An Apartment in Paris - Travel Stories
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San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Fall 2013 An Apartment in Paris - Travel Stories Colette O'Connor San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation O'Connor, Colette, "An Apartment in Paris - Travel Stories" (2013). Master's Theses. 4399. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.9s7h-ucef https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4399 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AN APARTMENT IN PARIS – TRAVEL STORIES A Thesis Presented To The Faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts by Colette O’Connor December 2013 © 2013 Colette O’Connor ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled AN APARTMENT IN PARIS – TRAVEL STORIES by Colette O’Connor APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY December 2013 Professor Cathleen Miller Department of English and Comparative Literature Dr. Nancy Stork Department of English and Comparative Literature Mr. James O’Reilly Publisher, Travelers’ Tales ABSTRACT AN APARTMENT IN PARIS – TRAVEL STORIES by Colette O’Connor This thesis is a first person narrative work of creative nonfiction. It is a series of travel essays, set frequently in Paris, that blend the elements of craft of the journalist, essayist, memoirist and humorist in stories designed to entertain, amuse and delight. Using an informal voice, conveying a lighthearted tone, the narrator tells of her travel adventures and discoveries in France, New Zealand and other destinations. Rich in those narrative elements that characterize the genre of travel writing, among them, memorable characters, vividly drawn settings, colorful dialogue, and a singular, personal point of view, these stories concern themselves, above all, with place. Each communicates to the reader a clear idea of the author’s experience in, for example, Paris, or Sun Valley, and each brings alive the subject travel destination via the nonfiction narrative art of telling a compelling story. The theme of love links the stories of this collection, whether it is seen in the relationship among the narrator’s family members, those who also participate in a number of these travel adventures, or the author’s fondness for the places in which the adventures take place. Each chapter intends, on its own and as a part of the whole, to celebrate the fun and wonder of travel and to inspire readers to pack a bag and go – to wherever in the world their curiosity calls, whenever their sense of adventure beckons. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For My Parents v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ............................................................................................................................1 PART ONE: PARIS The Making of My Maman ................................................................................................14 An Apartment in Paris .......................................................................................................20 Bruno in the Afternoon ......................................................................................................28 Paris, With Parents .............................................................................................................43 Auvers-sur-Oise: The Heart and Home of van Gogh ........................................................52 How I Got My Oh-La-La ...................................................................................................63 Luncheon of the O’Connor Party .......................................................................................76 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner…Never Again? ..............................................................86 A Coupe of the Fountain of Youth ....................................................................................96 The Miracle of Pierre .......................................................................................................111 Mastering the Art of Liking French Cooking ..................................................................122 My Mother’s House .........................................................................................................136 La Séduction, Interrupted.................................................................................................150 Internal Affairs .................................................................................................................158 Good Coco .......................................................................................................................164 Only in Paris is Parting Such Sweet Sorrow ....................................................................174 What Do You Say After You Say Allô ? ..........................................................................179 Make Mine Me .................................................................................................................185 vi Day of the Living Dead....................................................................................................189 Crêpes and Conversation .................................................................................................198 The Miracle of Pierre (for Children) ................................................................................207 PART TWO: ELSEWHERE Sun Valley With Dad .......................................................................................................226 Not-Surfing New Zealand ................................................................................................237 Oh Give Me A Home Where the Buffalo Don’t Hang Woebegone on the Wall .........................................................................................246 A Seacliff Serenade..........................................................................................................254 Submitting to Shasta ........................................................................................................258 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................269 vii PREFACE It started, as these things do, without a lot of hoopla – my mother and I arriving at the Place de la Concorde during her first-ever trip to Paris. The day was brilliant, the sun glittered off the Seine, and our jet lag made us woozy with the city’s beauty. But then, to my surprise, my mother flung her arms out wide and let escape a sound loud enough for every Parisian within earshot to turn. “I’m baaaaack!” she cried, her joy bursting forth in a teary laugh. It was at that startling moment I became convinced that what she always had felt was true: In a previous life my mother was French and had lost her head to the guillotine – the deadly blade that once stood in that very spot. First she lost her head; next she lost her heart. And then it followed: She found a tiny, ancient apartment in Paris’s stylish 16 th arrondissement, and our family had ourselves not a mom but a maman – as well as a place in Paris. The apartment was no bigger than a bonbon. And after a renovation in which my mother painted it pretty pink and seagrass green – girlie, California colors that scandalized the neighbors – it was no less sweet. The flat was a confection that gave our large family not only a mother whose essential French soul was home and happy after a lifetime lost, but also a new excuse for travel adventure. The apartment became a vacation, an escape, and a place where each of us – all of us – would lose ourselves, find one another and otherwise connect with life on a larger, more exciting, more Parisian stage. We two brothers, three sisters, assorted children, Dad, and, of course, newly French maman now had Paris to discover, and the City of Light did indeed dazzle us. Especially this daughter. 1 An Apartment in Paris – Travel Stories is a literary telling of this, among other, adventures. A collection of short, self-contained essays in the “travel writing” genre, this creative nonfiction work is, in the way of travel narrative, an exploration of place. What is meant by “place?” Don George in Travel Writing , a guide to the art and craft of the form, explains: What makes a successful travel story? In one word it is place . Successful travel stories bring a place to life through a combination of factual and vividly rendered descriptive details and anecdotes, characters and dialogue. Such stories transport the reader and convey a rich sense of the author’s experience in that place. The best travel stories set the destination and experience in some larger context, creating rings of resonance in the reader. (65) Whether Paris, New Zealand, Mount Shasta or Sun Valley, the settings in which I – writer, reporter, memoirist, explorer – find myself are in these pages brought to life via the elements essential to the travel writer’s art. These are the same considerations of craft at the heart of creative nonfiction – concerns of voice, tone, setting, memory, point of view, accurate fact-gathering and, of course, effective storytelling. As is often a given in creative nonfiction,