Literary Pick (***)

Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down 
-Rosecrans Baldwin

   
Boy, do I have a love/hate relationship with Paris.. I have to admit that if I had no interest in Paris at all, this book would've been incredibly boring to me. I think if you would've plugged in any other city other than Paris, this book would've never made it to the newsstands. The sheer fact that so many people from all over the world, but most especially from the United States, dream of someday moving to Paris is this novels only appeal.

In an odd way, reading this novel makes me want to actually move to Paris, although my visit there was less than stellar.

Literary Pick (***)

Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir 
-Paul Monette

When I first began reading this book, I though "oh God, is this memoir going to be this depressing the whole way through?" It was.. but it got increasingly better. I initially felt it was overly cerebral for an AIDS memoir (that sounds terrible..) and a tad over-dramatic, but it comes together gracefully, powerfully, and lovingly.
I felt there was a certain level of self-martyrdom in Paul's account of Roger's illness, but became convinced it was a memoir written purely for the honor of Roger's memory when Monette ended the novel without addressing his own issues with the virus.


I'd only recommend this to certain people. Ones who are compassionate and patient.

Questionnaire

The Proust Questionnaire 

The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:

•  What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
  To be separated from Mama
• Where would you like to live?
  In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
• What is your idea of earthly happiness?
  To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  To a life deprived of the works of genius
• Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
  Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real
• Who are your favorite characters in history?
  A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
• Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
  A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
• Your favorite painter?
  Meissonier
• Your favorite musician?
  Mozart
• The quality you most admire in a man?
  Intelligence, moral sense
• The quality you most admire in a woman?
  Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
• Your favorite virtue?
  All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
• Your favorite occupation?
  Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
• Who would you have liked to be?
  Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.

This questionnaire tells us much about two things, the character of petiit Marcel, and the amusement of the young in the Belle Epoque. We see Marcel as a sweet and dreamy Mama's boy, brainy, aesthetic, a young citizen of the world with much sympathy for the feminine. What he sees in Pliny the Younger, famous only for speaking and writing letters, is hard to grasp.
What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"
Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:

• Your most marked characteristic?
  A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired
• The quality you most like in a man?
  Feminine charm
• The quality you most like in a woman?
  A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship
• What do you most value in your friends?
  Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having
• What is your principle defect?
  Lack of understanding; weakness of will
• What is your favorite occupation?
  Loving
• What is your dream of happiness?
  Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.
• What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
  Never to have known my mother or my grandmother
• What would you like to be?
  Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be
• In what country would you like to live?
  One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]
• What is your favorite color?
  Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony
• What is your favorite flower?
  Hers - but apart from that, all
• What is your favorite bird?
  The swallow
• Who are your favorite prose writers?
  At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti
• Who are your favoite poets?
  Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny
• Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
  Hamlet
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  Phedre (crossed out) Berenice
• Who are your favorite composers?
  Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann
• Who are your favorite painters?
  Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt
• Who are your heroes in real life?
  Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)
• Who are your favorite heroines of history?
  Cleopatra
• What are your favorite names?
  I only have one at a time
• What is it you most dislike?
  My own worst qualities
• What historical figures do you most despise?
  I am not sufficiently educated to say
• What event in military history do you most admire?
  My own enlistment as a volunteer!
• What reform do you most admire?
  (no response)
• What natural gift would you most like to possess?
  Will power and irresistible charm
• How would you like to die?
  A better man than I am, and much beloved
• What is your present state of mind?
  Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  Those that I understand
• What is your motto?
  I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

Art of the Day

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey 
-Paul Delaroche 
1833

Literary Pick (****)

A Moveable Feast
-Ernest Hemingway

I purchased this book at Shakespeare & Co. on the first day I arrived in Paris. I rented a flat in the St. Germain area (Rue de Conde), and knowing the strong connection between Hemingway and the 6th arrondissement, I thought what a perfect time to read this book, and get to see and experience first-hand the area and quiet streets referred to in this memoir during the time Hemingway lived in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and first child, Bumby. I was also interested in reading about his earlier friendships with other famous writers living in Paris at the time as well, such as Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound, to name a few.

...edited
Update:
As time went on Paris grew on me, tremendously.