle et le clochard, Rintintin? Il y a longtemps que 
je ne suis pas allée au cinéma, il y a sûrement mieux. 

Les fautes pour lesquelles j'ai le plus d'indulgence? La gourmandise, le cabotinage. 

Qu'ai-je réussi de mieux dans ma vie ? Ma maîtresse.

Questions Marcel Proust Would Like to Ask You

I was given a great gift about a month ago. Our friend, Jeannette, asked me to lead a half-day Marcel Proust in Paris tour, as part of a larger tour she was leading.

I was thrilled by her invitation, but had two responses: while I'd read A La Recherche du Temps Perdu and a number of books about him, no way could I do justice to Proust in less than a full day, and furthermore, could I do justice to Proust? With hope and nervousness, I spent the next few weeks reading a terrific Proust biography by George Painter, investigating where I might take the members of this tour, and mapping out an itinerary with Richard.

There were a few surprises in the planning stages, such as at the manuscript museum. We’d heard there were letters of Proust there, but learned that the exhibition had been dismantled and the materials had migrated elsewhere. Not a single example of Proust in his own hand. But at the museum we found a card with a “Questionnaire de Marcel Proust.” It was a list of questions that he first answered in an English-language confessions album at the age of 13, and again at age 20. The original manuscript of Proust's enthusiastic answers was discovered in 1924, and auctioned off on May 27, 2003 for 102,000 euros.

Who knows what might eventually happen with your responses!

I won’t try to capture the tour in words. It was a transformative experience. If you’d like to enjoy it yourself, ask me to take you on a Proust tour when you’re in Paris (but give me some notice, please).

What we’d like to do is to ask you to play a Proustian game. Answer these questions in the following format (imaginary example):

1.  Vision. 2. Depth. 3. Grace. 4. Awareness. 5. Lateness. 6. Writing. 7. Etc.

Send them to us by Thursday, May 3 using this e-mail link, and we’ll print your answers in a Saturday, May 5 post. This is for the playful and adventurous among you. (You may skip five answers, but not more.)

Marcel Proust Questionnaire

1. The main feature of my character:

2. The quality that I desire in a man:

3. The quality that I desire in a woman:

Street art by Da Cruz

4. What I appreciate most about my friends:

5. My main fault:

6. My preferred occupation:

7. My dream of happiness:

8. What would be my greatest misfortune:

9. What I would like to be:

10. The country in which I would like to live:

11. The color I prefer:

12. The flower I like:

13. The bird which I prefer:

14. My favorite authors in prose:

15. My favorite poets:

16. My favorite heroes in fiction:

17. My favorite composers:

18. My favorite painters:

19. My heroes in real life:

20. My heroines in history:

21. My favorite names:

22. What I hate most of all:

23. Characters that I most despise:

24. The military act that I value most:

25. The reform that I admire most:

26. The gift of nature that I would like to have:

27. How I would like to die:

Street art by Tristan des Limbes

28. My present state of mind:

29. Faults that inspire the most indulgence in me:

Street art by Fred le Chevalier

30. My motto:

Without you, nothing will happen...so join in on the Proustian fun