Museum of Arts & Crafts, Itami, JAPAN

For those of you out there in Japan just wanted to say that my artist's passport is showing at an international group show Your Documents Please currently showing in Japan at the Museum of Arts & Crafts in Itami (see link above). The show moves next to Yokohama (ZAIM) if all goes well. I guess if my passport has made it to Japan it's a sign that one day I will too!

It will also travel to:
HUNGARY (November 2008)
-2B GALLERY, Budapest IX. Ráday u.47 Hungary
SLOVAKIA (January 2009)
GALÉRIA Z ZICHYHO PALÁC, VENTÚRSKA 9, 811 01 BRATISLAVA
The curators for this show are Daniel Georges & Rumi Tsuda.

In the last several months I've been doing a lot of art and thinking about it (though I'm glad to say that I've done more of it than thought about it). I'm in the process of updating my site to include some images. Also, I'll post any announcements for the future on this blog.

Antiquity and its discontents---2000 year old staues at Hodal

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About half-way between Delhi and Agra on National Highway 2 stands the city of Hodal. NH2 is a bit of a cliché with dusty industries, chimneys and swanky malls called fancy names like "Manhattan." There is even a government designated leafless "green belt" full of trucks and containers. As this highway past Palwal a small-town flavor sets in on the road. Hodal is located just a little ahead of here. Some 4 km off the highway from Hodal is the village of Saundhad where 2000 year old statues of Hindu deities were recently found according to an exclusive report in the Faridabad Times dated February 27, 2008. Ever since my family moved to Harayana a few years ago I've tried to get to know the area a little even though having been born and brought up in Delhi I still can only think of myself with reference to the megapole.

Om Bir of the village of Saundhad was kind enough to accompany us from the main road to the temple where .D. Verma of the Faridabad Times had reported the idols were kept. Saundhad, I was told, has a population of some 15,000 families. Despite its large size however it is very much a village. There is a palpable change in rhythm when one turns off the pukka road amid a herd of animals and follows the kaccha village road with its small houses and bales of fodder stored for animals.

The Badrinanrayan Temple is located beyond the village near a large tank called the Surya Kund which dates back to antiquity according to the villagers. The temple Mahant Parasuram is of the opinion that by reporting the find the local newspapers have caused a real problem for the village. He holds his hand around his neck to indicate that this is like a noose; the police will now hold him responsible for any possible theft of the icons from the temple premises.

Baba Nath and some other local villagers accompany us to the shrine of the goddess where the icons have been housed under lock and key with the exception of one large icon of a goddess dating back from antiquity that is kept outside the temple and has been freshly washed. It is impossible to eyeball the age of the statue. According to the Faridabad Times report the Archaeological Survey of India dated the statues as 200 years old, had them locked up inside the temple of the goddess and put it under police protection. The villagers are not happy about this. They want the temple to remain active, a place of worship where they can pay their respects every day. This is impossible with the temple barred and locked.

The police have gone on a "break" and we get to see the small pieces that have been housed inside the small temple in addition to the large statue of the goddess outside. Despite the report in the newspaper which was somewhat vague and suggested that these statues were recently discovered when the area was dug the villagers are vehement that the statues are not a recent discovery as the report claims. Baba Nath who is the priest under the mahant Parasuram goes as far as to say, "the newspaper report is propaganda." These statues have been lying outside the temple structure for years and years. They were not brought inside since they were broken (the paper had reported this) but in fact they have been on the temple grounds for fifteen, twenty or thirty years. No one can remember though Om Bir who is 31 says that for most of his life these pieces of antiquity have been lying around. In this short clip Madan Lal talks about the origin of the temple and there are shots from the inside of the temple once it was opened. Statues from antiquity are lying on the floor.

After some probing it comes to light that there are some more statues that haven't been "put inside" so to speak. These are lying under a tree near the Surya Kund itself. There is a recognizable lingam there and also a rather badly eroded statue of a goddess. Ants are crawling over a magnificent piece with figures and a dog comes over and hovers over the assemblage.

Mahant Parasuram and Madan Lal one of the villagers who has been talking to us get into an argument. (see clip below) Parasuram fears the worst for the statues and loathes the responsibility he must shoulder, he wants them taken away. He even implies that people like Madan Lal who talk about it are the ones who might one day make off with it (see the second clip). Apparently a while back there was an attempted theft of one of the statues but it was too heavy to lift. All sorts of rumors are thickly circulating in Saundhad, an otherwise sleepy idyllic village that is just starting to shoot into prominence following the report. After the Times article another reporter or two has been there but now they are sure more will be coming. The villagers divided as they are into at least two camps on the issue feel at moments that the goddess of the temple has decided to shower them with attention from the world.



There is an argument to be made for the heritage of this village to remain in it. The ASI could build a small museum on the temple grounds where the idols were found and also do some more work around the historic Surya Kund to date it and restore it. The Surya Kund has small monuments for its local devtas. If habitation in this region goes back to 11th and 12th century as Mr. Tanwar of the ASI is reported to have said in the Faridabad Times then these artifacts could illuminate the local history of the area. Once the idols are entirely removed from here and displayed out of context in another museum or worse put into storage some of their meaning will be lost. If there already exists a collection of this period then some of the idols could be re-united with it. No matter what villagers should not have to bear the responsibility of these gods from antiquity or be made to feel that when the outside world suddenly becomes aware of the objects that were always a part of their life they will be made scapegoats because of the high-handedness of the law givers.

The French Tour Fall 2007, Stop#4: Montélimar

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The regional express train TER that transports passengers from Lyon to the towns of the Drôme and Provence speeds past vast vineyards angled over hillocks. On the way to Montélimar I spot the Hermitage and Paul Jaboulet Ainé estates.
The Cafés Littéraires de Montélimar is organized by a small association of volunteers. A committee of readers reads books all through the year and decides on the authors to invite each year to the festival. This year for the first time the small village of La Garde Adhémar is hosting a café littéraire during the festival; it has taken some work and some convincing, I am told. One of the members of the association Christine drives us from the hotel to the medieval village some twenty kilometers from Montélimar which is perched on the top of a hill. She conjectures that La Garde (literally the guard or the army) was a lookout for the Adhémar (the local noble family) since the village is located high on the hills with a great view all the way to the Rhône river. The Rhône separates the Drôme from the Ardèche.

Night has already fallen but from the foothills one can spot the small ruin that is part of the village. In the main square a group of very serious men is playing pétanque. The referee is in a suit. The village dates back to the middle ages and has its own post office and a population of under 1500. On the hills just below the bell tower is a botanical garden that has all the species of the Rhône-Alpes. The café littéraire is moderated by Franck Daumas and held at the restaurant L'Absinthe. I’m absolutely touched by the incredible turnout. The committee of readers and other members of the association have worked hard with librarians and booksellers of the region to ensure that people attend events. Someone from the staff hunts for a microphone so that those seated outside the restaurant can also follow the proceedings.

The audience is hesitant to ask questions when Franck turns over the floor to them but they soon warm up. There are questions about India, about Babyji and about writing. Everyone now and then I get a question that betrays the as a writer. We finish up an hour later and when I’m asked to sign books I have my turn quizzing some of the audience. Many of them have traveled to India and others are, indeed, writers. The restaurant has a special menu for the evening and one of the choices is an Indian plate. This is how it comes about that I end up eating one of the best south Indian vegetable biryanis of my life in a tiny village in the south of France. L'Absinthe's owners have traveled several times to India and have obviously picked up a few recipes and some kadipatta.

The next morning we are taken to a nearby nougaterie which doubles as a museum. The Nougaterie Arnaud Soubeyran still makes nougat by hand and conducts a guided tour through the premises. Though we’ve had breakfast we take up the offer of a cake au nougat and some tea before being shown around. The nougaterie is fabricating calissons today. Originally a specialty of Provence somehow the delicacy made its way to Montélimar and now many provençal businesses order these from Montélimar. Nougat gets its whiteness from egg white. The nougaterie uses honey harvested from lavender fields (which it owns) and also grows its own almonds. A while back a local apiarist arrived with some bees and the nougaterie decided to display them in a glass case, the bees have been given an exit through a pipe out into the open but they come back to their hive in the evenings. The queen has a spectacular blue dot Franck Thilliez spots right away and is easy to identify through the glass, several worker bees are moving to and fro doing things for her. At the end of the tour we are offered some more types of nougats and calissons to taste. At the afternoon lunch served at the hotel dining room for the authors I’m too full to eat.

I’ve a rendezvous at three with students at the local lycée Alain Borne. A few minutes from the hotel, the lycée is having its break when Chantal the association president and I walk over. Some of the other writers invited to the festival are also addressing classes here and in another nearby lycée. My event is with students in the première, the seconde and the terminale. From what I understand of the scholastic system that means the students are high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors and a few students who’ve opted for a technical education. They are between fourteen and seventeen, a mixed group. The event is held in the library. The students have put up several displays about India, pictures, texts, studies and a collection of books. I take a look at them before sitting down. All the students have read extracts from Babyji and many have read the whole book, they have been asked to write about India and two texts have been selected for me. Marie-Charlotte reads her text first, it is poetic and rhythmic. The next text is written by Cassandre but is read by her and two of her classmates. After this the floor is opened to the students. They are shy to ask the first few questions but after that they don’t stop. For an hour and a half they quiz me about the book, about myself, about schools in India, about writing, about why the main character is a girl, about getting published, about the process of writing various drafts. It is intense, it is exhausting. It is, above all, profoundly satisfying. Their energy is contagious and their enthusiasm on a Friday afternoon at four pm is immensely flattering. I realize that with them I’ve let myself get carried away. The usual distance that I try to maintain as a writer is broken. When the teachers suggest we move to the réfectoire for a goûter littéraire and continue the discussion there I take a picture of them all saying I want it for my blog. Within hours one of them will comment on my French blog.

Saturday is the moment for readers to meet with authors. At the Village des Cafés Littéraires set up not far from the hotel the writers seat themselves at tables. Those browsing our books at the bookseller can drop by and ask us to sign. Two young teenagers Juliette and Charlotte who are journalists for a real-time gazette during the café drop by and interview me for their afternoon edition. The cartoonist Eric Vaxman draws us. Lunch is served in our hotel Le Relais d'Empereur (it has boasted the passage of Napoléan, Winston Churchill and Brigitte Bardot) which is located at the Place Marx Dormoy. One of the writers Eric Holder tells the rest of us that Max Dormoy a minister for the Popular Front who refused to sign over the granting of full powers to Pétain was assassinated in Montélimar with bombs that had been placed under his bed. His assassins fled to Franco’s Spain and were never persecuted. In the afternoon after lunch there is enough time to take a quick walk to the Château des Adhémar in Montélimar. Located on a small hillock it provides a nice outlook over town. It was constructed in the twelfth century.

My café littéraire in the evening is held at 9pm at a local teahouse La Caverne d’Ali Baba. The treasurer of the association Jean-François walks me over. I see faces I recognize from earlier meetings and many new ones. Harold David the moderator has come from Paris and works for La maison des écrivains. After the session I get a chance to speak one on one with many in the audience. Pia Petersen and Nathacha Appanah come to my event and we end up sitting and talking long after it is over. Pia is a philosopher by training who left her native Denmark to study in France and now writes novels in French. She’s bursting with political ideas of all sorts and regales us with stories about passports, civil status and run-ins with the bureaucracy that border on the Kafkaesque. Nathacha and I ask simultaneously if she’s written about it threatening that we will if she doesn’t! Nathacha’s café littéraire is the next morning and I’m going to miss it since I am leaving early. But we’ve bought each other’s books now—another way of being in touch. Earlier in the day leafing through her novels trying to decide which one to begin with I finally settled on Blue Bay Palace because the character Maya shares her name with my character in That Summer in Paris. I wonder for a moment if I would have written that book if I had known so many other writers at that time and if the novel would have been anything like it is if I had. I felt the isolation of the writing life and the absence of friends in the field so sorely then. The beauty of the festivals this month is that one gets to meet one’s readers and also ones confreres.

Christine Carraz who is the only employ of the festival (the others are all volunteers of the association) has handled all our logistics and our last minute issues with train reservations and transfers like a solid rock. Since the festival began on Thursday she has barely slept, whether one is getting back to the hotel past midnight or taking breakfast early in the morning she is always there with a smile. She drives us to the station in the morning, Eric Faye and Dominique Fabre are on the same train. Dominique will be in New York next year, his book La serveuse était nouvelle is being published in English by Archipelago Books under the title The Waitress was new. Only after I leave the train and head to the taxi stand do I realize I’ve not left my email with Dominique so I’m hoping he’ll come across this blog and contact me before his US book tour.

The French Tour Fall 2007, Stop#3: Manosque

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Just before the high speed train from Paris comes to a stop in Aix-en-Provence it passes by several exposed limestone cliffs and one feels as if one is actually pulling up into a Cézanne painting. The authors invited for Les Correspondances de Manosque are received at the station by a smiling Valérie who puts us all into a small mini van. The ride from Aix to Manosque is an hour in low traffic. Despite the dark grey skies the ochre-colored cliffs bring cheer to the day.

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Even though it is only September the temperatures are not much higher than those in Paris and the weather conditions not a lot sunnier. We pass the L’Occitane factory along the auto route and I try to imagine the countryside in the height of the lavender season.

The festival at Manosque is a leisurely affair with time to digest what is happening and the possibility of doing things at one’s own rhythm. I’m staying with several of the other writers at a hotel just five minutes from the small center of the old city which has several large gates and a crisscross network of some fifteen or twenty narrow streets. I walk around and make it to the Place de l’Hôtel-de-ville only after 5pm when François Salvaing is most of the way through his débat. The session is animated by Pascal Jourdana who is also responsible for my being present as well. The Place de l’Hôtel-de-ville is a small square surrounded by cafés. A podium has been set up with a large bookshelf full of books. Salvaing holds forth on his new novel Jourdain. After Salvaing two novelists Gilles Leroy and Maurice Audebert are on for a session. Gilles Leroy is on the shortlist for four awards-the Prix Goncourt, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina-for Alabama Song, an imaginative fictionalized biography of sorts about Zelda while Maurice Audebert is a philosopher who has just written a novel (his second) about Greta Garbo. They talk about the real personalities behind their books and also the fictionalized aspects of their novels. Someone in the audience is bothered by the fictionalizing of others’ lives but when the writers probe deeper it seems her discomfort comes from the fact that the people in question are famous.

By the end of the afternoon’s sessions everyone is a little frozen and happy to stand around the table set up in the square by the local bookseller La librarie du Poivre d’âne. While poivre means pepper and âne is a donkey I still haven’t cracked the idiomatic mystery behind the bookstore name. The conversation turns around the unseasonably low temperatures and those who were here last year say that it was incredibly hot during the festival, but I’m guessing that in 1901 the fall was as cold as it is today. There is a statue at one of the main gates showing a couple huddled together called La froid. Not the kind of thing you’re expecting when you head down to Provence.

Manosque, despite its modest population of some twenty thousand, has been hosting this festival for nine years inviting major authors and actors. The 9pm evening special each night is the reading of a text in the local theater by an actor of national repute. Tonight it is Julie Depardieu—yes the daughter of Gérard—and an actress in her own right. She does a staged reading, props and all, from the letters of Violette Leduc. One of the people I have just met is Achmy Halley the new director of the Villa Mont Noir where I will be spending some time next year. Violette Leduc, Achmy tells me, she was a close friend of Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre. In her letters to Nelson Algren, Simone de Beauvoir referred to Leduc as the “ugly one” but she also thought Leduc was the most brilliant woman she ever knew. Leduc’s letters to her lovers Alain, Georges and Robert would be funny if they weren’t tinged with sadness. Intense and obsessive the letters follow a repetitive pattern of declaring dramatic love, suffering from rejection and repeating the pattern.

Friday morning is a day of discovery. I make the most of the sun in the morning to climb the small hill Mont d’Or (530m) to the north-east of Manosque. The climb is short but steep and I pass by many beautiful provencal homes along the way. Though in the south of France Manosque is actually located at approximately the same latitude as Portland, Maine. The vegetation as one climbs up gets more interesting. There are several plants that have been entirely populated by snails, at first sight I mistook these for flowers. There is another tree I’m unable to identify with very weird fruit. Mont d’Or provides a nice view of Manosque and the surrounding lands.

One of the special things at the Manosque festival which is centered around correspondence and letters is the omnipresence of écritoires. A word that can be translated as a writing desk but does no justice to the concept. Ecritoires have been set up in all sorts of venues including shoe stores, chocolateries, pâtisseries, boulangeries, cafés and boutiques. There is even an écritoire in the shape of a camera lens that can be used to write in the dark or with little light and one shaped like a kaleidoscope with mirrors. The population at large is encouraged to write letters (pen, paper, envelope and stamps provided for free by the post) and indeed people can be seen writing away furiously. I stop by a lovely art gallery run by the painter Anje Delaunay and write. Delaunay borrows from some of the ideas of Buddhist thangka art and appropriates it with his own style and indeed some of his works achieve the mysterious and the spiritual. I then wander into Empreinte a workshop for etchers, lithographers and print-makers. The workshop is run as an association with each of the artists paying a small membership fee in exchange for a key and materials. The artists “correspond” in images with artists from all over the world, sending there prints and receiving one that enters into a dialog with the work they sent. The idea is magnificent and in many of the “letters” that are on display (during the annual festival they exhibit the year’s correspondence) there is a visible and evident dialog between Japanese and Danish artists and Manosquins.

Today, Gloria one of the etchers from the association is volunteering. Visitors are encouraged to try this art form for themselves. While the artists at the workshop etch on a regular basis on wood, metal and linoleum, she proposes something very simple: a small square of thin plastic. I get to work with the tools. Once I’ve got my engraving I cover it with printer’s ink and we run it through the one ton press that is over a century old. I’m so enchanted I do another. I also meet Claudine Rovis a painter from Nice who is going to bring out a hand-made book L'Incendie précaire at another book festival next week. Her book is a collection of her paintings along with the text of a poet who has written specially for the occasion. We hit it off. Bernadette another of the members of the association drops by and I take a photo of the three ladies. If I can find a low-cost workshop like this in NY or Delhi I will participate in this other aspect of the literary festival for next year, corresponding in image with one of the ladies I’ve met. There are other options too, like engraving at home and substituting the one ton press for a rolling pin in the kitchen. The images are less beautiful but apparently it works! So in case you are interested you can too.

Muriel Barbery speaks in the afternoon about her novel L’élégance du hérisson. She has found herself on the bestseller list for over 53 weeks and the Place d’Hôtel-de-ville is spilling with people. I read her book in the spring and stayed up late into the nights to finish it before I left Paris (it was a borrowed copy). I find out she’s got a background in philosophy. She’s in and out of Manosque in a jiffy since she’s invited to Korea so I don’t get a chance to talk to her in person. In the evening I dine with Hubert Artus a journalist who is covering the festival for rue89 an online news site set up by journalists who worked for Libération. We head over to catch Edouard Baer for the 9pm show which is entirely sold out. The auditorium packed. My translator Isabelle Reinharez and her husband Georges call out to me; they have a free seat next to them. I’m in luck! Baer reads from Patrick Modiano’s Un pedigree: searing autobiographical pages about a horrific relationship between the young Modiano and his parents. After the 9pm reading there is a concert scheduled in another room of the same premises. I had missed Mathias Malzieu on Thursday but I catch Babx tonight. He begins by reading an extract from Novecento Pianiste (a novella I’ve read before) and then moves on to texts he’s set to music (Kerouac, Rimbaud, Baudelaire) and other’s he’s written himself.

The next morning is so gray I go right back to Empreinte and set to work on a few more etchings, try new things. At lunchtime it starts to pour and when I bump into Hubert again we take cover in an Italian restaurant offering a simple fare of bruschetta and pizza. The dessert however is totally unexpected, a duo of melting chocolate-caramel-à-la-fleur-de-sel cake. Exotic and delicious it is worthy of getting into more gastronomic menus. In the afternoon I catch snippets of Yannick Haenel who speaking of his book Cercle (also shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis) says he wanted to compose this book much like a musician composes—a comment that immediately made me want to read the novel. I also catch bytes of Marie Darrieussecq (her novel Tom est mort is shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Femina) and Natacha Appanah (her novel Le dernier frére is shortlisted for the Prix Médicis). In the evening the dinner table is bigger than ever, we are 13 and I find myself across one of the only other non-francophone writers invited to the festival: Jamal Mahjoub. With an œuvre comprising some seven novels in English, Jamal is of Sudanese-British descent and currently lives in Barcelona. Needless to say he is a polyglot who speaks fluent Arabic, Spanish, and French in addition to his native English.

The 9 pm reading at the theater tonight is by Jacques Gamblin who has chosen to read from Romain Gary’s La nuit sera calme. A piece in which it turns out Gary has interviewed himself (clandestinely of course, much as he wrote his second Goncourt winning novel under the name of Emile Ajar). Gary holds forth on international politics and his time in the United Nations in the piece and some of his comments are clairvoyant. I skip the evening concert since I have my own débat the next morning.

Sunday is a sunny day. My translator Isabelle Reinharez (click on 25th september to watch her on tv) and I are on together for a Jeu double. Pascal Jourdana our moderator finds a balance between posing us both questions about language, about the book and about writing and translating. The hour flies quickly. We chat for a while after the event and then I head back to the hotel. A bus is taking the authors who are returning on the same train as me to Aix. On the bus Natacha Appanah and I chat through the crack between our seats. We haven't talked before and I'm heartened to hear our conversation can continue next week in Montélimar where we are both invited for the Cafés littéraires de Montélimar.

The French Tour Fall 2007, Stop#2: Nancy

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The new TGV inaugurated in the summer hurtles east reaching over 320km/hr as we head to one of France's most important literary festivals of the autumn Le livre sur la place in Nancy. I'm expecting a pretty city but nothing prepares me for my sudden arrival into the dramatic place Stanislas after I check my luggage into the hotel and follow directions to le centre ville. With its gleaming gold highlights and its symmetric fountains, its paved central plaza and its open-air cafés it has me instantly in love.

A fountain at Place Stanislas

My publishers get me a last minute invitation to a luncheon hosted by Le Point, a national magazine with a lot of readers in these parts and a co-sponsor of the festival. We all find ourselves in the cave of a restaurant where the apéro is served. The basement has a damp odor that is somewhat intoxicating. Over warm crispy bread sticks I meet Le Point's marketing director Xavier who worked for many years as a professional magician. I'm hoping that before the salon is over I'll have a chance to see some of his sleights of hand. The lunch is given in honor of Michèle Lesbre the author of Le Canapé Rouge (ed. Sabine Wespieser). Her book has been chosen as the Coup de Coeur of this year's rentrée littéraire by Le Point (it is also shortlisted for the Goncourt). Despite the last minute arrangements there is a place marked for me at the table thanks to Marie-Claude and the restaurant dishes vegetarian versions of all four courses including a lavish pastry shell in the form a purse that is stuff with finely julienned vegetables and served with a delightful red sauce.

Franz-Olivier Giesbert who is the Director of Le Point speaks for a few minutes followed by the mayor of Nancy André Rossinot who has held his office since 1983. In a short but touching speaks he talks of his vision of Nancy as a tolerant and diverse city two words one rarely hears in France where public discourse is not all that politically correct. After lunch we all head to the place Carrière where the festival is being held. Along the way I find out from Franz-Olivier that it was France 5 who chose to name his Saturday night talk show Chez F.O.G and that among other books he has written one called The American which was published in the US in February by Vintage. A journalist wants pictures of F.O.G in place Stanislas for the newspaper and he insists that Tatiana and I get in the photo.

The place Carrière is located just off of place Stanislas. Communicating tents have been pitched up with local booksellers hosting authors at their tables. I'm signing at the bookseller Le Hall du livre between Tatiana and Pierre Pelot both authors published by EHO. (Pelot is the author of over ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY books!) A couple of high school students come and quiz Tatiana for a school project. Minutes after they leave another gang arrives and wants to pose the same questions. With admirable patience she agrees. Tomorrow they will come for me.

At 5:30 I have a radio interview with Laurent Pilloni of France Bleu Sud Lorraine who is running his show live from a tent pitched at the entrance of the festival. He is very funny and we chat for a quarter of an hour about Babyji after which I return with the others to the hotel. There is an official dinner for the authors invited to Nancy (some 450). Tomorrow, Saturday, will be a busy day at the salon and we will all be exhausted (130000 visitors pass through the salon over the period of one short weekend) but tonight we are still enthusiastic.

The sit down dinner is held at L'Excelsior where I am happy that our table seats not just our own crowd (EHO authors and Héloïse & Gilles) but also two nancéiens Michel Vagner (who has interviewed me in Paris many months ago) and Patrick Germain who are both journalists in addition to Christopher Mory who has among other things written a biography of Molière. The Excelsior is the perfect venue for hearing from Michel and Patrick about some of Nancy's art nouveau tradition and the école de Nancy because the brasserie itself is a work of art boasting Jacques Grüber's glasswork and chandeliers from Majorelle (in two days I will know more about this following a visit to the Villa Majorelle). They convince me as I snap some quick pictures of the mirrors and the ceiling that I must make time for the museum devoted to Nancy's golden age.

The interior of the Excelsior

The official dinner for authors that marks each of the literary festivals I am attending has already become familiar. Some of the same authors are invited to Nancy as Besançon but the big gossip tonight is that four (or is it five?) members of the jury for the Goncourt are present. When Dephine De Vigan who is shortlisted for the Goncourt walks by our table and says hello I decide to investigate the table of honor with my camera where in addition to the mayor and his wife the jury is said to be seated.

St. named after the Goncourts

Saturday is lost in a whirl of people. I sign books in the morning and briefly stop by the Hôtel de Ville of Nancy at lunchtime where a luncheon buffet is organized. The salon has been so packed and noisy that I need to decompress. I order a large tart à la mode on one of the terrasses and read (in English!). Most of the afternoon is taken up by a café littéraire hosted by Sarah Pollaci. I only know one of the authors at the round table Alex Taylor an Englishman who writes in French; he has been signing beside Tatiana at our stand. Next to me is Jakuta Alikavazovic, beside her Dorothée Janin followed by Gérald Bronner. It is a hard group to unite together but Sarah Pollaci manages to pose us all specific questions as well as ones that can be answered by the entire group. Alex has written a shocking memoir of his life as a homosexual and believes it is his first and last book (he lived in Nancy and worked in television and continues to be a journalist), Gérald's book is a kind of fantasy novel while the three of us women seem to be authors of literary fiction. Alex turns the tables on the audience and invites an old lady who has been smiling at him to speak up. She tells us she is 90 and that she's seen a lot of tomfoolery in her times; there is nothing that Alex or anyone else can say in their book that is going to shock her! You can see her hold forth right here!

We return to the tables where the booksellers have us set up and sign some more. The salon is hectic and a public announcement calls for security guards to control the flow of people in and out of the tents. Repeated announcements ask visitors to frequently step out of the tents and get fresh air. Sitting cramped behind tables we are hardly able to move. In certain moments the flow of humanity ahead of us has been in such volume that no one can actually look at the books, as people jostle and heave we try talking above our usual volume to the readers who manage to resist the momentum and stop to ask questions. Two high-schoolers ask me why I write, when I first wrote, how I write etc for their assignment. The young booksellers helping the bookshop and selling our books have been standing on their feet all day. They offer us authors coffee and tea and water. At 7 I go back to the hotel exhausted. I have an hour of much needed silence sitting on the bed with a book. Later I meet up with Tatiana and Richard Andrieux. A musician by training he has just brought out his first novel José to much critical acclaim. The salon has been taxing for him as well and we each realize we've had to talk ourselves into freshening up and making it to dinner.

If the food in Nancy has been fabulous so far it has yet to reach its peak. Les Agaves is the very sommet of my gastronomic experience this weekend. The savory millefeuille with tomato and fresh goat cheese is crispy, the risotto with morels one of the best I’ve ever had. At dinner I meet Patrick Besson who delivers all his lines with deadpan humor and can never pass up the opportunity for playing a word game or saying something caustic. I wish my French were better so I could catch all of it. He wrote his first novel when he was just seventeen, it also happened to be the year when I was born. Stéphanie Janicot who I have met many times before is also there.

Sunday is a light day for me because the bookseller runs out of my books. I make the most of it by going to the Musée d’école de Nancy and the Villa Majorelle. The museum boasts many beautiful pieces in wood and glass by Emile Gallé the most important figure of the art nouveau movement of the école. Majorelle was his rival and the villa he built is from outside to inside, tip to toe, is a work of art. It was, also at the time it was constructed, a fantastic commercial showcase for Majorelle. Visits to the villa are only by appointment with a guide who tells us that everything from the tiles on the outside of the villa (an orchid design) to furniture inside was available for sale in both popular and “lux” versions for buyers. Majorelle also had the items photographed in their respective rooms and put them in a catalog that was sent out to customers.

The most exhilarating aspect of both the museum and the villa Majorelle is that one can see how expansive the art nouveau moment was in its golden age. It touched every kind of object and medium from glass to furniture and tiles to paintings. One reason for the incredible flourishing of this period was that Nancy in the late eighteen-hundreds became home to many of the French who fled parts of Alsace and Lorraine in the aftermath of the Prussian war. There was thus a gathering of important men of wealth in the town. Industry boomed as did glasswork and the iron foundry of Louis Majorelle. In more modern times nancéiens have remained independent of Paris boasting their own wonderful boutiques and gourmet restaurants because of the lack of a TGV. Until the inauguration of the high speed line in June it took some four hours to get to Nancy from the capital. Now however the life of the city is going to change. Patrick told me at dinner he already knows of someone who does a daily commute to Paris for work and lives in Nancy. For someone like me coming from the other direction however it is a boon. It’s not unthinkable to just hop on the train one day on a whim and have lunch, take in another museum and make it back for dinner to 75005.

The French Tour Fall 2007, Stop#1: Besançon

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The heart of the town of Besançon in the Franche-Comté is circled by the river Doubs. The Doubs only leaves a small neck of land as it goes around the town and this was corked for the fortification of the town by a citadel in the seventeenth century. I now forget if Český Krumlov in the Czech Republic (briefly home of Egon Schiele and now the site of the Egon Schiele Art Centrum) has a similar citadel that blocks off its neck of land but the Vltava and the Doubs form rather similar horseshoe shapes as you can see from the Google Earth maps below.


Besançon, France Český Krumlov, Czech Republic

I am in Besançon for the annual literary festival sponsored by the town and organized by Pierre Défendini who lives in the south of France and organizes such festivals all over the country. It is the first of four-five long weekends that will be spent discovering la France profonde as everyone has been telling me.

For a big time lifelong fan of stone like myself this city has much to offer. Most of it is built with pierre de Chailluz a stone quarried from nearby mines and made de rigeur in the sixteenth century to avoid the accident and larceny engendered by wooden constructions. The buildings therefore, despite their classic architecture, sometimes give the vibe of a modernist two-toned contrasting palette.

The book festival is packed with people and the weather is unexpectedly divine. The sun pours down on the tents at the Parc de la gare d’eau where the 3 day affair is organized. The salon is busy with visitors streaming in and stopping by authors, posing questions, asking for autographs. The stands are run by booksellers in the region who are warm and eager. But staying indoors all day with the constant hum of noise and the heat of hundreds of bodies can be fatiguing. So on Sunday morning I take off with my press-attaché Anne-Laure Clémént who grew up in Besançon. Her brother Max joins us. At fourteen he already knows he wants to be a chef. I tell him that he must create more gourmet French options for vegetarians but he’s already aware of the problem since one of his friends is off meat and fish. The previous evening at the end of the day’s festival I had already walked around through the pedestrian town center and gotten mildly lost. I had come back to the official author’s dinner through the park with its magnificent plane trees.

Today Anne-Laure and Max walk me through the Battant, a former communist neighborhood across from the Doubs river (or rather outside the circle) and show me some fine courtyards and spectacular views of the Jura.

The neighborhood has changed and there’s a lot of new development; the bousbots and bousbottes have been replaced by the more universal bobos (deriving from bourgeois-bohemian).

This literary festival (Les Mots Doubs) as most others, has its moments of discovery. I’m interviewed live over France Bleu Besançon the local radio that is covering the event and quizzing authors. Marie-Ange Pinelli breathlessly and enthusiastically poses one question after the other. I ask if I can hang out for a few minutes and catch the next author. Jeanne Labrune author of L’Obscur (her first novel) and a seasoned director answers questions on parallels between film and literature. Later I’m in a multiple author panel Génération…romans with more writers I don’t know: David Foenkinos, Jean Philippe Blondel, Dominique L. Pelegrin and Murielle Magellan. The panel is recorded and will be put online soon.

Besançon’s most literary call to fame is possibly its son Victor Hugo who was born there in 1802 and wrote the poem Ce siècle avait deux ans the first stanza of which reads:

Ce siècle avait deux ans ! Rome remplaçait Sparte,
Déjà Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte,
Et du premier consul, déjà, par maint endroit,
Le front de l'empereur brisait le masque étroit.
Alors dans Besançon, vieille ville espagnole,
Jeté comme la graine au gré de l'air qui vole,
Naquit d'un sang breton et lorrain à la fois
Un enfant sans couleur, sans regard et sans voix ;
Si débile qu'il fut, ainsi qu'une chimère,
Abandonné de tous, excepté de sa mère,
Et que son cou ployé comme un frêle roseau
Fit faire en même temps sa bière et son berceau.
Cet enfant que la vie effaçait de son livre,
Et qui n'avait pas même un lendemain à vivre,
C'est moi. –

The century was two years old! Rome was replacing Sparta,
Napoléon was already drilling under Bonaparte,
Already in myriad locations from the first consultation,
The Emperor’s forehead was shattering under its mask.
So in Besançon, an old Spanish town,
Thrown like a seed in the blowing breeze,
Born from Breton and Lorraine blood alike
An infant without color, or eyes or voice
So frail he was almost a chimera,
Abandoned of everything but his mother,
His neck bent like a frail blade of grass
Had his coffin and his cradle made at the same time
This infant that life was wiping off its book
And who did not even have one tomorrow to live,
Is me.

(the quick and dirty translation is mine!)

Anne-Laure walks me by a bistro called 1802 in memory of Hugo’s poem but we don’t have time to stop. The bistro’s place settings apparently all carry his poem. The Bisontins and Bisontines have a sense of history that is no doubt accentuated by the fact that the city has been making watches since the late 1700s. Wikipedia puts the number of watchmakers at 1000 in 1795.

A year before I was born Besançon’s major watchmaker LIP threatened by globalization and sinking profits risked a shut down. Anne-Laure tells me that the workers at that point took matters in their own hand and decided to continue making watches and going around the world personally to sell them. The film Les Lip, imagination au pouvoir is a documentary about the events. It is now on my list of films to watch. There seem to be a series of books on the subject too but their academic tone has me hesitating. They include Lip des heures à conter, Comment j'ai sauvé LIP, andL’affaire Lip et les catholiques de Franche-Comté. I would welcome any suggestions on films or books that treat this in an engaging way. You can surf LIP designs from the historic to the modern and buy their watches online.

At the risk of having lost all but the most patient readers of this blog I will end here. The next stop is Nancy in Lorraine, the birth place of Edmond de Goncourt and Eric Rohmer.

India's 60th in New York

As usual the Indian parade passed by my window kicking up the kind of racket you can expect from any parade in New York. However this time round there was a float that was somewhat out of the ordinary even by India’s diverse standards. This one seemed to have found inspiration from Brazil during carnival time. How did London Beverage Cash & Carry (is that a big business or a small one?) get away with a float that had nothing to do with India and even less with Indian culture? One gentleman got rather angry and spat in front of the float saying it was against our culture. He’s right, but his ire would probably have been better directed toward the podium on Madison Avenue where all the bigwigs who make these decisions were gathered.

The sponsoring Federation of Indian Associations has previously prevented legitimate Indian sexual minorities from marching at the parade on the grounds that these were against the spirit of Indian culture; notwithstanding India’s own sexual diversity. However the same FIA it seems has no qualms of any kind when it comes to pure commercial propaganda on behalf of London Beverage. That the colorfully plumed bare-skinned dances of the carnival are not part of the sub-continent’s rather rich and varying heritage is not in question. That most Indians would find that kind of body flashing embarrassing in front of children that too on their national day is merely a fact though one could argue it’s their problem. But that FIA should choose to allow such a float to pass simply for advertising dollars when it denies real people of Indian origin the right to express themselves at the parade is a matter of double shame for them.

Illusions at the Guggenheim

The Guggenheim is offering icy cool respite from the oppressive New York heat until September 5th in The Shapes of Space. The centerpiece of which without doubt for me is the Alyson Shotz glacial glass curtain showcased on the ground floor which is neither made of glass nor really 3-dimensional. Illusions, it turns out, cannot fool the camera!

Yuken Teruya's origami inspired trees are by far the most delicate pieces at the exhibition while Mika Rottenberg's video Dough is mesmerizing and grotesque. Tiny tots and oldsters alike crowd in the little wooden compartment and sit it out for a full cycle watching lumps of dough being kneaded and processed by gigantic hands.

copyright Guggenheim.org
One of Teruya's trees

Unfortunately not all of the pieces on show are of such fascinating shallowness (as Sholtz's work) or weirdness (as Rottenberg's) or beauty (as Teruya's). And at moments walking down the spiral I cannot help but give thanks to the spiral structure of the rotunda which only on rare occasions (the Russian exhibition for one) has managed to be overwhelmed by the art.

Two days to go

If you're in New York you have until Monday to catch Van Gogh and Expressionism at the Neuegalerie. One of the first pieces in the exhibition is an 1890 rendition of the Farms hear Auvers that could practically have been signed by Cezanne. Then there are twin boat paintings, one a small ink study and the other the final oil on canvas that are sheer joy to behold. Soon after we are brutally thrown out of this mood and into the Klimts from the permanent collection. And somehow the moods of the Klimts just doesn't match the rest of the show. In all the shows I've seen over time at the Neuegalerie the Klimts seem to interrupt this one the most. But we move on to other things in the smaller room. There is lots of color and beauty in the exhibition even in the non-Van Gogh bits. But something about it just doesn't hang together. I walked away perplexed and trying to put my finger on why it doesn't work. If the purpose of the show is to display the Noldes and Kirschners and Schmidt-Rottluffs that mirror Van Gogh's style it achieves it. But there is something strangely unsatisfactory about walking through the rooms and rooms of mirrors, I felt there was no movement. The mad red splats of paint the "others" used often felt heavy. While so many works worked individually and mirrored the Van Gogh influence they remained static. Maybe the pieces were all too obvious. Though I don't think it was the obviousness that bothered me. I am agreed with the New York Times article (link in this blog heading) that one of the more successful couplings is Schiele's bedroom (see above) beside Van Gogh's. The real problem was that seeing the paintings that had been influenced by Van Gogh I felt I wasn't seeing anything essential by the "other" painter (whether the "other" was Nolde, or Kirschner). Schiele can hold his own anywhere but Kirschner would have been dwarfed but for his woodcuts at the very end of the exhibition. I could not help but think of the recent exhibition of German portraits from the 1920s at the Met that had been brilliantly curated or for that matter a Kirschner exhibition a few years back that came from London to NY. Despite the curatorial hiccups the works here are lovely so line up in the sun tomorrow!

On a bleaker note I'm reading Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi. Despite claims that this 1940s novel was an earth-shaking event I'd not heard of him before. I'm wondering if his legacy in India is less known than in Pakistan where he went after Partition. Ali quotes sublime passages of Urdu shayiri in the book. Delhi is palpable though the few mentions ever made of non-Muslim Delhi are condescending or snide or bitter. But it doesn't really matter since we don't often get to read from this perspective about Delhi. One of his characters Mir Saheb reflects upon the illness of his mistress: His wife was there, no doubt; and so were the children. But the world they lived in was a domestic world. There was no beauty in it and no love.

A minute at the MoMA

Richard Serra is on at the MoMA. I first saw his Torqued Ellipses at DIA in 1997. On view at the MoMA are several new pieces including Sequence, Band, and Torqued Torus Inversion. Speaking of Band, Serra said: I wanted the speed of skin to configure the volumes as you walk them. I leave you to decipher that one.

Serra is an artist who has generated much controversy over the years. After a public hearing his commissioned work Tilted Arc which was installed at the Federal Plaza was voted to be removed by a jury. It was carted off to a scrap metal yard. Serra might well be right that art is not democratic and it's function is not to be pleasing. But Serra's work emphasizes experience over image; that combined with the costs of these huge pieces (Tilted Spheres by Serra at Toronto's Pearson Airport apparently cost $1.5 million) and their dimensions which necessitate the use of public spaces for their installation means tension is inevitable. On the one hand Serra has said that art is not for the public. On the other, the idea of infra-structural sculpture weighing 70 tonnes is hard to imagine outside of the public realm. These ideas in the end just might not be compatible.

The MoMA has put out a beautiful free pamphlet of Serra's work and the photos of his massive swirling shapes of steel as I look at them right now far exceed the experience of them earlier today*. This would probably be problematic for Serra who wants to get away from "the imagistic value of an object." The "psychological impact" of the sculpture which is what his work is about was unfortunately a little paltry for me.

*My moment at the MoMA was rather these two shadow lines of space and negative space.

Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson

The Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson is located in a small impasse in Paris near the Gare de Montparnasse. Following my visit there yesterday I've added it to my list of favorite museums in Paris that include the Rodin and Maillol museums and the Musée de la vie romantique. These museums all share one thing in common: they are small and personal. They afford you the physical space and quiet needed to really spend time with an œuvre d'art. The FHCB is like these other museums except for its modern accents. The art deco roof as the director pointed out to me is all glass and luminous.

Each year the foundation holds a competition and names a laureate. This year's winner Fazal Sheikh is also a MacArthur fellow. The foundation presents (until 26 August 2007) two series of Shaikh's work "Moksha" and "Ladli."

Moksha portrays widows in modern day Vrindavan and bears testimonies to their lives. The photographs are accompanied by text that presents these women's stories. Sheikh's touch is both light and tender at the same time. The photos are intimist, a little like being inside one of Bonnard's domestic scenes (minus the color). They suspend time. Lingering over the image of one old lady after another one senses the weight and thickness of their lives, the passing of time that marks their faces. It is this aspect of Sheikh's photography and engagement that reveals the touch of a master.

© Fazal Sheikh from Moksha

The subject of Sheikh's series Ladli is no easier, bearing witness as it does to the status of the girl child. In this series, exhibited in another hall, Sheikh's narrative texts take on a different distance. He plumbs into the causes and deep-rooted sociological and psychological reasons that contribute to the suffering of these children. The stories are always hard but Sheikh's photographs allow us to see these young girls and women without the infliction of a third person.

Fazal Sheikh's works will be on display at the Pace McGill Gallery from October 18 -November 24, 2007

It’s that time of the year

You can walk into the