Day 7, Monday March 14 : Already the weather is showing signs of the approaching spring: it is printanière. The snow was still falling when I'd left Connecticut a few days ago. (Returning in April it would continued to be dismal there for more than a month ) Now I could enjoy the ambiance of April in Paris without having to deal with the planeloads of tourists arriving in that month. The March tourists seem to be nicer bunch anyway.
The trite myth that the French despise Americans is completely false. There is bound to be culture shock between any two nationalities. What is interesting in this case is the way in which culture shock between cognate civilizations ( such as the nations of Western Barbarism) can sometimes be harder to deal with precisely because it is unexpected. Even a hidebound visitor will expect that China or the Congo will be very different from the US. However, when misunderstanding and failure of communication occur between an Americans and the British, or Dutch or French, one may be at a loss to know what to do. It is amusing to note that the 4 quarrels I've had to date, ( in which I finally lost patience and began ranting ) were based on misunderstandings in restaurants and groceries, situations in which food was involved. Mann ist was er isst.
Leaving the Hotel Picard around 8 AM , I walked in the beautiful sunlight along the long and narrow rue du Temple back to the Centre Pompidou . At least half a dozen streets and plazas in the Marais have been retained their names from the time of the Knights Templar in the 13th century: rue du Temple; rue du Vieux Temple; rue du Faubourg du Temple; Avenue du Temple ; rue Vielle du Temple ; Boulevard du Temple ; Square du Temple ; etc.Their destruction by auto-da-fé in 1307 is one of those blights on civilization common to all nations.
Taking the metro to the Luxembourg station I once again picked up coffee and a pastry in the lobby of the Institute Henri Poincaré. This is not the first, nor will it be the last mathematical research institute where my presence appears to generate some controversy among its receptionists - in this case the middle-aged woman sitting in a glass-enclosed office near the entrance.
I'd encountered something similar at the MSRI in Berkeley, during the historic symposium on Topological Quantum Field Theory back in 1992. From the nucleus of a two-week conference on Knot Theory, it grew into a 6-week marathon event. On this occasion everyone present fell under suspicion from the MSRI secretaries for imagined illegitimacy or infractions . Several distinguished mathematicians had to reassure them that I was both harmless and on the level.
The problem seems to be this : If I'm not a mathematician what am I doing there ? If I am a mathematician , then what sorts of ridiculous demands will I be likely to impose on them ? In fact the Poincaré Institute has placed a one-page notice on the dining tables in the ground floor café space , advising personnel from neighboring scientific institutes along the rue d' Ulm , Curie, Pasteur, to take their business elsewhere. Quote: " This is a meeting place for mathematicians and theoretical physicists. If you or your students are not involved in these subjects, you should not consider this to be a work place for you . " ( Or words to that effect.)
On this morning the receptionist saw me talking with another mathematician, suggesting that I probably did belong there. Then because I didn't scream at her about the malfunctioning of the elevator, I was probably the safer kind of mathematician. However what I was working on at the dining table wasn't either math or physics, which might have raised some hackles on people who cared (some version of the null set) .
Is the 'set of no sheep' the same or different from the 'set of no cans of shaving cream'? There's a question for the philosophers!
Rather I was composing a letter, in picturesque Frangoamericano to the editors ofPresses de la Cité. In this letter I ask them to consider the manuscript of "The Eiffel Tower Gang" for publication, even though it's written in English.
Concurrent with my letter writing I was eating a delicious Croissant aux Amandes purchased at the café counter from a bellicose yet likable Senegalese waitress, and also listening to the first of Beethoven's 3 Razamuffskii Quartets , Opus 59, no. 1 on a Walkman cassette player. Persons who know this quartet will instantly acknowledge the immensity of the experience. Persons unfamiliar with it cant be made to understand this by any means other than listening to it themselves.
I left the IHP around 11 to return to the CNRS research center at 175 rue du Chevaleret. Pierre Lochak and I discussed the possibility of my going to the town of St. Giron outside of Toulouse to make another impromptu visit to La Maison d'Alexandre Grothendieck.
After a brief return to IRCAM I returned once again to the Cité Internationale (City for International Students" located on the ceinture péripherique, the southernmost border of the French capital. Sitting over a beer in the cafe adjoining the restaurant I got into a conversation with a wise, wizened elder from Somalia. In his opinion George Bush, Jr. wasn't as bad as he's been made out to be. The reason he gave for this was that his regime has seen the elevation of two Afro-Americans, Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice into the highest positions of government.
I then mentioned the name of George Bush, Senior. He waxed indignant for 15 minutes over the catastrophe that Bush the First had created in Somalia. Human beings are terribly self-preoccupied in their politic judgments: that the Bush Junior administration had placed some Afro-Americans in its administration counted for more than all the cruel suffering it has brought on the Middle East.It is in this domain that human selfishness reaches its acme.
Paris, Day 8. March 15th
IRCAM. In circular order , starting from the yellow raincoat:Elaine Chew, Alexandre Francois, Gilles Dowek; Daniel Schell,Frank D. Valencia , Charlotte Truchet, Andreatta Moreno,Asseyag
After stopping briefly for breakfast again at the Institut Poincaré, I proceeded along the rue d'Ulm to the Ecole Normale Superieure. A seminar directed by mathematician/music theorist Guirino Mazzola, organized by IRCAM, was scheduled for 10 AM .
The Ecole Normale Superieure was established under the inglorious Bonapartist reign as a kind of prep school for French whiz kids. Since Napoleon had assumed that all of Europe and much of the Middle East was soon to be incorporated into France, he must have pictured it as a kind of academic hothouse for the incipient geniuses of the new Holy Roman Empire.
Things didn't work out exactly as planned, yet the ENS and its guiding philosophy have endured. Even today a diploma from the ENS carries enormous prestige. The modal average of prominent names in French politics, letters and science consists of graduates of the ENS. Admission is not based on class, money or inheritance. Any bright high school kid can get in merely by passing the entrance exams. However these exams are very difficult. Much like IQ tests (which , it should be remembered, were invented by a contemporary of Poincaré, Binet) I suspect that they are filled with silly bits of specialized knowledge known only to children of the well-heeled (sik!) and the well-educated.
The class was held in a confined classroom, the Salle Simone Weil . I've always had trouble liking that woman. Her "saintliness" in particular has always impressed me as a childish neurotic trip taking the form of an on-going hunger strike against mommy and daddy. Her flirtation with Catholicism is particularly irritating, given that it incorporated elements of anti-Semitism despite her intensely Jewish personality and family. ( Given the evident similarities between her background and mine, there has to be either love or hate between us. No doubt there are small and subtle factors pushing me towards the latter.)
Be that as it may, she did do a number of interesting things, including romantic gestures like making a parachute jump into Spain during the Civil War, and working for a day in a factory, which women of her class were not supposed to do. (The story has it that she broke down from first-hand contact with the miseries of the working-class, a fairly typical example of hysterical Marxist over-kill. The story doesn't say what she did with the paycheck ). Living in exile in London during WWII she succumbed to chronic tendencies to anorexia aggravated by depression.
The ENS is sufficiently distinguished to not need any further distinction in its architecture. One of the delights of French intellectual life is the kinds of antiquated, yet surprisingly appropriate buildings and venues in which it is pursued. The ENS functions inside a comfortable, if not terribly handsome 19th century. scholastic building. The very absence of modernity resonates 4 centuries of creative energy in French intellectual life.
At the front gates I encountered the concierge in a commanding position in a glass-enclosed cage. She was an irascible old lady, charming and a bit batty, genre English detective fiction. She'd formed a somewhat exalted picture of my status and thought I was the lecturer. Without a moment's hesitation she handed me the key ( the kind one might use to open a medieval wine cellar) to the Salle Simone Weil. I could have turned around and walked out with it as a souvenir from France! My disaffection with Simone Weil does not extend that far, so I went inside, asked around, and found the classroom in one of the corridors on the first floor. Within a few minutes I was joined by Alexandre Francois and Elaine Chew, musicians and computer scientists collaborating on research projects at the University of Southern California. Shortly after we entered the room wee were joined by the other participants, about a dozen altogether, all of them members or visitors at IRCAM .
The lecturer, Guerino Mazzola mathematician turned music theorist, teaches at the University of Zurich. His name is Italian, his native language German, while the lecture was delivered in very acceptable French. Sometimes he switched to an effective English, He's of medium height, very energetic, a bit overweight (Look who's talking!). Mazzola and I were introduced to one another by Andreatta Moreno .
"I know who you are" , he told me, "You're the person who's translating Grothendieck's Recoltes et Semailles into English." Evidently the translation of 100 pages of a 2000 page memoir carries lots of mileage! Available on the Internet for several years It receives thousands of hits each month but never a penny of financing. Last month I cut out everything except the introduction and asked interested parties to send $20 for the rest.
Mazzola has done valuable work in music theory. His basic treatise is a (predictably) massive tome : Topos of Music . He tends to "doctor" (give a PhD to) his ideas with extensive quotes from worthy authorities, pictures of statues of ancient philosophers appearing in the upper right hand corner of his power point presentations, etc. One really has to have a combined background in both modern mathematics and music theory to fully understand what he is saying. I happen to have both, which put me in a unique position to separate the hot air from the substance.
Mazzola on Music Theory
Following Guerino's lecture Alexandre Francois took Elaine Chew and myself to a Greek Creperie on the rue Mouffetard. The delicious crepes were crisp yet solid, without sogginess, their several layers cooked through and through and filled with ham, cheese, Greek dressing and freshly cut lettuce.
From there we walked through the crowds up the cobblestoned street to the Place Contrescarpe, legendary through the carousings of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé , Alfred Jarry and assorted ilk. There we continued our discussions and ate the crepes while leaning on the pedestal surrounding a large chestnut tree. I would be seeing them one final time at IRCAM in a few days.
Leaving them I walked over the Montagne St Geneviève back to the rue Soufflot and down to the Luxembourg station, heading to the Place d'Italie again to deliver the manuscript of "Eiffel Tower Gang" to Presses de la Cité. The manuscript was accepted by a new, more courteous receptionist on the ground floor. The publisher replied by E-Mail a few days later. They'd been charmed by the idea, but it wasn't their kind of book. (The obvious course of action for me is to find a publishing house that will publish it in English . It's a virtual certainty that a French house will want to secure the translation rights, The novel is all about Paris and will delight Parisians.) After delivering the manuscript I returned to IRCAM and worked at a computer for a few hours.
Leaving the studios around 7 that evening my attention was drawn to the sound of an operatic voice singing religious music at the far end of the parvis. Religious music, of course, is just any kind of music that inhibits dancing.
The gathering twilight which in Paris conjures up the metaphor of a squinting eye , intensified the prevailing atmosphere of mourning. I believed at first that a cult was behind the event; this was not totally mistaken, however the cult turned out to be the size of the Catholic Church. A large crowd was gathered at the base of the Place Beaubourg, adjacent to the doors of the Centre Pompidou. Walking over I learned that this was a memorial service in honor of the homeless who'd died in the streets of France over the past year. The organizers call themselves Collectif : Les Morts de la Rue. A raised platform serving as podium to hold performers and microphones had been erected in front of the Centre Pompidou. After the vocalist was finished, some poetry was read, followed by personal testaments made by persons who had, and often still were, homeless. Several readers took turns reading off the names and manner of death of the 85 persons who have died in France over the last year from conditions relating to homelessness. Between each recitation a bell was sounded . On a table to the right of the podium were copies of a book in which all the names and their stories were listed. They were selling for 20 Euros. Someone came by carrying a stack of large, white church candles. I didn't take one but others did. Mounds of burning coals placed at locations within the crowd further contributed to the religious tone of the event. A sign at the top of the hill indicated that another demonstration was being held at the same moment in Montreal.
Paris, Wednesday March 16:
The morning was spent in a Laundromat around the corner from the rue Royer-Collard where I lived for about a year in 1968. Every machine in a French Laundromat is controlled by a central panel: soap powder dispensers , washing machines, driers. For soap powder there are slots on this panel for inserting 40 centimes. One must then press a button on which a number is painted, corresponding to each of the two soap powder distributors. The system invites many opportunities for mistakes: I hit button 15 when I should have hit 16, which meant that I had to scrap the soap powder from the bottom of distributor 15 into the cup Iid placed underneath the sluice at 16! A disaster was narrowly averted when I confused the numbers of the driers with those of the washing machines. Fortunately there was an Australian woman waiting for her clothes to spin dry who was able to assist me.
Stuffing my washed clothing in a bag I proceeded next to the metro and the Gare du Nord. It was time to arrange my travels to the Midi where I intended to spend two weeks: Montpelier, Arles and Aix-en-Provence. An office named Preparation de Voyage at the Gard du Nord is the place for all arrangements. The line was long but well worth to wait. The young man who consulted schedules and prices calculated the total cost for the round-trip at 146 Euros, a bit less than $200. By skillfully combining buses and trains I was able to get the cost down to about 130 Euros. In general , basic ingenuity and 6 years of previous experience living in France enabled me to make large savings everywhere. As a friend recently pointed out to me, $2000 bought me a $4000 vacation.
My business at the Gare du Nord completed, I left the main entrance, turned left on the rue St. Denis, and continued walking north in the direction of the metro Porte de La Chapelle. My destination was the headquarters of the French Youth Hostel association (FUAJ) in the rue Pajol. This district is filled with immigrant workers from North Africa, the Middle East , India, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Colorful shops, clothing stores, hotels, and restaurants abound, very different Paris than the neighborhood of the Hotel Picard and the Place de la Republique. I promised myself that I would come back and live here for a while on my next trip. The local hotels charge as little as 27 Euros ($36), a night.
The street widened to a traffic island where a crowd was gathered, looking down an intersecting street. From several police cars were stationed there, gendarmes emerged to control the situation and guard access . I asked the person next to me, a middle-aged worker from some Muslim country, if he knew what was going on.
"Un mort" he replied simply, and pointed me to a corpse lying in the street about 100 meters away, covered with a white sheet.
I'd come upon the scene of a recent accident. I had my camera with me and began taking pictures. This annoyed some of the people gathered there (Stupid American tourist wandering around snapping pictures of fatalities in our exotic neighborhood.) They were upset, not hostile, and no-one tried to stop me.
It was another 4 blocks to the headquarters of the Youth Hostel association. The only way to reserve a room in advance at any member of the official youth hostel organization is to pay the full amount in advance, either by cash or credit card. A bed at the Montpellier hostel rented at 12.50 a night, about one-third of what I was paying at the Hotel Picard. In Arles I stayed in a hotel. The reservation for Aix-en-Provence was placed from Montpellier The 5 days adventure of my stay at the Montpellier youth hostel was of the kind that engraves itself indelibly on one's psyche, and I will be writing about it presently.
A walk along the metro station at Porte de la Chapelle to the one at Barbès-Rochechouart is like being given a plane ticket for an hour's visit to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The metro Barbès took me directly to Chatelet, where I caught a train to the Place de la Republique. After lunch and a nap, I was back in the at 3.
That evening I returned to the neighborhood around the rue du Chevaleret. My destination was the newly completed Bibliothèque Mitterand, situated on the banks of the Seine at the confluence of the Boulevard Massena and the Quai d'Austerlitz . The library is actually a collection of buildings separated by walkways and terraces, a notably ugly specimen of Political Architecture that could fit in well with similar constructions in Albany, NY and Moscow. The ramps go nowhere, the terraces have nothing on them, many of the doorways open into nothing. One's overall impression is of a contrived installation of warehouses, hardly a fit monument to the "high culture" inscribed in the legend of the Socialist ex-prime minister.
I had an appointment to meet the statistician Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel and attend a public lecture about Srinivasa Ramanujan delivered by Don Zagier, a prominent number theorist. For many years Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel was the administrator for the SMF (Societé des Mathematiques de France . "Mathematics" in French is a refreshingly plural noun) . Now she directs of the International Mathematical Union, an organization devoted to increasing public awareness of mathematics, and to maintaining communication between mathematicians and their organizations. We hadn't met since the last time I visited France in 2001. She and I got together on the ground floor, from where we walked to a dark and chilly basement lounge adjacent to the auditorium where the Zagier's lecture would be given. Bridge chairs are arranged around small tables, the whole effect being somewhat cold and unappealing. We'd last gotten together in 2001 in connection with the formation of the Grothendieck Circle.
Mireille bought several copies of my Ferment Press book on Emilie du Chatelet and a copy of the book on the Einstein Centennial Symposium , adding another 25 Euros to my slender resources. She also introduced me to officials of the SMF and another organization hat supports the careers of woman mathematicians( "Femmes et Mathematiques", a division of "Femmes et Sciences").
The lecture was excellent, at least for mathematicians : "public lectures" in math are usually like that. Don Zagier is director of the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, and professor at the College de France. He talk didn't touch on the human tragedy of Ramanujan's years in Cambridge, which is fully covered in the book by R Kanigel, "The man who knew infinity : A life of the genius Ramanujan" (1991) , which may have disappointed persons who' d come for the human interest aspect to the life of this important mathematician.
Day 10, Thursday March 17: Finances dictated that I could not remain at the Hotel Picard beyond Wednesday, March 16. I could either move to a cheaper hotel, 27 as opposed to 33 Euros per night, such as the Hotel Bellevue up in the Porte La Chapelle district, or accept the invitation of George Whitman, founder and manager of Shakespeare & Company to stay in his 'writer's guest house', that is to say, a couch in the bookstore itself.
From its inauguration in the 50's, Shakespeare & Co, George has always been open to traveling writers. Provided they are writers, a label left intentionally vague. I was told this story by the person to whom it happened: several years ago he fell asleep on a bench in the reading rooms up on the second floor fronting the Seine. He slept through the evening and into the night, a good 5 hours. When he woke up it was in response to being shaken by George. "You have to go now." George explained, "It's closing time." Then he paused, looked him over quizzically, and asked:
"Are you a writer?"
Without reflecting the man answered, "No."
"Oh", George said, "In that case you have to go now."
The bookstore also serves as a temporary home to an assortment of "tumbleweeds": young people with an interest in literature, travelling around Europe with scant resources. Normally there is no enforceable time limit to their stay- unless they steal books, punishable by perpetual banishment. George Whitman is very unforgiving about such infractions. That it is absurdly easy to steal books from Shakespeare & Co. contributes to the high prices of its merchandise. Living conditions are very rough here and most guests, young or old, leave after a few weeks. My limit is 5 days.
Official guest quarters still operate on the 3rd floor of the building housing the two story bookstore. In them one finds a kitchen, gloomy and cramped living-room and double-decker bunk beds at the back. Altogether half a dozen beds are distributed between 4 rooms. Located off to the left as one walks to the back is the "Henry Miller" room. Legend has it that it was occupied by Miller himself for awhile. Its double bed almost completely fills the floor space, with piles of books taking up most of what's left. I stayed there for 2 days on my trip to Paris in 2001.
Altogether no more than 6 to 8 persons can stay on the 3rd floor, a number that is probably already against Parisian fire laws. The remaining dozen or so tumbleweeds stay in the bookstore itself. In theory everyone who stays there has to help out at the store a few hours each day. However there's not enough work for everyone, so the tenants hang around and help customers find books .After the store closes at midnight the couches and benches are converted into beds. The books on them are removed for the night and replaced the next morning. The blankets and sleeping bags kept in storage on the premises are sufficient to keep one warm, though it is doubtful that they are ever cleaned.
Shakespeare & Co. doesn't open up before noon. At that time the tenants put the benches, which serve to hold boxes of used paperbacks, on the street in front of the store . There is no shower, no cooking for persons not staying on the 3rd floor and no bathrooms during the day. Although a bathroom was recently was installed on the second floor, French law stipulates that only employees can use it during the day. Only after all the customers have left will it be unlocked for the residents.
The promiscuity (in the sense of 'habitation at close quarters' ) can be embarrassing if not intimidating. Shakespeare & Co. has been in operation for over 50 years. Every cubic inch of its walls have been fitted out with shelves for books, with benches, boxes and tables overflowing with hard-covers and paperbacks, new and old.
Although the great majority of them have been published in English, there are long shelves overstocked with books in German, Spanish, and less familiar languages running along the wall at the far back. Russian and Italian have alcoves all to themselves. These shelves have not been replaced in a very long time, ( if they have ever been), and all of them sag dangerously. Periodically half a dozen shelf-loads of foreign language books, usually German books will come tumbling down onto the floor. While staying there I was haunted by the famous story of the rabbi who was killed by the books falling off his shelf as he reached for a Talmud.
Over breakfast this morning, contemplating the prospect of staying at the bookstore my verdict had tipped in favor of moving to the Hotel Bellevue. As a matter of courtesy I intended to drop by Shakespeare & Co. to tell George know that I was declining his offer. My bags were already packed my bags and left in the lobby of the hotel so that I could go to 175 rue du Chevaleret pick up a letter Pierre Lochak containing 50 Euros sent me by a friend in the US.
Pierre and I sat around discussing the possibility of my going to St. Giron in the Pyrenees to say hello to Alexandre Grothendieck. Pierre had contacted a friend in Toulouse who'd agreed to put me up for the night before and the night after my attempt to visit him. The suggestion was tempting, yet even as we were talking I'd decided against it. The glamour of my career as the "Grothendieck hunter" has faded away. We all know where he's living. Leila and Pierre keep in touch with him, or at least with the small number of people who are allowed to visit him.
To a certain extent the joke has grown stale. Professor Grothendieck dares people to try to find him. Those who do discover that he will be surprisingly hospitable to visitors for a brief spell. Inevitably he finds some excuse for banishing them from his company forever. Let somebody else do the legwork.
I left CNRS around 12:30 and arrived at the door of Shakespeare & Co. at 1. The store, which is managed by the tumbleweeds, a small paid staff, and George's charming young daughter, Sylvia, was still being made ready for the public. The salescounter resembles a large nut ( in the sense of "nut and bolt") made of wood. Sitting inside the counter and around its edge were Andy, Deborah (Franco-American) ,Gemma (Australian) Daniel (Canadian) and Sylvia, all in their 20's. Standing in the doorway with me was a Chinese-American student who asked if she could stay a few nights.
Deborah wasn't sure there was room for the two of us. I was just about to say that I'd decided to decline his invitation when George Whitman himself can into the room. A legend in Paris for half a century, he's reached 91 still strong and healthy. During my stay he usually showed up wearing a pressed brown suit. He's always been clean shaven. Recently he's allowed his hair to grow. Now his head is covered with a broad crop of silver curls, creating an aura of laurel leaves and poetic fancy that well become him.
George interrogated Deborah about the housing situation. Turning to the Chinese-American girl, he told her to come back in a few days. He reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder:
"As for this guy", he told Deborah, "he's special. If there isn't any room for him, I'll give up my bed. He's always welcome here."
Having had the red carpet rolled out for me it was impossible to say no! I was now committed to staying 5 nights in spite of dirt, lack of bathrooms or showers, late hours and potential Talmuds flying off the shelves. Giving up his bed didn't mean of course that George would have no place to sleep. He could stay in the rare book store adjacent to the main bookstore, or even go back to his apartment about 6 blocks away. )
Deborah was a gem. Deborah speaks English with only a trace of a French accent. Short with dull black-grey hair, she adopts a dumpy slouch and dresses in castoff jeans and a sweater. Her skin was pallid and I'd the impression that she was somewhat emaciated. She understood that a 66-year old tumbleweed might not feel comfortable with the all-night parties that sometimes occur on in the 3 reading rooms on the second floor. She and I fixed up the couch up the steps to the right in the back, in front of the alcove for books in Italian and behind the shelves of books in German. During the day this holds expensive art books, which I removed each night.
Within a few days I'd begun to be terrified that the oversized and heavy art books on the upper shelves might fly off during the night; so I also I removed these before going to bed, remembering to put them all back up again when I left at 7:30 AM. Since the tumbleweeds all went to sleep very late at night, they normally slept in until 11 or even noon, when they had to get up to open the bookstore.
Having arranged my lodgings for the time being, I took lunch at the Salambbo restaurant, on the rue St. Severin between the rue St. Jacques and the Boulevard St. Michel. A very decent cous-cous can be had there for 7 Euros; with wine and coffee the bill comes to 12 Euros , excellent for this part of Paris. Following lunch I went back to the Hotel Picard to pick up my luggage. Before returning I made a reservation there for April 3rd and 4th, my final 2 days in Paris before returning to the US on the 5th. It wasn't used: the Hotel de Medicis in the Latin Quarter turned out to be both cheaper and more convenient.
After 9 PM there is nothing to do at Shakespeare & Co. but hang out, try to socialize, and wait until it closes at midnight. A film was being shown in a theater on the Place St. Michel, a documentary and recreation of the life of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The film is in both English and Norwegian, with French subtitles.
The cinematography of this film, its landscapes, countryside, interiors, cityscapes, people and climates, is incredibly beautiful, and it can be highly recommended for that aspect. The narrative line is a sad and predictable mix of cheap Marx and cheap Freud, its political earnestness driven home by capricious chronologies of wars, strikes and revolutions in Europe and elsewhere in Munch's time. Given that the life of Edvard Munch was one of great intensity and interest , I was willing to put up with such banality. I left the cinema with regret at 11:30 before the film had finished.
Back in Shakespeare & Co. by midnight. Lights out at 12:30
Gemma at the cash register.
Shakespeare & Co., the daytime crowd.
Evening outside the bookstore.
Sunday Tea on the 3rd floor
Sunday Tea