Hollins Abroad Paris II: Paris Today! Recommended Reading and Resources

This list isn’t meant to be definitive or exhaustive (we could bind an entire book on everything worth reading about Paris) but rather, it includes specific books, articles, and on-line sources that pertain to specific lecture topics, museums, artists, and guides who are part of the 2017 HAPII program, as well as a few we consider to be classics. We keep discovering that the more we read, the more we realize there is to know, and while we’re not suggesting you read all of these, we hope you won’t be content with just one. You may also find that simply reading about certain books or topics will be of interest, and perhaps you will discover you want to delve more deeply into a particular topic. For the ‘Companion Reading - Fiction’ and ‘Paris’ selections, we’ve mostly focused on books published recently – there are hundreds of titles in these two categories in particular – and if, as you’re preparing for this trip, you discover a resource you think the other program attendees would be interested to know about, please let us know!

Language Immersion (Thursday and Friday, 19 and 20 October)

“There have never been as many French speakers in the world as there are today. The number has tripled since the Second World War.” -- Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, The Story of French, 2006

Learning programs and directories for all levels: 501 French Verbs (Barron’s) Fluent in French: The Most Complete Study Guide to Learn in French (Frédéric Bibard, CreateSpace Independent Publishing) Living Languge French (Living Language, a division of Penguin Random House)

Language sources with a targeted twist (mostly for those with a basic knowledge of French): At Home Abroad: French – Practical Phrases for Conversational French (Helen and Nigel Harrison, Passport Books, 2000) Insiders’ French: Beyond the Dictionary (Eleanor Levieux and Michel Levieux, University of Chicago Press, 1999) Les Bon Mots: How to Amaze Tout le Monde with Everyday French (Eugene Ehrlich, Holt, 1997) Pardon My French: Unleash Your Inner Gaul (Charles Timoney, Penguin, 2007) Tune Up Your French: The Top Ten Ways to Improve Your Spoken French (Natalie Schorr, McGraw-Hill, 2009)

A unique book and a blog: Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language From the South of France (Kristin Espinasse, Touchstone, 2006). Though Espinasse doesn’t live in Paris, she’s an American married to a Frenchman and she shares all the joys and pains of learning French (the book came about from her popular blog, French-word-a-day.com, where her husband Jean-Marc produces spoken French recordings) and chapters are named from A to Z with corresponding French words.

Saturday, 21 October “Avec l’âge, l’art et la vie ne font qu’un.” (With age, art and life become one) -- Georges Braque

Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain www.fiac.com/ Sunday, 22 October

“Yet, most importantly of all, Hollins Abroad Paris is an individual experience. Each of us emerges with her own interpretation of what happened to us there.” -- Hollins magazine, October 1980

Je ne regrette rien: 60 Years of Hollins Abroad Paris by Jean Fallon (ebook for download onto iPad or as a pdf)

Diane Johnson: among her most famous works of fiction are Le Divorce (1997), Le Mariage (2001), and L’Affaire (2004), all published by Plume. A reviewer for the New York Observer opined that “She knows Paris from gutter to rooftop; she knows the natives as well as she knows the cozy community of expat Americans…a highly entertaining culture clash.” Johnson is also the author of Into a Paris Quartier: Reine Margot’s Chapel and Other Haunts of St.-Germain, and she is a two-time finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize (Persian Nights for fiction; Terrorists and Novelists for non-fiction) and the National Book Award (Lying Low for fiction and Lesser Lives for biography).

John Baxter: author of a number of books about Paris, including We’ll Always Have Paris, Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas, and the bestseller, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, Baxter’s relatively new ‘Great Parisian Neighborhoods’ series is most welcome. Current editions include Saint-Germain-Des Prés: Paris’s Rebel Quarter (2016) and Montmartre: Paris’s Village of Art and Sin (2017). Baxter was also a visiting professor at Hollins in 1974, and he has called Saint-Germain home for more than two decades.

David Burke: Burke’s unique and engaging book, Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light (Counterpoint, 2008) appeared in an updated edition in 2016 (Paris Writers Press). Working on the book gave him the opportunity to page through books, study maps, paintings, and photographs, and walk all over the city tracking down literary sites. Burke moved to Paris in 1986 intending to stay for a year but has now lived there ever since.

Terrance Gelenter: Gelenter – “your American friend in Paris” -- maintains a great website, Paris Through Expatriate Eyes, as well as a biweekly electronic newsletter, ‘The Paris Insider.’ He is also the author of From Bagels to Brioches: Paris par Hasard (2010), an entertaining story of how he got from Monongahela, Pennsylvania to Brooklyn and on to Paris, where he’s been since the mid-1990s. His other book is Travels in France With Terrance (2015).

Monday, 23 October “As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.” -- F. W. Nietzsche Street Art in Paris: The Ultimate Guide

‘Gehry’s Paris Coup’ by Paul Goldberger, Vanity Fair, August 2014

‘Why Paris’s Newest Art Museum – the Foundation Louis Vuitton – is Like None You’ve Ever Seen’ by Leslie Camhi, Vogue, September 2014

Claude Monet: Life and Art (Dr. Paul Hayes Tucker, Yale University Press, 1995) and Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism (Daniel Wildenstein, Taschen, 2010). Dr. Tucker is one of America’s foremost authorities on Monet and Impressionism, and former art dealer Wildenstein (1917-2001) produced a five-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet that was published between 1976 and 1992. Both are excellent books to page through in preparation for Monet’s waterlilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie – the eight compositions there, at Monet’s own suggestion, are arranged in two consecutive oval rooms.

Tuesday, 24 October “The realities of French society today call for a more pragmatic and flexible approach, with fewer ideological diktats and less anxiety about plurality. France isn’t what it used to be, and it’s time it came to terms with that idea.” -- Farhad Khosrokhavar, ‘Jihad and the French Exception,’ The New York Times, July 2016

French Law ‘Laïcité’ Restricts Muslim Religious Expression, NPR, 2015 The Professor and the Jihadi, The New York Times Magazine, 2017

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust (Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland Desaix, Holiday House, 2010). This picture book opens with a quote found in both the Islamic and Jewish traditions: "Save one life, and it is as if you've saved all of humanity." Despite various opinions on the true interpretation, and though the authors state that "many of the details are destined to remain forever uncertain, with few facts proven to a historian's satisfaction," it's clear that something courageous and brave and kind happened here. Whether the number of Jews saved is 100 or over 1,000, the story is worth telling and sharing. Appropriate for all ages.

L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Arch Daily, “the world’s most visited architecture website”

A Fuller Understanding of the Paintings at Orsay (Franҫoise Bayle, Éditions Artlys). This excellent book is unique in that there are chronological pages enabling readers to discover and place the artists in their time and thematic pages allowing for comparing and appreciating their work.

The History of Impressionism (first edition 1946, revised editions 1955, 1961, and 1973) and Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gauguin (1956), both by John Rewald, both published by The Museum of Modern Art). Of the hundreds of books published about these popular art movements, Rewald’s have long been the leading and acclaimed volumes.

‘For a New Paris Museum, Jean Nouvel Creates His Own Rules,’ by Nicolai Ouroussoff, The New York Times, June 2006 (about Quai Branly).

Stuff Parisians Like: Discovering the Quoi in the Je Ne Sais Quoi (Olivier Magny, Berkley, 2011). Magny opened Ô Chateau wine-tasting school when he was 23 and is one of France’s most charismatic sommeliers (and he’s funny). For each topic in this book – such as ‘Wondering What the Point of Living in Paris is’ – Magny provides a ‘Useful Tip’ and a ‘Sound Like a Parisian’ sentence in French.

Wednesday, 25 October

“It is hardly news that the words food and French are inseparable. Back when heads were piling up in baskets in a Paris square, and revolution in France shook the world as nothing had before, a pudgy, balding savant reminded citizens to keep their priorities straight. Great human events are fine, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin observed, but let’s not forget lunch.” -- Mort Rosenblum, A Goose in Toulouse and Other Culinary Adventures in France

Markets of Paris: Food, Antiques, Crafts, Books & More (Dixon Long and Marjorie Williams, second edition, The Little Bookroom, 2012).

‘Why Chef Guy Savoy’s 3-Michelin-Starred Monnaie de Paris Restaurant Sizzles’ by Rooksana Hossenally, Forbes, February 2016.

“From Hermès to Eternity,” by Laura Jacobs, Vanity Fair, August 2007.

‘Despite Pledge, France Lags in Hunt for Looted Art,’ The New York Times, 2013 (Elizabeth Royer, art historian and owner of Galerie Elizabeth Royer, is interviewed).

My Grandfather’s Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War (Anne Sinclair, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). Sinclair is the grand-daughter of Paul Rosenberg, who in the 1920s and ‘30s was among the most influential art dealers in Paris (Sinclair is also a well-known journalist in France and the former wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn). Rosenberg’s gallery at 21 rue La Boétie was filled with works by Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and Léger until it was requisitioned by the Nazis for a propaganda office. Rosenberg and his family were able to flee Paris just ahead of the deportation of French Jews and landed in New York thanks to the assistance of Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art. In her Epilogue, Sinclair states that this ‘improvised portrait is about a forgotten era, that of France in its greatest glory, the expression of a resplendent artistic culture in the early years of the twentieth century.”

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (Lynn Nicholas, Vintage, 1995).) Hands-down the groundbreaking work on the subject, and though it’s not exclusively a French story, Paris and France are mostly at the center of the events (and a photo of a Louvre gallery graces the cover of the Vintage paperback edition). No other endorsement better sums up the book than that in The New York Times Book Review: “Nicholas knows the art world as well as any military historian knows his battlefield…Her work deserves the widest reading among those who call themselves civilized.”

Thursday, 26 October

“If I had been in any doubt about using the term [Parisienne] to describe a woman not living in the city but imprisoned in a camp, wearing rags, with sores on her skin, scars from lashings and unwashed hair, I felt justified when I learned that, instead of eating the ounce or so of fat she was given daily, she massaged it into her hands after concluding that these needed preserving more than her stomach. That seemed to me the reasoning of a true Parisienne.” -- Anne Sebba, Les Parisiennes

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation (Anne Sebba, St. Martin’s Press, 2016). Like Sebba’s New York Times bestseller, That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, this is a fascinating account. Author Edmund White, who moved to Paris in 1983, says that Sebba “knows everything about Paris during the war…she understands everything about the chic, loathsome collaborators and the Holocaust victims, and their stories are told in an irresistible narrative flood.”

The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). A beautifully written account of a valuable collection of Japanese netsuke (small sculptures introduced in the 17th century) that were hidden from the Nazis by a housekeeper in the employ of the author’s family, the Ephrussi of Vienna. De Waal spends much time in Paris, where his uncle Charles was friends with the Camondo family, as he unravels the story of this collection, now in his possession. (Look for the hardcover, illustrated edition rather than the paperback.)

“A Secret Paris Museum and an Aristocratic Family Decimated by the Holocaust,” by James McAuley, Town & Country, February 2017. (The secret museum referred to is the Musée Camondo)

Friday, 27 October “No one relishes a grand architectural scandal the way Parisians do” -- Nicolai Ouroussoff, The New York Times, 2006

Five Hundred Buildings of Paris (photography by Jorg Brockmann and James Driscoll, text by Kathy Borrus, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2003). Arranged by arrondissement, and with accompanying maps and brief but good descriptions of each building, the 500 buildings are presented in handsome black and white photos. Included are private homes, hotels, churches, synagogues, mosques, stores, restaurants, train stations, museums, and workplaces in a range of styles from ancient to contemporary (as of 2003).

“Celebrating 70 Years of Christian Dior,” The New York Times, 4 July, 2017 on the exhibit at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, ‘Christian Dior, Couturier du Rêve.’

‘Dior and I’ documentary of an inside look at the creation of Raf Simons’ first couture collection as its new artistic director (2016).

“Paris Palais Royal Columns Get 6 Million Euro Facelift,” Reuters, January 2010.

‘The Louvre’s new Islamic Galleries Bring Riches to Light,’ The New York Times, 2012 ‘The Invisible Louvre’ documentary of behind-the-scenes at the museum (2005)

Saturday, 28 October

“I threw myself on a bench and began to wonder if there was anything better in the world worth doing than to sit in an alley of clipped limes smoking, thinking of Paris and of myself.” -- George Moore, “In the Luxembourg Gardens,” Memoirs of My Dead Life

Gauguin: His Life and Works in 500 Images (Susie Hodge, Lorenz Books, 2015) and The Moon and Sixpence (W. Somerset Maugham, many editions, originally published in 1919 and loosely based on the life of Gauguin).

‘How Constantin Brancusi Tuned Paris’s Impasse Ronsin into a Haven for Artists’ by Abigail Cain, Artsy.net, November 2016.

Companion Reading - Fiction “Historical fiction is not only one excellent way to explain our parents (or grandparents) to ourselves, it can also explain ourselves to ourselves, allowing readers to consider what they might have done, or how they might have been different, in circumstances unlike their own. We don’t read historical fiction to find out ‘what it was like back then’ so much as to get a fresh look at who we are now. And if I want to take another look at who I was then? All I have to do is remember what I was reading.” -- Roger Sutton, editor-in-chief, The Horn Book

Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet (Stephanie Cowell, Broadway, 2011) A Hero of France: A Novel (Alan Furst, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2017) The Little Paris Bookshop (Nina George, Crown, 2015) Pictures at an Exhibition (Sara Houghteling, Knopf, 2009). Set in Paris, this novel about a son’s quest to recover his family’s art stolen by the Nazis is written with “tense drama and a historian’s eye for detail.” Count Moïses de Camondo is introduced on the first page. Suite Franҫaise (Irène Nemirovsky, Knopf, 2006)

Dinner and a Movie Start immersing yourself in the trip now: invite friends or family over for dinner (French, bien sur) and a Paris-themed movie. Some films we love:

‘Amélie’ starring Audrey Tatou and Mathieu Kassovitz (2001) ‘Amour’ starring Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Riva, and Jean-Louis Trintignant (2012) ‘An American in Paris’ starring Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly (1951) ‘April in Paris’ starring Doris Day and Ray Bolger (1952) ‘Le Ballon Rouge’ starring Pascal Lamorisse and Sabine Lamorisse (1956) ‘Before Sunset’ starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (2004) ‘A Bout de Souffle’ starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg (1960) ‘Celestial Clockwork’ starring Ariadna Gil, Arielle Dombusle, and Evelyne Didi (1995) ‘Charade’ starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant (1963) ‘Delicatessen’ starring Jean-Claude Dreyfus and Dominique Pinon (1991) ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’ starring Arletty and Jean-Louis Barrault (1945) ‘Entre Les Murs’ starring Franҫois Bégaudeau and Agame Malembo-Emene (2008) ‘French Kiss’ starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline (1995) ‘Funny Face’ starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire (1957) ‘Hotel du Nord’ starring Arletty, Annabella, Louis Jouvet, and Jean-Pierre Aumont (1938) ‘Les Intouchables’ starring Omar Sy, Franҫois Cluzet, and Anne Le Ny (2011) ‘Kings of Pastry’ starring Jacquy Pfeiffer and Regis Lazard (2009) ‘Midnight in Paris’ starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams (2011) ‘Paris Blues’ starring Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier (1961) ‘Rendezvous in Paris’ starring Clara Bellar and Antoine Basler (1995) ‘Sabrina’ starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden (1954), in which Hepburn does not say, “Paris is always a good idea;” that line was added to the remake, starring Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond (1995). ‘Window to Paris’ starring Sergey Dreyden, Agnès Soral, and Viktor Mikhaylov (1993)

Paris “Curious travelers will make it a point of honour to be in the know and show off their knowledge. You don’t have to live in Paris to be a Parisian.” -- Paris: Louis Vuitton City Guide

City Secrets : Paris : The Essential Insider’s Guide (Robert Kahn, series editor, Fang Duff Kahn Publishers, 2014). This little clothbound edition in the City Secrets series – other editions include Florence & Venice; Manhattan; London; and Rome – is a compact gem filled with the favorite discoveries by food and travel writers, artists, photographers, fashion designers, and filmmakers.

Hidden Gardens of Paris: A Guide to the Parks, Squares, and Woodlands of the City of Light (Susan Cahill, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012). Cahill opens this helpful book by writing, “Look inside the green heart of Paris and you will see the exquisite beauty of one of the world’s most cherished places,” and she guides visitors to forty of Paris’s loveliest pleasures.

My Paris Dream (Kate Betts, Spiegel & Grau, 2015). Betts – the youngest person ever to serve as editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar and author of the critically acclaimed book Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style – relates her time in 1980s Paris. Parts of her memoir feel familiar to anyone who’s lived in Paris but her entrée into the fashion world make it unique. After she graduated from college she had no plan and no strategy, but she did have an instinct based on the feeling of elation she felt when she first visited Paris four years before. “I couldn’t say what I thought I’d find there, but I knew Paris would give me something I couldn’t find anywhere else.”

New Paris : The People, Places & Ideas Fueling a Movement (Lindsey Tramuta, Abrams, 2017). Tramuta (who maintains the Lost in Cheeseland: Food, Life and Travel in Paris (and Beyond) blog) opens her book with an appropriate quote by Charles Baudelaire: “The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas, than the human heart).” Her goal here is “to further shift the perspective of the city beyond the hoary clichés that have circulated blithely across lands and generations. Today, the Paris long-adored for its medieval vestiges, religious relics, Seine-lit bridges, old-time brasseries, and corner cafes find itself on unstable ground and of value for so much more than its storied past. It is yet another seminal time in the capital’s history.”

The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs (Elaine Sciolino, Norton, 2016). Former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, Sciolino delves into the street she lives on, which runs through the working-class neighborhoods of the 9th and 18th arrondissements. One neighborhood resident, a photographer, says that “the rue des Martyrs is the center of France” while another, a resident for 50 years, says that the street “is the center of the world.” Sciolino not only reveals much about “the last real street in Paris” but about the city itself. In 2010, Sciolino was named a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Paris: The Collected Traveler (Barrie Kerper, Vintage Departures, 2011). We couldn’t resist recommending this unique book by a member of the HAPII planning committee (within ‘A Paris Miscellany’ at the back of the book there is an entry for Hollins Abroad Paris, which includes a list of favorites from another committee member). In addition to articles and personal favorites there are interviews with Ina Garten, Patricia Wells, Alexander Lobrano, Kermit Lynch, David Downie, and Alison Harris as well as lots and lots of suggestions for further reading. The Collected Traveler series was praised by the Chicago Tribune as “perfect for both the armchair traveler and those who want to get up and go.”

Seven Ages of Paris (Alistair Horne, Knopf, 2002). In his foreword to this de rigueur read, Maurice Druon, of the Académie Franҫaise, writes that “Horne is everywhere and knows everything…Nothing escapes his paintbrush.” Druon also refers to the book as “a monument” and we wholeheartedly agree.