August Book Swap

After the crepes came... the books:

The Belgian writer and doctor Alain Brichau brought Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell. Alain attended a workshop by Smartt Bell 11 years ago and says the book has "great ideas on the process of writing" and channeling what Smartt Bell calls "the creative black box."

Alain's second choice Le Chant de L'etre et du paraitre, by the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, is a novel about a "writer trying to write a new novel" and the "dialogue this writer has with another more cynical, successful writer" who tries to dissuade him from doing so.

Johanna Gohmann was up next. Jo, who is here on a barter fellowship, donated the memoir Are You Somebody? by Nuala O'Faolain because it gives a "sense of where I am now" (Jo is an American living in Ireland) and the fact that she is working on a collection of essays.

Jo also donated a collection of essays in which one of her essays, "The Vagina Dialogues," is included: Best Sex Writing, 2010.

Charles (left) and Lupin Pooter at from Chapter VI of The Diary of a Nobody.

The English writer and actor John Finnemore talked to us about Michael Frayn's "amazing play" Copenhagen and the book he donated Frayn's writings on theatre from 1970 to 2008: Stage Directions.

John's other book was The Diary of A Nobody, a novel set very near the part of London John lives in, about a character who is a "misrepresentation" of who he really is. It is a classic English comic novel written by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon. It first appeared in the magazine Punch in 1888 to 89, and was first printed in book form in 1892.


Our University of Wisconsin Fellow, Sarah Johnson then told us about Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Sarah said the novel she's writing is along the same lines as Hollinghurst's book and Brideshead Revisited in the sense that it is the story "of an outsider who gets involved with a family."

Sarah also donated A Gate at the Stairs by Lorie Moore who taught her at Madison, the story of "a mid-western girl who becomes a nanny" in what Sarah called an Edith Whartonesque way "because of the way it draws a socio-political picture with such a gentle hand."

Thanks again for all the books!

Sheryl St. Germain

Here's the video of Sheryl St. Germain reading (sorry about the bad audio) an hilarious poem, "A French Mosquito Defends Itself," from the new collection of poems she was working on in July while here at La Muse. It flips over after a few seconds... :



Here are the blood-thirsty lines:

A French Mosquito Defends Itself

Eet is not easy always to speak with your race,
you of zee mountainous body, you who do not
always pay attention to such small sings as us.
But you should, mon ami, you should.  We have lived
millions and millions of years, we have been found
preserved in zee amber from a time unthinkably
before yours.  And you will not find a way
to exterminate us anytime soon with your stupeed
fog blowing trucks and chemicals with zee Latin
names that hurt you more zan zey do us. 

You speak of us as biting, attacking you. 
Zeese are all zee wrong words, mon ami.  Eet is only
the female of our species, such as myself, who drink
your blood.  Like your vampire we must have a blood
meal every now and zen, but only to make zee eggs,
zee blood is necessary for zee protein of zee eggs, oui?

So we do not bite, first of all, we search out zee ones of you
zat smell best—we search for zee most intoxicating aroma,
we land, we enter, we sip, we drink, we swill
but we do not bite, mon ami.
                      Sink of us, if you will,
as connoisseurs, and your body, a terroir.  We
are searching for zee right vintage, zee good structure
zee good nose, zee long finish, good color, a warm
taste, zee good texture in zee proboscis. Très elegant,
zee slight prickle going down, ooh la la, I must sit down.

So you should feel honored when I choose you above
others, it means your blood is like wine to me, with
zee beautiful aroma and bouquet and moi, I like
zee blood with a hint of berry and darkness,
zee blood with a taste of La France in it from the past,
and how shall I say, a little bit fat, the way we like
things preserved in zis country (zee confit du canard,
for example, you fat ones have zee good taste like
zee confit du human). 

Your body ees like a vineyard with rows and rows of
grapes, your body ees  zee raw material for our eggs,
so non, we do not attack, monsieurs et madames,
we harvest, we feed, we take what we need to
survive, only a tiny bit, not any more.    It eez true
that we spread zee word when you taste good,
that eez why, mon ami, you have 55 bites,
as you call them, 55 leetle mountains of objection

from your body, your slow body, I might add,
whose defenses do nothing to us, but
torture you after we are long gone.  Where,
I ask, eez zee logic in zis torture?  What
young and inexperienced god has formed you?
We mosquitoes would not have survived
one hundred years with such a system.

Maybe you can sink of me, too, as a bit
like Jean D’Arc, My proboscis eez my sword,
I rally the troops, I get us all on the same body,
but not to attack, only to take what eez rightfully ours,
zis blood our bodies have been built to harvest
for our children. 
      Aren’t we a leetle like you Americans,
you want to take zee oil, zee minerals,
zee ideas etc. from zee ozer countries,

and if sometimes you carry by mistake
some hitchhiker, some parasite, somezing,
from your culture, say, that infects or kills,
it’s not your fault, like us, you were born for zis.

Sex: Our Bodies Our Junk

As with the videos posted yesterday, you probably don't want to have this book cover (see left) open on your browser before reading a goodnight story.

Our friend Mike Sacks' new book Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk out from Random House yesterday is perfect bedside reading, accompanied, that is.

We LOVE the title play on the reference classic Our Bodies, Ourselves from the Boston Women's Health Collective's.

As with Mike's other books it's bound (pardon the pun) to be hilarious and promises to be comprehensive, what with a load of other well-known comedy writers on board to write under the collective name of  The Association for the Betterment of Sex.

Here's the publisher's blurb, but you're probably better off just buying this aesthetic informational tool today!

Onion News Stories

Yes, this is not the kind of stuff you want to play when kids are around, but this is an hilarious Onion video we just found. Those of you who have a dislike for derogatory language ought not press play:



And here's the one a friend of ours sent us which allowed us to discover the one above:

Open Studio - Deborah Clarke

Here's the South African artist Deborah Clarke's paintings from her open studio in July: 



The paintings are all watercolors of our village. This was Deborah's second time as a resident here. She lives in Grenoble.

Space Jump!

Can you jump from space? Just found out that  Joe Kittinger did it 50 years ago! It was called Project Excelsior, or, how to abandon your space ship and not die:


Jumping From Space from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Toni Freitas - Open Studio

Here's one of the videos of the art that was shown at the open studio here in July by the American designer Toni Freitas.



As you can see, some of the necklace's are inspired by her surroundings such as the "Vive La France" piece and the beautiful local stone (schist) necklace. Toni, who is a writer too, was also inspired by the work of Virginia Woolf, specifically her novel Mrs Dalloway.

Toni lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was here at La Muse on her third retreat with her husband the writer and graphic designer David Trujilo-Farley.

One Apartment and Six Drummers

Check out this song Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers inspired by the
film Sound of Noise (we love the bathroom scene one):

Book Swap

Another retreat started yesterday and here are the great books people donated to our living library after crepes this morning:

Tracy Marchini from New York who is here working on her YA novel donated Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan as it reflects the genre she's working in.

Tracy also donated Gare Thompson's Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt? about her "home town" and the Roosevelt estate.











The Londoner Tanya Byrne was up next with her "desert island books," the first being the "first book I read for school that I really loved": To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel expressed "racial tension" for the first time for Tanya as a child, as opposed to the "Pride and Prejudice genre of novels I read before it." She especially loves "the strong male role model of Atticus."

Tanya's other selection was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five, quoting the first line as one of the best she's every came across.

Next up was Dennis Lewis who lives and teaches in Qatar and is here working on his first collection of poetry. Dennis donated The Triggering Town by the Montana poet Richard Hugo which he called "an honest and very helpful book on writing."

Dennis' other book was W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants, a book he said that repeats many of things from Sebald's other works, "all of his books being a combination of different forms and all of them dealing with memory and loss."








New Zealander Jenny Simpson, who is here working on short stories, gave the library Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones as her first contribution. She describes Jones as a very different writer from other writers in New Zealand as he writes about things set elsewhere.

Jenny's other book was the poet Bill Manhire's most recent work of stories and poems, Lifted. For the 25th anniversary of the Erebus air disaster, Manhire composed the poem "Erebus Voices", which Sir Edmund Hillary read at the commemorative service at Scott Base, Antarctica.

Writer Natalie Mera Ford spoke after Jenny about her book An American Story, a collection of Barack Obama's speeches, reflecting where she's originally from, the US.

Natalie's second choice was The Other Side of the Bridge by the Canadian writer Mary Lawson. Natalie chose Lawson's book because she is working on a novel herself away from her home country.

Last to speak was another London writer, Martha Close, who is here working on a novel much like the first book she donated, Grahame Greene's The Quiet American which she has "kept on her desk while writing my novel based in Cambodia" because of its' "meeting of East and West" but mainly because it is so beautifully written.

Martha's other book was How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. She cited specifically page 28's title: Why Your Job is Harder than God."

Thanks again to everyone who donated books!

Tiziana Stupia post

Tiziana Stupia just wrote a lovely post about us on her TravelBlog about her experience here at La Muse and the surrounding region.

Tiziana, a pagan priestess and writer who was on a journey connecting with sacred sites, the land, shamans, tantrikas, and other like-minded people, was here for two consecutive retreats. She lives in Glastonbury.

Opening a Bottle of Wine with a Shoe?

Don't know what it does to the wine bashing it against a wall like this, but here you have it, a bottle of wine being opened with a shoe:



Presuming one would need to hold said bottle pretty lightly and use a shoe with an ample sole!

Potluck pie...

To the left (photo courtesy of Kathleen - thanks for all the onions et al.) is a delicious cheese pie Toni made this retreat for our Potluck last night to send off Mary.

Thanks also to Toni and David for the beautifully "wet drink" of sublime Scottish gin and tonic with cucumber, Sheryl's awesome ratatouille, Mary's succulent shrimp, Daphne's fresh fruit salad, Kerry's burgeoning blinis and Seamus and Fionn's filling zuichini fritters!

Thanks to all the chefs!