Paris and Writers: An Interview with Jake Lamar, Novelist & Playwright

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Paris and Writers: An Interview with Jake Lamar, Novelist & Playwright
Jake Lamar was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. As a boy he was deeply moved by James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain, and Richard Wright’s Black Boy. These two books were among the first to make him start to think he “might like to be a writer one day.” He graduated from Harvard University and wrote for Time Magazine before publishing his first book, a memoir called Bourgeois Blues, in 1991. The following year he was selected for a little-known, but highly prestigious literary award, the Lyndhurst prize, which gave him the financial means to be able to come to Paris to live for a year. Twenty-two years and six books later, he is still here. He recently took the time to sit down and chat with us about his life in Paris and his work, including his most recent work, a play based on the famous feud between James Baldwin and Richard Wright, titled Brothers In Exile. JH: What first brought you to Paris? And what has kept you here all these years? JL: The inspiration was all the American writers who came before me. The first American writer I knew about who had come to Paris was James Baldwin. I read Go Tell It On the Mountain when I was 12 or 13, and I was blown away by that book. It’s an autobiographical novel about Baldwin growing up in a difficult family in Harlem, and I was growing up in a difficult family in the Bronx. I asked my teacher, “Who is James Baldwin?” And he said, “He lives in Paris.” It seemed like just such an exotic idea to me, that someone with that background could live in Paris. So around the same time I was first thinking I might want to be a writer, I also got the idea of someday going to Paris. Twenty years later I finally had the chance. I arrived in September 1993. I knew one person, a friend from college who needed a flat-mate, in Vincennes, two metro stops outside of Paris. And I didn’t speak a word of French. But I found it very easy to meet people. One of the first people I met was the poet Ted Joans. I went to a reading of his, and he said, “Oh, you should come by my café.” He had his favorite café, the Café Le Rouquet on the Blvd. St Germain, and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 4-6 he would be there, just sort of holding court. When I went there for the first time, Hart Leroy Bibbs and James Emanuel were sitting there. Ted told me about Jim Haynes’s Sunday night dinners, I met my first Paris girlfriend at one of those dinners. I’d meet someone at Ted’s café and they’d invite me to their house for dinner. Then I’d go to the dinner and meet someone else. So I was able to get a social life pretty easily here. I was having a great time, meeting interesting people, so I decided to stay for a second year. I moved from Vincennes to the 18th arrondissement, then stayed a third year, and at the end of the third year I met the woman I would go on to marry. So the first reason for wanting to stay was just the people I met here. I met great people. But I also loved the city, loved the feel of the place, loved the sidewalk cafes, the beauty of the place. And then once I started getting published here, about 12 years ago, I really began to appreciate how much the arts in general, and writing in particular, are appreciated here, the respect the French have for artists and writers. That’s something different than what we have in the States. In the States I think it’s more the idea of success that’s respected. Being a rich and famous writer is all that counts. Whereas here it’s the métier itself that’s respected. JH: Can you say a little bit more about that? JL: When I meet a French person for the first time, and I tell them I’m a writer, their first question is, “What do you write?” When I meet an American, their first question is “Would I have heard of you?” That says a lot. The French person is interested in writing. The American is interested in “Are you famous? Are you worth reading?” In the U.S. if you bring out a book, you have to hope the New York Times likes it. In France you’ve got three national daily papers, a slew of weekly magazines that cover literature and the arts, you’ve got a radio station like France Culture. In the U.S. you’ve got the Charlie Rose Show. Here you’ve got 10 different versions of the Charlie Rose Show. It’s a culture that values writing and writers. What we do is respected here. JH: I want to ask you about your latest book, it’s called “Posthumous” in English, “Postérité” in French. And it has been published first in French. How did that happen? JL: My French editor read it and loved it. I wrote it in English, I gave it to my agent in New York, and she shopped it around. I knew it would be a hard sell, because everybody has their “brand” now. And my brand is the black guy who lives in Paris and writes thrillers. But this book is not a thriller, it’s not set in Paris, and it has nothing to do with racial questions. This is a book about a Dutch abstract expressionist painter, and I think people just didn’t smell the money on the page, as Fitzgerald said. The aroma of money wasn’t there. Meanwhile my French editor, who had published my most thriller-ish books as well as my memoir, jumped at the chance to publish it. They hired a translator, and the book…
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Lead photo credit : Jake Lamar

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Janet Hulstrand is a freelance writer, editor, writing coach and teacher who divides her time between France and the U.S. She is the author of "Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You," and "A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France." She writes frequently about France for Bonjour Paris, France Today, and a variety of other publications, including her blog, Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road. She has taught “Paris: A Literary Adventure” for education abroad programs of the City University of New York since 1997, and she teaches online classes for Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington D.C. She is currently working on her next book in Essoyes, a beautiful little village in Champagne.

Comments

  • Louise Wareham Leonard
    2015-09-22 20:06:22
    Louise Wareham Leonard
    I was the personal assistant to Black Liberation Founder and Reverend James H Cone, and we discussed Jake's intense anti-white stance in one of his early novels. Has Jake updated his feelings/distaste for white people in America?

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