I love to cook and I love French bandes dessinées, so when I learned that the comic author and artist, Christophe Blain, had written a book about one of France’s top chefs, I wanted to check it out. Published by Gallimard in 2011, En cuisine avec Alain Passard is the…
On May 18, 1922, one of Paris’ grandest hotels was the site of a legendary dinner party. Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust, were among the attendees. The evening is featured in a book, titled Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author…
In the fall of 2011, I signed up for a French literature course at Eastern Michigan University. I loved the class and am indebted to our professor, Benjamin Palmer, who improved my understanding of great literature and its relationship to history. I enthusiastically enrolled in a second semester that winter…
I’m not a big fan of winter. Living in Michigan, in a drafty old house, I’m perpetually cold from November through April. Yet, I appreciate the month of January. The days already seem noticeably longer and there is snow on the ground, helping to brighten the season’s gloom. I also…
My favorite Christmas story is A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Every year I watch or read some version of this classic tale. Last week, I began wondering if there might be a similarly cherished, yuletide parable from France. I tracked down a dozen acclaimed stories, including two by Molière,…
If you’re like me, you enjoy giving books as presents. Lately, I’ve been combing through various book blogs and lists on Goodreads to determine what I should buy for whom this year. In doing so, the thought occurred to me that I should put together my own list of sensational…
In 1968, The Sunday Times in London ran a competition to translate the poem Spleen, by the famous French poet Charles Baudelaire. Upon learning of the contest, Nicholas Moore, who had once been one of Britain’s most celebrated poets, decided to have a little fun and also prove a point.…
Sunday, November 7, marks what would have been the 108th birthday of Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus. During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance, a movement dedicated to overthrowing the Germans. Camus lent his genius to the clandestine effort by working as a journalist and underground newspaper editor.…
