Authors who Talk

After being absent from Paris for most of the year from September 2007 to this September, and having been too swamped with work to get to the American Library during the year before, I have been delightfully surprised since my return to discover that the library’s venerable Evenings with an Author program, which began in the 1930s, has undergone a decided coup de jeune. In fact, it’s as exciting as I’ve ever seen it during my twenty-odd years in Paris.   The first event I attended, ten days after I returned from New York, was journalist Donald Morrison’s talk called “The Death of French Culture,” based on a notorious article he had written for Time Magazine, now expanded into a book published by Editions Denoël as Que reste-t-il de la culture français? More than 150 people were there, and as you may imagine, with a provocative theme like that, aggressively argued by the author, the Q&A raised the roof. Great!   Some of the writers I’ve missed this year, much to my regret, are (just to name a few): David Lodge presenting his new novel Deaf Sentence; Edmund White talking about his latest novel Hotel de Dream; Cara Black, on Murder in the Rue de Paradis, the latest of her detective Aimée Leduc’s enquêtes in Paris; Mary Duncan on Pursuing Kafka’s Last Love, based on a cache of letters, diaries, and photos belonging to Kafka’s last mistress, which were discovered in Paris eight years ago; Richard Reeves, on his biography John Stewart Mill: Victorian Firebrand; famed detective novelist Sarah Paretsky, the creator of to New York sleuth V. I. Warshawski; Dinau Mengetsu, the brilliant young Ethiopian-born American novelist of The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears; and Patricia and Walter Wells on their memoir We’ve Always Had Paris … and Provence.   But not to despair: from now through the onset of the Christmas season there’s a fresh Evening with an Author every Wednesday at 7:30 pm. Among the writers I’ll be sure not to miss are Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C. K. Williams reading from his works on October 22; Jerome Charyn, a part-time Parisian, presenting his novel Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution on October 29; Diane Johnson presenting her latest novel Lulu in Marrakech on November 19; and Polly Platt, the author of French or Foe, in a talk called “I Married a Frenchman,” based on her new book Love à la française, to be joined by other American women married to French men. That’s on December 3. The full list of events is to be found on the library’s web site: www.americanlibraryinparis.org. For visitors to the city not familiar with the American Library in Paris, these events are free and open to the general public. They are financed by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation. Wine and nibblies are served before and after the presentations. Copies of the books are available for purchase after the talks, and the authors are delighted to sign them and answer questions. The Evenings with an Author are organized by library director Charlie Trueheart and his efficient and resourceful Communication Officer Abigail Altman, at the reins since her gifted predecessor Emmy Slatni went on maternity leave six months ago. The program’s success is buoyed by the spirited team of volunteers, who make attendees feel welcome and cheerfully pour the wine. These are community events as they should be: the kind that create a community. Our congratulations to all involved. The American Library in Paris is at No. 10 Rue du Général Camou in the 7th Arrondissement, between Avenue Rapp and Avenue de la Bourdonnais, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Métro: Ecole Militaire (Line 8) or Alma Marceau (Line 9). RER C: Pont de L’Alma. Tel: 01 53 59 12 60. (David Burke is the author of Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light, Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, 2008. He will be giving a lavishly illustrated presentation entitled “Edith Wharton’s Paris: A Literary Stroll through the Faubourg Saint-Germain” on January 21, 2009).