Tag Archive
Astrid Bas Diptych: The Lover and La Musica Deuxième
Astrid Bas: Diptych, The Lover and La Musica Deuxième, faithfully takes some of the most memorable passages of Duras on love, desire, and her youth from The Lover (1984) and pairs it with her play La Musica Deuxième (1985), a piece exploring the end of love as a soon-to-be divorced couple takes leave of... »
“Every Word Contains the World,” A Conversation Between Adam Gopnik and Nobel Prize Winner J.M.G. Le Clézio
In her introduction to Friday night’s festival-opening event, Caro Llewellyn, Director of PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature, feted the festival’s fifth birthday with a retelling of its roots. She recalled skeptics’ claims that the volume of literary events and readings in New York negated the need for such a... »
Land of Refuge, Land of Exile: French Writers & Artists in the U.S. During the Occupation Years
“When France fell to the Germans in 1940, a number of French writers, intellectuals and artists fled France and found refuge in the U.S. mostly in New York and on the East Coast. Some worked for the U.S. government, some militated for Free France, most continued their creative work. Many of the French were... »
Darts & Philosophy: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s “Monsieur”
“What really matters is to pay attention to what is both infinitely small (the most pathetic, trivial things, the most insignificant details of daily life) and infinitely large (the essential questions we have, the meaning of life, the place of human beings in the universe). A book must contain both darts and philosophy, bowling... »
The Importance of Being Indolent
“The Idea came to me while I was sitting on my couch in a state Flaubert called ‘la marinade’…” -Edmund White The final Franco-American pairing of the Festival of New French Writing had no moderator; it was a conversation between two authors who love and admire each other’s work. Edmund White and Chantal Thomas each made... »
Lost in Translation
This will be the first entry in a series on The Festival of French Writing: French and American Authors in Conversation, taking place February 26-28 in New York City. Friday’s 3:15 session was a conversation between Abdouraham Waberi and Philip Gourevitch, moderated by Lila Azam Zangeneh. Their topic of conversation was one that is close to my heart: why so few French novels... »