Grace Paley: a lyricist of the domestic life

The good friend who told me about McSweeney  (see previous post) warmly recommended to me Grace Paley (that he discovered himself through McSweeney). She wrote above all short stories. “Totally delectable”. From what he said, as good as Carver, but much less desesperate, and her characters are not alcoholic insurance contractors of the Mid west, but rather New-York based jewish artists or leftist militants. It’s incisive, biting and sharping. Born in New York City in 1922, of Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled in the poor quarter of the Lower East Side, Paley emerged from the densely populated, fiercely individualistic Yiddish culture of which Anzia Yezierska (1885-1970) and Henry Roth (1906-1997) wrote in the 1920s and 1930s in such acclaimed novels as Bread Givers and Call It Sleep respectively (said J. Carol Oates).
Joyces Carol Oates, Philip Roth and Raymond Carver count among her fervent admirers (see their reviews of Paley’s work here , here and there). Susan Sontag too: ‘Grace Paley makes me weep and laugh – and admire. She is that rare kind of writer, a natural, with a voice like no one else’s: funny, sad, lean, modest, energetic, acute.’

In German, all I found was “Später am selben Tag. Geschichten”, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp. 1989, which suggests that some texts are not translated yet.

Mohamed Choukri

Mohamed Choukri is one of the greatest Moroccan writerS, friend of Paul Bowles who translated one of his most famous novels in English under the title “For Bread alone” [published as Das nackte Brot in German]. He was also a friend of Jean Genet. I’m sure that there are plenty of great texts of Choukri which are not translated in German yet.

Below a picture I took in Essaouira (est coast of Morocco) last week, click for enlarged view.

Paul-Jean Toulet

Paul-Jean Toulet wrote one of the most beautiful collections of poems in French, les Contrerimes. He had three passions: women, alcohol and landscapes. If I remember well the (great) classes of poetics of Marc Dominicy, he was also cocainomane. He was friend with Claude Debussy. His novels are quite boring, but his poems delicious. I didn’t find anything translated in German, weird if it’s true. La Contrerime is a rarely used poetic form. Toulet and Leconte de Lisle were among the few ones using it. A contrerime is a short poem with three to five strophes, which alternate octosyllabic and hexasyllabic verses. The first one rimes with the last one, and the internal ones rime together (ABBA):

:

Dans le lit vaste et dévasté

J’ouvre les yeux près d’elle

Je l’effleure: un songe infidèle

l’embrasse à mon côté

PS: To learn how to count syllables in French verses, read eg Marc Dominicy, «Métrique accentuelle et métrique quantitative», Langue Française, numéro 99, 1993, 75-96.

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Chantal Akerman

From here: “Geboren am 6. Juni 1950 in Brüssel. Besuch eines Lyceums in Brüssel. Mit 15 Jahren sieht sie den Film “Pierrot le Fou” von Jean-Luc Godard und wird angeregt, selbst Filme zu drehen. Für vier Monate besucht sie die Film-Hochschule in Brüssel (INSAS). Nach eigenen Aussagen hat sie dort keine Anregungen erhalten. 1971 längerer New-York Aufenthalt und Beschäftigung mit den Filmen von Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow und Jonas Mekas. Seit 1968 dreht sie Filme.” Below a picture of her taken from her filmed autobiography.

Dear Umberta,

I told you a bit some weeks ago about a film inspired by “La Prisonnière” of Marcel Proust. It is La Captive (die Gefangene, 1999) by Chantal Akerman, jewish and homosexual like Proust. Very very beautiful film about jealousy inter alia. Any film of Chantal Akerman is interesting, but I particularly liked “Demain on déménage” (morgen ziehen wir um) — she’s a bit obsessed with migration — and “Jeanne Dielman” (1975) an incredible experimental film about an efficient homemaker and also a discreet one-client-per-day fille de joie marvelously performed by one of most beautiful voices of French cinema, Delphine Seyrig. One can see her peeling the potatoes here. She also published a not very well known small autobiographical novel, “Une famille à Bruxelles”, Edition L’Arche, 1998, of course not translated in german. The picture below is taken from La Captive.

Odilon-Jean Périer

Odilon-Jean Périer is one of the most subtil Belgian poets. He died in 1928 at the age of 27. He was friend with Rilke who dedicated him some poems like this one. He had an “amour pieux” for Bruxelles where he lived. Le Promeneur, one of his most beautiful collection, does not seem to be translated in German.