Henri Justin

Du jour au lendemain (6/5)

Avec Poe jusqu'au bout de la prose

Renovator of the short story, inventor of crime fiction, herald of psychoanalysis, Edgar Allan Poe was the spritual brother of Baudelaire, the proclaimed master of Valéry and Mallarmé. In 1894, the latter concluded that he was "an absolute literary event." Years of familiarity with the work of this American writer convinced Henri Justin of the accuracy of this strange phrase.

Noting that Poe is hardly perceived as anything but a master of fantasy and a writer for young adults, the author takes it upon himself to restore the original shine to these stories and to reestablish the logic of the whole. He brings to Poe's oeuvre all that Poe himself brought to western literary consciousness: an esthetic that serves the text itself, and which helps think literature.

Without jargon, passionate, captivating, the book opens with the life and work of Poe before delving into an exploration of his imaginary space, moving in stages, with stops and detours. Henri Justin has labored with Poe, and when he takes the reader into his work, he is a guide who knows the good spots and who knows how to provide a taste, using the best examples, of writing at work.

Du jour au lendemain for iTunes

Simonetta Greggio

Du jour au lendemain (5/29)

Les mains nues

"Books make you think, make you a little more intelligent. Television prevents intelligence and thought."

Emma is a veterinarian in the country. At forty three, in the middle of a difficult life, autarchic and solitary, the young, teenage Giovanni arrives. She'd known his parents, Micol and Raphael. She had wanted to forget what had happened between them, bury it as deep as possible. She'd prefer Giovanni left, but he stays. And little by little a tenderness, feverish and awkward, grows between them.

When Micol comes back for her son, she believes the irreparable has occured, that Emma and Gio are having an affair. There will be a trial. And revenge. But about what and on whom? Over a love that remains taboo? Or over a past whose wounds haven't healed?

Du jour au lendemain for iTunes

Pascale Kramer

Du jour au lendemain (5/27)

L'emplacable brutalité du réveil

"Una nursed while softly banging her head. Alissa could barely feel her. The computer was on and displayed in succession the same images of her and him, a hypnotic world before waking. Una stared at her with her blue eyes that seemed frosted over. A dead leaf caught in the air conditioner fan grated the silence. It seemed like time could stand still for hours, and Alissa could think of no one to seek out. How could things have become so merciless, without the hope of future recourse or alternative? Alissa could not get over what she had allowed to happen. This couldn't be the life that had been promised her.

"Alissa and Richard were known as the sexiest couple on campus. From their love, Una had just been born. It's summertime: the California sky is spectacular, the air conditioners hum in the apartment building where they've just moved. Left alone with the baby whose total dependence moves her and overwhelms her, Alissa sinks inexorably into doubt. But the moment of choice has passed. There is no going back."

Download Du jour au lendemain for iTunes

La Table de Montaigne, Christian Coulon

Du jour au lendemain (4/20)

"Meeting Montaigne as a reader, you feel like it would be nice to sit down to dinner with him. Yet the author of The Essays hardly comes across as a gourmet. It has even been said that he lacked delicateness when eating: the "science of eating" leaves some doubt; his knowledge of all things culinary are rudimentary, to the point where he admits that he doesn't distinguish cabbage from lettuce and is not too familiar with the "diversity and nature of fruits, wines, meats"; he is unable to "carve at the table", doesn't understand "police of sauces"... "You can give me all the preparations in a kitchen, I will go hungry." Hopeless!

"When you take a closer look though, you realize that this avowed ignorance doesn't mean that the man is indifferent to all things cuisine. On the contrary. First, he has a great appetite, and even recognizes "eating gluttonously": "I often bite my tongue, sometimes my fingers, in haste." A precipitation that reflects a ferocious taste for life and natural sensual pleasures.

"In the Essays, Montaigne doesn't hesitate to provide us, in minute detail, with his table habits, his favorite dishes and the evolution of his tastes. He tells us how he adapts his diet to his digestive troubles, his age, his illness, without renouncing "natural pleasures", how he "loyally takes pleasure in his being" and "lives well", thanks to careful attention to the "culture of the body."

"During his voyage across Europe, Montaigne likes to discover and taste the specialities of the regions that he passes through, he thrusts himself on "tables thick with foreigners", castigating men who shy away "from forms opposed to their own" and call "barbarian" whatever is not of their land. A fine lesson in cultural openness.

"After having placed Montaigne's comments about cuisine and table manners in the context of alimentary habits of the 16th Century, La Table de Montaigne studies his culinary knowledge and sensibility, his tastes and appetite, the thoughts that cuisine suggests to him in understanding "the human condition", and the importance that he puts on the alimentary habits of "others" in understanding their cultures."

Du jour au lendemain for iTunes

Patrice Leconte

L'humeur vagabonde (4/7)

"I like women with short hair, I always have. There is no reason for it, that's just the way it is. Women with short hair make me shiver, they enchant me, fluster me, fascinate me, move me, touch me, attract me and overwhelm me. After years of close observation, I decided once and for all that women with short hair were more beautiful than the others. I say women, but I could also say young girls, teenagers, young women, mothers or older women. In the theater, in the street, in a crowd, a reception, a beach, a department store, on a train station platform, an airport, a restaurant, a public swimming pool, from a distance in the fog, even in the dark, anywhere, I always spot women with short hair. It's like a magnetism, a fascination, a happiness." - Patrice Leconte

"Women with Short Hair is the first novel by the director Patrice Leconte. A sort of fairy tale for old kids, it reads with a smile, with lots of images of a Paris filled with park benches for those who love post cards, where all the women are beautiful and and family meals are not at all boring. It's a novel..." -Kathleen Evin

Download l'humeur vagabonde for iTunes

Guadalupe Nettel

Pétales : Et autres histoires embarrassantes

"Over the years I heard all sorts of opinions about veritable solitude. It was a recurring theme at family dinners. The kind of conversation in which it isn't proper to express a sincere opinion about the news or moral questions, because you would most likely end up in the prodigious tumors of misunderstanding. Certain people, especially those already on the slope of old age, speak of veritable solitude like an austere spider web that we construct over time. But there are also some who speak of it as a privileged and capricious place where the rules for admission are more or less arbitrary.

"When I forget to be prudent in the midst of all this chatter, among so many eye glasses, so many mouth noises of aunts with make-up covered faces, and a child who stretches a filthy hand to reach a cookie in a small container, I defend this last definition because I remember, not without some nostalgia, that I myself was looking for this paradise when I was fifteen years old. In my opinion, the only inhabitant of the veritable solitude should be a young girl, full of shame, her little pointy breasts, like the nipples on a family dog, her body too big for her clothing and too flat for her swimming suit."

Download l'humeur vagabonde for iTunes

Philippe Sollers

Du jour au lendemain (2/11)

Philippe Sollers describes the novel as something that is heard (ça s'écoute) and has no patience for the American definition of a book as something that should tell a story which can be easily transformed into a Hollywood film. The true novel must be heard. Beckett wrote "for a voice." If there is a voice, it's good. The test is poetry - it has to speak to the ear.

Sollers always seems very much in the brain though, and he says in the interview: "I expect a book to bring me knowledge." Maybe that is why this books begins by thanking the body for being there, constantly reminding the narrator that it is all about le corps.

Du jour au lendemain for iTunes