I bought Gustave Flaubert’s hilarious little book about six years ago, out of boredom. I  was extremely tired and reading it proved to be a delightful experience; it thus became one of my most prized possession. But, being a generous person, I let a friend borrow it when she needed a delightful read. And I never saw neither the book nor my friend again. Until I stumbled on it in a library lately and immediately bought it. And the one who said laughter was the best cure for anything certainly knew what he was talking about, because Flaubert’s satirical definitions of platitudes soothed my recent heartbreak. I assume I don’t need to tell you who Gustave Flaubert is: his name makes his Frenchness pretty obvious and Madam Bovary is a must-read, so I guess I can skip the biography. I’ll just say that the Dictionary of Received Ideas was written in the 1870’s but that it sometimes oddly resonates with our time. Actually, I will also skip the review for Flaubert defines Literature (my main occupation) as the “occupation of idlers”. Not only am I too lazy to write a review for this amazing book, I also believe the best way to convince you to read it is to tease you with a bunch of definitions. There you go.

ACADEMY, FRENCH (ACADEMIE FRANCAISE) Run it down but try to belong to it if possible.

ACTRESSES The ruin of young men of good family. Are terribly lascivious, engage in orgies, run through fortunes, and end up in the workhouse. ‘I beg to differ: some make excellent mothers!’

AMERICA Fine example of injustice: Columbus discovered it and it is named after Amerigo Vespucci. If it weren’t for the discovery of America, we shouldn’t have syphilis and Phylloxera. Praise it all the same, especially if you’ve never been there. Expatiate on selfgovernment.

ANGER Stirs the blood: it is healthy to be angry now and then.

ARISTOCRACY Despise and envy it.

ARTISTS All charlatans. Praise their disinterestedness (old-fashioned). Express surprise that they dress like everyone else (old-fashioned). They earn huge sums, but squander them. Often asked to dine out. A woman artist must be a whore. What artists do can’t be called work.

BALDNESS Always ‘premature’. Caused by youthful excesses, or the hatching of great thoughts.

BEETHOVEN Don’t pronounce Beatoven. Be sure to swoon when one of his works is being played.

BILL Always too high.

BOOK Always too long, whatever the subject.

BRUNETTES Hotter than blondes. (See BLONDES.)

BUDGET Never balanced.

CATHOLICISM Has had a very good influence on art.

CELEBRITIES Find out the smallest details of their private lives, so that you can run them down.

CHAMPAGNE The sign of a grand dinner. Pretend to despise it, saying: ‘It isn’t really a wine.’ Arouses the enthusiasm of the lower orders. Russia drinks more of it than France. The medium through which French ideas have been spread throughout Europe. During the Regency people did nothing but drink champagne. But one doesn’t drink champagne: one ‘sips’ it.

COITUS, COPULATION Words to avoid. Say: ‘Intimacy occurred…’

CONCERT Respectable way of killing time.

CORSET Prevents childbearing.

DARWIN The fellow who says we’re descended from monkeys.

DEBAUCHERY Cause of all the diseases from which bachelors suffer.

DIPLOMA Emblem of knowledge. Proves nothing.

ENGLISHWOMEN Express surprise that they can have pretty children.

ERECTION Said only of monuments.

FAME Vanity of vanities.

GENTLEMEN There aren’t any left.

GODFATHER Always the godchild’s real father.

HERMAPHRODITES Arouse unwholesome curiosity. Try to see one.

LATE NIGHTS Are respectable in the country.

LADIES Always come first. ‘God bless ‘em!’ Be careful how you use the term.

LAURELS Keep a man from sleeping.

LAW (THE) Nobody knows what it is.

LEARNING Despise it as the sign of a narrow mind.

MOON Inspires melancholy. May be inhabited.

ORGASM Obscene term.

PIANO Indispensable in a drawing-room.

POET Flattering synonym for fool, dreamer.

PROSE Easier to write than verse.

RELATIVES Always a nuisance. Keep the poor ones out of sight.

SELFISHNESS Complain of other people’s, and overlook your own.

SYPHILIS Everybody is more or less infected with it.

TIGHTS Sexually exciting.

WAR Thunder against it.

WEATHER Eternal topic of conversation. Universal cause of illness. [MB2.5] Always complain about it.

YAWNING Say: ‘Excuse me, it isn’t that I’m bored— it’s my stomach.’

Now, if you don’t feel like you need to read it, I just don’t know what to do with you!

I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie lately. Well, re-read is more like it. See, Dame Agatha is more to me than the undisputed Queen of Crime novels. She is an inspiration. She is also the one who wrote the first ‘adult’ book I ever read. I was eight, or nine maybe –yes, nine probably- and I went from Enid Blyton to murders with The Body in the Library. I’ve read most of what she wrote, all those murders thoroughly plotted and I’ve enjoyed the ride. More than that, I decided I wanted to be part of it and become a writer too. But that’s another story, the one I want to tell you about today is one of my favorite of hers. It doesn’t involve Poirot, or Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence or Parker Pyne. Ordeal by Innocence is a story told backwards, sort of, through flashbacks. The murder of Rachel Argyle has taken place a couple of years ago. Jacko Argyle, her adopted son, has been convicted, and hung. But one night, under a showering rain, Dr. Arthur Calgary knocks at the Argyles’ door. He is here to provide an alibi for Jacko who was with him at the time of the murder. The news should be relief for the family, but it isn’t. Evryone was too happy that Jacko, bad seed and constantly broke Jacko, was the one who killed their mother because she refused to pay for his debts. This is not an idyllic, loving family. The children were all adopted after the war, and Rachel wasn’t as generous and caring as she was authoritative and controlling. And if Jacko didn’t kill her, it means one of them did it and it’s not a pleasant idea. Arthur will investigate anyways, because he thinks he owes it to Jacko and that makes for a thrilling story. I loved it. I loved it because of that initial mistake, that missed opportunity that can’t be repaired. Like Lady Macbeth would say: ‘The deed is done and cannot be undone’. It seems unfair that Jacko was convicted and killed for a murder he didn’t commit, but is it really? He was not a likeable person, but did he deserve to die? Those are the questions Dame Agatha must have wondered about when she wrote that brilliant piece; and she now serves them to us. With a plate full of murders. Enjoy!

There is nothing like a very good read in the sun. To me, it’s the closest thing to perfect pleasure. It is, the times when I don’t have a very skilled lover. And lately, Paris has been uncostumarily sunny for March. So I have taken the happy habit to laze in a park (the Jardin du Luxembourg) with a book before or between classes. After several re-readings of the Millenium trilogy (I know!), I picked a play by my favorite playwright on the shelf. I have admired Tennessee Williams ever since I first read A Streetcar Named Desire, when I was twelve. I was young and maybe naive and the sultry, sexy, dark play opened doors to a world where the hot and damp Southern air is also filled with lies, secrets and passion. I followed with Suddenly, Last Summer, A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Baby Doll,The Rose Tattoo, The Night of the Iguana and many more. Everytime, I enjoy the ride in this other world that the Deep South still was fifty years ago. It’s a world filled with Southern Belles and Big Daddies, where you drink mint julep and display good manners -in public, at least. But it’s far from perfect, it’s violent and racist and it tries to live on the remains of a past glory.

Sweet Bird of Youth is a story of past glory and past prime. The play opens with The Princess and Chance Wayne waking up in a hotel room in St-Cloud (somewhere near New-Orleans), his hometown. The Princess is an aging Hollywood diva who has panick attacks and forgets her loneliness and fading beauty in the arms of young lovers. Chance is an aspiring actor who survives by giving older women pleasure with a price. Funny enough, those two don’t consumate until later into the play. Chance is back in St-Cloud for his girl, Heavenly. Heavenly’s Papa, Boss Finley, is not to happy with the return of the “criminal degenerate” who took his little girl’s virginity and gave her something else in the process. Boss Finley and Tom Junior, his son, are determined to salvage the girl’s reputation by getting rid of Chance, one way or another. So, the clock is ticking for everyone. The Princess   is mourning her past beauty. Chance wants to put his gigolo days behind and longs for a future with Heavenly -a future he could obtain through blackmail and mendacity. Heavenly is still young but she lost her innocence and purity. The clock ticks, time is the real enemy. But I think, what the play is really about is the eruption of modernity and youth in an archaic world where keeping up appearences is all what’s left. Pretending the past glory is still here when it crumbled years ago. I loved it, needless to say, the violence, the sex, the shame, the self-disgust and the realization that you blow your chances and that now is too late. It’s dark and you can’t expect happy endings from Tennessee Williams, but somehow it gave me a much-needed rush of energy to try to acheive my own dreams. Because who wants to end up like The Princess or Chance or Heavenly: emptied?

I wish I could have seen it on the stage in 1959, with Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Shirley Knight, all directed by Elia Kazan. Kazan had the fortunate idea to adapt the play for the screen with the same cast, so when I see it, it’ll be a little as if I were there.