A. J. Liebling on Paris
I've seen a few quotes about this "young man moving to Paris" business. There's Hemingway's line about it being a moveable feast. There's Virgil Thompson, who said that Americans came to Paris in the 1920's for three things: "to get screwed, sharpen their wits, and eat like kings for nothing" (and as I recently told someone, I am getting screwed everyday--on the exchange rate).
But I've recently discovered A. J. Liebling, a former newspaper journalist and press critic for the New Yorker whose style--humble yet confident and sardonic, colorful yet direct and parsimonious, and aghast at all cliché--reminds me of one of my heroes, H. L. Mencken. Unfortunately, Mencken didn't spend much time in Paris--indeed, he hated to spend much time at all away from his dear, beloved Baltimore. Thank god Liebling made it to Paris.
The quotes David Remnick pulled out for his appreciation of Liebling on his 100th anniversary took the words out of my mouth time after time. Of course, Liebling's gems would have been coal had I tried to express them. Luckily we have his reportage.
On first living in Paris as a young man: “I liked the sensation of immersion in a foreign element, as if floating in a summer sea, only my face out of water, and a pleasant buzzing in my ears. I was often alone, but seldom lonely.”
Liebling was a gourmand--or, to use the crude, childish mauvais mot, a "foodie." (Really, can we drop this awful phrase? This is something a toddler says when he's hungry, yet I've heard it many times escape from mouths that rest beneath crow's feet.) His fascination with all things gastronomical began, of course, in Paris. Here's Liebling lamenting the fact that Proust's madeleine was but only a "tea biscuit":
In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sautéed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he might have written a masterpiece.
What worried him most about the the 1940 German takeover: “France represented for me the historical continuity of intelligence and reasonable living."
Four years later, at the liberation of Paris: "For the first time in my life and probably the last, I have lived for a week in a great city where everybody is happy. Moreover, since this city is Paris, everybody makes this euphoria manifest."
I can only imagine being in Paris at the liberation. I have a picture in Alistair Horne's Seven Ages of Paris of a crowd ducking under sniper fire in front of Notre Dame during the liberation. Although most people hit the deck and a horde ran away from the cathedral, you can see some people still strolling toward the cathedral completely oblivious, as if they were still reeling from a top drawer gigot d'agneau and half a bottle of St. Emilion.
Paris might go through white flags like mouchoirs, but at least there's someplace in the world one can still go where the popular culture still enshrines "intelligence and reasonable living."
But I've recently discovered A. J. Liebling, a former newspaper journalist and press critic for the New Yorker whose style--humble yet confident and sardonic, colorful yet direct and parsimonious, and aghast at all cliché--reminds me of one of my heroes, H. L. Mencken. Unfortunately, Mencken didn't spend much time in Paris--indeed, he hated to spend much time at all away from his dear, beloved Baltimore. Thank god Liebling made it to Paris.
The quotes David Remnick pulled out for his appreciation of Liebling on his 100th anniversary took the words out of my mouth time after time. Of course, Liebling's gems would have been coal had I tried to express them. Luckily we have his reportage.
On first living in Paris as a young man: “I liked the sensation of immersion in a foreign element, as if floating in a summer sea, only my face out of water, and a pleasant buzzing in my ears. I was often alone, but seldom lonely.”
Liebling was a gourmand--or, to use the crude, childish mauvais mot, a "foodie." (Really, can we drop this awful phrase? This is something a toddler says when he's hungry, yet I've heard it many times escape from mouths that rest beneath crow's feet.) His fascination with all things gastronomical began, of course, in Paris. Here's Liebling lamenting the fact that Proust's madeleine was but only a "tea biscuit":
In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sautéed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he might have written a masterpiece.
What worried him most about the the 1940 German takeover: “France represented for me the historical continuity of intelligence and reasonable living."
Four years later, at the liberation of Paris: "For the first time in my life and probably the last, I have lived for a week in a great city where everybody is happy. Moreover, since this city is Paris, everybody makes this euphoria manifest."
I can only imagine being in Paris at the liberation. I have a picture in Alistair Horne's Seven Ages of Paris of a crowd ducking under sniper fire in front of Notre Dame during the liberation. Although most people hit the deck and a horde ran away from the cathedral, you can see some people still strolling toward the cathedral completely oblivious, as if they were still reeling from a top drawer gigot d'agneau and half a bottle of St. Emilion.
Paris might go through white flags like mouchoirs, but at least there's someplace in the world one can still go where the popular culture still enshrines "intelligence and reasonable living."
posted by disappearingink at 9:46 PM
1 Comments:
The 1999 Bordeaux gave you a case of the brain confusion. There is nothing in this entry about spies. At all.
--Rebecca
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