Guest Post: Jonah Raskin on What the French Are Reading
by Jane Ciabattari | Jul-04-2009
NBCC member Jonah Raskin, in Paris to do readings and radio interview for his new book, Field Days, sends this dispatch on what the French are reading this summer.
Whenever I visit France I go to bookstores. This summer is no different. I’ve been to bookstore events, talked to editors, publishers, and readers—before the whole country goes on vacation.
They pack their bags with bikinis, sunblock, and of course books. If the French didn’t read in the summer if wouldn’t be France. This summer the French are reading bestsellers that provide an escape from reality and that also look closely at the realities of French history and French heroes. At a time of uncertainties about France’s future, readers are turning to both fiction and non-fiction for a sense of continuity, pride, and pleasure. For those who appreciate firm dates and real events the editors of Le Monde have assembled a massive tome with news stories from 1944 to 2009; no major event is missing. For readers who enjoy the mix of fact and fiction there’s Pierre Michon’s The Eleven, a dazzling new novel set during the French Revolution that provides a meditation on the nature of history itself. Reviewers have acclaimed it a genuine work of literature; readers have made it a commercial success without a big advertising budget.
Readers are also turning to bestselling confessional memoirs by Laurent Fignon, France’s famed cyclist, and Claude Lanzmann, the French filmmaker and long-time friend of Sartre and De Beauvoir. Both offer a strong sense of French identity, and are comforting.
The French are also venturing beyond their own literary borders and reading books in translation. Stieg Larsson’s The Millenium, which has been a global hit after its initial Swedish publication, is also popular with readers in France who want an escape into the pages of murder, sex, and mystery as they go off to the mountains and the sea this July and August.
Comments
Thanks for catching, Marc! Will fix that right away…
– Jane Ciabattari (07/06 at 6-Jul 18:40 -05:00)
fixed… and good eye! I nearly bought the new Lanzmann memoir, LE LIEVRE DE PATAGONIE, when I was in France last month, and now I wish I had. I imagine it’s unlikely to appear in English, which is our loss…
– Eric Banks (07/06 at 6-Jul 19:10 -05:00)
Translate it! I doubt you’d have trouble finding someone to subsidize publication in the US (this is the guy who made Shoah, after all). From the excerpt and comments on amazon.fr, it looks like a gripping read, which isn’t something that can be said about a lot of autobiographies.
– Marc (07/06 at 6-Jul 19:47 -05:00)
Hélas, were my French a bit better than it is… Benjamin Ivry recently wrote a very nice piece on the “scintillating wild boar” in The Forward:
http://www.forward.com/articles/104643/
It sounds like a terrific project for translation—let’s hope someone bites!
– Eric Banks (07/06 at 6-Jul 23:52 -05:00)
There was some discussion a while back on Conversational Reading about how few translations Americans read compared to, say, the Germans. Part of it is obviously that the number of people writing in English simply outstrips the equivalent number for almost any other language, except Chinese maybe. There might be something else at work, a kind of intellectual insularity perhaps, but either way, it’s hard to sell a translation in the US. The thing about Lanzmann, however, is that I’m sure there’s at least a few Jewish foundations in the US that would be willing to help out with publication costs.
Anyway, it does look fascinating. I might have to order it from amazon.fr.
– Marc (07/07 at 7-Jul 01:01 -05:00)
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“...Le Monde have assembled a massive tomb with news stories from 1944 to 2009…”
That’s one macabre typo…
– Marc (07/06 at 6-Jul 18:24 -05:00)