{"id":4818,"date":"2010-09-16T11:44:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T15:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=4818"},"modified":"2013-01-09T12:01:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T17:01:07","slug":"a-week-in-culture-nelly-kaprielian-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/16\/a-week-in-culture-nelly-kaprielian-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week in Culture: Nelly Kaprielian, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second installment of Kaprielian’s culture diary. Click here<\/a> to read part 1.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

DAY FOUR<\/h3>\n

11:00 A.M. <\/strong> Trying to write my column. I got an e-mail from Michel H. asking me not to put the photos of him bare-chested on the cover for September 8. It\u2019s too bad, those photos are the best by far.<\/p>\n

11:15 A.M.<\/strong> Still trying to write my column (nothing to say, really). Get a phone call from the French publisher of Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, Imperial Bedrooms<\/em>. (It\u2019s such a great novel. I know American critics don\u2019t like him. As we say in French, \u201cnul n\u2019est proph\u00e8te en son pays<\/em>.\u201d) They\u2019re very cool about it, but they just want to let me know how badly we’ve screwed up their plans. We put Ellis on the cover of our rentr\u00e9e<\/em> issue, which came out August 18, and ran the interview he gave me in Los Angeles, but it was a month before the book came out. Usually we don\u2019t do stuff like that. Nobody does. But this year the publishers decided to publish some very famous and interesting writers late in the season\u2014no doubt to get coverage early on for authors who are less well known. <\/p>\n

But the rentr\u00e9e<\/em> needs one or two locomotives if the books are going to get read\u2014ditto the magazines. If you put a star on the cover, people are curious to read the article, then they read the other reviews, even of first novels. (That\u2019s how each book finds its readers.) Also, I have to say, we\u2019re the only magazine that puts writers on the cover at all. Everyone knows a writer doesn\u2019t sell copies. That\u2019s the sad reality. And it\u2019s why I like working for Les Inrocks<\/em>\u2014we can still do it anyway.<\/p>\n

\"\"2:00 P.M.<\/strong> Reading the new (to us) Philip Roth, Indignation<\/em>. I interviewed Roth last year in New York. He\u2019s one of the sexiest minds I\u2019ve ever met. Les Inrocks<\/em> are putting together a series on the greatest American writers. I wonder if an American magazine would ever do the same for French writers!<\/p>\n

5:00 P.M.<\/strong> High heels? Not serious enough. An expensive bag? Too bling. Black trousers and black jacket? Too executive\u2026 Finally I opt for a black minidress and black ballerina slippers for our annual rentr\u00e9e<\/em> cocktail party. It takes place in a restaurant in the Panth\u00e9on cinema, decorated by Catherine Deneuve. Cozy, cool, lounge-y. Unless you’re as tense as I am. It\u2019s nice but always difficult to have all those people around. And will they even show up? If they do, what to say? How to behave? But I\u2019m relaxing as the years go by. Now I know all you have to do is smile. And kiss. So I spend my evening smiling and kissing. And everyone is happy\u2014me included. <\/p>\n

\"\"10:00 P.M.<\/strong> Over. All the publishers came, lots of writers I like, and of course, my friends. How easy it all was. I no longer feel the need to look serious when a writer tells me his new book is about vibrators. And when a writer comes up to shake your hand, now I know that \u201cBravo!\u201d is all you have to say about the book. They\u2019ll understand. What I\u2019ve learned over the years is that everybody needs to be loved. Absolutely everybody! And the love people need is endless. By ten, the Inrocks<\/em> team seems satisfied with the party, so I can leave with my friends for Le Rostand, a caf\u00e9 across from the Luxembourg Gardens. (Yes, Rostand is a caf\u00e9 now. Le Balzac is a cinema. And Colette is a trendy boutique.) <\/p>\n

DAY FIVE<\/h3>\n

11:00 A.M.<\/strong> A TV crew shows up to interview me about Houellebecq for the evening news. The journalist\u2019s big question: Is Houellebecq a genius? It\u2019s funny. Five years ago they kept asking, Is Houellebecq a fake? How quickly fashions change. I tell the newscaster that I just spent four thousand words trying not to be so reductive. He gives me a big grin, \u201cSure, but this is TV!\u201d The crew puts me against a blue screen\u2014it\u2019s very Avatar<\/em>\u2014and I talk in long sentences to try to wriggle out of the question. Maybe I can hypnotize them \u2026 or put them to sleep \u2026 <\/p>\n

11:15 A.M.<\/strong> \u201cRight, but is he a genius? Yes or no?\u201d Evidently the hypnotism failed. \u201cYou have to answer yes or no!\u201d He looks about ready to scream, so I murmur \u201cIn his way, yes, Michel Houllebecq is kind of a genius,\u201d or words to that effect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>1:00 P.M.<\/strong> Lunch on the terrace of Marly\u2014a very pretty restaurant across from the pyramid of the Louvre\u2014with Ellis\u2019s Paris publicist. Bret, who\u2019s the other headliner of the rentr\u00e9e<\/em>, will be here in a few weeks. \u201cBret has asked me to set something up for every evening.\u201d She\u2019s worried because she hasn\u2019t found anything for September 22. I suggest that Les Inrocks<\/em> throw him a party. Everyone at the office loves the idea. In France, Ellis is an icon.<\/p>\n

6:00 P.M.<\/strong> The TV crew is back. The blue screen has eaten my entire face. The sound is OK, but all you can see is a headless woman. A headless woman\u2014who talks! I\u2019m into it. But they\u2019re not. So we do the whole thing again\u2014this time against a green screen. I\u2019m starting to get tired.<\/p>\n

7:30 P.M.<\/strong> I join my friends Santiago Amigorena and Juan Pittaluga at l\u2019Avant-Comptoire, a nice little bar at Od\u00e9on, for a drink. Then dinner at Le Comptoire. I\u2019m impressed that they managed to get a table without booking it three months in advance. Le Comptoire is very small and very trendy. Since Juan co-produced the great Mondovino with Jonathan Nossiter, I have every confidence in his choice of wine.<\/p>\n

8:30 P.M.<\/strong> Over our appetizers I tell them about my interview with Houellebecq\u2014how down-to-earth and forthright he is. Santiago disagrees. In his opinion, all interviews are marketing ploys, and the subject is always aware of the game and plays it to project a certain image. I try to say that if I were that cynical, I wouldn\u2019t do interviews at all. Sure, it\u2019s a peculiar exercise. But for me an interview is an encounter between two people who try, as best they can, to be honest with each other in the moment. (Sometimes, of course, that encounter never quite takes place.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>11:00 P.M.<\/strong> Santiago is a cin\u00e9aste and a writer, and the author of one of this decade’s better memoirs. We are both obsessed with Proust. When the conversation turns to old love affairs, we both think of Swann\u2019s famous sentence about his affair with Odette\u2014\u201cI felt my deepest love for a woman who did not appeal to me, who was not my type!\u201d We both agree that the people with whom we were most passionately in love were not our type and didn\u2019t appeal to us. Is this the true definition of love?<\/p>\n

DAY SIX<\/h3>\n

11:00 A.M.<\/strong> After several cups of coffee, I\u2019m still puzzling over our conversation of last night. I find myself unconvinced. What if we\u2019re mistaken in our reading of Proust as much as in our own real lives? After all, who says we have to believe this made-up character? What if Swann is wrong? What if he\u2019s lying to himself? And what if\u2014this is the cruelest and most ironic possibility\u2014Odette was his type, after all, his exact type? And what if we ourselves felt the most passion for impossible people who were\u2014all the same\u2014exactly our type, whatever we said to the contrary? That would be the hardest thing to accept, for Swann and for us. Maybe we\u2019ve felt our greatest loves for people whom \u2026 we couldn\u2019t love.<\/p>\n

3:00 P.M.<\/strong> An hour of pilates. I feel virtuous for the first time all week. Plus, sometimes it\u2019s nice to think of nothing but your abs.<\/p>\n

7:00 P.M.<\/strong> A friend, a radio journalist, calls to ask if he can use the tape of my interview with \u2026 Michel Houellebecq. I might as well get used to it: for the next three months, no one will call or speak to me without saying the word HOUELLEBECQ.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>8:00 P.M.<\/strong> Finally a night at home with my books. I\u2019m already reading the October releases. Among the stacks, Patti Smith\u2019s lovely memoir, Just Kids<\/em>. She doesn\u2019t torture herself with questions like mine: even though he was gay, Robert Mapplethorpe was really and truly her type. I envy her freshness. I envy her for living in New York in the 1970s. It was still easy to meet people like Warhol, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, and to be accepted into their circle. I envy her lack of self-doubt and her readiness to accept whatever comes her way in life\u2014without regrets.<\/p>\n

DAY SEVEN<\/h3>\n

11:00 A.M.<\/strong> Finally a whole day at home, in bed, surrounded by newspapers and books. A few leisurely cups of coffee, punctuated by a couple of cigarettes, while I read Le Monde<\/em> and Lib\u00e9ration<\/em> \u2026 but how French politics annoys me! I won\u2019t spend long on this subject, because it tends to be boring, but Nicolas Sarkozy\u2019s government is a national disgrace and that\u2019s all there is to it. Now his labor minister, Eric Woerth, is implicated in a serious financial scandal. Not only does he refuse to step down, but according to today\u2019s paper, he\u2019s attacked the press for mounting a smear campaign against him. Isn\u2019t that just great. In the United States, I like to think, a cabinet member who found himself in the same position would already have been fired.<\/p>\n

11:30 A.M.<\/strong> Oh, and guess what\u2014now Sarkozy is claiming the right to handpick the heads of all public radio and TV channels \u2026 Isn\u2019t our freedom of the press a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n

Before I get really mad, I decide to read a novel \u2026 <\/p>\n

2:00 P.M.<\/strong> \u2026 a French novel. When I started this culture diary, I promised myself I wouldn\u2019t bore American readers by talking about French authors they\u2019d never have heard of, since I know French literature doesn\u2019t get translated much in the States, or at least isn\u2019t in wide circulation. But I can\u2019t resist. Not to \u201ctalk\u201d to you about French literature, but to give you a list of names of contemporary writers who deserve to be read (or at least translated, if they\u2019re not already):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Eric Reinhardt, R\u00e9gis Jauffret, Patrick Modiano, Lorette Nob\u00e9court, Tristan Garcia, Jean-Christophe Valtat, Anne Garretta, Val\u00e9rie Mr\u00e9jen, Eric Laurrent, Jean Echenoz, Philippe Vasset, Virginie Despentes, Antoine Bello, Gr\u00e9goire Bouiller, Pauline Klein, Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re, Marie Darrieussecq, Nathalie L\u00e9ger, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Jean-Jacques Schuhl, <\/p>\n

and, of course,<\/p>\n

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ!<\/p>\n

But that one you could have guessed.<\/p>\n

Nelly Kaprielian is a critic and editor in Paris, France.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the second installment of Kaprielian’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 11:00 A.M. Trying to write my column. I got an e-mail from Michel H. asking me not to put the photos of him bare-chested on the cover for September 8. It\u2019s too bad, those photos are the best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[837,843,828,846,839,832,844,858,857,840,505,850,849,856,835,575,847,822,848,851,854,834,852,845,99,841,833,855,853,836,838,842],"class_list":["post-4818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-culture-diaries","tag-anne-garretta","tag-antoine-bello","tag-bret-easton-ellis","tag-emmanuel-carrere","tag-eric-laurrent","tag-eric-reinhardt","tag-gregoire-bouiller","tag-imperial-bedrooms","tag-indignation","tag-jean-echenoz","tag-jean-christophe-valtat","tag-jean-jacques-schuhl","tag-jean-philippe-toussaint","tag-juan-pittaluga","tag-lorette-nobecourt","tag-marcel-proust","tag-marie-darrieussecq","tag-michel-houellebecq","tag-nathalie-leger","tag-nicolas-sarkozy","tag-odette","tag-patrick-modiano","tag-patti-smith","tag-pauline-klein","tag-philip-roth","tag-philippe-vasset","tag-regis-jauffret","tag-santiago-amigorena","tag-swann","tag-tristan-garcia","tag-valerie-mrejen","tag-virginie-despentes"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Week in Culture: Nelly Kaprielian, Part 2 by Nelly Kaprielian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 16, 2010 \u2013 This is the second installment of Kaprielian's culture diary. 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