Skip to main content

My COVID19 Shelter-In-Place Reading List

Janet Flanner with Ernest Hemingway during WWII
After I got back from the Paris study abroad program 6 weeks ago, I decided to expand my reading around the cultural life of Paris and Montparnasse in the early 20th century. I've finished the first 6 on this list, and the enforced stay-at-home policy at the moment will give me plenty of time to finish the rest. All of these books are very good, in different ways:

Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall, and the Outsiders of Montmartre, by Stanley Meisler (despite its title, this is a well researched and well written book that is based around a sympathetic biography of the painter Chaim Soutine, who lived in Montparnasse for more than 30 years and is buried in the Cimitiere de Montparnasse.)

Americans in Paris, selected by Adam Gopnik. (An anthology of writing, mainly letters and essays, by American politicians, writers, artists, etc, who visited or lived in Paris. Everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Isadora Duncan to Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, etc)

Giacometti, A Biography, by James Lord. (The Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, resident of the same house in Montparnasse from 1923 to 1967.)

The Life of Samuel Beckett, by James Knowlson. (Resided in France, mostly Montparnasse in Paris, from 1938 until his death in 1989).

My Life in Absurdity, by Chester Himes. (African-American writer who fled Jim Crow America to Paris in the 1940s, about the same time as James Baldwin. One virtue of this autobiography is, I suppose, that he doesn't try to varnish what a horrible person he was, particularly towards women. Still worth reading for what it reveals about how racism can so deform a personality that it never recovers)

James Baldwin, A Biography, by David Leeming. (Written by someone who was Baldwin's friends and secretary in the 1960s. Baldwin of course lived in Paris and France for long periods, beginning in 1948.)

Paris Was Yesterday, by Janet Flanner. (Flanner was the Paris correspondent for the New Yorker magazine for decades, beginning in 1925. Consists of mainly short, witty pieces witnessing everything from the hard drinkers of the American expat crowd in Montparnasse, to the French response to the death of FDR).

Shakespeare and Co., by Sylvia Beach (memoir of the woman who was the literary birth-mother of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway.)

So, what's on your reading list? Leave a comment here, or connect with me on Facebook and leave one there: click here to comment on Facebook.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Restoring my Printing Press

I've just finished restoring and assembling my large etching press -- a six week process involving lots of rust removal, scrubbing with steel wool, and repainting. Here is a photo of the same kind of press from the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative: And here is a short YouTube video of me testing the press, making sure the motor still works after nearly seven years of lying in storage:
Click here to read more

Brancusi in Plastic

Artist Mary Ellen Croteau is showing these columns made from recycled plastic cartons and lids in the window of the Columbia College bookstore on Michigan Avenue. They are a playful homage to Brancusi's "Endless Columns", with a serious environmental message for our times: Image copyright Inhabitat.com and Mary Ellen Croteau Mary Ellen also runs a wonderful experimental art gallery in a window space in west Chicago, called Art on Armitage . I will be exhibiting a mixed media piece there during August 2012.
Click here to read more

How to etch a linoleum block

Linoleum as a material for printmaking has been used for nearly a hundred years now. Normally, you cut an image out using special gouges similar to woodcut tools, cutting away the lino around the image you want to print. This is called relief printmaking, because if you look at the block from the side, the material that remains stands up in relief from the backing material. You then roll ink with a brayer over the surface of the block, place paper over it, and either print by hand or run it through a press. You can do complex things this way (for example, reduction linocuts), but the beauty of the process is that it is quick, simple, and direct. Incised lino block, from me.redith.com Etched lino block, from Steve Edwards A few years ago, I saw some prints that were classified as coming from etched linoleum blocks, and I loved the textures I saw in them. In the last few months, I've been trying to use this technique in my own studio, learning about it as one does these d
Click here to read more