Tag Archive
La Crème de la Crème: Hottest tickets in town to French film, lectures, and theater events in New York City
For the lover of all things French, New York in January and February is alive with lectures, film, and plays from across the Atlantic. You can hear Bernard Henri Lévy discuss free speech at Columbia and listen to Sylvia Kahan dish the dirt on the American heiress and salon hostess that inspired Proust;... »
Coco Avant Chanel
On a windy afternoon in New York, I made my way to The Paris Theatre to take in a matinée of the latest French import to hit New York soil: Anne Fontaine’s “Coco Avant Chanel.” What better theatre to take in a French film than the familiar darkness of The Paris, home to slightly saggy,... »
The Pleasure of Language in Vanina Marsot’s “Foreign Tongue”
Vanina Marsot’s Foreign Tongue has as many layered meanings as its playful title. This novel-within a novel is part erotic romance, part insightful musings on the nuances of the French language and the difficulties of translation. Professional writer Anna takes advantage of her dual citizenship and flees to Paris after a bad break-up with LA’s... »
Edmund White’s “The Flâneur:” A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris
“For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate observer, it’s an immense pleasure to take up residence in multiplicity, in whatever’s seething, moving, evanescent and infinite: you’re not at home, but you feel at home everywhere, you see everyone, you’re at the center of everything yet you remain hidden from everybody…The amateur of life enters... »
The Arrogance of the Anglo-Saxon, or Why Sartre was Wrong and French Literature is Paying for It
The conversation between the French novelist Frédéric Beigbeder and the American journalist Paul Berman was among the most explosive of the “Festival of New French Writing” conference. The panel got off to a shaky start, when the lanky, long-haired Beigbeder and Tom Bishop, the slightly-balding, distinguished Director of NYU’s Center for French Civilization and Culture,... »
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... »