Reading about the recent protests in France brought to mind my own brush with demonstrators and the law when living in Paris decades ago. After classes at the Sorbonne, I used to walk over to Presses Universitaires on Rue Soufflot to look at the beautiful books I couldn’t afford. These…
In 1976, while working in Paris teaching ESL to middle managers at a French language school, I splurged and bought two tickets to the Béjart Ballet. I wasn’t making great money so this was a big expense. I had a hot first date, however, and wanted to have a special…
I lived in Paris for several years in the 1970s. Things were cheaper then–five francs to the dollar–but gourmet dining in fine restaurants was out of my reach. I usually ate at North African restaurants, or enjoyed the humble, bland faire at the Cité Universitaire. I nevertheless had vicarious methods…
I was both a literature and French major in college, so I could read Samuel Beckett’s novels and plays in both languages. His plays used a literary device called “stichomythia,” which had characters speaking short lines back and forth, so it was easy to read in French. Beckett, like Joseph…
George Whitman just died at the ripe old age of 98. He opened the famous Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare & Company in 1951, renaming it in 1964 in tribute to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore of the same name that closed at the onset of World War II. She ran…
